7 ms·

The Sting: How the FBI Created a Terrorist

98 points by etiam 12y ago

sunday 12y ago
Securing jobs the FBI way! Cultivate criminals if there are none.
- trhway 12y ago
  FBI is still probably long way from such an achievement like CIA building the Al Qaeda.
mercurial 12y ago
1984 has to be on their must-read list.
- CapitalistCartr 12y ago
  Of course, for them its a technical manual.
  - CWuestefeld 12y ago
    Tangent: back in the mid-80's I was in college, working in a co-op job for a major vendor of radar systems to the military. This was back when Hunt for Red October came out, and it seems that the book was so factually accurate that some of the radar engineers actually kept a copy on their desks for technically reference.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 12y ago
Careful. Even saying that this sort of thing might be the case is now classed as terrorism in the UK. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31809453 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31809453
- mpweiher 12y ago
  Journalism already is as well. We used to quip about Arafat swearing off "International Tourism", quite a menace that was. Satire, meet Reality.
NN88 12y ago
None of these people are innocent. If you can be tricked into doing this, there's not much difference between the FBI and some separatist group.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  You're ignoring the payoff on invested resources. To "recruit" one of these schizophrenic ne'er do wells (or as the FBI called him, "a retarded fool"), the FBI has > a dozen agents working on it, cultivated CIs, a nigh-omnipresent surveillance operation, and effectively unlimited funds, over the course of several months. A corresponding effort by a group already under surveillance would noticed incredibly quickly and absorb massive amounts of resources that could just as well be used directly for ill.
- georgeoliver 12y ago
  I agree. Every one of those agents should be prosecuted under the Patriot Act.
CWuestefeld 12y ago
There's reason to believe (not certain by any means, but there's interesting evidence) that Timothy McVeigh's bombing in Oklahoma City was similarly set up by the FBI, and McVeigh jumped the gun and really did execute the job ahead of schedule, before the FBI was prepared to swoop in and save the day in the nick of time. At the very least, the government was aware that something was going on, and dropped the ball in intercepting McVeigh. I hope they've learned their lesson, and aren't working so close to the edge anymore. See for example, http://www.comeandtakeit.com/feds-okc.html http://www.comeandtakeit.com/feds-okc.html (and apologies for the tinfoil hat site, it's the most concise citation I could come up with quickly)
rokhayakebe 12y ago
This is a talent war. A terrorist group finds and grooms people who have the potential to destroy at massive scale. The FBI says why pay the price after they have become experts, let us start our own incubator. The FBI finds and grooms the same people before the terrorists group.
mc_hammer 12y ago
which time?
tedks 12y ago
Before Muslims were a target, and even now, the FBI did this with "eco-terrorists": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_McDavid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_McDavid I hope nobody here believes that these cases are instances of the FBI diligently protecting us against legions of terrorists, eco or otherwise, who want to destroy us all. It's very clear all these cases are, if not strictly speaking entrapment, then at least manufactured by the FBI preying on vulnerable people. The real question is, why would they do this? I can think of a few reasons: 1. Personal gain. Everybody in the FBI benefits from a successful case. The agent gets a notch on their belt. Their boss can demand more funding and more toys to capture future "jihadists". The prosecutors get a win and bump up their stats. Even people loosely connected benefit, like the journalists that can cover a juicy story for a few weeks, politicians that can attach themselves, etc.. The only real losers are people that are already isolated and unable to defend themselves. 2. Maintaining an image of social control. If you know that the FBI is bearing down on activists and Muslims, are you going to be as willing to join an activist group, participate in an Occupy-style protest movement, or even go to a protest? You could get tear gassed, you could say something like "Yeah, the banks need to go" to an FBI agent who later testifies that you planned to blow up a bank, it's a hassle, just stay home, the new season of 24 is supposed to be great anyway. Personally, I think both of these are primary reasons; #1 incentivizes individuals to go through this plan, and #2 makes it more likely future plans will succeed by making the system as a whole harder to disrupt. This creates a positive feedback cycle where dissent is slowly marginalized out of existence, and all political discourse is limited to what the Republicans and Democrats delineate as "moderate" ground. And, because the system works, it is basically impossible to change. Combine this with pervasive surveillance and you have permanent techno-dystopia. The FBI uses plenty of software to do this. I hope that if anyone writing that software is reading these comments, they take a moment to consider the consequences of their actions.
- dalke 12y ago
  I'll add a #3: little risk of personal or professional failure.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
notdonspaulding 12y ago
