The news spread quickly when federal prosecutors announced on Tuesday night that FBI agents had foiled an Islamic State-linked plot to bomb a beach in Key West, Florida.
The alleged attacker, 23-year-old Cuban-American Harlem Suarez, also known as Almlak Benitez, hardly looks the part of an Islamic State fighter.
In a selfie posted on Facebook, Suarez has closed-cropped brown hair and tattoos that cover his right arm, left shoulder and chest. He wears a Batman T-shirt and a sleeveless hoodie.
The U.S. government alleges that Suarez conspired with an FBI informant and undercover agents to bomb a stretch of beach in Key West. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal complaint portrays Suarez as a bumbler who lived with his parents — not an uncommon description for targets of FBI counterterrorism stings.
Indeed, in Suarez’s case no sophisticated surveillance operation was necessary: Suarez came to the attention of a law enforcement agency simply because he announced his support for the Islamic State online.
On April 8, an unidentified individual went to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office because he had received a friend request from Suarez, who had written, among other things, on his Facebook page: “We are the islamic state We are isis Muslims” and “We are you behad cristians isis.”
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office referred the tip to the FBI. In May, an FBI informant friended Suarez on Facebook. Suarez, who had posted a number of ISIS videos and statements to his Facebook page, allegedly told the informant in an online chat that he had two guns, and was looking for a rifle and a bulletproof vest.
In a phone conversation, according to the affidavit, Suarez told the informant that he had “thought about traveling to the Middle East and that he had been trying to contact someone from Syria.” In the FBI document, there is no confirmation, or even suggestion, that Suarez had been in contact with a member of the Islamic State.
With Suarez, the FBI followed its sting playbook to a tee. The informant recorded Suarez making video, as occurred in the sting involving Sami Osmakac, a mentally ill Albanian-American from Florida who was also caught up in a counterterrorism sting.
In the video, Suarez wore a black tactical vest, black shirt, black face mask and a yellow and black scarf. “I call to other brothers worldwide to create a caliphate in the Middle East,” Suarez had written in his video script, according to the affidavit. “Destroy our enemies against us.”
A couple of weeks later, on June 3, the informant introduced Suarez to an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as an Islamic State operative who could supply explosive devices. Suarez allegedly talked of an attack on July 4 in Marathon, Florida, or in Miami Beach.
“They would know that, you know, it’s coming from Islamic State,” Suarez allegedly said.
The Independence Day plot didn’t happen, of course. It’s unclear why, from the FBI affidavit. There is some suggestion that Suarez had cold feet. The undercover agent had to ask Suarez in a phone conversation on July 13 if he was playing games, according to the affidavit.
“No, I don’t,” Suarez answered. “I’m not playing no games.”
The agent then asked if Suarez if he was “true to the Islamic State.”
A one-word answer followed: “Yeah.”
The first undercover agent introduced Suarez to a second agent, a supposed bomb maker for the Islamic State. On July 27, Suarez met with the second undercover agent in Key West and accepted from him what he believed was a backpack bomb. In truth, the device was inert. FBI agents then arrested Suarez, and he was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
One of Suarez’s former co-workers on a hotel cleaning staff told the local newspaper he was a “a little slow.”
Suarez is the latest man to be arrested as part of an increased push to nab Islamic State sympathizers in FBI counterterrorism stings. These stings, like the ones over the previous decade that targeted so-called lone wolf Qaeda sympathizers, are catching people of questionable capacity who may not even be in contact with the Islamic State. Some of these recent targets have been described as mentally ill.
In Suarez’s case, it’s questionable whether he could have moved a terrorism plot forward were it not for the FBI. When he tried on his own to purchase an AK-47 using his real name and address, according to the FBI affidavit, the seller turned him away.
The reason: Suarez was incompetent. He had filled out the paperwork incorrectly.
Photo: Facebook.
Perhaps the Federal Bureau of Intimidation sees culling the intellectually challenged and the mentally ill from the population as an ancillary benefit to its immensely lucrative (Just keep those appropriations coming !) security theater charade .
Thanks to tombrowns’ schooleddaze’ for the refresher course below on the adverse trajectory of the entrapment defense.
