When two men opened fire at the “Draw Muhammad” contest in a Dallas suburb in 2015, the FBI had an undercover agent on the scene, newly filed court documents reveal.
On May 3, 2015, two men from Arizona armed with assault rifles — Elton Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi — attacked a convention center in Garland, Texas, where Pamela Geller had organized the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest.” The two attackers shot a guard outside the convention center and were then killed in the parking lot by Texas police.
Hours earlier, the FBI had sent a bulletin to local police with Simpson’s photo, warning that he was “interested in the event.” FBI Director James Comey said in a press conference following the shooting that the FBI did not have reason to believe Simpson was planning to attack the event, even though the bureau had spent years trying to build a case against him.
The new information came to light in an indictment filed Wednesday against Erick Jamal Hendricks, 35, of Charlotte, North Carolina, who allegedly recruited people online to join the Islamic State. An affidavit in the case reveals that an FBI undercover agent was at the “Draw Muhammad” event and was communicating with Hendricks about security there. The affidavit raises questions about whether the FBI knew, or should have known, that the event was a likely target of attack.
It’s unclear, in the affidavit, whether the communication between Hendricks and the undercover agent was via text or through another messaging system.
“If you see that pig [Geller] make your ‘voice’ heard against her,” Hendricks wrote to the undercover agent.
Hendricks then asked the agent a series of questions to gauge security at the event.
“How big is the gathering?”
“How many ppl?”
“How many/police agents?”
“Do u see feds there?”
It’s unclear from the affidavit what information the FBI agent provided in response. It’s also unclear whether any of the information the agent provided to Hendricks was, in turn, passed on to the men who attacked the drawing event.
But the affidavit states that the FBI was aware that Hendricks and Simpson were in contact to some degree. In fact, according to the document, Hendricks had made an online introduction between Simpson and the undercover agent and was the nexus between them. As a result of that introduction, Simpson and the undercover agent corresponded online. After Simpson posted a link to the “Draw Muhammad” event, the undercover agent wrote: “Tear Up Texas.”
Simpson appears to have suggested violence.
“Bro, u don’t have to say that … U know what happened in Paris … I think … Yes or no?” he wrote, referring to the January 7, 2015, attack on Charlie Hebdo.
“Right,” the agent responded.
“So that goes without saying,” Simpson responded.
After the Garland shooting, Hendricks posted a statement online in which he referenced the shooters as “a new Muslim of 2 years and another of 11 years.”
Simpson had told the undercover agent he’d been a Muslim for 11 years. The agent’s cover was that he’d been a Muslim for two years. Simpson’s actual accomplice, Nadir Soofi, was born a Muslim. In the affidavit, the FBI admits that Hendricks, not knowing about Soofi, had assumed the undercover agent was the second shooter.
The undercover agent got back in touch with Hendricks after the shooting and said he watched as police shot Simpson and Soofi.
“Keep in touch with me,” Hendricks told the agent. “If you need a safe house, let me know. This is why I’m here.”
Less than two weeks later, Hendricks cut off contact with the undercover agent. It took the FBI another 15 months to arrest Hendricks, and the affidavit does not disclose what was happening during that time period.
Top photo: Investigators work a crime scene the day after a shooting occurred at Curtis Culwell Center during the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas, on May 4, 2015.
Giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt, that they are not outright engaging in false flag terror operations in the US. This story demonstrates how the FBI’s COINTELPRO program of entrapping terrorists, is as likely to incite a terror attack that may not have happened, or at least be more deadly than it would have been otherwise; than stop an actual terrorist attack.
It would seem the primary purpose of this program is to frighten the public into acquiescing to broad police powers and increased counter terrorism funding. When the program isn’t doing little more than netting harmless, basement dwelling teenage misfits; the few times they net an individual who may eventual carry out an attack, this is offset by the times they inadvertently incite real terrorism that would not otherwise have happened.
