Michael Scheyer discusses entrapment operations in the video below.
Schemes to carry out a
Presidents Day jihadist attack on a train station in Kansas City. Bomb a Sept.
11 memorial event. Blow up a 1,000-pound bomb at Fort Riley. Detonate a weapon
of mass destruction at a Wichita airport — the failed plans all show
imagination.
But how much of it was real?
Often not much, according to a review of
several recent terrorism cases investigated by the FBI in Kansas and Missouri.
The most sensational plots invoking the name of ISIS or al-Qaeda here were
largely the invention of FBI agents carrying out elaborate sting operations on
individuals identified through social media as being potentially dangerous.
In fact, in terrorism
investigations in Wichita, at Fort Riley and last week in Kansas City, the alleged terrorists
reportedly were unknowingly following the directions of undercover FBI agents
who supplied fake bombs and came up with key elements of the plans.
“What I get concerned about is
where the plot is being hatched by the FBI,” said Michael German, a fellow at
the Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent. “There has been a clear effort to manufacture
plots.”
Law enforcement has increasingly
used undercover agents and informants to develop such cases in recent years,
especially against people suspected of being inspired by the Islamic State.
Of 126 Islamic State-related cases prosecuted by federal authorities
across the country since 2014, nearly two-thirds involved undercover agents or
informants, according to the Center on National Security at the Fordham
University School of Law in New York. The FBI has stepped up its use of sting operations, which were once seen as a tactic of
last resort.
FBI officials have said the
sting operations are just one tool for thwarting terrorist attacks and that the
suspects in such cases are given many opportunities to back out before their
arrest, yeah, sure. Federal authorities employ the stings on the theory that a
person willing to engage in terrorism would eventually find real accomplices to
carry out an attack.
Such cases are almost never successfully challenged in court with
entrapment defenses, so that is why the FBI does it.
But some question whether the
FBI is catching real terrorists or tricking troubled individuals into volunteering for a long prison
sentence.
The most recent alleged plotter,
25-year-old Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr. of Columbia, Missouri was indicted last
week after federal prosecutors accused him of participating in an ISIS plan to cause mass casualties in a bombing
attack on a train station and possibly buses and trains in Kansas City on Feb.
20.
The two men leading Hester in the alleged plot were actually undercover
FBI employees. They suggested the time, place
and type of attack, and loaned Hester $20 to buy the 9-volt batteries, duct
tape, roofing nails and copper wire that they implied would be ingredients for
a bomb. Hester reportedly failed to buy the copper wire, saying he could not
find it. There were no actual bombs.
The FBI employees had identified
Hester as a suspect after seeing Facebook posts he made about his “conversion
to Islam, his hatred for the United States and his belief that supposed U.S.
mistreatment of Muslims had to be ‘put to an end,’ ” according
to court documents.
But despite Hester’s denials, the FBI employees noted, he continued to
test positive for marijuana even though it is frowned upon by Islamic
teachings. And he allegedly found it necessary to bring his children to a
meeting with the FBI workers because he had no other options for child care.
At a December meeting, one of the FBI employees threatened Hester with
a knife, saying he “knew where Hester and his family lived” to make the point
that Hester was not to plan any attacks of his own.
“It seems like outrageous
conduct,” said German, the former FBI agent, who noted other aspects of the
investigation that he thought seemed “odd.”
The FBI found Hester on Facebook
in August and made contact with him through an undercover employee on Oct. 2, a
day before Hester was arrested in Columbia for reportedly throwing a pocket
knife through a grocery store window during an argument with his wife and
menacing store employees with a 9 mm handgun he carried in a diaper bag.
Hester was released from jail on
bond and remained under electronic monitoring for the next three months as he
continued talking with the undercover employees and allegedly grew more deeply
involved in their plans.
In January, Hester pleaded
guilty in the Columbia case. He remained free on bond and was taken off
electronic monitoring. The plot with the undercover FBI employees sped up,
ending with his arrest in February, a month before he was to be sentenced in
the Columbia grocery store incident.
German questioned why Hester was
allowed to walk free.
“If the government had a legitimate reason to think this person was a
danger to society, why would they let him out on bond?” he asked.
