In the midst of Omar Mateen’s shooting rampage in Orlando, law enforcement officials say the 30-year-old Florida resident called 911 and proclaimed his support for the Islamic State. Although FBI officials say they have not identified any direct connection between Mateen and the terrorist group, his case has once again brought calls for a harsh crackdown on individuals who might commit acts of domestic terrorism.
In the United States, 88 people have been arrested on charges of supporting ISIS since 2014, according to statistics compiled by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Who are they? Most are young, male, and American citizens. But in contrast to the Islamic State’s own propaganda, as well as the statements of many political figures, many of the U.S. supporters of ISIS come across as more pathetic than fearsome. While media reports have trumpeted the danger of sleeper cells, most of the people arrested by the FBI appear to have been wayward, isolated young men (and a few women) with little connection to international terrorist groups.
Recent coverage of the Orlando shooting has indicated that Mateen was motivated by homophobia and mental illness as much as any militant ideology; the FBI had investigated Mateen on two occasions and interviewed him but never pressed charges. The FBI’s handling of his case, along with its handling of the often-hapless people it does arrest on terrorism charges, shows the complexity and, perhaps, the impossibility of the task — trying to identify and imprison real terrorists before they commit acts of terrorism.
Using court documents, interviews, and Google images of major landmarks from their personal lives, The Intercept has constructed brief portraits of nine recent cases of “ISIS in America.”
The Rochester, New York, restaurant where Mufid Elfgeeh lived and worked.
Photo: Google Maps
For Mufid Elfgeeh, the internet was an escape. The 30-year-old spent his days working in a pizzeria in a bleak industrial area of Rochester, New York, living in a small attic above his business. He had lived alone in the United States since the age of 14, after his father left the country for Yemen. Temperamental and socially maladjusted, he spent his nights chatting with Islamic State supporters on Twitter, operating dozens of accounts for that purpose.
By 2013 his online activity had put him on the radar of the FBI. The following year, after a sting operation in which Elfgeeh was befriended by two government informants, he was arrested and charged with material support for terrorism. Shortly after his arrest, his pizzeria was partially destroyed in a fire.
Elfgeeh was described by those who knew him as a difficult and emotional man with few real friends. By the time of his arrest, the informants in the case had become the people he spent most of his free time with. In conversations with them, he mused about shooting soldiers and offered to help them travel to Syria with the aid of his online contacts.
On May 31, 2014, after his new friends successfully set up a gun deal for him, Elfgeeh was arrested.
He is now serving a 22-year sentence for material support of terrorism. His sentence is the longest given to anyone convicted of supporting ISIS in the United States.
Photo: Google Maps
After Nader Elhuzayel’s parents declared bankruptcy, the Crystal Inn motel in Anaheim, California, became their home. Elhuzayel, 25, lived there until his arrest in the summer of 2015. The government alleges he had attempted to travel abroad to join the Islamic State.
In his surveilled conversations, Elhuzayel evinced an overwhelming desire to leave Anaheim. Debating with a friend about where to go, he first chose Yemen, because “it was so beautiful.”
He expressed wishes to die and go to heaven by fighting with ISIS. Online, he connected with a Palestinian woman who also supported the group.
According to the criminal complaint against him, he and the woman “professed love for each other” and agreed to meet to get married. They discussed living on a farm together and raising children, while supporting ISIS “despite their parents’ opposition.”
On May 21, 2015, Elhuzayel was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport while attempting to board a one-way flight to Tel Aviv. He is currently on trial on charges of material support for terrorism and bank fraud.
Photo: Google Maps
For several months, Ali Shukri Amin crafted a terrifying image for himself as the most prominent American supporter of ISIS on Twitter. Under the name @AmreekiWitness, he sent thousands of messages in support of the group, disseminating its propaganda and even providing instructions on how to fund the organization with Bitcoin.
His offline persona was somewhat less imposing. Amin was a 17-year-old student at Osbourn Park High School in suburban Virginia. Physically impaired by Crohn’s disease, he spent hours alone on the internet. While outwardly living the life of a typical teenager, in private he developed a raging obsession with the Islamic State. When his best friend, 18-year-old Reza Niknejad, made his own plans to actually join the group, Amin helped drive him to the airport. Niknejad is believed to have made it to ISIS territory and remains at large today.
Amin was arrested in 2014. His estranged father, whom Amin had not seen in over a decade, traveled from the United Arab Emirates to attend his court hearings. His father would later tell the judge that his absence in Amin’s life had “created a spiritual wound” in his son — one that was ultimately filled by his online activities.
Last year, Amin pleaded guilty to one count of material support for terrorism. In a letter to the judge before his sentencing, Amin apologized for his actions and renounced his support for the group. “Developing these relationships became very important to me,” he wrote of his online audience, “because several of these ‘friends’ treated me with respect and occasionally reverence.”
Following his guilty plea, Amin was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Photo: Google Maps
Safya Roe Yassin was a resident of Buffalo, Missouri, a town of 3,000 people an hour’s drive north of Springfield. Neighbors knew Yassin, a single mother, as outspoken about conspiracy theories, including alleged links between autism and childhood vaccinations and the poisoning of the American public by “chemtrails.”
Sometime in 2014, a Facebook friend complained to the FBI about Yassin’s increasingly erratic online postings. She had begun posting messages in support of the Islamic State, although her sister described her to local media as a Christian. Alongside her Facebook activity, Yassin had been operating dozens of Twitter accounts.
According to a criminal complaint, on August 24, 2015, Yassin retweeted a message from another user that contained threats against U.S. government officials. As the complaint noted, “Her unrelenting support of ISIS/ISIL was patently obvious in her verbatim retweets.”
Yassin was taken into custody in February 2016 and charged with transmitting a threat. She has pleaded not guilty. She faces up to five years in prison.
Photo: Google Maps
On June 2, 2015, Usaama Rahim was shot and killed by a police officer in the parking lot of a pharmacy in Boston. A blurry video later released by the police purported to show Rahim approaching the officer in a threatening manner before he was killed. On his body, police found a hunting knife.
In the weeks following the shooting, the circumstances that led to Rahim’s death became the subject of intense scrutiny. FBI officials alleged that Rahim was a supporter of the Islamic State and had expressed his desire to kill a police officer. Rahim was the brother of a prominent local imam, and his family said that Rahim, an African-American, carried a knife for protection from local police. “As you all know, with the current slaughter of black men that’s going on across the nation, that’s enough to make any black man feel threatened,” a woman who identified herself as his aunt told reporters shortly after the shooting.
In their public accounting of the event, local and federal law enforcement claimed that Rahim had been under surveillance due to his online behavior. His social media activity, however, seemed contradictory. Despite “liking” an ISIS page on Facebook, he had also spoken out against extremist violence in the Middle East.
Earlier this year, two friends of Rahim’s who were also arrested at the time were charged with planning to support ISIS in the United States. They each face up to 20 years in prison.
Photo: Google Maps
Abror Habibov, 30, operated a chain of small cellphone and kitchenware kiosks in malls across the East Coast. He employed a 19-year-old named Akhror Saidakhmetov to help run his business. According to a criminal complaint, the government alleges that Habibov and Saidakhmetov began making plans for Saidakhmetov to travel to Syria, with Habibov acting as his funder.