Query: When law enforcement profiling leads to a risk assessment asserting a targets “predisposition” toward committing specific crimes for the FIRST time (rendering material assistance to a known terrorist organization like PETA) what reasonable period of time needs to elapse (and how much LEO JTRIG manufactured twitter exchanges or clickbait ignored) before a targets “predisposition” is reassessed?
http://www.peta.org/donate/ways-to-support-peta/donate-fur/
http://irstaxattorneys.info/donating-tax-deductible/
“before a targets “predisposition” is reassessed?”
The question lies at the heart of the matter.
The agency’s seek trophys like American dentists.
They lure them out with bait (clickbait as you state).
They take them out of their protected areas and then kill them for sport.
They then show their carcassess as proof of their beastiality.
A lion is proud, humans are less so.
So they’re on a fishing expedition hook line and sinker.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
They know what will get the prey into the barrel. They provide the means and controll the outcome.
Then they stand and say look at what is there. See you need us to stop this.
Funny thing is I am a fisherman. I eat what I catch but I would never eat farmed fish. I can not understand the sport of fishing, catching something only to release it seems senseless to me. I am a pensioner and the protein I get from fish sustains me.
Jesus was friends with fisherman, go figure. He even helped them net fish.
Perhaps things are not as they seem; maybe the Obama administration is trying to quietly reverse the deinstitutionalization of the feeble minded and insane that happened under Reagan. Next, the FBI will start targeting the crazies among our ever growing homeless population. Presumably, if they are white and gringo, they will receive better treatment in jail than on the streets.
Alternatively, the Obama administration may be quietly attempting to institute some of the racial purity activities of the NS era. First the feeble-minded, then the disabled, then the blacks, then the latinos, then the Jews. But don’t worry, America, it is all for the best.
I would venture to say that most criminals are not “fast” and “intelligent”, and that’s why they end up in a life of crime. If you let alone every young person who is “slow” and who on his own spouts (as this person did) jihadist killer material, some of them will end up committing a terrorist act on their own. Where do you draw the line? How slow is too slow?
I think the point is this kid was too incompetent to even purchase a gun because he didn’t know how to fill out simple paperwork, so without the FBI setting the “terrorist act” there would be no terrorist act.
The FBI is having a very difficult time bringing ISIS to America — but they are determined to do it.
Criminals who are intelligent get themselves elected to public office. The FBI has to take what it can get.
or rise to high management levels in the private sector. Indeed, the FBI is disadvantaged from the start, because they are mostly ‘C’ students. And I’m not talking about programming languages, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offense that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit.[1] It is a conduct that is generally discouraged and thus, in many jurisdictions, it is a possible defense against criminal liability.”
snip
snip
United States of America
Entrapment defenses in the United States has evolved mainly through case law. Two competing tests exist for determining whether entrapment has taken place, known as the “subjective” and “objective” tests. The “subjective” test looks at the defendant’s state of mind; entrapment can be claimed if the defendant had no “predisposition” to commit the crime. The “objective” test looks instead at the government’s conduct; entrapment occurs when the actions of government officers would usually have caused a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime.[6]
Courts took a dim view of the defense at first. “[It] has never availed to shield crime or give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to say that under any code of civilized, not to say Christian, ethics, it never will” a New York Supreme Court said in 1864.[7] Forty years later, another judge in that state would affirm that rejection, arguing “[courts] should not hesitate to punish the crime actually committed by the defendant” when rejecting entrapment claimed in a grand larceny case.[8]
Other states, however, had already begun reversing convictions on entrapment grounds.[9] Federal courts recognized entrapment as a defense starting with Woo Wai v. United States, 223 F.1d 412 (9th Cir. 1915).[10] The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the question of entrapment in Casey v. United States,[11] since the facts in the case were too vague to definitively rule on the question; but, four years later, it did. In Sorrells v. United States,[12] SCOTUS unanimously reversed the conviction of a North Carolina factory worker who gave in to an undercover Prohibition officer’s repeated entreaties to get him some liquor. It identified the controlling question as “whether the defendant is a person otherwise innocent whom the government is seeking to punish for an alleged offense which is the product of the creative activity of its own officials”.[12]
