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How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists'
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoMoving a serious conversation about blowing up "a bridge" versus a "cargo ship" using bleach explosives to a "big bridge" using C4 isn't "inventing terrorists".
- baltcode 14y agoIf every conversation among people of all political persuasions was exploited, you'd see a very different picture. You really think conversations among Tea Partiers, Democratic party drones, and other mainstream-type groups never bring up fantasies of violence on their supposed enemies? Or do you think there are no unstable and insecure people who could be turned among these political blocs?
- _delirium 14y agoIn particular, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to entrap some of the gun-show types who talk about "second amendment solutions", goading them into making more specific statements. I'm not sure it makes sense to lock up everyone who has a very generalized idea of using violence, though, especially if it takes coaching to get them to articulate it with any specifics.
- dominicmauro 14y agoIt's not illegal to fantasize. It is illegal to attempt to blow up a bridge. Federal law is remarkably consistent on this, whether you vote Democrat, Republican, or Ron Paul.
- bluedanieru 14y agoIt is illegal to attempt to blow up the bridge. But if you do so when led by an agent of the state, having been convinced by an agent of the state to perform the act, and with the necessary materials provided by the state, then you ought not be convicted of a crime. The more worrying part of this article is the targeting of certain groups and certain ideologies. Even if this particular case wasn't entrapment, that the FBI is specifically targeting certain groups and egging them on to commit acts of violence, is undemocratic and just plain evil.
- njharman 14y agoConspiracy to commit foo, is illegal for many foo. So, it is illegal to fantasize out loud.
- tomjen3 14y agoConspiracy to commit foo generally means you are planing to commit foo, not talking about the best way to commit foo.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoOnly if you take real action towards committing foo. Talking about it does not constitute real action.
- sophacles 14y agoThat isn't how conspiracy to commit works. There has to have been foo (or an attempt at foo), and demonstrable knowledge of that act of foo (or highly probable knowledge), and actions to further the committing of foo (direct or indirect I believe). Just exploring stuff in the hypothetical is completely legal.
- AkThhhpppt 14y agoGoogle 'entrapment "ruby ridge"'
- wisty 14y agoIt may not have been a serious conversation. I've met a few "anarchists" in college, and the limit to what they can usually accomplish is a bit of graffiti. They'd need leadership, training, and materials to actually accomplish anything. I'm sure you could find a few people here who talk about ways they could hack into banks, but they aren't bank robbers. If you came up with a great plan (designed by a bank security specialist), and egged them on, then you might be able to convince a few to join you.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoThey'd need leadership, training, and materials to actually accomplish anything. I just find it ironic that self proclaimed anarchists require leadership to function. Not that I disagree, just, it's a bit funny is all.
- sp332 14y agoBeing "lead" isn't the same as being bossed around. As long as the leader doesn't claim some authority over the other members, it can still be "anarchist" leadership.
- ceejayoz 14y agoWhen I was in college, our floor's resident anarchist ran for (and won) a seat on student council. We found it rather entertaining.
- sp332 14y agoWow, did he even try to justify it? Maybe he's destroying the system from the inside? http://abstrusegoose.com/456 http://abstrusegoose.com/456 :)
- JonnieCache 14y agoThis argument is fallacious. Would you expect conservatives in 1970s britain to avoid using gas, electricity, trains, the telephone and so on, because they were publicly owned? Do you expect socialists in modern america not to ever use commercial businesses?
- bluedanieru 14y agoYou assume they weren't just talking shit. Are there recordings of the conversation?
- evilbit 14y agofantasy of violence != violence former is protected under 1st amendment, latter is a criminal offense.
- refurb 14y agoAgreed. These guys have lawyers and will be tried in front of a judge. If they can prove entrapment, then the charges will be dismissed. The gov't isn't stupid about this, they want convictions, they have their own lawyers (prosecutors). No doubt many conversations were had about avoiding entrapment and ensuring that the party in question committed a crime. I'm not saying that there aren't abuses, but the gov't (ATF, DEA, etc) have been doing this for decades. This is nothing new.