The allegations came about after a lengthy investigation involving an undercover informant. The government alleges that Habibov bought tickets for Saidakhmetov and another man, 24-year-old Abdurasul Juraboev, to travel abroad and ultimately join ISIS. Their plans seemed to be poorly thought out, however — even fantastical. At one point, Saidakhmetov suggested to an undercover government informant that he would hijack the plane and give it to ISIS — so that “then they would have a plane.” When Saidakhmetov’s mother later confiscated his passport, the informant helped him fill out an application for a new one.
In surveilled conversations, Habibov raised doubts about the mental stability of his alleged co-conspirators, telling a third party, “Yes, I think [Juraboev] is normal. I am just saying … I don’t know.” Habibov was arrested in Florida on the same day that Juraboev and Saidakhmetov were detained in New York.
Habibov is now facing up to 15 years in prison on material support for terrorism charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Photo: Google Maps
On the internet, Christopher Lee Cornell created a new persona for himself: Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. The unemployed 20-year-old began tweeting support for ISIS in the summer of 2014, largely from his family home in suburban Cincinnati. In August of that year, he was contacted online by an individual working undercover for the government. According to the criminal complaint, that individual “began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.”
Over the next few months, Cornell and the informant would continue communicating online, discussing their support for ISIS. In time, they’d talk about the possibility of conducting a terrorist attack on their own. The informant traveled to meet Cornell at a hotel, bringing their internet discussions a step closer to reality. In January 2015, Cornell was arrested by authorities after agreeing to purchase weapons, allegedly to further a terrorist plot.
The pale, long-haired 20-year-old was described by his parents as a “momma’s boy” who was bullied in his neighborhood and referred to his cat as his best friend. He had apparently converted to Islam only months before his arrest.
Members of the local Muslim community interviewed by the media appeared oblivious to him. Indeed, the only personal nexus he had with terrorism was the government’s own informant.
Cornell is in custody awaiting trial on charges of plotting to kill government officials and provide material support to ISIS. He has pleaded not guilty.
Photo: Google Maps
Before heading to the airport to board a flight bound for Turkey, Jaelyn Young and Muhammad Dakhlalla left farewell notes for their families. The young newlyweds had decided to leave the United States and start a new life in the territories controlled by the Islamic State.
On May 13, 2015, the 19-year-old Young came onto the radar of authorities after tweeting her desire to save money and travel to Syria. Through a pseudonymous Twitter account, she said that she was working overtime to save money for her trip and to get a passport to leave the country. Over the next several months, she conversed with a number of undercover FBI agents online with whom she developed travel plans for herself and Dakhlalla.
Officials in the case said that Young, a former high school cheerleader, had been the one to initiate the idea to travel abroad with Dakhlalla, whom she would later marry. The two were arrested while attempting to board a flight from a regional airport near their homes in Columbus, Mississippi.
In her farewell note, Young told her family that she was safe and not to look for her. This March, after her arrest, she pleaded guilty to one count of attempted material support. Young and Dakhlalla face up to 20 years in prison.
Photo: Google Maps
On March 26, 2014, 19-year-old John T. Booker checked himself in to a mental health facility. He had already been under the watch of the FBI after a series of social media postings praising attacks against U.S. soldiers. Over the next year and a half, Booker was befriended by two government informants. He told them about his desire to join ISIS and fight American troops. They provided him with information and material related to bomb making — and helped him plan an attack against a local military base in Kansas.
Booker was arrested before the plan ever came to fruition. The materials he was provided were inert, and the FBI had been tracking him long before his arrest. The circumstances of his case — in which the FBI evidently watched him check himself in to a mental health facility as a teenager and then proceeded to set up a sting — have led to speculation that Booker was a vulnerable individual who was entrapped by the government. Pictures of the chubby, bespectacled teenager seemed at odds with a hardened terrorist who informants said had been willing to kill himself in an explosion at the base.
Speaking to local media in Kansas after his son’s arrest, Booker’s father said, “Once kids turn 18 and graduate, parents have no control over them.”
Booker pleaded guilty to terrorism charges this year. He is awaiting sentencing. He faces up to 30 years in prison.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
A really important question has come up straightforward, and at full speed from the Christian community, whose faith has always kept alive with God’s will and his given principles of grace as fundamental to Christianity as that of justice is to law, and or love is to marriage.
Indeed, Christianity cannot be understood apart from an adequate grasp of grace, while the doctrine of grace distinguishes the Christians faith from every other religion in the world, as well as from the cults.
An unanswered question remains floating straight to those, who actually still refusing to accept it the main existence for its essence of truth, in which does it exactly sounds just like a hatred to those, who certainly hates the truth.
Perhaps, who could possible be so mentally compelled, and so physically self-guided dragging a primary intent with a unique purpose to denigrate it Christian individuals, included evangelical followers on our marbleized gifted world’s in a false, illusory and dishonest argument, and or perhaps, used as a main tool to exclusively undermine it, and or to impose it as a form of subversion against Christianity’s faith in relation to an Islamic radical extremist commonly known worldwide as Omar Seddique Mateen, at the age of twenty-nine, who has carried out on past June 12th, 2016 the deadliest barbaric mass shooting attack ever in the United States history.
While we’re remaining shocked and saddened by this barbaric terrorist attack occurred at Orlando’s Pulse Gay Nightclub, committed by a radical Islamic extremist, a terrorist, and surely a homosexual perpetrator, who has physically left his own homosexual wooden closet widely open to be eyeing watch as a legit homophobic executioner by ideology, and not a religion, who previously attended accompanied with his Gay partner as a frequent customer of the same entertainment Gay activities during at least three years carried out his own homosexual tendencies, even before he had pulled the trigger and executed 49 innocent people, along with 53 seriously injured.
You mention that a “really important question has come up straightforward”, but I cannot discern this “question” amongst your incoherent ramblings, Mack.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
Actually, I have more than a good reason to believe that you were indeed *among* those, who doesn’t have the basic acknowledgement in *differing* the real grammar meaning with your already achieved levels of illiteracy, truly originated from your own existent shadowed *past n’ present tense*, and most importantly, towards of usage for the two words, *amongst* your overseas virtual friends, included those, who often spread, speak and or writes cynicism in spanglish format with a unique purpose in criticizing men and women in uniform, while truly enjoying themselves by simple writing *gunpoint* as two words followed right below in the same forum session.
Please enjoy yourself *just some guy* !
“Please enjoy yourself *just some guy* !”
Thank you. I will.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
At anytime !
I read your rambling prose 3 times and I still cannot figure out what your point is. In future, please state your thesis in your introduction, and clearly state how any evidence you include supports it.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
To be quite frankly, for a common virtual such as yourself, who allegedly wrote it a rambling prose at the very end of your critizing remarks followed as, “…and clearly how any evidence you include supports it…”, I can assured you that you’re just trying to make your overseas welfare’s essay sound better towards to the viewers, included yourself as principal non-English speaker, who also must be sitted behind of a limited foreign translation generator that apparently wasn’t properly calibrated to distinguish it the mathematical number 3 ( x ) straight to a standard *couple, or few times*.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/6/20/headlines/jo_cox_shooter_attended_meeting_of_white_supremacists_arranged_by_fbi_informant
FBI did catch these guys way BEFORE they could get to the point of an Orlando attack. Just because what they were convicted of was small stuff doesn’t mean they would not have blossomed into Jihadis later, we’ll never know what they could have done. Maybe they would, maybe they would not – but because they didn’t make it that far doesn’t make them any less guilty of supporting ISIS etc. They just thankfully didn’t kill anyone.