The trouble I have with this article is that it seeks to remove any personal responsibility from the person it claims is the "target" and victim of the sting. Any bad decisions made by Osmakac are written off as having been coached, or a result of his being "Schizo-affective"[0]. The article title claims the FBI "created a terrorist", but then presents these things as factual: - He travelled to Saudi Arabia to get holy water, but later claimed he actually wanted to end up in Iraq or Afghanistan to fight American troops. - He argued with Dabus (the Palestinian shop owner) that Islam and democracy were incompatible. - He physically attacked the street preachers outside the Lady Gaga concert. ...all of which happened before the FBI got involved. Furthermore, the FBI only got involved because Dabus, the shop owner who Dennison had suggested he meet, turned Osmakac in. And why did Dabus do that? Because he felt that: ...he was doing his civic duty in reporting Osmakac and the young man’s interest in acquiring weapons... As terrible as the Patriot act is, this all sounds like the government got this one right. In particular, the article doesn't show that Osmakac would have behaved any differently if instead of being handled by the government, he had found an actual small arms dealer and weaseled some guy into giving him $300. And personally, I think we jump too quickly to the "he's just crazy" defense [1]. I don't want to live in a world where acting out on a dream you had absolves you of personal responsibility for your actions in the real world, which is apparently what The Intercept wants to believe. [0] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoaffective-disorder/basics/definition/con-20029221 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoaffectiv... [1] I'm not a psychiatrist, but I play one on The Internet [edit: formatting]
- dalke 12y ago
  "if instead of being handled by the government, he had found an actual small arms dealer and weaseled some guy into giving him $300." I believe that this quote from the article: > Osmakac was, in the FBI’s own words, “a retarded fool” who didn’t have any capacity to plan and execute an attack on his own. That was a challenge for the FBI. is supposed to mean that he wouldn't be able to go through the planning of doing as you suggest. If he has poor ability to plan, then your point #1 could be interpreted as another example. He wasn't able to go through the planning to get the holy water, or work around the visa issues, or manage the funding. Or figure out how to get to Afg Point #2 is protected free speech. As for point #3, another interpretation is that he's willing to fall into things in front of his face, so long as they don't require non-trivial planning. I know people who talk big, but can't actually pull anything off, so I wouldn't discount that possibility. Even if he 'weaseled some guy into giving him $300', it doesn't seem that he would find a small arms dealer willing to sell him "six grenades, a fully automatic AK-47 with magazines, a handgun and an explosive belt". Checking various auction sites, the minimum price for an AK-47 is $400, and those are semi-automatic, not an illegal fully automatic. Assuming $100 for the handgun, $10/grenade and I have no idea how much for he explosive belt, the real cost is likely over $1,000. (That's a wild-ass guess; but it's certainly over $500 in hardware, plus extra to cover risk on the dealer's side.) I don't think it's easy to find a dealer for this sort of equipment. I wouldn't know where to start and have 'no concept of what weapons cost on the black market.' I suspect that if I start asking around, someone is likely to call the cops on me. Also, why did you mention the Patriot Act? It's only mentioned once in the article, concerning someone else. I don't see mention that Patriot Act powers were used or potentially misused.
ufmace 12y ago
I don't think that the FBI is quite as bad of an actor as the article tries to make them out to be for various reasons, mostly covered by other posts here. What I do think is that the FBI and other government agencies have a fine line to balance with these things. On the one hand, we constantly push for them to catch terrorists before they act via standard, good police work - which mostly involves tips and confidential informants, just like this case. We criticize them when they use over-broad mass electronic surveillance to try and find the terrorists, and we criticize them some more when they fail to catch actual terrorist before they act. I'm all for criticizing them when they screw up or overreach, but if you want them to do their job, they need some room to work. This is what that work looks like - maintaining networks of informants at the fringes of the broad movement, constantly listening and following up on any signs of anyone who might want to take action, and aggressively pursuing those who do have a desire to take action. If these guys have some genuine desire to take violent action, shouldn't we get to them before somebody else does? On the other hand, the process of maintaining informants in a movement can be rather alienating to the movement as a whole. I've been into guns as hobby for a while, and every now and then, I've heard second-hand accounts of people who show up at various gun club events and start asking rather pointed questions about how to do illegal things. I don't know if it's true, if they're really government informants, or how often it actually happens, but the very idea and plausibility of it leaves a rather bad taste in peoples' mouths. It tends to make think the Government sees us as the enemy, to make us think of ourselves more as a group in opposition to them, then just a bunch of ordinary Americans exercising a constitutional right in a harmless way. I can't help but think that many Muslims experience the same thing and feel the same way about it. If we really want to fix these problems long-term, shouldn't we be working to integrate Muslims into mainstream America, and send them the message that they're welcome here, and we're happy to have them as productive members of society? I don't know that much about this particular investigation, but it sounds like it may be a touch further than we'd like to be along the lines of pursuing too aggressively. Not enough that I'd want to see things changed too drastically - this guy sounds like he's at least some level of bad actor. Maybe they should look further towards getting these guys mental help and medication, rather than multi-decade prison sentences? Or maybe he was already too far gone for that type of help even before the FBI got to him. I would be interested to hear the opinions of some members of the area Muslim community. At least ones not coordinated by reporters trying to push an agenda, or grandstanding civil rights activists more interested in their own prominence than what the community actually feels. Not that I'm likely to get that.