In Sherman v. United States,[13] the Court considered a similar case in which one recovering drug addict working with agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (a predecessor agency to today’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ) solicited another to sell him drugs on the premise that his own efforts were failing. Again unanimous, its opinion focused more clearly on the defendant’s predisposition to commit the offense and, on that basis, overturned Sherman’s conviction as well since, although he had two prior drug convictions, the most recent dated back five years. Furthermore, he was attempting to rehabilitate himself, he had made no profit on the sales, and no drugs were found in his apartment when it was searched, suggesting the absence of a predisposition to break drug laws. “To determine whether entrapment has been established,” it said, “a line must be drawn between the trap for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal”.[14]
Prosecutors won the next two times entrapment came before the Court, in United States v. Russell[15] and Hampton v. United States,[16] albeit by narrow margins. In the former, the Court upheld the conviction of a Washington man for manufacturing methamphetamine even though an undercover agent had supplied some of the ingredients, and also pondered an “outrageous government conduct” defense, though it did not enable it. Hampton let stand, by a similar margin, the conviction of a Missouri man who had, upon seeing track marks on a DEA informant’s arms, expressed interest in selling him heroin. After several sales to the informant and undercover agents, he was arrested. The defendant alleged he had been led to believe by the informant that he was not selling heroin but a counterfeit. The Court found he was adequately predisposed to sell heroin in any event.
This became known as the “subjective” test of entrapment, since it focused on the defendant’s state of mind. However, in all cases, concurring opinions had advocated an “objective” test, focusing instead on whether the conduct of the police or other investigators would catch only those “ready and willing to commit crime”.[17] Under the objective approach the defendant’s personality (i.e., his predisposition to commit the crime) would be immaterial, and the potential for the police conduct to induce a law-abiding person considered in the abstract would be the test. This, supporters argued, avoided the dubious issue of an unexpressed legislative intent on which the Sorrells court had relied and instead grounded the entrapment defense, like the exclusionary rule, in the court’s supervisory role over law enforcement. And like the exclusionary rule, they would have had judges, not juries, decide whether a defendant had been entrapped as a matter of law.[18]
Since the subjective test focusing on predisposition had, unlike the exclusionary rule, not been applied to the states, they were free to follow it as they saw fit. The state courts or legislatures of 37 states have chosen the subjective test, while the others use the objective test.[19] Some have allowed both the judge and the jury to rule on whether the defendant was entrapped.[18]
In the Supreme Court’s last major ruling on entrapment, Jacobson v. United States,[20] which overturned the conviction of a Nebraska man for receiving child pornography via the mail, the subjective vs. objective debate was completely absent. Both the majority and dissenting opinions focused solely on whether the prosecution had established that the defendant had a predisposition for purchasing such material (which had only recently been outlawed at the time of his arrest). Since no other material was found in his home save what he had purchased from the undercover postal inspectors, Justice Byron White believed the operation had implanted the idea in his mind through mailings decrying politicians for assaulting civil liberties by passing laws such as the one the inspectors hoped he would break. Sandra Day O’Connor disagreed in her dissent, arguing that the record did indeed establish that Jacobson was interested in continuing the purchases. Analysts believed that was the Court’s indication it considered the subjective vs. objective debate settled.[citation needed]
University of Arizona law professor Gabriel J. Chin points out that the entire federal entrapment defense rests on statutory construction—an interpretation of the will of Congress in passing the criminal statutes. As this is not a Constitutional prohibition, Congress may change or override this interpretation by passing a law.[21]
snip
Depending on the law in the jurisdiction, the prosecution may be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped or the defendant may be required to prove that they were entrapped as an affirmative defense.
Sting operations are fraught with ethical concerns over whether they constitute entrapment.[2]
Thanks for the refresher course on the adverse trajectory of the entrapment defense.
When law enforcement profiling leads to risk assessments asserting a targets “predisposition” toward committing a specific crime for the FIRST time (rendering material assistance to a known terrorist organization like PETA) what reasonable period of time needs to pass (and how much LEO JTRIG manufactured clickbait ignored) before a targets “predisposition is PERMANENTLY reassessed?