This is nothing new. Agents outed as imposters
https://youtu.be/GsUtvOW6SR0
“Less than two weeks later, Hendricks cut off contact with the undercover agent. It took the FBI another 15 months to arrest Hendricks, and the affidavit does not disclose what was happening during that time period.”
Very important passage, How does the undercover FBI guy explain this.
If the undercover guy had not been FBI, he would have been found guilty of the conspiracy, so he played an essential part. This is evidence of FBI involvement in false flag terror ops.
G. K. Chesterton A Man Who Was Thursday
Published 1908
Read it. This phenomenon isn’t new.
It’s free on gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm
Frankie P
For a very long time, I’ve suspected that most events of this type (starting with 9/11 followed by mass shootings and other “terrorist attacks”) are black ops operations designed to create social upheaval, which eventually leads to martial law under a police state.
I would be curious to find out if they had goaded him to go on the run.
What did the FBI do wrong here? They were watching people with a genuine desire to commit terrorism, but didn’t have enough information to act. They can’t post the name of every informant on the department website. And however it happened, the sumbitch was stopped – there was a tragic cost, but he did not find a “soft target” that day.
So if a person is trying to find “bad people” and they go on the street and introduce people they think are “bad” to one another, teach them how to use guns and give them money to buy guns, then show them the event that you “don’t” want them to attack yet encourage them to attack…. then that person is innocent and wasn’t an instigator? They’re just not doing enough?
((Hope I never get help or protection from you…. You don’t douse a potential explosion with gasoline to find out if it’s a threat. You get an explosion that’s worse than what would have been.))
Given the FBI’s history on instigating and funding these sort of these situations in order to entrap people, I’d say there’s a high degree of probability that the FBI itself may be directly responsible for the attack.
Let me guess, the FBI refuses any comment on interactions and communications with the two suspects, right?
You say Hendricks cutoff communication with the FBI? Are we sure about that? I’m sure this is what they would want you to believe, especially if they created this situation and assisted it.
That’s the implication of the missing 15 months. The FBI found these guys, encouraged them, supported them, probably funded them and then dangled the event out in front of them like a piece of bloody steak over a shark tank.
I guess they thought arresting them for murder instead of lesser crime would put them in jail for a longer period.
I have been wondering (honestly) what happens when people keep resisting chomping down on that steak. We hear more about these trumped up entrapment schemes lately but we still don’t hear a lot about the ones that don’t go through with whatever it is they try to lure people into. I have a difficult time believing they would have been satisfied with a “no thanks” after months or years of working one of these things. And the few cases we have heard about that haven’t involved prosecution (or have, later) seem to suggest that they keep throwing different cuts of meat out there. It is hard to believe that this itself doesn’t lower someone’s inhibitions: it seems to normalize interactions that are not at all normal in the eyes of the gullible and “innocent” (pure sense of the word). If people keep saying be my friend; I want to blow shit up over and over again, considering we are a suggestible species that wants friends and acceptance, we (a) often think it is just talk (a lot of people fantacize and don’t do things; witness zombie apocalypse fans, and people addicted to serial killer websites or kungfu movies or heck, most online forums)… And/or (b) some might entertain the idea ala jumping off a bridge (rarely doing it alone). People want to please people, I think, a lot of the time. Or just don’t want to say “get away from me”. Or maybe they are (ironically) afraid of what might happen if they do.
Not to beat a dead horse but people keep glossing over the fact that while it is the FBI often behind these pseudo-investigations, they all require a prosecutor’s office taking them on. And many have other agencies working in tandem with them. I suspect some also have others behind the scenes guiding things along in certain ways, not even necessarily for political purposes. Maybe that is even a good thing sometimes (I wouldn’t know; I have never worked for or with law enforcement, at least knowingly); sometimes it is probably very very wrong — and sometimes they probably know that but probably sometimes they don’t. Like the gambling adage about throwing good money after bad, maybe. They have to justify it.