98 points by etiam 12y ago

sunday 12y ago

Securing jobs the FBI way! Cultivate criminals if there are none.

trhway 12y ago
FBI is still probably long way from such an achievement like CIA building the Al Qaeda.

mercurial 12y ago

1984 has to be on their must-read list.

CapitalistCartr 12y ago
Of course, for them its a technical manual.
- CWuestefeld 12y ago
  Tangent: back in the mid-80's I was in college, working in a co-op job for a major vendor of radar systems to the military. This was back when Hunt for Red October came out, and it seems that the book was so factually accurate that some of the radar engineers actually kept a copy on their desks for technically reference.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 12y ago

Careful. Even saying that this sort of thing might be the case is now classed as terrorism in the UK. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31809453 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31809453

mpweiher 12y ago
Journalism already is as well. We used to quip about Arafat swearing off "International Tourism", quite a menace that was. Satire, meet Reality.

NN88 12y ago

None of these people are innocent. If you can be tricked into doing this, there's not much difference between the FBI and some separatist group.

fiatmoney 12y ago
You're ignoring the payoff on invested resources. To "recruit" one of these schizophrenic ne'er do wells (or as the FBI called him, "a retarded fool"), the FBI has > a dozen agents working on it, cultivated CIs, a nigh-omnipresent surveillance operation, and effectively unlimited funds, over the course of several months. A corresponding effort by a group already under surveillance would noticed incredibly quickly and absorb massive amounts of resources that could just as well be used directly for ill.
georgeoliver 12y ago
I agree. Every one of those agents should be prosecuted under the Patriot Act.