Looks like some cleaning up has occurred while I was at work.
Semper Fi!
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
I’d regret to informed you that I don’t hired illegals at all to work in my 30-years old family owned company, neither after hours cleaning staff, and as matter of fact, every single employees on my payroll are assigned on my forty-days policy, in which includes a constantly criminal background screening.
I wasn’t speaking to you, Mac.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
Neither do I !
This latest case is beginning to sound like an FBI sting gone wrong…
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 20th, 2016
I’m in the hopes that a good customized dried wood will have at least in the 21st century a better chance to gain a new definition for a single admission of a lost souls, in which I doubt it if they actually have a soul to be dragged among to their path of destruction across of the globe.
LOL! The two jokers who wrote this article are correct that Mateen should have been stopped. But all they do is attempt to garner sympathy for the other terrorists in their article. I don’t CARE if these Muzzies are maladjusted…socially awkward…”lost souls.” They needed to be stopped as well. Maladjusted people such as them are the ones who DO snap and commit terror acts.
There are ENOUGH Muslim apologists paving the way for terrorists, in DC! We don’t need them in the media too…
Getting spammed by the American Nazi Party . . . where does the hatred come from?
1) Chimp mentality based on tribal in-group/out-group concepts and the desire for alpha status in one’s social group.
2) Fear of anything that looks different from what one sees in the mirror.
3) Poverty and the competition for scarce resources in the increasingly unequal American economic system.
All in all, things in the U.S. are trending towards conditions in that existed in Europe post-WWII, or pre-French Revolution, a growing underclass ruled over by a wealthy elite that insists on enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else; continuation of this trend will be a disaster for everyone.
Maybe the FBI could use this peculiarly well adjusted Voter Bot. Introduce him to some Nazis. Give him some automatic assault rifles and work out the logistics for him. Collect that pay raise, promotion, and medal, then ask HRC to sign off on a Surveillance Surge. What else could possibly keep America safer?
It’s a proven business model. What works for Al Qaeda’s and ISIS’ sponsors could work for his.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
In fact, the truth sounds just like a hatred to those ( included yourself ), who indeed hates truth.
Something is bothering me regarding the event in the Pulse nightclub.
There were close to 100 persons in the club when this murderer made his entry. Granted that he had a handgun and an assault rifle, what I cannot understand is that while this tragedy went on for three hours not a single person took upon himself to fight back. There was no dearth of missiles that could be thrown at him, and with some luck he could have been taken out long before he killed 49 people. Beer bottles, beer cans, liquor bottles, glasses … there really was no dearth of stuff that could be used to throw at him and take him out.
I think what we are really lacking is courage to confront evil. We tend to be politically correct all the time and when it time to confront evil many of us try to find refuge in restrooms.
Yes, I wondered about that as well, but then I looked into the history of the killer – he had eight years experience as a GS4 security guard, probably with lots of training – from the GS4 blurb:
“Our excellence in recruiting, screening and training ensure that our Security Officers project the right image for our clients.”
Think about it – charging someone in a corridor who has two guns, one a high-capacity assault rifle, and can shoot really fast? Who is to say many people didn’t try this, but were immediately gunned down? And the killer had cased the club previously, probably had a strategy to avoid ‘being tackled.’
So no, I don’t think your ‘politically correct’ narrative makes any sense at all. And if you’re going to claim that bar patrons should carry guns, well. . . drunks with guns. Sure, great idea.
Personally, I’d say banning the sales of high-capacity, easily-reloaded guns would be more effective; than someone could have tackled him while he was reloading – but the NRA doesn’t like that narrative.
Semi-automatic rifles and handguns without removable magazines would have to be reloaded slowly, bullet by bullet – seems like a good idea to me for preventing mass shootings of this sort.
Regardless, this is sort of the worst case scenario, when a trained guard or officer or soldier does something like this. Why the police didn’t go in earlier is uncertain – hostages? Why not go in immediately? But even when they did one was almost killed by a shot to the head that fractured his Kevlar helmet.
What governments really worry about, of course, is if highly-placed trained officers or soldiers decide to do something like this; that’s how many assassinations of government leaders from Israel’s Begin to Egypt’s Sadat etc. take place. That’s why there was so much concern over this story:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/armed-former-convict-was-on-elevator-with-obama-in-atlanta/2014/09/30/76d7da24-48e3-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html
And no, I’m not voting for that race-baiting nutcase Trump, nor that warmongering Clinton. Forget about it.
That’s ok. Jeb Bush also rescinded his commitment to vote for Trump.
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
You must admit it to yourself that the future of my own country, the United States of America is more important than your foreign socialist feelings.
Try having basic knowledge of why we have the second amendment.
While standing on the other end of the line, the government and any pantywaste like yourself would like for civilians to be thrusted back a few centuries in defense against a tyrant government.
That is why the “conspiracy theory” exist of manchurian candidates. While one hand pushes the other hand can stress the need to taketh away.
FYI, Montgomery Ward catalogs used to carry ads for machine guns and canons. That’s right, I said fucking canons bitch.
I don’t understand how these people are charged with a crime essentially for “professing support for ISIS”. They haven’t done anything concrete towards committing an actual crime/violence and without the “help” of govt informants it does not sound like they will Ever do anything. It seems awfully similar to people getting 20 years imprisonment (or 10 years hard labor) for criticizing Stalin.
I took a look and in all cases the actual charges seem to be “material support for terrorism” although that seems as minimal as buying oneself or others a plane ticket to Turkey, which could be viewed as funds used to support ISIS activities. So free speech is still protected, as per normal limits. (one person was arrested for threatening the POTUS).
What’s annoying is that the real big-time providers of material support to ISIS over the past five years, from the Saudi and Qatari governments (who fed arms and money to ISIS) to the CIA program managers (who used the $1 billion Syrian black budget to train and equip fighting forces who went on to join ISIS) to the Turkish authorities (who provided forged Turkish passports to foreigners who wanted to cross into Syria and join ISIS), are all going un-investigated by the FBI for political purposes.
I don’t believe even a single Saudi or Qatari private citizen, which is who people like Hillary Clinton claim are backing ISIS (she won’t point to the Saudi government), has been the subject of an FBI investigation, not that the Saudi government would cooperate with such an investigation, as links to the House of Saud might be revealed.
Doesn’t some of this count as entrapment?
A few of them with no experience and just have issues with america goaded by a bunch of power hungry americans into doing something they might have avoided. Especially that Booker guy, he tried to get help for himself. Instead of recognizing that and making a attempt to help the young man instead they turned him into a “terrorist”.
The father of the Orlando shooter, Seddique Mateen, is known to have used anti-american rhetoric and is a sympathizer of the Taliban. Information about this is available through Google. It would be naive to believe, that he and his son Omar were not under constant surveillance by the FBI. The question arises: What are we NOT being told?
You are totally right, as a person named in the federal hit-list naming over 2-million Arabs, Muslims, and American political dissidents for persecution and assassinations we have to be on guard 24/7 to prevent the FBI from fabricating charges.
The harassment against me has been such that in the last six months the NYPD has raided my apartment at gun-point without a warrant after breaking its door twice in the last six months.
