We should be catching terrorists, not creating them

... and no, I don't mean our foreign policy. This is happening right at home:

"The hope is that they will nab an actual terrorist or prevent a putative jihadi from becoming one," says David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and co-author of Less Safe, Less Free, a new book detailing the ways 9/11 has transformed domestic law enforcement. "It makes sense in general ?but when you're pressing people to undertake conduct they would have never undertaken without an informant pushing them along, there is a real question if you're creating crime, not preventing crime."

Where's the line? How can we tell the difference between a terrorist plot stopped in the nick of time, and a terrorist plot that was created by the law enforcement organizations involved? When you get down to it, someone who is willing to look into a video camera and declare jihad on America probably deserves a bit of law enforcement scrutiny. But does it really make sense to devote extensive law enforcement resources to encouraging them?

The next Wednesday, the two men met with Cap in a parking lot under the gaze of agents from the JTTF. As Shareef swapped the used speakers for four nonfunctioning grenades and a 9mm handgun with neutered ammunition, he was swarmed by law enforcement. News of the bust traveled the world over. "It had all the makings of a holiday bloodbath," Fox News breathlessly reported. Shareef was charged with the ultimate crime in the so-called War on Terror: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Here we have those four terrifying words: Weapon of Mass Destruction. Granted, we're dealing with something a little more dangerous than a simple handgun. On the other hand, shouldn't a weapon of mass destruction involve... well... mass destruction? Four grenades just don't qualify.

There are some successes:

In Buffalo, the FBI spent eighteen months tracking the "Lackawanna Six" ?a half-dozen men from the city's large Muslim population who had been recruited by an Al Qaeda operative in early 2001 to undergo training in Afghanistan. Only two lasted the six-week course; the rest pretended to be hurt or left early. Despite extensive surveillance, the FBI found no evidence that the men ever discussed, let alone planned, an attack ?but that didn't stop federal agents from arresting the suspects with great fanfare and accusing them of operating an "Al Qaeda-trained terrorist cell on American soil." Fearing they would be designated as "enemy combatants" and disappeared into the legal void created by the Patriot Act, all six pleaded guilty to aiding Al Qaeda and were sentenced to at least seven years in prison.

They went to Afghanistan, were trained by Al Qaeda, and returned. At that point the only logical thing to do is assume they have become agents of the enemy, which means you invoke counterintelligence doctrine -- surveillance, to identify their other contacts, and eventually rounding up the ring. That the people in question were too pathetic to finish the training courses they signed up for and did not appear to be subsequently planning and attack is almost irrelevant.

But there are also failures:

In Brooklyn, a Guyanese immigrant and former cargo handler named Russell Defreitas was arrested last spring for plotting to blow up fuel tanks at JFK International Airport. In fact, before he encountered the might of the JTTF, Defreitas was a vagrant who sold incense on the streets of Queens and spent his spare time checking pay phones for quarters. He had no hope of instigating a terrorist plot of the magnitude of the alleged attack on JFK ?until he received the help of a federal informant known only as "Source," a convicted drug dealer who was cooperating with federal agents to get his sentence reduced. Backed by the JTTF, Defreitas suddenly obtained the means to travel to the Caribbean, conduct Google Earth searches of JFK's grounds and build a complex, multifaceted, international terror conspiracy ?albeit one that was impossible to actually pull off. After Defreitas was arrested, U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf called it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable."

Perhaps the plot was so "chilling" because it had been created by the finest minds of the FBI. Here's another chilling plot:

The next morning, I meet with three members of the Field Intelligence Group. The FIGs are designed to create a centralized approach to intelligence, both domestic and foreign. In northern Illinois, the group analyzes information from around the world, as well as that supplied courtesy of Operation Virtual Shield, the surveillance initiative designed to make Chicago one of the most-watched cities in the world. Thousands of cameras deployed on street corners, train platforms and buses now provide a nearly comprehensive visual record of all public movement in Chicago.

"A nearly comprehensive visual record of all public movement in Chicago." An agency that combines information from foreign intelligence and domestic surveillance. And for what? In return for constant surveillance of ordinary citizens and how many millions of taxpayer dollars, how many terrorists have been captured?

And it gets worse.

Many of the callers who contact the JTTF are intentionally misleading, hoping to take revenge against a boyfriend, neighbor or co-worker. Such hoaxes are so routine, in fact, that the JTTF's public-relations officer keeps a separate file stuffed with press reports of invented pipe bombs and unattended suitcases and lunch trucks packed with explosives.

Turn in your friends and neighbors for fun and profit?

If this was a serious operation you'd think that some of these would be prosecuted as deliberate hoaxes.

"Have you ever found a terrorist cell?" I ask.

"That's kind of a vague question," Gutierrez says. "There are certain things we can't talk about, because it leads to more."

Yeah. More questions.

I firmly believe that there are people who hate the United States and mean us harm. Some of them even live here. Most of them don't.

The idea of terrorists, of whatever stripe, in possession of a nuclear weapon scares me. But nuclear weapons require the resources of a nation-state to develop or acquire. But you know what doesn't scare me?

The two officers tell me about a close call at the Taste of Chicago food festival last year. Millions attend the annual street feast, with Chicago-style sausage and pizza and tamales on sale in booths along the lakefront. There was a radiological hit on one of the sniffers... For an hour, the JHAT frantically tried to determine if Chicago had been struck by a "dirty bomb"... Finally, after an anxious hour... the cause of the positive alert was determined. "Someone who had chemotherapy had just done a poop," DeRosa says.

THAT doesn't scare me.

We have entered the realm of Orwell's perpetual war. Pray we can find our way out.

Posted on 2008-02-12 01:15:27.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

Check the groups below and enter your email address to receive updates by email:

The trackback URL for this entry is: http://triggerfinger.org/weblog/servlet/trackback/7209

No trackbacks have been posted so far.

No comments have been posted so far.