CWuestefeld 12y ago

There's reason to believe (not certain by any means, but there's interesting evidence) that Timothy McVeigh's bombing in Oklahoma City was similarly set up by the FBI, and McVeigh jumped the gun and really did execute the job ahead of schedule, before the FBI was prepared to swoop in and save the day in the nick of time. At the very least, the government was aware that something was going on, and dropped the ball in intercepting McVeigh. I hope they've learned their lesson, and aren't working so close to the edge anymore. See for example, http://www.comeandtakeit.com/feds-okc.html http://www.comeandtakeit.com/feds-okc.html (and apologies for the tinfoil hat site, it's the most concise citation I could come up with quickly)

rokhayakebe 12y ago

This is a talent war. A terrorist group finds and grooms people who have the potential to destroy at massive scale. The FBI says why pay the price after they have become experts, let us start our own incubator. The FBI finds and grooms the same people before the terrorists group.

mc_hammer 12y ago

which time?

tedks 12y ago

Before Muslims were a target, and even now, the FBI did this with "eco-terrorists": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_McDavid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_McDavid I hope nobody here believes that these cases are instances of the FBI diligently protecting us against legions of terrorists, eco or otherwise, who want to destroy us all. It's very clear all these cases are, if not strictly speaking entrapment, then at least manufactured by the FBI preying on vulnerable people. The real question is, why would they do this? I can think of a few reasons: 1. Personal gain. Everybody in the FBI benefits from a successful case. The agent gets a notch on their belt. Their boss can demand more funding and more toys to capture future "jihadists". The prosecutors get a win and bump up their stats. Even people loosely connected benefit, like the journalists that can cover a juicy story for a few weeks, politicians that can attach themselves, etc.. The only real losers are people that are already isolated and unable to defend themselves. 2. Maintaining an image of social control. If you know that the FBI is bearing down on activists and Muslims, are you going to be as willing to join an activist group, participate in an Occupy-style protest movement, or even go to a protest? You could get tear gassed, you could say something like "Yeah, the banks need to go" to an FBI agent who later testifies that you planned to blow up a bank, it's a hassle, just stay home, the new season of 24 is supposed to be great anyway. Personally, I think both of these are primary reasons; #1 incentivizes individuals to go through this plan, and #2 makes it more likely future plans will succeed by making the system as a whole harder to disrupt. This creates a positive feedback cycle where dissent is slowly marginalized out of existence, and all political discourse is limited to what the Republicans and Democrats delineate as "moderate" ground. And, because the system works, it is basically impossible to change. Combine this with pervasive surveillance and you have permanent techno-dystopia. The FBI uses plenty of software to do this. I hope that if anyone writing that software is reading these comments, they take a moment to consider the consequences of their actions.

dalke 12y ago
I'll add a #3: little risk of personal or professional failure.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

notdonspaulding 12y ago

The trouble I have with this article is that it seeks to remove any personal responsibility from the person it claims is the "target" and victim of the sting. Any bad decisions made by Osmakac are written off as having been coached, or a result of his being "Schizo-affective"[0]. The article title claims the FBI "created a terrorist", but then presents these things as factual: - He travelled to Saudi Arabia to get holy water, but later claimed he actually wanted to end up in Iraq or Afghanistan to fight American troops. - He argued with Dabus (the Palestinian shop owner) that Islam and democracy were incompatible. - He physically attacked the street preachers outside the Lady Gaga concert. ...all of which happened before the FBI got involved. Furthermore, the FBI only got involved because Dabus, the shop owner who Dennison had suggested he meet, turned Osmakac in. And why did Dabus do that? Because he felt that: ...he was doing his civic duty in reporting Osmakac and the young man’s interest in acquiring weapons... As terrible as the Patriot act is, this all sounds like the government got this one right. In particular, the article doesn't show that Osmakac would have behaved any differently if instead of being handled by the government, he had found an actual small arms dealer and weaseled some guy into giving him $300. And personally, I think we jump too quickly to the "he's just crazy" defense [1]. I don't want to live in a world where acting out on a dream you had absolves you of personal responsibility for your actions in the real world, which is apparently what The Intercept wants to believe. [0] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoaffective-disorder/basics/definition/con-20029221 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoaffectiv... [1] I'm not a psychiatrist, but I play one on The Internet [edit: formatting]