(based on an entrapment algorithm implemented against a “suspect” based on an anonymous suspicious activity report, entrapment algorithm)
If you believe in a god that tells you that even a thought about committing an act is enough to make you guilty, obviously you won’t have a problem with a fascist state deciding that you are guilty because of certain books in your bookshelf, or the likes on your facebook page. And yes, there is a bunch of crazy nutters out there, that’s for sure. But most of them will never actually live out that crazy. Just because I have thought in the passed about suicide doesn’t make me suicidal 24/7. The same with crazy. The thing is, a fascist mindset wants to outlaw certain thoughts. And they will go out of their way to push crazy to a point where they can say: See!!! We were right!!! We have a terrorist, ladies and gentleman!!! There is enough reason for you to be afraid. Very afraid. Crazy is upon us. It walks among us in the same streets and they go to the same places. But don’t worry. We will protect you against these thoughts. Just give us the right to snoop on every single person’s metadata. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. In god we trust.
FBI manufacturer terrorists.
COINTELPRO STALKING is real.
FBI STASI scum
This reminds me of how they fight the drug war… Once in awhile they do a bust for show and tell, to let the public know they are hard at work with tax payers money. They then get the praise, photo-ops with their prize…..In reality the massive shipment sneaks in under their nose while they are getting their hero worship praise… If FBI want’s to catch a real terror threat and terrorists, alls they have to do is look in the mirror and quit setting up idiots who are so dumb they post on a facebook page…If your so dumb to post on a factbook page then you might be to dumb to be a real terrorist…
The FBI and NSA are an embarrassment to the idea of “intelligence” operations. That’s why they’ve never stopped a meaningful and serious attack anywhere in the known world.
You want to fuck with them and show how fundamentally inept and Keystone Coppish they really are–add the following to every e-mail you send:
And when those morons of the alphabet agencies show up at your door, and I’d mock their questions mercilessly if they actually do show up to question you, not even their “3 hops” intelligence links from all your meta data are going to make any legal cause of action other than one that demonstrates they are fucking morons.
This is an example of precisely the problem. The NSA/FBI/name your alphabet agency are so busy trying to manufacture plots that they will never actually prevent an actual terrorist plot. And you know why, because your “real terrorist” group/individual isn’t a fucking moron and is well aware of the capacities and methods of the moronic lilly white stupid fucking NSA/FBI.
Gawd I hate spending my tax dollars to support those clowns.
Nice to see the FBI going after the low hanging fruit.
You know, I really don’t feel I am getting my money’s worth anymore with these charlatans. Can I get a refund?
I want a refund too.
The two of you should team up and try to get your refund. It would make for a most excellent adventure.
…and a toaster.
The FBI is pathetic for entrapping people like this. But of course we all knew what the basic story was as soon as we saw the headline in the news.
So, what’s next? Searching for “terror supporters” among the participants at the Special Olympics? Or will it be raiding nursery schools and kindergartens? I can just see those FBI turds coaching five-year-olds to get them to parrot “extremist” rhetoric and maybe push the button to detonate a fake bomb provided by the FBI.
I don’t know how FBI twats can sleep at night. It’s not just the sheer immorality of what they do that would make me ashamed to be one of them. There’s also the fact that they’re spending their working lives doing nothing of significance. Instead of spending their limited time on earth working to make it a better place, they choose to contribute to a continuous oligarchic power-grab, attempting to stoke popular paranoia about terrorism by “protecting” us from the borderline mentally retarded. These agents are condemned to a punishment that is harsh but self-imposed: they’ll spend their working lives in service to a lie.
Surely Suarez’s co-worker – aided by his or her impeccable cleaning staff credentials – is a qualified and reliable source for assessing Suarez’s mental health. Enough so for Trevor to portray the comment as fact in the title of the article.
Trevor continues his hard-nosed investigative journalism by noting that the guy has tattoos and a close cropped haircut, uses Facebook, and has a batman t-shirt. In other words, irrefutable proof the guy is mentally ill
Furthermore, Suarez cannot spell for shit, speaks with double negatives, and cannot competently fill out paperwork necessary to purchase assault rifles online. Again, attributes undoubtedly unique to the mentally ill!