The government is hiding a lot of information in the Mateen case.
The FBI is indeed in the business of entrapment, having the NYPD twice in the last six months raid my apartment at gun-point after breaking its door, without a warrant, to provoke a shoot-out after their numerous failed attempts to fabricate criminal cases against me.
Who are the terrorists ?
Don’t you have a right to defend your castle against besiegers?
As confirmed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the United States has a hit-list naming over 2-million Arabs, Muslims, and American political dissidents who are persecuted and assassinated.
The list is shared with all police and government agencies with instructions to target those named.
Because of my inclusion in the list, in the last six months NYPD cops have raided my apartment at gun-point without a warrant after breaking its door, while the courts consider these as “minor mistakes”.
Who are the terrorists ?
New York – NY / U.S.A
June 21st, 2016
I’m a native New Yorker, and raised in my neighborhood composed by local kids of different backgrounds, and we all played together during school recess.
We also learned about diversity ways even before it was a campaign.
Then, I went to college on scholarships aid, and as well worked part-time, because I knew that I had to work hard to become a citizen of success, and of course, without getting myself in trouble with our local, and or federal enforcement officials over an *alleged drugs smuggling, and or possession*.
I’m proud to say that I’m a New Yorker, and these are my New York values, and as for the latest dead Islamic radical extremist / terrorist, in which is by far well know worldwide, carrying a name as Omar Seddique Mateen.
As a native NewYoker and U.S citizen, I’ve truly thanks every men and women in uniform, who simplify the words honor, courage and commitment in order to protect and serve my country’s community.
God Bless the United States of America.
“ROMAN NUMERAL III: Philosophical Implications”
(The Terminal Man – Michael Crichton – 1972)
Too bad The Terminal Man was not Seligman’s major influence in his professional life rather than Asimov. Though, no doubt, the original trilogy was amazing.
“In Learned Optimism,[11] psychologist Martin Seligman identifies the Foundation series as one of the most important influences in his professional life, because of the possibility of predictive sociology based on psychological principles. He also lays claim to the first successful prediction of a major historical (sociological) event, in the 1988 US elections, and he specifically attributes this to a psychological principle.[12]” (Wikipedia)
Wow. Can I have a 31 million dollar contract from the DOD because I prefer The Terminal Man over the Foundation Series?
Can those of us who prefer to Make Art and Make Love and Not War get us one of those contracts? How does someone go from that to the ‘Psychology of Capitulation.’ Well, obviously, Christmas Parties.
This is an excellent article detailing the challenges and dilemma that our brave men and women in uniform face on a daily basis. There are some Muslims here who are genuinely good people, and they even eat bacon and pork like the rest of us. I have come across quite a few who still go by ISIS and Al Qaeda food and other cultural habits. But despite all that our folks are doing a remarkable job of protecting us and out children and grandchildren.
Oh please, the apparatchiks and functionaries in the FBI know very well that they’d end up just like John O’Neil did if they focused all their resources on more probable financiers and supporters of terrorist groups in the Middle East. The U.S. State Department is opposed to such investigations because it might upset commercial relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Turkey and Israel.
If you don’t know who FBI agent John O’Neil was:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/
This has been an ongoing problem in criminal terrorism investigations dating back to 1993; Steve Coll details these roots of these issues in Ghost Wars, a history of the period from c.1979 to Sept 10, 2011.
If you ask me, the greedy cynical sleazebags at the U.S. State Department and the FBI/CIA leaders are the worst actors; they’re afraid that if they ‘offend’ the Saudis or Qataris or Israelis, then they’ll lose their cushy post-retirement jobs in corporations that do business with such interests. I bet plenty of the low-ranking agents know this, and to win promotions, they go along with this agenda.
It’s just like the 2008 economic collapse, when all the biggest Wall Street CEOs walked away with no criminal charges, despite lots of evidence that they’d engaged in illegal activities linked to the sub-prime mortgage disaster – the Ruling Class is immune from prosecution in this corrupt system.
Hard to understand thing is that all that crazy @ss “Mack2308 New York – NY / U.S.A” troll bot does is randomly compound supposedly offensive adjectives based on Wordnet to cr@p flood our fora while our messages are being “held” (some disappeared):
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/18/ben-ehrenreichs-new-palestine-book-explores-life-on-planet-hebron/?comments=1#comment-244892
RCL
Bernie Sanders is entangled to a Muslim fagot in Aldebaran
Jo Cox was a spy from Egyptian Pharaohs, so, she deserves what she’s got
…
Well, that was my lousy attempt at emulating that “Mack2308 New York – NY / U.S.A” troll bot
RCL
P.S. Hmm! and, in a sense, thank to that idiot I just learned something about how they “monitor” our comments
Let me clearly reinstate that I am totally and absolutely against censorship of any kind
RCL
Whew, this Mack2308 is the posterboy for government sponsored trolling operations. I bet CraigSummers is a fan of his.
FBI/NSA trolling hijinks aside, excellent article once again TI. Several of these cases stink of entrapment, especially those of Habivov and Booker.
With these examples, it looks like the FBI is targeting individuals with certain traits that have been used to describe those who have committed mass shootings in public schools, except they talk about Daesh/ISIL.
Also it appears that FBI is far more likely to set someone up if they are active online and if they never meet them in person.
And in person, if they don’t fit loner or Islamic enough profile, they get a pass.
I agree with Tom Ritchford. Why does the FBI use the friendship they make online with those under suspicion to encourage them to do something illegal? Shouldn’t prevention mean using their support online to go in the opposite direction?
what’s new in America is a mainstream right wing political culture that wants a war on a religion and ethnicity, demanding you respect men that are crude, violent, and take actions that create fear especially if they target gun free zones.
This same political culture blames the fallout of their message on their political opponents rather than the reality of their message and actions. That is their strategy for change in America (which to me looks like religious military rule.)
Forget responsibility, anyone that has a problem with it is trying to make you weak or is simply an enemy.
All of this force fed conditioning is going to make choosing terrorism or mass shooting or more likely option for a person from any religion or ethnicity in this country especially for those who already feel isolated, angry, suicidal or ashamed of who they are and want to be taken seriously as US media will reliably do when you kill people, yourself and with extra points if you claim ISIL told you to.
No problem though, right? Just collateral damage in the war on those who would not vote for a Republican president or support a religious war in the Middle East.
I would like to be wrong but that is what it looks like to me which is why I am saying it. Any national effort to protect Americans from more common dangers they experience here are instantly slammed as oppressive government involvement. Everything that causes it is supposed to fix it.
What did we learn after Newtown?
Forget children and their teachers being murdered in public schools but the government can’t be involved enough when we are talking about protection from a religion. We don’t have enough means of surveiling and we haven’t dropped enough bombs to protect us from what (it looks like )government politicians and media are doing everything in their power to make as threatening as possible.
Huh?
wha?
ISIS is a fictitious group created by the government to provide an excuse as they mind control people into mass shootings. FBI themselves arm and prep them to kill others to force these people to get themselves killed. It’s part of how our government eliminate people covertly.
What nonsense. The rise of ISIS was facilitated by the joint US-Israeli-Turkey-Saudi-Qatar effort to remove Assad from power in Syria and install another client puppet regime that would be obedient to Washington, particularly on the issue of oil and gas export routes (i.e. blocking Iran and facilitating Saudi-Qatar exports to Europe).