dalke 12y ago
"if instead of being handled by the government, he had found an actual small arms dealer and weaseled some guy into giving him $300." I believe that this quote from the article: > Osmakac was, in the FBI’s own words, “a retarded fool” who didn’t have any capacity to plan and execute an attack on his own. That was a challenge for the FBI. is supposed to mean that he wouldn't be able to go through the planning of doing as you suggest. If he has poor ability to plan, then your point #1 could be interpreted as another example. He wasn't able to go through the planning to get the holy water, or work around the visa issues, or manage the funding. Or figure out how to get to Afg Point #2 is protected free speech. As for point #3, another interpretation is that he's willing to fall into things in front of his face, so long as they don't require non-trivial planning. I know people who talk big, but can't actually pull anything off, so I wouldn't discount that possibility. Even if he 'weaseled some guy into giving him $300', it doesn't seem that he would find a small arms dealer willing to sell him "six grenades, a fully automatic AK-47 with magazines, a handgun and an explosive belt". Checking various auction sites, the minimum price for an AK-47 is $400, and those are semi-automatic, not an illegal fully automatic. Assuming $100 for the handgun, $10/grenade and I have no idea how much for he explosive belt, the real cost is likely over $1,000. (That's a wild-ass guess; but it's certainly over $500 in hardware, plus extra to cover risk on the dealer's side.) I don't think it's easy to find a dealer for this sort of equipment. I wouldn't know where to start and have 'no concept of what weapons cost on the black market.' I suspect that if I start asking around, someone is likely to call the cops on me. Also, why did you mention the Patriot Act? It's only mentioned once in the article, concerning someone else. I don't see mention that Patriot Act powers were used or potentially misused.

ufmace 12y ago

I don't think that the FBI is quite as bad of an actor as the article tries to make them out to be for various reasons, mostly covered by other posts here. What I do think is that the FBI and other government agencies have a fine line to balance with these things. On the one hand, we constantly push for them to catch terrorists before they act via standard, good police work - which mostly involves tips and confidential informants, just like this case. We criticize them when they use over-broad mass electronic surveillance to try and find the terrorists, and we criticize them some more when they fail to catch actual terrorist before they act. I'm all for criticizing them when they screw up or overreach, but if you want them to do their job, they need some room to work. This is what that work looks like - maintaining networks of informants at the fringes of the broad movement, constantly listening and following up on any signs of anyone who might want to take action, and aggressively pursuing those who do have a desire to take action. If these guys have some genuine desire to take violent action, shouldn't we get to them before somebody else does? On the other hand, the process of maintaining informants in a movement can be rather alienating to the movement as a whole. I've been into guns as hobby for a while, and every now and then, I've heard second-hand accounts of people who show up at various gun club events and start asking rather pointed questions about how to do illegal things. I don't know if it's true, if they're really government informants, or how often it actually happens, but the very idea and plausibility of it leaves a rather bad taste in peoples' mouths. It tends to make think the Government sees us as the enemy, to make us think of ourselves more as a group in opposition to them, then just a bunch of ordinary Americans exercising a constitutional right in a harmless way. I can't help but think that many Muslims experience the same thing and feel the same way about it. If we really want to fix these problems long-term, shouldn't we be working to integrate Muslims into mainstream America, and send them the message that they're welcome here, and we're happy to have them as productive members of society? I don't know that much about this particular investigation, but it sounds like it may be a touch further than we'd like to be along the lines of pursuing too aggressively. Not enough that I'd want to see things changed too drastically - this guy sounds like he's at least some level of bad actor. Maybe they should look further towards getting these guys mental help and medication, rather than multi-decade prison sentences? Or maybe he was already too far gone for that type of help even before the FBI got to him. I would be interested to hear the opinions of some members of the area Muslim community. At least ones not coordinated by reporters trying to push an agenda, or grandstanding civil rights activists more interested in their own prominence than what the community actually feels. Not that I'm likely to get that.