To really drive home his point, Trevor ends with a surely agonized qualification that it was “questionable” whether Suarez could have moved the plot forward without the FBI. Presumably, the AK47 paperwork error would have been impossible to overcome…
Quality work Trevor!
I can’t say I disagree with the conclusion being drawn by Aaronson, nor do I agree with law enforcement baiting people into committing crimes. I do agree that this article is tissue paper thin and doesn’t make its case well.
“Surely Suarez’s co-worker…is a qualified and reliable source…Enough so for Trevor to portray the comment as fact in the title of the article. – Nate
To be fair, this seems a narrative piece rather than an investigative piece, and to portray it another way is misleading – something I don’t think the article, even with this headline, does.
In other words, it’s a much needed reminder of the incompetency of the FBI in particular, and our national security priorities and their inefficacy overall.
It’s does serve quite well in that regard, especially when considered with some of Trevor’s other, more comprehensive work on this same subject.
@ Nate
You really don’t get it do you Nate? The “terrorist” you should be worrying about isn’t the moron like Mr. Suarez who can’t spell and appears to be borderline cognitively impaired. It’s the well educated preferably military or engineering trained terrorist who absofuckinglutely wouldn’t be dumb enough to broadcast his intentions or abilities via Facebook or e-mail.
And that’s precisely why the moronic American alphabet agencies, collectively, haven’t stopped a single solitary meaningful terrorist attack (not that statistically there are even as many as lightning strikes) anywhere in the world.
That’s how big a fucking farce the entire idea of the “war on terrorism” is and that’s absolutely why only very stupid frightened morons ever even buy into the idea that such a “war” could be effective at stopping that which is no more of a threat/risk, statistically speaking, to life and limb as a lightning strike or bee stings.
Neither cause me much worry. Some articles on FBI entrapment make a good point. This isn’t one of them. I refuse to just swallow the whole “mental disorder” excuse. Furthermore, stupid people can cause an inordinate amount of damage. Dylan Roof wasn’t exactly a Rhodes Scholar.
Mind if I borrow your time machine to fact check this?
Pro-U.S. individuals who buy into the War on Terrorism fear are “stupid frightened morons.”
Anti-U.S individuals who also buy into the War on Terrorism fear but decide to act violently on those fears are “borderline cognitively impaired.”
Lastly, the whole “compare terrorism to bee stings” exercise is such a tired red herring. Such arbitrary quantitative figures don’t capture the psychological and social impact of terrorism. Blacks might be more likely to be killed by whatever obscurity one can think of, than to be shot while unarmed by an overzealous white cop. Would you similarly gloss over this critical problem as “no more of a threat/risk, statistically speaking, to life and limb as a lightning strike or bee stings.”
Sure go right ahead. And while you are at it provide even one link demonstrating the FBI/NSA has foiled a “terrorist plot” that had actually achieved the capability/capacity to cause mass casualties. I’ll wait.
Yes but let me be more precise: Pro-U.S. individuals who buy into the War on Terrorism’s irrational fear are “stupid frightened morons” who don’t actually comprehend the statistical reality of “terrorism” in relation to other “threats to life”.
The above is some sort of weird non-sequitur. How exactly could “Anti-U.S. individuals buy into the War on Terrorism fear but decide to act violently on those fears”? Are you arguing that anti-U.S. individuals are fearful of America’s War on Terrorism tactics but decide, notwithstanding that fear and/or because of that fear, to act violently? I’d argue they both aren’t “afraid” because the War on Terrorism tactics are ineffective, and even if they were “afraid” or the tactics were “effective” that they’d “act violently” because it isn’t their fear that is motivating their “acts of violence” but rather political grievances against the U.S. based on the U.S. governments policies and actions. They will act regardless of any fear they feel at being caught or stopped.
Except it isn’t a “tired red herring” it is a statistical reality and fact. Sorry if it is one that fatigues your intellect to contemplate.