It was a disastrous policy that fed arms and money and volunteers to groups that later became ISIS; perhaps Turkey was the worst actor as it actively did oil deals with ISIS and supplied them with weapons well into 2015 (if not still actively doing so).
As a result, ISIS became an international phenomenon, breaking out of Syria, establishing itself in Libya, the Philippines, etc., as well as sending terrorist groups into Europe and running a large online propaganda machine that influenced the Orlando killer to a great extent.
This is called blowback, isn’t it?
Thank you for a concise explanation of the current situation. I’ve told others that the best way to lessen attacks here in the US, is to withdraw from active engagements against various elements of the states of the Middle East. Yes blowback is what is happening and they say as much when arrested if not outwardly killed. My take on US policy is akin to a bull-in-the-china-shop syndrome. These’s bound to be some unavoidable damage.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/This_story_could_be_the_smoking_gun_for_false-flag_operations/51997/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Santa Monica; Two police officers who wish to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation say that James Wesley Howell, an Indiana man who was found with a car full of explosives and weapons on Sunday morning, told police he was part of a team that planned shooting attacks on gay communities in Florida and California.
Howell told police he was turning himself in because he wanted protection. His story was that he had been assured by his recruiters that he would not be harmed in the shooting but, when he heard on the news that Omar Mateen, the lead gunman in the Orlando group, had been killed by sniper fire, he realized he was being set up as a patsy and would be killed.
Soon after that, the FBI took over the investigation, and information to the public was filtered to remove any facts that might show the Orlando shooting as a planned event involving others. GetOffTheBS 2016 Jun 15 (Story) (Cached)
It is important to remember that the police officers who are the source of this story choose to remain anonymous, so it cannot be independently verified at this time, but circumstantial evidence supports it. For example:
(1) After the FBI took charge of the investigation, Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks changed her original report that Howell was part of a group of five people who intended to do harm at the gay-pride event in West Hollywood. Her altered report made no mention of anyone other than Howell.
(2) The web site that reported this story is still carrying the article without triggering legal action against it. That is significant because, if the story is false, immediate legal action would be expected. If it is true, Howell will be killed or ‘disappeared’ to prevent him from talking, but the last thing the perpetrators would want is a public trial where witnesses can be called to testify.
This is what is so disgusting. The FBI interviewed this monster twice and let him go on to commit mass murder. The national media is not focused on the incompetence of law enforcement. We have also learn that the donations given to the victims of the Orlando tragedy are NOT going to the victims but to local charities to use as they wish. Very little money will go to the victims. Most of the donations will go to the for profit charity CEO’S and board members for inflated salary and bonus. Please be sure to give directly to the victims not the for profit charities.
… “Mack2308 New York – NY / U.S.A” …
…, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …,
… “Mack2308 New York – NY / U.S.A” …
I think I kind of get it. Mona is on vacation. I can’t wait to have her back! What a lousy replacement!
“Mack2308 New York – NY / U.S.A” doesn’t appear to have finished its training. Is using a turk GUI to generate canned crazy-@ss messages so hard?
RCL
I do not think he knows you very well… or reads very much.
ISIS is a fictitious group made to create a false excuse while our government mind controls people in secret using equipment on ground and in the sky to kill people in mass shootings for their own agendas.
What’s the one narrative on the Orlando murders that Americans seem to have the hardest time listening to?
This applies to both liberals who supported Obama in 2008 and generally viewed the regime change efforts in Libya and Syria as ‘good wars’, but also to conservatives who backed Bush’s invasion of Iraq and believed his lies about WMDs and ties to 9/11 and said it was also a ‘good war’.
Is it the gun question? That’s the liberal line; the Orlando killer was mentally ill, got his hands on guns, was obsessed with homosexuals for unclear reasons, and that if we just had stricter gun laws fewer people would be killed.
That’s basically not very accurate; while it is true that many massacres could be stopped with stricter gun laws, note that security guards and police officers and soldiers have more training and access to weapons than most people, so if one of them goes off the deep end, and decides to commit violent acts, simply enhancing gun laws will do little to stop them. See the Norweigan killer, the Paris killers, the Oklahoma City bombing, etc. For example, if semi-automatic weapons with removable cartridges were banned, this weapons-trained individual could have instead used four handguns and explosives to carry out similar carnage. Nevertheless, far tighter restrictions on guns are a good idea; why not treat them as motor vehicles are treated, i.e. with gun licenses, gun registration, strict rules on transfer of ownership and liability, background checks, etc? Motor vehicles kill lots of people in the U.S.; but with the DMV there is a process for removing licenses from drunks, etc.
Is it the radical Islamic terrorism question? That’s the conservative line; ‘they hate us for our freedoms’ as GW Bush said, and so we have to launch military assaults and run regime change programs in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia to overthrow unfriendly governments and install U.S.-friendly puppet regimes.
You have to be pretty ignorant of the fact that U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia have financed so much of the radical groups as proxy forces, both via private citizens and through their intelligence services, to swallow that line.
But here’s the narrative that makes people really uncomfortable:
Isn’t there a good argument that this is blowback? That when the U.S. conducts reckless and poorly considered military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and launches drone strikes over Pakistan and Africa and Yemen that kill innocent women and children, that this inspires individuals to conduct attacks on American targets domestically and internationally, and that’s the real root of terrorism? That’s just a narrative that both liberal and conservative mainstream American media finds too uncomfortable to discuss – because it moves the blame to American foreign policy, and we’re supposed to always cheer on our military interventions, even when they’re idiotic disasters, utter FUBAR events.
Why is it so hard to understand that violent destruction of human lives in foreign countries, part of the global imperial project of the American empire, can inspire people to conduct violent attacks against American citizens? Is it ‘unpatriotic’ to point this out? Is it that liberals just can’t accept that Obama’s militaristic policies picked up where GW Bush’s left off, despite all the “Hope and Change” BS that they bought into in 2008?
You can hate Trump all you like, but at least he had the guts to point out that it was the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the disaster created by the GW Bush administration, that brought terrorist groups into Iraq (where Saddam, despite his other faults, kept them out) – and it’s also true that the disastrous regime change efforts of Obama & Clinton in Libya and Syria directly facilitated the rise of ISIS, as did the actions of our so-called ‘allies’ from Turkey to Israel to the Saudi/GCC alliance.
What’s the matter? Can nobody point this out because they’re afraid of being called un-American by the corporate warmongering media? Are people worried it might undercut support for Hillary Clinton in the general election (a diehard advocate of this disastrous U.S. foreign policy)?
Instead we get a liberal/conservative propaganda blitz that desperately attempts to avoid this central issue. Weird.
Obama had the guts to point out that the 2003 invasion into Iraq was a disaster also.
…and he had the guts to continue the disaster….
yes and he was our antiwar, diplomat – bridge the divide between the Middle East and the West president. He is also criticized for not doing enough in Syria and being too nice to Iran
Everywhere in America it seems there is a push for escalation in the Middle East, even so-called diplomats want Obama to bomb Syria.
(Obama may have been trying to tone down what was already in place but covert intervention paves the way for large scale invasion.)
Either candidate will have their own signature devastating mistakes to make in the Middle East.