- horsehead 14y agoHow many times, though, have you jokingly said to a close friend that you should blow X up to solve the world's problems? It's akin to saying we should ship all of X type of people to some third world country. It doesn't mean you want to act on the thing. It might be a joke in bad taste, but words do not equal action. This guy apparently felt "pressured" by this agent to go through with an act. I don't know what that means, but it surely casts doubt on the ethics of the investigating agency.
- shabble 14y agoThe problem is getting the authorities to see the funny side, e.g. Paul Chambers and the airport: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8673196.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8673196.s...
- andrewpi 14y agoLegally it is not entrapment. Entrapment requires that the defendant not have a propensity to comment the offense.
- bediger4000 14y agoThe whole of morality is not contained within the law.
- bluedanieru 14y agoI'm not really familiar with the case, and the article isn't clear. Had they already decided to carry out the act and were merely discussing a target, or were they bullshitting the best way to "disrupt the 1%" or whatever other nonsense, when the informant offered up the C4 and where and how to detonate it?
- its_so_on 14y agoI totally called this (here - http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/tdw6j/tsa_agents_in_salt_lake_city_destroy_teens_10000/c4lwzq9 http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/tdw6j/tsa_agents_i... ). If you read my followup comment, you will see what people are really afraid of. Nobody cares if someone innocent is busted for saying "Yeah, let's bomb a bridge!" What people are afraid of is that the FBI is the only thing pushing real terrorism forward. That but for the FBI, it would ALL be just talk. That's pretty dangerous if you ask me. (To my follow-up comment, I forgot to add: what if the person who precipitates the terrorist plot and manoeuvers into being the final link in the chain simply CAN'T be that link. Maybe they get EXTREMELY ill, maybe they die, maybe someone else convinces the rest of the organization to let THEM do it, what if all the pieces are laid and then the informant is simply replaced by someone who doesn't know enough not to set the thing off at the end...)
- tomjen3 14y agoThe bombs are duds. Meaning that even if they attempt to set them of, nothing will happen. And, presumably the FBI is keeping so well tap on them that if they somehow got acces to real explosives (which can't be that hard, considering Tanerite is legal, as is fertilizer if purchased in small enough quantities) they would be arrested earlier.
- Karunamon 14y agoI'm sorry, but I have little sympathy for someone who was able to be convinced to blow up $thing with nothing more than a "Gee, it would be nice to blow up $thing wouldn't it?" That's not entrapment. Any sane, law abiding person would react viscerally and negative to such a suggestion. I don't even like Congress, but if you were to suggest that setting a bomb in the building was a sane course of action, I'd ask what you were smoking.
- raganwald 14y agoThis isn’t a question of sympathy, it’s a question of what types of behaviour on the part of the police are in society’s best interests. I don’t have sympathy for a shoplifter, but if the police beat a confession out of him, I am troubled by their actions. The world where the police can suggest targets to a group and supply the materials for action is also a world where you can take your taxes to an accountant, have him suggest some “aggressive” reporting of expenses, and when you agree you are arrested when it turns out the accountant was an undercover fraud squad officer. It’s a world where you can take a Porche out for a test drive and discover that the sales man who gave you directions to a deserted highway and suggested you speed was really an undercover police officer padding the unit’s statistics. I can’t even imagine how badly this could go if undercover police officers were to pose as high school students. Actually, I can, there has already been at least one case where a female officer suggested a male citizen procure drugs for her and then arrested him when he complied. I don’t need to sympathize with tax cheats, fast drivers, or love-smitten young men to fear the police state that doesn’t have enough criminals to catch and therefore must manufacture some of its own. Summary: yes, these people are unsympathetic. But also yes, it’s important to ask questions about the choices the police are making to prosecute them.
- georgieporgie 14y agothere has already been at least one case where a female officer suggested a male citizen procure drugs for her and then arrested him when he complied. I believe you may be talking about what was covered in Act Two of This American Life's "What I Did For Love": http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/457/what-i-did-for-love?act=2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/457/w...