It isn’t “arbitrary” in any way, it is statistical reality. And that’s the point about the “psychological and social impact” that is created and fueled by the U.S. government’s response and rhetoric re: “terrorism”. In other words, the U.S. government if it so desired, could (likely) create the exact same statistically irrational hysteria regarding bee stings, despite bee stings statistically unlikely incidence of causing harm, by 24/7/365 touting the “impending swarms of deadly Africanized bees” and ratcheting up the fear in every conceivable media venue (which is precisely what’s done re: “terrorism”). I can pretty much guarantee that if the U.S. government spent as much time, money and focused media attention on creating statistically unsupported irrational hysteria about “bee stings” as it did “terrorism” you’d have precisely the same impact (psychologically and socially) in America regarding Africanized bees as you do Muslim terrorists on America’s shores.
No and that’s because you don’t understand the statistical reality of being black and being shot by comparison to the statistical reality of bee stings and terrorism. If there are 45 million African Americans in America and 1000 unarmed AA are shot per year, year in and year out over the last 20 years, by police while that statistical likelihood is small compared to let’s say auto accidents killing African Americans, it is significantly higher (by orders of magnitude) and an actual statistical “threat”, by comparison to bee stings, lightning strikes, airliner crashes or terrorist attacks on America’s shores that kill a handful of people, year over year, on average over the same 20 year period.
And I most certainly wouldn’t “gloss over it” but I would address it in a “rational” way in the same “rational” way I’d address the reality that there are “criminals/terrorists” who seek to do others harm. In other words, with regard to the former, I’d take reasonable measures to improve “police policies” regarding issues of race/racism/racial profiling/disparate law enforcement, change disparate prosecution and sentencing in the court system, screen and select officers better suited to “policing”, and require universal video and audio recording of all interactions of police with the citizenry that cannot be destroyed or altered.
What I wouldn’t do is create hysteria and a “war on police” even though they are a much greater statistical threat to African Americans than are “terrorists” of whatever variety, or bee stings or lightening strikes. That’s my point. If the American people can muster up the courage to drive a car on the public roadways of America everyday, given the statistical likelihood of death from that rather banal activity, then they sure as shit shouldn’t be cowering and/or asking or permitting the government to spend 100s of billions of dollars year in and year out to attempt to prevent that which is likely unpreventable in most instances and a very small statistical threat AND which attempts to do so by destroying privacy and civil liberties. And why you might ask–because it is “irrational” as a function of the statistical threat of “terrorism”. What is “rational” is to take reasoned measures to protect against terrorism i.e. improved border screening, targeted surveillance with warrants not mass warrantless surveillance, long hard work of human infiltration of actual terrorist organizations, improved airline security, choking off known funding sources, building better international law enforcement institutions or domestic ones in the nations that have “terrorist” training going on, . . . and on an on. What isn’t “reasonable” is a global war on a “feeling” that includes invading foreign nations and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents, drone assassinations, signature strikes, collateral damage, mass global spying . . . because it is unreasonable and irrational and only fuels the anger that drives those few humans who seek to engage in “terrorist” activities.
“What isn’t “reasonable” is a global war on a “feeling” that includes invading foreign nations and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents, drone assassinations, signature strikes, collateral damage, mass global spying . . . because it is unreasonable and irrational and only fuels the anger that drives those few humans who seek to engage in “terrorist” activities.” – rrheard
Exactly this. And the rest of your post – excellent analysis and dissection of the attempts at rationalizing the irrational – which is at the root of poor public policy around the world, from monetary policy to foreign policy.
What we don’t have in any of this is an affective, peer-reviewed process that removes the feelings and outright fiction in order to provide the facts and the best evidence available. Our democracy has been hobbled by the ignorance and self interest of big money and other groups who have ‘feelings’ about issues that are ultimately self-serving, unsubstantiatable, or simply plain wrong.
“We have come to a point in time where using common sense, speaking factual truths and asking honest questions have been deemed radical behavior. While in turn, manipulation, thoughtlessness and dishonesty is often rewarded and rules the day.” – Gary Hopkins
I love when I am tasked to disprove someone’s claim. The height of laziness and lack of accountability for words stated.