If the Trump mobster wins and if in four years we still have a country, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t made it a crime to criticize him (which would include foreign policy decisions)
So it will take some considerable courage, like “I hope I have body guards and enough money to run against him, I hope I can stay out of jail and maybe I should campaign from Canada” kind of courage to criticize foreign policy mistakes that are sure to come for a scared, war hungry America led by Trump the Republican.
This is all assuming that elections haven’t been suspended by that time due to protests and his political opponents “disgraceful” behavior – only while he tries to figure out whats going on, of course.
I don’t see anything admirably daring about what Trump is willing to say to get elected or for any reason. Republicans dont have to worry about how Obama or media reacts to their criticism or worry about getting sued for lying and being a loud mouthed, offensive and proud of it Republican politician has become mainstream.
Thank you for this in depth review of the sad people caught in our twisted modern society. Many of these stories seem to be more about government entrapment, than actually finding potential threats.
Perhaps it would be useful to add the stories of others like the man who killed the church group, those who have done school shootings, the one who shot the senator and others in a mall….I cannotbrecall them all now. They had nothing to do with ISIS, but probably fit the same psychological profile.
Perhaps what we need is another force to approach people with this profile, a social services force. Wouldn’t it be better for our communities if we were to send out “under cover” agents to help rather than incite and entrap? What about organizing community centers for outreach and connection to a future worth living for?
On the matter of ‘home’ and the attack in Orlando.
It strikes me the attacker was above all mentally ill. His terrorism claims were deeply intermixed with his illness, but to the extent he recognized his illness he likely ascribed it to the dysfunction of American society itself, perhaps even as a conspiratorially-directed attack against himself and others by unseen political forces.
It may also be that humdrum home-life had become secondary to him as he entered deeper and deeper into an Internet-enveloped fantasy world of psychosomatic dependence, which in itself was a sort of virtual medication for his dysphoric and depressive states. The Internet-filtered ‘ontology’ became more real, more directing, than actual reality, which either was the source of the dysphoria, or could do little to compete against the narcotic and palliating power against said dysphoria afforded by the Internet. The Internet, as a narcotizing agent-cum-source of ‘semiotic reality’, afforded a toxic blend of narcotized or intensely psychosomaticized ideas, namely the subconscious desire to become permanently integrated into its now indispensable virtuality, an occurrence which could be ‘materialized’ through his own dematerialization, i.e. death, via a heinous yet socially (and perhaps even historically) significant traumatic event: i.e. an extremely high ‘kill score’ attack tinged with potentially highly resonant and delineating political messaging. Indeed, as the killer was in the midst of his attack, it has been reported, he repeatedly checked Facebook and other online media for reflexive manifestations of his attack, yet the Internet was not simply a mirror of his acts, but the impulser of his feelings and thoughts, i.e the primary prism of his personal reality–his death during the unforgettably devastating attack would insure that his life would be ‘uploaded’ to the highest degree informationally and technologically possible onto the Internet, he would finally be fully integrated into his primary, most real, essential and necessary sphere of existence. He would lose his soul, according to normal human quotidian accounting, but enter the ‘heaven’ of an enveloping virtuality where everything was permissible, relative, and forgiven.
Actually, the Orlando shoot-out looks like a typical gangster shoot-out to me. It wouldn’t be the first time that gangsters terrorized innocents or each other and then pretended that the whole thing was an islamist attack. That’s why the FBI failed to find the shooter — because the actual shooter is just a mafia thug. The man they eventually arrested is a random muslim guy from their computers, with a history of mental illness so that he cannot stand up for himself in court (even with the help of a lawyer).
Look, society is pretty simple, really. People like to read all sorts of profound, psychological meanings into events because everybody thinks he’s Dan Brown or Henning Mankell, but in reality, we live in a profit-driven society — every act of anything is profit-driven, including acts of violence. Nightclubs, including gay clubs, are notorious watering holes for gangsters.
All of these terrorist attacks mirror one for one the gangster wars of the Roaring Twenties — only back then, the government accused Italians and Irishmen of being terrorists, because most unions at the time were organized by Italian and Irish-American workers, and droves of Italian and Irish immigrants were still wandering into America, at a time where employment was decreasing at an alarming rate, and the government didn’t want to provide welfare and didn’t want more mouths to feed.
Today is the exact same situation. All capitalist governments want to wage a gigantic war for the benefits of banks, investors and speculators. Every war is preceded by terror — the scale of terror depends on the scale of the impending war. And usually the people who instigate the terror are gangsters and the police (or the clergy, like in the medieval ages). All of this tommyrot about mental illness, communism, nationalism, islamism, homophobia etc are just excuses for the capitalist to shift the blame for the terror on the shoulders of others who are weaker and more difficult to identify.
So what has really been happening is that the FBI is not busting these guys, and allowing them to buy weapons and letting them sink deeper into their crazy world in an attempt to follow them, hopefully leading to the king pin. What a stupid idea. I respect the FBI, but lets be real.
New Warning Label for the FBI:
Letting suspected terrorist buy weapons results in death of the people you are suppose to protect.
Let’s just pretend due process doesn’t exist, eh
Lost souls. I haven’t read a more accurate headline all day. It’s so deeply pathetic. All these poor people (in both senses of the word), mostly with medical conditions, but none of them with any hope for the future at all.
I believe that had the FBI left these people alone that nothing would have happened. Indeed, I believe that in most cases, if someone in authority had just come in and had a respectful chat with them – “This is a free country, but you worry us when you talk about violence. We want you to work with us to defuse tension”, that they would have abandoned their “radical” talk – which was just empty talk in every case.
But this is not the sort of country where law enforcement ever try to defuse situations. Oh, no! In each of these cases, in fact, law enforcement deliberately enflamed and encouraged these people to get to the point where they were breaking some law – and them promptly arrested them and destroyed their lives (and put we the taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in penal costs).
But then, so is the FBI, In a sense they are “a match in heaven”. Some people even see actual medically, functionally diagnosed mental retardation as some sort of disease.
// __ nytimes + abcnews: Police Can “legally” Bar High I.Q. Scores …
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/09/nyregion/metro-news-briefs-connecticut-judge-rules-that-police-can-bar-high-iq-scores.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
~
it is as if there were official, public regulations stating: “if you are a decent person you can’t work in Wall Street” ;-)
I can notice sarcasm by il Duce real quick but at times I have my doubts, especially if you are talking about being those situations (which by the way are way more common than people suspect) “deeply pathetic” and “living in a free country”.
If we were indeed living in “a free country” even this conversation would not happen, make any sense.
But our patriots need to justify salaries, don’t they? How else are they going to be making money if not making sh!t up. Having some common sense and some sense of morality doesn’t help when you are police, snitching @ssh0l3s
RCL
——Question——
What do the Orlando shooter, Boston Bombers, San Bernadino shooter, 9/11 hijackers, Timothy McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswalt and the kid going to the L.A. Gay Pride event all have in common?
——Answer——–
THEY ALL HAD PRIOR CONTACT WITH THE FBI AND CIA. Folks our Government has been doing false flags in our country for over 100 years, to take our God given rights. Don’t believe me, just look up
“Operation Northwoods”.
Thank you, Mjg, I had never heard of this! Well, it looks like the playbook for the current “terrorize them right out of their democracy and into total subjugation, and like it!”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Really… Google photos? I’d rather see a an article without those photos. Railroad tracks near the high school that… Seriously, what the hell does that add to your story? You can do better. You should do better. Do you have a photo editor?
