In a long-overdue exposé on the so-called "war on terror" on the homefront, RS writer Guy Lawson exposes the FBI, JTTFs, and CIA covert operatives as being overly eager to hype the threat of "homegrown terrorism" in the United States. In most cases that he examines, Federal agents are actually the most enthusiastic "terrorists" in suspected terror cells, supplying inspiration, physical means, and ideas that make potential plots even remotely plausible. When plots are completely outside the means of suspects targeted and encouraged by Federal agents, the plots proceed until arrests can be made, and then the suspects wind up plea bargaining, despite the fact that they could never pull off plots like the "JFK Terror Plot".
Federal agents have a long history in the US of infiltrating and instigating or attempting to instigate actual violence to promote a political agenda. In 2006, Rabbi Michael Lerner revealed that organizations that he was involved with back in the late 1960s were dearly compromised by agents of the state;
"At one point in my life I thought that real conspiracies were a left-wing fantasy, and that sophisticated Marxists and other social theorists would not have reason to want to acknowledge the existence of such conspiracies against the Left or against anyone else. But when I was indicted for "conspiracy and using the facilities of interstate commerce with the intent of inciting to riot" (as one of the Seattle Seven federal conspiracy trial in 1970 arising from a large demonstration against the Vietnam war and in support of Black liberation which I had organized and which turned violent when police attacked the demonstrators) I quickly learned that my organization (the Seattle Liberation Front) was totally infiltrated by police agents.
Indeed, many of those most vociferous in denouncing me and other leaders for being "too timid" were actually paid FBI informants or members of various law enforcement agencies. When one such changed his mind and began to reveal his story of having been solicited by the FBI to try to engage us in violence that would have led to some of us being killed, I really "got" that conspiracies do sometimes happen--paid for by the U.S. government." - Rabbi Michael Lerner, in 9/11 & American Empire Vol. II, Christians, Jews and Muslims Speak Out. (emphasis added)
Preceded by Federal programs like COINTELPRO, the current rush to legitimize budgets for the JTTF and associated agencies has left American citizens at the mercy of agents on a crusade, blind to objectivity, and focused on reifying "homegrown terrorism" and keeping Americans paranoid and ready to rat out their fellow citizens for practically no justifiable reasons.
This could be a stepping stone to worse abuses, like the GLADIO program in Europe during the cold war that wound up getting real people maimed and killed by agents eager to reify the "communist threat".
Arguably, the FBI has already engaged in GLADIO-like activities in the 1993 WTC bombing, and possibly, the Oklahoma City bombing.
The phenomenon of government-linked terror is not limited to the U.S.
The Australian government covered up evidence that indicates the 2002 Bali bombings were a fabricated terror event;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4135706276167925924&hl=en
Britain's MI5 had 7/7 bombers under surveillance and were forewarned by Saudi Arabian and French intelligence that a plot involving public transit was afoot in 2005;
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2007/10/cynical-distortion-around-77-and.html
Canada's biggest "Muslim terror plot" was heavily instigated and steered by the RCMP, with the two most important players in the plot revealed as Canadian federal agents in 2006;
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=11880
The government of Egypt fabricated a terror group to keep public support for their terror laws in 2007;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7137950.stm
However, just because "everybody's doing it" doesn't mean "we" have to.
Here are some memorable sections from Lawson's very welcome article;http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18137343/the_fear_factoryThe Fear FactoryThe FBI now has more than 100 task forces devoted exclusively to fighting terrorism. But is the government manufacturing ghosts?"...For all his bluster, Shareef was, by any objective measure, a pathetic and hapless jihadist — one of a new breed of domestic terrorists the federal government has paraded before the media since 9/11. The FBI, in a sense, elevated Shareef, working to transform him from a boastful store clerk into a suicidal mall-bomber. Like many other alleged extremists who have been targeted by the authorities, Shareef didn't know that his brand-new friend —the eager co-conspirator drawing him ever further into a terror plot —
was actually an informant for the FBI. ...
...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. But in backwaters like Rockford, the JTTFs don't have much to do. To find threats to thwart, the task forces have increasingly taken to using paid informants
to cajole and inveigle targets like Shareef into pursuing their harebrained schemes. In the affidavit sworn by an FBI special agent in support of Shareef's indictment, the co-conspirator who called himself Jameel is known only as "CS" (Cooperating Source). In fact, CS was William Chrisman, a former crack dealer with a conviction for attempted robbery who was paid $8,500 by the JTTF and dispatched specifically to set up Shareef. Like other informants in terrorism cases, Chrisman had been "tasked" by federal agents to indulge and escalate Shareef's fantasies — while carefully ensuring that Shareef incriminated himself...
...In Rockford, "Jameel" repeatedly urged Shareef to dream up gory details of the havoc they would cause at the mall. Chrisman had received a call, he told Shareef, from a man he called "Cap" —a contact willing to sell them weapons. They could buy "pineapples" —code for hand grenades —from Cap for fifty bucks each.
Cap, of course, was an undercover agent. Eleven "pineapples" were available, Chrisman said. Walking around the mall —the Dippin' Dots, the Panda Express —Shareef suggested they toss the "pineapples" in garbage cans to create shrapnel. They would fast for three days beforehand. They would shave their bodies. They would meditate and pray...
...Chicago has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country —some 400,000, DeRosa estimates. "Experts say that between five and ten percent of Muslims are extremists. So you take it down to one percent. What's one percent of 400,000? Forty thousand? Technically there could be 40,000 —"
"You mean 4,000," I say.DeRosa pauses. "Right," he says. "Four thousand." He forges on. "Most people who come to America who are Middle Eastern come for a good reason. But there's still a percentage that may be here that don't like us. They are with the extremists." ...
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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