But I’ll play along. First, we need some kind of basis or list of attacks. Second, we need to see if there are FBI efforts that have been characterized as thwarting an attack. There are several. But the best are from Wikipedia and Heritage. Either is a good starting point but Heritage’s list is better organized. It does not include only FBI operations and thwarted efforts but you can easily search through the narrative to see when FBI was involved and there is a lot of them. (46 key word searches including the footnotes)
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/60-terrorist-plots-since-911-continued-lessons-in-domestic-counterterrorism#
So, the existence of the list and their depictions of thwarted efforts directly challenge your claim that the FBI has not stopped a SINGLE terrorist attack. As an open-minded fellow, I just don’t know what to think!!!
Guess what that means!? The burden of proof is on you, rrheard!! Surely you won’t miss this opportunity to set the record straight.
Now you can go through the list, pick all the ones the FBI supposedly stopped, and – including the ones that were and weren’t sting operations – explain how each should not count as a thwarted attack. Be sure to define “mass casualties” and “meaningful” so we all have proper context and understand your subjective definitions.
Maybe this won’t take long. Presumably to speak with such confidence you’ve catalogued and researched every FBI investigation to conclude they have “NEVER” thwarted an attack.
Good luck!
P.S. Let’s do a trial run to make your life a little easier. After all, if the FBI stopped a single attack, your whole claim is junked. Start with number 57
Is there something in your job description that you think gives you the “credentials” to argue that your opinion about Suarez is more solid than his coworkers? What other types of workers besides those who are on cleaning crews do you look down your nose at? Is there something in your job description that you think gives you the “credentials” to agree with the FBI that this Suarez person belongs in prison for the remainder of his very young life?
This comment is soooooo Kitt faux indignation is swell.
Odd, I don’t remember making such a statement! But, you know how it is, if you reject a certain narrative, you endorse the opposing narrative by default…
Kitt, your strawmen deserve better craftsmanship than this.
Oh, so then you’re trying to say that the following comment isn’t that of a self righteous stuffed shirt?
Also … what? I mean, your ‘sentence’ I quoted above is pretty much incomprehensible.
“aided by his or her impeccable cleaning staff credentials –”
And so Nate writes:
Hey, Nate, even you can do better than that.
Again the real terrorists are the FBI agents who move these incompetents along. Such sad individuals. Even drug dealers and ladies of the evening are more useful to society.
Indeed. The purpose of terrorism is to spread fear among a civilian population for political purposes; “terroristic threats” can achieve the same goals. The ludicrous exaggeration of the “terror threat” by the FBI (and other government tools), in part through the use of these serial entrapment cases, is essentially just another way of making terroristic threats. Much like the perpetrators of phony bomb threats, the FBI seeks to spread fear among the population. But the FBI does this under color of law, and with a different motivation for spreading fear.
Reminds me of CSIS (Canada) entrapment of the very dopey Nuttall and Korody. Nuttall, apparently, really felt that the best plan was for him to build a short-range missile all by himself. CSIS agents kindly guided him toward more practical ideas, and then charged him as a terrorist mastermind. Such good usage of taxpayer dollars all over North America.
http://news.antiwar.com/2015/07/27/fbi-defends-speedy-detentions-as-many-allegations-prove-unfounded/
…FBI arrests of “terror suspects” on extremely flimsy pretexts, with charges stemming almost entirely from allegations by “informants” and the provision, by the FBI, of fake weapons to the suspects, have become something of a running joke. Attempts to prosecute these people are often extremely difficult, as the allegations are vague, and the evidence to support them is usually non-existent. Cases collapse, and the FBI has to roll the dice by charging them with something else, hoping something eventually sticks….
Hi Trevor :),
WSJ is a paywall and I’m not sure if something was missing in between or if they’re charging him for gaining possession as ‘attempted use’ in the below section of the article; did he ever attempt to use it or was merely obtaining possession their criterion for ‘attempting to use’ something? That seems even fishier to me than the rest of the sting itself (which seems to be something that keeps repeating). My apologies if this might have been covered in another media outlet already, though clarifying it if there was more to it would be helpful. Thanks for your article and thanks ahead of time for clarifying this.
“On July 27, Suarez met with the second undercover agent in Key West and accepted from him what he believed was a backpack bomb. In truth, the device was inert. FBI agents then arrested Suarez, and he was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.”
You can find the full criminal affidavit for this case here:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/641111/download
Thanks. You’re awesome. :)