“We could hijack a jetliner and fly it to Syria so at least ISIS would have a plane” is exactly the type of snarky remark that I am apt to utter.
Note to self: Humor could cost you your freedom.
Are we mentally deficient or? Anyone serious is not going to leave any traces until too late?
Damn! I finally read a sensible editorial in the Washington Post … was thinking oh my God, someone finally is willing to compare fatalities from terrorism to other kinds of fatalities — and it turns out to be Glenn Greenwald!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/17/the-fbi-was-right-not-to-arrest-omar-mateen-before-the-shooting/
I want to be clear: my feeling on seeing the byline was a deep disappointment. Glenn Greenwald isn’t always right, but in the media it would seem he is the lone human being amid a sea of monkeys sitting at typewriters. It must get damn frustrating to be the last man on Earth, at least within the realm of the press.
The comments are a bit disappointing. One of my favorites:
Several of those commenters seem sufficiently unstable so that if the standards they propose for permanent FBI monitoring were imposed, but without religious discrimination, they would be tying up an army of agents.
Best are his comments on the tradeoff between liberty and security. The comparison to traffic deaths is brilliant.
Lets call him a terrorist, now what’s your point? we are no better than ISIS, Boko Haram, Jaish al Islam…???
Are you trying to say the Brexit is a terror organization?
What are you trying to say? there is no such thing as terror? there is? what’s the point of all that aside from another pathetic post modernize nonsense “we are not better, or don’t judge a group” bls.
I think the central issue here is that federal agencies like the FBI have a high proportion of ambitious careerists, who are adept at anticipating what their superiors want to see.
The heads of the FBI want to see high-profile prosecutions of “Islamic terrorists” that they can take to Congress in order to justify their budget requests.
But, on the other hand, they don’t want to upset other departments of the federal government or members of Congress with close ties to the global arms industry. So if Saudi Arabia is the biggest purchaser of U.S. weapons today, prosecutions that point to Saudi Arabia as a sponsor of terrorist groups like ISIS are not going to win the FBI any friends in Congressional budgetary committees, or for that matter with other federal agencies like the CIA, that have coordinated with the Saudis to supply “moderate Islamist rebel groups” in Syria.
Hence, the FBI careerists, the bureaucratic apparatchiks and functionaires, focus their efforts on finding mentally ill nobodies to prosecute on terrorism charges; to do this they recruit informants who are fairly well paid for their efforts who set these nobodies up to take falls.
Comey, after all, spent what, eight years at Lockheed Martin, whose #1 foreign customer is Saudi Arabia. Hence, terrorism investigations never lead to Saudi Arabia – and Comey and his cohort, when they ‘retire’, will be guaranteed cushy Wall Street jobs. Blatant corruption? Sure it is.
But don’t talk about that, Mack2308, just spew nonsense. Who do you think you’re fooling?
This, incidentally, is precisely how the FBI’s sister agency, the DEA, operates – they are not going to try to bust the heads of (a) Big Pharma or (b) Wall Street banks for ignoring sales of opiate pills to street dealers and gangs (case a) or for laundering the proceeds of South American drug cartels (case b), so, to promote their careers, they will try to prosecute low-level or mid-level dealers in big show trials that help them get promotions while doing nothing at all about the underlying problems. Busting the heads of Big Pharma for drug dealing would lead to retaliation by the Congressmembers in Big Pharma’s pocket, and would negatively impact the budget of the DEA.
Perhaps, because the FBI is as good as you or anyone else at reading minds.
“liking”? Not even an ISIS page anywhere, just visiting TheIntercept would be enough for your terroristic potential index to go through the roof
Are those the kinds of folks joining ISIS? If the FBI would be smart enough they would actually help those kinds of folks do so.
that sentence should have been “tweeting support for ISIS” through the NSA/FBI communication channels
The FBI doesn’t really know what to make up in order to justify salaries it seems
Guys this is not how it is done. Here I am giving a general advise about how to do things:
1) you develop an Interest in scuba diving
2) fly to a scuba diving resort not in Egypt, but in Thailand
3) then from Thailand fly to you middle East location
4) of course
4.1) do not take a cell phone with you (leave your misplace at a place you know will be used by someone else)
4.2) discard all clothing you are wearing (wear only local cheap stuff you buy directly using local monies)
4.3) make sure to check if USG has planted a tracer on you (have you ever had surgery?). They easily inset those radio devices in your ribs
Oh, the social animals we are! Am I the only one whose mother advised not to talk to strangers?
Him? They “track” everybody anyway.
RCL
The really funny part about Roe Yassin and her “chemtrails” is that she’s 100% correct. Jet liners are indeed releasing poison into the atmosphere, because there is no upper limit on how much sulfur can be in jet fuel. (Contrary to conspiracy theorists, the obvious place to put any toxic chemical is in those giant tanks that make up much of the airplane, not in the passenger cabin…) It’s estimated that the sulfur dioxide kills 5000 people a year. But, it holds back the course of global warming by six months as long as they do it (is that ‘geoengineering’? Yes, but not very much of it!). And more to the point, getting rid of the sulfur would make the fuel something like 25% more expensive. So rational legislators turn it down, conspiracy theorists look to the skies and see clouds forming from jet exhaust, and 5000 people get fed to the Minotaur next year same as this one. And that’s the facts.
Thanks, now I feel better about believing chemtrail conspiracy theories and writing my local congressman as a child.
This is so sick and disgusting, posting stuff on twitter is not a crime, is not an act of ‘terrorism.’ Most of these people shouldn’t be in jail at all, and nor is putting them into the horrific U.S. prison system going to make them less disposed to “”isis”” an organization which is really not the buisness of the U.S. government at all.
“…trying to identify and imprison real terrorists before they commit acts of terrorism.” – pre-crime
america vs religion
This is why the founding fathers of the US wanted a separation of church and state. America is NOT a christian country, nor should it be, it should be an American country. The laws comprising America are of property and rights both of which override ANY religious practice. The separation of belief and practice is the defining event.
What is happening to these persons in this report is a test similar based on temptation put forth to them which is often entrapment. In the anything-for-money US pretty much, for enuf money, anyone can be entrapped.
Will you sleep with me for one million dollars?
Sure.
How about one dollar.
What do you think i am, a prostitute?
We already established that, i’m just negotiating your price.
Adoption of American values above religious values is very difficult for some people – honor killings, what an abominable primitive and depraved thing. The F…B…I… is testing people for their priority, American or Relgious. This is not a bad thing. The theory is that if these persons are not rooted out, they may act like the Orlando person and go bananas.
What is bad is that these people are sent to prison rather than being Americanised, or simply allowed to leave America and go be happy with ISIS because now these persons, upon exiting prison, are likely to be more disapproving of America than before.
Who should really be investigated for providing material support to terrorists? How about starting with the the program managers of the CIA’s $1 billion Syrian black budget and the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and Turkey?
For example, let’s look at who facilitated the flow of ISIS volunteers into Syria with false passports, etc:
https://levantreport.com/tag/tow/
Turkey reportedly supplied ISIS volunteers with fake passports . . . And whose actions have resulted in transfers of advanced weaponry to ISIS and al Qaeda groups in Syria?
Shouldn’t we be charging a whole host of CIA and State Department officials, along with their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with facilitating the travel of ISIS volunteers to Syria as well as with providing weapons and money to terrorist groups?