- forgotAgain 14y agoDHS needs to justify its budget and spying on Americans. To do so they need homegrown terrorists. Put yourself in the position of a DC bureaucrat. It's a lot safer to deal with losers than dangerous wackos.
- sakai 14y agoAlso true -- but FBI is not part of DHS, it's part of the DoJ.
- forgotAgain 14y agoYou're right of course. Thanks for the correction.
- ttt_ 14y agoI don't see anyone commenting on a specific part of the article where basic it implies that white-supremacy groups are basically flying under the FBI radar. Isn't that quite the bothersome perspective? It's to me in the same level of awe as the part of hand-leading people into terrorist acts. Probably even related, as a police state can make use of home-grown hooligans that are just waiting for the oportunity to put their 'peers' in line through violence. How much further along is there before the US turns into a full-blown totalitarian regime? This all seems eerily in line with this bleak proposal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-down-a_b_46695.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-... (2007)
- georgieporgie 14y agoI wonder if it's the result of the embarrassment that came out of Ruby Ridge? Also, I imagine that there's a certain element of control, predictability, and cowardice: as an undercover cop or informant, I'm going to feel a lot more comfortable 'infiltrating' a protest movement than I am going into a somewhat isolated, armed, and organized group.
- evgen 14y agoExcept for the fact that the bulk of the arrests on terrorism-related charges in the past year have been white supremacists and "militiamen" who share your apparent fantasies regarding an oncoming fascist state I guess you would have a point...
- brown9-2 14y agoDo you have a source for this claim? I'd like to read more about this.
- dalke 14y agoYour phrase "source for this claim" implies to me that you didn't read the Rolling Stone article under discussion. It is a "source for this claim." Quoting from the article: "But don't worry your pretty little heads over the epidemic of far-right insurrectionism that followed the election of Barack Obama: all told, according to a forthcoming data analysis by Neiwert, there have been 55 cases of right-wing extremists being arrested for plotting or committing alleged terrorists acts compared to 26 by Islamic militants during the same period. The right-wing plots include the bombing of a 2011 Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane and the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009." It links to http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-... which includes a list of "incidents of insurrectionist violence". It also links to a book, "Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane" by the aforementioned Neiwert.
- nirvana 14y agoSuppose I went out and sought out people who I think might have a beef with the american government, proposed a terrorist plot to them, and supplied them with the tools to do it (and the FBI has supplied real explosives in the past to these groups).. and then they do it and all die in the process, but cause death of innocents as well. If I did all that, would I be guilty of something? Probably conspiracy and a dozen other crimes. Ok, now, if I'm doing the exact same actions, but I'm a member of the government, does that make my actions less of a crime? If something is a crime, does the criminality of it change depending on who is doing it? Is it ok for the president to murder someone but not for a distraught spouse? Is it ok for an FBI agent to set up a terrorist plot that gets foiled, but not ok for a truck driver? Imagine in both cases, before the plot can be put in motion, that law enforcement swoops in. The plot hasn't occurred yet, so they haven't actually committed an act of terrorism. But they did plan one and engage in a conspiracy to do it. In that case, isn't the FBI agent legally as guilty as anyone else in the conspiracy? How can the law be relative and let certain members of society off the hook- especially if, as it appears, those members were the primary conspirators, and without whome nothing would have happened? Whether this is "entrapment" or not is besides the point here-- if participating a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act is itself a crime, then isn't organizing the same also a crime? And shouldn't' criminality apply to anyone, no matter what their profession. If the law starts treating certain members of society differently than others, you don't have the rule of law so much any more and you start having two classes- the untouchables and the common. Police getting away with speeding doesn't always hurt society (thought it does cause wrecks) but over time, it seems natural that more and more laws will apply to the common folk and not to the "elite" and the elite will come to use their powers more and more for their own advantage. This disconnect is corruptive in nature, I believe.
