Again. This is the reality of the so-called "War on Terror", at home. The NSA did not decrypt top-secret missives emanating from a CIA-commissioned, Bin Laden-constructed secret base in Afghanistan, and speedily pass on the info to the correct authorities... nor did astute FBI agents stumble across an "Al Qaeda" cell in the heart of the Big Apple!
Instead, an
agent provocateur was dispatched to a mosque, spouting violent rhetoric and allegedly offering money to at least one member of the mosque to join his "team". According to the Imam of the mosque, none of the 4 alleged "homegrown terrorists" were regulars of his mosque.
Two of the
'Newburgh Four' have had drug problems, (trafficking, addiction to cocaine), and one was a schizophrenic, currently under medication.
So what is going on here? Last year writer Guy Lawson investigated several recent terror busts and
wrote in Rolling Stone;
"...Using informants to gin up terrorist conspiracies is a radical departure from the way the FBI has traditionally used cooperating sources against organized crime or drug dealers, where a pattern of crime is well established before the investigation begins. Now, in new-age terror cases, the JTTFs simply want to establish that suspects are predisposed to be terrorists — even if they are completely unable or ill-equipped to act on that predisposition. High-tech video and audio evidence, coupled with anti-terror hysteria, has made it effectively impossible for suspects to use the legal defense of entrapment. The result in many cases has been guilty pleas —and no scrutiny of government conduct..." (emphasis mine)
Thoughtcrime! Precrime! It's like being written into a Sci Fi novel... but why, Mr. Spock...
why? Lawson again...
"...he was under almost constant surveillance by the Joint Terrorism Task Force for the Northern District of Illinois. Since 9/11, the number of such outfits across the country has tripled. With more than 2,000 FBI agents now assigned to 102 task forces, the JTTFs have effectively become a vast, quasi-secret arm of the federal government, granted sweeping new powers that outstrip those of any other law-enforcement agency. The JTTFs consist not only of local police, FBI special agents and federal investigators from Immigration and the IRS, but covert operatives from the CIA. The task forces have thus effectively destroyed the "wall" that historically existed between law enforcement and intelligence-gathering. Under the Bush administration, the JTTFs have been turned into a domestic spy agency, like Britain's MI5 — one with the powers of arrest.
The expenditure of such massive resources to find would-be terrorists inevitably requires results. Plots must be uncovered. Sleeper cells must be infiltrated. Another attack must be prevented — or, at least, be seen to be prevented ... To find threats to thwart, the task forces have increasingly taken to using paid informants to cajole and inveigle targets ... into pursuing their harebrained schemes. (emphasis mine)
In short, "The spice must flow." Last SF reference, I promise.
Robert Dreyfuss, at the
Nation, is convinced that
if it wasn't for the "informant", there wouldn't even be a "Newburgh Four" case, never mind a pseudo-terror cell;
"...By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur...
...So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx...
...The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense."
Dreyfuss is obviously a little annoyed. I think rightly so. A close reading of Lawson's
Rolling Stone piece
reveals a pathetic pattern: U.S. intelligence agencies, with the FBI at the forefront, conjure up the vast majority of these terror plots to keep the fear alive. This in turn shores up foreign policy that justifies bombing the shit out of Afghanistan with the ultimate in impersonal long-distance warfare;
remote control drones.
And the main "informant"? Or should I say "provocateur"? Or just a straight-ahead "actor portraying a terrorist"? Well, this isn't the first time he has hustled some suckers; one last time from Lawson;
"...The "Albany Pizza" case provides a stark example. Known as a "sting case," the investigation began in June 2003 when U.S. soldiers raided an "enemy camp" in Iraq and seized a notebook containing the name of an imam in Albany — one Yassin Aref. To snare Aref, the JTTF dispatched a Pakistani immigrant named
Shahed "Malik" Hussain, who was facing years in prison for a driver's-license scam. Instead of approaching Aref directly, federal agents sent Malik to befriend Mohammed Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant who went to the same mosque as Aref. Hossain, an American citizen who ran a place called Little Italy Pizzeria in Albany,
had no connections whatsoever to terrorism or any form of radical Islam. After the attacks on 9/11, he had been quoted in the local paper saying, "I am proud to be an American." But enticed by Malik, Hossain soon found himself caught up in a government-concocted terror plot.
Posing as an arms dealer, Malik told Hossain that a surface-to-air missile was needed for an attack on a Pakistani diplomat in New York. He offered Hossain $5,000 in cash to help him launder $50,000 — a deal Hossain claims he never properly grasped. According to Muslim tradition, a witness is needed for significant financial transactions. Thus, the JTTF reached out for Hossain's imam and the true target of the sting —Aref.
At trial, the judge brushed aside questions about why the government was after Aref in the first place. "The FBI had certain suspicions, good and valid suspicions, for looking into Mr. Aref," he told the jury. "But why they did that is not to be any concern of yours."
For their role in a conspiracy confected entirely by the FBI, both Aref and Hossain were convicted of attempting to provide material support to terrorists and sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison."Lawson documents similar activities
again and again.
The "War on Terror" is a war for your perception, with starring roles from domestic intelligence agencies, and supporting roles from MSM cheerleaders like, in this instance, the
LA Times.
With CIA covert ops now in the mix, how far are they willing to go? And under cover of "National Security", how far have they already gone?
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