Come on FBI agents – why not start using your surveillance tools against CIA managers and State Department officials? Worried about the negative effect that might have on your promotion prospects? But if the Pentagon-backed Kurdish rebels are fighting CIA-backed “moderate Islamist” groups, why not join in the fun? Low-grade civil war in Washington DC? Welcome to the circus. . . here come the clowns! But where’s the ringmaster?
The Department of Homeland Security removed the names of nearly 1,000 individuals suspected of terrorism ties from the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to newly released documents obtained by an advocacy group under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported in 2014 that the Obama administration secretly assembled a terrorist “hands off” list that enabled individuals with terrorist ties unfettered entrance into the United States.
The latest documents, obtained by Judicial Watch and released on Tuesday, appear to confirm these initial reports. They further disclose that at least 1,000 names were scrubbed from the U.S. Terrorist Screening Database as part of an administration effort to protect the civil rights of suspected individuals.
“The documents appear to confirm charges that Obama administration changes created a massive ‘hands off’ list,” Judicial Watch said in a statement. “Removed data from the terrorist watch list could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terrorist attack.”…
Oh please, the terrorist watch list is a joke; claiming that by putting more names on it you’ll stop attacks is just political propaganda of the lowest order.
I think you should say that any juror voting “Not Guilty” should be added to the terror watch list, since the act of exonerating a person who is potentially guilty based on a mere lack of evidence is inherently an act of violence against the country.
There are good Muslims. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community rejects terror in any form:
https://www.alislam.org/introduction/
This is just sad. I don’t think most people realize how easy of prey they are, and that the FBI conduct this sort of operation. The real “bad guys” are harder to catch, so spooks have an incentive to do this and let shootings happen – which will just get their department a pay raise anyway.
The Roe Yassin case is the most disturbing because it has taken censorship to its logical extreme: the one-click prosecution. It seems like there is no medium more prosecutable than Twitter, but even this is ridiculous: a woman clicks on a “retweet” button and is supposed to be thrown in jail for years and years over somebody else’s threat! In real writing, there would still be some distinction between quoting or referencing somebody who talks about watering a tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and martyrs, versus making such a radical and dangerous threat oneself.
She retweeted hacked personally identifiable information (PII) on U.S. government personnel – including full names and locations -with a caption at the top saying “Wanted to kill.”
As the complaint says:
Before that, she retweeted a link to a list of approximately 150 US Air Force personnel and document that said “…and slay them wherever you may come upon them.” The indictment says that “as a direct result of ISIL and its supporters posting this list, USAF members were threatened with death.”
Calling this “censorship” as you have is disingenuous. She knowingly helped facilitate transmission of information that resulted in people being threatened with death.
Wait a minute! I remember seeing a list of 100 Jordanian pilots that was part of a video that was posted on regular news sites! Are you telling me that those journalists should be prosecuted and sent to prison long-term? Are you saying that if I’d “retweeted” or “liked” one of those stories, that I’d be guilty of the same as her? (I assume it isn’t any more legal to threaten a Jordanian pilot than an American one)
I say that’s censorship. ISIS propaganda may be horrible, and its call to kill people appalling, but Americans should have the right to read such things and talk about them. And it doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good to ban Americans from sharing and retweeting this stuff when nearly the entire target audience can share this stuff outside of America! I wouldn’t be for banning that stuff even if it *were* effective, but that remains as yet a hypothetical, because censorship is as invariably ineffective for its stated purpose as it is effective as a tool for bureaucrats to go after whoever they feel like.
Hell, anyone who hands out a Koran — or an Old Testament — “helps facilitate transmission of information that resulted in people being threatened with death”, and indeed, sometimes dying. That too is their right.
OK Nate, here you go. If you’re feeling squeamish you can fast forward to the last couple of minutes of this video: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4030583977001/warning-extremely-graphic-video-isis-burns-hostage-alive/?#sp=show-clips They have pictures of various named pilots from the “Crusader Database” titled with “WANTED DEAD”. So has Fox News committed a crime here by extending their reach? Have *I* committed a crime by extending Fox News’ reach? Fuck it. I say the cat was out of the bag the minute ISIS made their kill list, and it doesn’t matter a hill of beans if a couple of gwailos are giving them a movie review, whether on Twitter or The Intercept.
Interesting point, but ultimately a false equivalence. You cannot simply ignore the rule of law for which this person was indicted!
Yassin is being charged under Title 18, United States Code, Sections 875(c):
(c) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Furthermore, 18 USC 2 is used against a person assisting in the commission of someone else’s crime:
“Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.”)
Ultimately, the government has to prove that she willfully transmitted information that threatened injury. Her current defense is that she had journalistic intentions, which indirectly shows you how that distinguishes entities like Fox News from one aiding and abetting. Now she might not get convicted (I’d bet on a plea deal), but what separates her from Fox News is “intent.” That is why the word is contained in the first sentence of the indictment. Why not charge Fox News? Because of intent. Fox News gave their reason http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31013455 and I don’t think anybody questions that explanation (i.e. they actually did it for nefarious purposes). With that said, they should take all efforts to protect the identity of Americans and allies by redacting or omitting such information. If you had an enemy online that posted Wnt’s address and theats to kill you and I decided – you know what – Wnt does deserve to die and retweeted it; I’d deserve the consequences of that action.
I don’t see how this argument connects. I see one “willfully” in the text you quoted, which is in reference to the action that has the effect. It would seem like that asks, did Fox News repost the video intentionally or unintentionally? It doesn’t seem like it asks, did Fox News want ISIS to make its threat or carry it out or whatever. I don’t see a way to read all the first law as compatible with free speech; it simply talks about communications “containing” a threat, which refers to all sorts of quotations. Maybe they’re taking a fundamentally unconstitutional law and inferring some kind of Miller Test on top of it, where they say Fox News passes it and she fails… I don’t know. But it would make more sense to have only laws compatible with free speech to begin with – I am no fan of Miller, and am unapologetic about calling for a total end to “obscenity” as a concept.
If there is any merit to banning threats – something of which I am skeptical – it would only apply to situations in which a person intends, on their own behalf, to threaten someone else by some means; it should not apply to retransmissions and facilitations. Whether the threat is delivered by postman, email server, or retweeter, what’s the difference? Don’t kill the messenger.
But what about the batshit lady pushing ISIS? Well, we don’t like her speech, and the world is *full* of obnoxious ways of communicating that. People are cyberbullied over *nothing* every day. I imagine there’s a way to bully an online ISIS cheerleader that doesn’t require taxpayers to set aside a $100,000-a-year cell in the college that doesn’t teach anything.
A few days ago I heard multiple media claim that Omar Mateen’s wife could not be charged with any crime merely for knowing that he was going to go commit a massacre. Yet in the last case Alexander E. Blair was charged with “failing to report a felony”, facing three years in jail for failing to report a plot to explode an inert bomb provided by FBI agents – a charge which is based only on *attempting* to do various things. So either the law is completely crazy and unpredictable, or the mass media don’t understand and are spreading misinformation what is A-OK legal versus what will get you thrown in jail for twenty years. Either way, that should be a disturbing phenomenon.
Just imagine how these cases could have turned out if the government was focused on providing mental health intervention instead of radicalizing lonely disturbed men.
Hey, FBI, why stop with men?