Tag Archives: Tactics

The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on
Terrorism, by Trevor Aaronson, Ig Publishing, 256
pages, $24.95
Imagine a country in which the government pays convicted con
artists and criminals to scour minority religious communities for
disgruntled, financially desperate, or mentally ill patsies who can
be talked into joining fake terrorist plots, even if only for
money. Imagine that the country’s government then busts its patsies
with great fanfare to justify ever-increasing authority and
ever-increasing ;funding. According to journalist Trevor
Aaronson’s ;The Terror Factory, this isn’t the premise
for a Kafka novel; it’s reality in the post-9/11 United States.
The Terror Factory ;is a well-researched and
fast-paced exposé of the dubious tactics the FBI has used in
targeting Muslim Americans with sting operations since 2001. The
book updates and expands upon Aaronson’s award-winning
2011 ;Mother Jones ;cover story “The Informants.”
Most readers likely have heard about several alleged conspiracies
to attack skyscrapers, synagogues, or subway stations, involving
either individuals whom the FBI calls “lone wolves” or small cells
that a credulous press has tagged with such sinister appellations
as the Newburgh 4 or the Liberty City 7. But they may be astonished
to learn that many of these frightening plots were almost entirely
concocted and engineered by the FBI itself, using
corrupt ;agents provocateurs ;who often posed a far more
serious criminal threat than the dimwitted saps the investigations
ultimately netted.
Drawing on court records and interviews with the defendants,
their lawyers, their families, and the FBI officials and
prosecutors who oversaw the investigations, Aaronson portrays an
agency that has adopted an “any means necessary” approach to its
terrorism prevention efforts, regardless of whether real terrorists
are being caught. To the FBI, this imperative justifies recruiting
informants with extensive criminal records, including convictions
for fraud, violent crimes, and even child molestation, that in an
earlier era would have disqualified them except in the most
extraordinary circumstances.
In addition to offering lenience, if not forgiveness, for
heinous crimes, the FBI pays these informants tens to hundreds of
thousands of dollars, creating a perverse incentive for them to
ensnare dupes into terrorist plots. Aaronson quotes an FBI official
defending this practice: “To catch the devil you have to go to
hell.”
Such an analysis might make sense when police leverage one
criminal to gain information about more-serious criminal
conspiracies—in other words, to catch a real “devil.” But
Aaronson’s research reveals that the targets in most of these sting
operations posed little real threat. They may have had a history of
angry anti-government rhetoric, but they took no steps toward
terrorist acts until they received encouragement and resources from
government agents.
Aaronson describes the case of an unemployed and practically
homeless 22-year-old named Derrick Shareef, befriended by an FBI
informant with an armed robbery conviction who gave him a place to
live. When Shareef couldn’t (or wouldn’t) raise the money to buy
weapons needed for a plot suggested by the informant, he was
introduced to a faux weapons dealer who was willing to trade four
hand grenades and a pistol for Shareef’s used stereo speakers. The
fact that Shareef believed a real weapons dealer would accept such
a barter provides a clue as to his criminal experience. ;
Aaronson correctly takes pains to avoid portraying those caught
in the stings as completely innocent of malice. But he demonstrates
that they almost universally lack violent criminal histories or
connections to real terrorist groups. Most important, while they
may have talked about committing violent acts, they rarely had
weapons of their own and, like Shareef, usually lacked the
financial means to acquire them. Yet the government provided them
with military hardware worth thousands of dollars that would be
extremely difficult for even sophisticated criminal organizations
to obtain, only to bust them in a staged finale. ;
This aspect of Aaronson’s narrative is most troubling to me, as
a former FBI agent who worked undercover in domestic terrorism
investigations before 9/11. Prior to September 11, 2001, if an
agent had suggested opening a terrorism case against someone who
was not a member of a terrorist group, who had not attempted to
acquire weapons, and who didn’t have the means to obtain them, he
would have been gently encouraged to look for a more serious
threat. An agent who suggested giving such a person a stinger
missile or a car full of military-grade plastic explosives would
have been sent to counseling. Yet in Aaronson’s telling, such
techniques are now becoming commonplace. ;
My concern is partly that the artificially inflated scale of the
threat in these cases seems designed to overwhelm judges, jurors,
and the general public, who might otherwise view such methods as
illegal entrapment. The FBI often announces these arrests with
great fanfare, highlighting the scope of the damage that could have
been caused by weapons provided entirely by the government. Such
pretrial publicity creates a climate of fear that is likely to
influence judges and jurors. ;
Indeed, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon severely criticized
the investigation that led to the 2009 arrest of James Cromitie, a
small-time ex-con from Newburgh, New York, whose apparent
reluctance to join a fake missile plot was overcome when an
informant offered him $250,000 to participate. At his sentencing,
Judge McMahon observed that “only the government could have made a
terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively
Shakespearean in scope.” Yet McMahon let the jury’s conviction
stand and sentenced Cromitie to 25 years in prison. Of 150
defendants charged in these schemes, Aaronson documents only two
acquittals. ;
The exaggerated significance of these manufactured terrorist
plots also raises the possible penalties for those charged, due to
“terrorism enhancement” sentencing provisions. The majority of
defendants plead guilty to mitigate draconian penalties, raising an
additional question of whether the purpose of this government
tactic is to avoid judicial and public scrutiny altogether. Law
enforcement has no business staging theatrical productions that
intentionally exaggerate the seriousness of a defendant’s criminal
conduct.
Even more unsettling is the flawed reasoning that drives the use
of these methods. FBI agents have been inundated with
bigoted ;training materials ;that falsely portray Arabs and
Muslims as inherently violent. The FBI also has embraced an
unfounded theory of “radicalization” that ;alleges ;a
direct progression from adopting certain beliefs, or expressing
opposition to U.S. policies, to becoming a terrorist. With such a
skewed and biased view of the American Muslim community, the FBI’s
strategy of “preemption, prevention, and disruption” results in
abusive surveillance, targeting, and exploitation of innocent
people based simply on their exercise of their First Amendment
rights.
Aaronson fails, however, to recognize that these tactics are
neither new to the FBI nor exclusively used against Muslims. The
FBI’s earliest documented use of ;agents provocateurs ;with
criminal backgrounds was revealed during
congressional ;investigations ;of labor “radicals,”
pacifists, and socialists in 1918. The bureau’s investigations of
radicals led to nationwide warrantless raids, resulting in
thousands of arrests and hundreds of deportations, yet solved no
terrorist bombings and discovered less than a handful of firearms.
Although reforms were implemented, decades later the Church
Committee’s inquiries revealed that covert operations conducted as
part of the FBI’s ;COINTELPRO ;investigations had targeted
civil rights and anti-war groups because of their First
Amendment–protected activities from the 1950s through the
1970s.
Recalling this history is important because in both cases,
reform of these improper practices was implemented by restricting
FBI intelligence activities and requiring a reasonable suspicion of
criminal activity before initiating investigations. These
restrictions have once again been relaxed, and the rapid increase
in sting operations under the Obama administration that Aaronson
documents is directly attributable to amendments made to the
FBI’s ;guidelines in 2008, authorizing the use of informants
without requiring any factual predicate of wrongdoing. The FBI also
has used these dubious tactics against aged
anti-government ;militiamen ;and misfit ;anarchists, so
Muslims are not the only targets in its crosshairs.
Without reforms to FBI guidelines, anyone holding unorthodox
views or challenging government policies could find himself
targeted by overzealous federal agents using unscrupulous
informants. The FBI should be investigating violent crime, not
inventing it. ; … Read More