- castillowl 14y agoThis is great. We need more of it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aes256 14y agoOh dear. Have all the proofreaders at the Rolling Stone been locked up in a similar entrapment case? > "[...] the indictments of Animal Liberal Front activists who burned down [...]" > "In the Harrisburg 7 trial of in 1972 [...]" > "They have no place in American and those who advocate them have no place in this government."
- MartinCron 14y agoI hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are the proofreader for Rolling Stone.
- brudgers 14y agoI last reread Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago not long after 9/11. What was particularly salient is how many of the people he describes had been charged with terrorism by Stalin's organs. There's nothing particularly shocking in the rolling stone article. Terrorists are so designated for political ends. That's not to say that they're never criminals, just that conspiracy to blow up a bridge is already a crime.
- AkThhhpppt 14y agoTerrorism is opposition to the current political setup. Totalitarian regimes' innovation is making opposition to the current political setup terrorism.
- TDL 14y agoI disagree with defining terrorism so broadly. An act (or the ability to execute an act) of violence targeted against a civilian population is necessary to be considered terrorism. The FBI has been attempting to widen the definition over the past ten years (successfully I might add) & has clearly focused on helping groups gain (very minimally) the capabilities of executing a terrorist act.
- brudgers 14y ago>"An act (or the ability to execute an act) of violence targeted against a civilian population is necessary to be considered terrorism." By this definition, much of the bombing of Germany and Japan during the Second World War would be terrorism. Conversely, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole would not be. The usage of the term is different from the definition proposed.
- TDL 14y agoI am not sure if the Pentagon is considered a military building or a civilian building (I think there is a valid argument to make that it is a civilian building.) I do not believe that the attack on the USS Cole should be classified as an act of terrorism. As far as acts that resemble terrorism during war, they can be classified as war crimes. Actions during war have their own categories of law, so I would disagree with using the fire bombing of Dresden or the bombing of Tokyo as examples.
- richardlblair 14y agoThe damage inflicted goes beyond those who are being entrapped. This type of behaviour develops a culture which lives in irrational fear. The type of irrational fear that makes a population believe that body scanners at airports are acceptable, that all muslims must be Terrorists, and that no one is trust worthy anymore. We need to remember what our core principles are. We have allowed terrorists to influence the way we live our lives, and in doing so we have allowed them to win. That's right, we ALLOWED them to win.
- JonnieCache 14y agoAny of you beancounting/game theory types fancy analysing this trend in the FBI's behaviour from an economic perspective? What is the driver or incentive for them to do this?
- fleitz 14y agoIt's not so much an economic perspective as a political one, the government derives its power (and income) from the current federal reserve system, if something were to undermine this system the government would be left toothless and facing a very angry populace. A full investigation of the banking system would cause credibility to be lost by the banks which would unravel the whole system as the fractional reserve system collapses. Thus the government needs to remove credibility from those who pose a threat to this system. As to why white supremacists aren't targeted, white supremacists don't pose any fundamental threat to the banks or to power because their ideas are unpopular, occupy touches upon an angry thread running through the country that the average person cannot get ahead. Threads like these unseat governments, an unseated government cannot prevent an investigation into the banks.
- TDL 14y agoIt's not simply a political factor (although it mostly is.) This has nothing to do with the Fed (which I believe should be done away with.) The powers the USG use to go after groups that potentially threaten it existed before 1913 (even though more powers have been added since then.) The Fed has nothing to do what so ever with this discussion. Edited for some grammar & clarity.
- avstraliitski 14y agoGetting consistent 'Access denied' messages trying to read the article from China. For others in this position, some part of the article is quoted at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002694603 http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002694603 VPN resolved the issue. It really sucks how companies in the west reject email and web access from China.
- dromidas 14y agoArticles like this are pointless. Americans as a whole will not band together to prevent or rectify problems like this because of one or more of the following: FEAR) We're all expecting the government to view anything related to freedom as an act of terrorism that will get us into pound-me-in-the-ass prison or worse. DENIAL) That will never happen to me if I just keep my head down. Only bad people have that happen to them. DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY) I'm nobody, so how could I change government policy? That is something that important people can do, but not me, I'm just a(n) __________.