How? Is the question on my mind…
The FBI recruits patsies. They have done it many times. They set the patsy up with bravado talk, provide weapons or inert explosives, and point to a target.
Most of the USA terrorist attacks, have been FBI inspired.
W0X, some folks aren’t going to believe you and are too lazy to look it up, but you are absolutely correct. A quick search for Kurt Haskell and the “underwear bomber” is a good place to start.
“Tear up Texas.” “Bomb Boston.” Undercover FBI Employee orders to their patsies.
Release all the raw data on these cases.
Bomb Boston?!
Another “Abscan” gone wrong..(reminds self to watch American Hustle again)
Abscam. That one actually went well. But it didn’t concern terrorism but government malfeasance.
This is quite a messy situation. It is very difficult to determine who is the bad guy and who, if any, is the good guy.
The past eight years have been a mess. This administration in deeply involved in fooling everybody, making illegal ransom payments to foreign governments and killing black lives folks. If anybody speaks up the he is charged with treason. It is a shame that our reps have not yet impeached him. You can get by raping the whole world, but our vigilant reps only wake up if you screw around in the premium public estate.
Worse, his protégé is on the way.
I am STILL bothered that Clinton faced impeachment over sex (really? Lying about sex impeachable? Always irked me) but Obama kills and tortures people, lies about it, and admits to torture and so forth and supports a natsecstate that encourages lying and corruption at all levels… But that gets career upward mobility. Oh yeah and something something about charging more people in less than two terms with espionage for whistleblowing than what, all presidents before him combined. Yeah don’t impeach that though… After all, he let a few drug dealers out early (yet still probably later than most other countries).
Don’t get me wrong. I care deeply about this country. But that is precisely why I am so horrified at what it says it is doing in the name of certain qualities I think most have lost a definition of.
Yet I still dont put ALL of the onus for this stuff on Obama. I am convinced our presidents don’t run the show anymore. I think we get a kind of paint wheel of shades of “shadow state”. Military, commercial, intel. Puppet masters is a stupid cliche. But Acton was not wrong. The thing is control doesn’t need corruption to be oppressive either though. Sometimes it does even better without corruption as we understand it. I think a lot of people believe they are the good guys. And I think it may be a mistake to assume that it is ok to make that sort of call by committee or opinion. Common sense is rarely common. I dislike Obama because he is a dissembling hypocrite but not even I believe he is to blame for most of what is going on. I think he was railroaded due to his lack of experience. But I think many or most people in the current climate also would be.
It wasn’t an illegal ransom payment! It was money we stole from them at the time of their revolution. No matter how many times our corporate media says we are paying them for the nuclear deal, or to return prisoners, or anything else, it is still THEIR money. Some of the money was for arms they had paid for but we refused to deliver, some was money in American banks, stocks and other investments. Some of it was in property that our government sold or even tore down the buildings on but we still owe them because we froze their assets and didn’t maintain good records. We agreed to return part of it in the 90’s but we are the U.S. and we don’t have to follow international norms. Other than that I agree with you but it has been longer than 8 years, more like since WWII ended.
When the FBI isn’t framing innocent people as terrorists, and allowing real terrorists kill people, it does a great job protecting the American public.
Hatfill was educative. You don’t have to do anything to be a patsy, is the thing. Yet I believe most of the agents and other people involved in cases like that are being played just as those getting set up get played. Maybe they toss 2-3 people or groups of people at one another and let them do the dirty work for them by manipulating all sides. Someone is pulling strings in these cases but I suspect it is higher up. What if the FBI is also being treated like mooks? But that is one reason so much power concentrated and deniable is dangerous, Olivia.
Illuminati!!!!!!!!!!!!
Innocent people don’t have a desire to blow people away because they draw stupid pictures of your Jesus or what have you. These people were violent lunatics in the first place. In this case, it’s pretty clear the guy was primed to commit murder and mayhem on his own and didn’t need the FBI’s help, thank you very much.