“And this person was about to walk into a jail cell. It makes me think the
reason is they didn’t believe he was a threat, but they could use him to make a
case.”
It’s not unusual for authorities
to go undercover to try to foil terrorist plots, said Daryl Johnson, a former
analyst for the Department of Homeland Security. And some plots show evidence
of being very real.
In 2007, Johnson noted, six
Muslim men from New Jersey and Philadelphia were charged with plotting to
attack Fort Dix with automatic weapons and possibly rocket-propelled grenades
in what authorities said was a plan “to kill as many soldiers as possible.”
“The Fort Dix case was the most
serious — they actually had a small arsenal,” Johnson said.
In Kansas last year, authorities
uncovered what they said was a plot by a militia group to detonate bombs at a Garden City apartment complex where a number of Somalis live. The
defendants in that case included three men who, according to court documents,
had stockpiled weapons and told an FBI source of their plan.
Johnson said it’s harder to find
the real threat in sting cases, such as Hester’s, where a person spouting off
on social media, with no
resources or ability to carry out an attack, is led by undercover FBI
agents down a path to acting out a pretend terrorist plot.
“Most of these cases are trumped-up, FBI facilitated,”
Johnson said. “A lot of times, these people are just engaging in free speech.
If they’re American citizens, they can say they hate America, they can say, ‘I
support ISIS.’ Then they become targeted.”
In these cases, he said, law
enforcement has facilitated a terrorist plot with someone who held some hateful
views but didn’t have the capability to do anything.
“And they were either provided
the capability, or they were arrested for just the plotting aspect,” he said.
Several of the Kansas and
Missouri cases followed a similar pattern.
In 2013, FBI agents arrested a 58-year-old Kansas man as he tried to
use his employee badge to bring a fake bomb onto the tarmac of a Wichita
airport. The arrest of Terry L. Loewen came after a months-long sting
operation in which two FBI agents posed as his co-conspirators and led him in a
supposed plot they devised with phony explosives.
The FBI had found Loewen on Facebook, where he told an
undercover agent of his interest in jihad. Over a period of about six months,
the agents arranged for Loewen to meet in person an undercover agent posing as
a terrorist, asked him to scout the airport and take photos for an attack they
planned, and instructed him to gather items supposed to be used in bomb-making.
According to court documents, Loewen eagerly participated and expected to die
in the explosion.
In 2015, FBI agents arrested
20-year-old John T.
Booker Jr. as he
attempted to set off a fake car bomb at Fort Riley. Booker had been befriended
by a pair of undercover FBI agents after posting inflammatory messages on
Facebook. Booker told the agents he wanted to join the ISIS and would do
whatever they said. “I will follow you,” he said.
When the agents, posing as
terrorists, asked what target they should attack, Booker suggested Fort Riley.
At the agents’ direction, Booker rented a storage locker and went with an agent
to local retailers to buy components for what was supposed to be a homemade bomb.
No real explosives were involved in the operation.
In court, Booker’s attorney said
Booker was being treated for bipolar disorder. He pleaded guilty to two counts
related to the bomb plot and faces 30 years in prison.
The same year, 2015, an FBI
Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested 20-year-old Joshua R. Goldberg at his
parents’ home in Orange Park, Fla. Goldberg was accused of trying to help plan — online — an attack on a 9/11 memorial in Kansas City by providing details on
how to build a pressure
cooker bomb, hmm sounds like the Boston Marathon bombing.
FBI agents had become aware of
Goldberg through a social
media account in which he reportedly posed as a terrorist instigator
living in Australia. Online, Goldberg allegedly took credit for inspiring a May
2015 attack on a “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” in Garland, Texas, in which
police killed two armed men.
An undercover FBI agent
contacted Goldberg online and expressed interest in carrying out a bomb attack
in Kansas City. Goldberg allegedly suggested targeting the Sept. 11 memorial
event, supplied links to online bomb-building manuals and suggested packing the
bomb with nails, glass and metal dipped in rat poison.
While FBI agents kept Goldberg’s
home under surveillance, they received information from Australian police that Goldberg had been identified as
an “online troll” who engaged in internet hoaxes. Days later, they arrested
Goldberg on one federal count of distributing information relating to
explosives.
Since his arrest, Goldberg has been held in a federal detention center
in Miami and repeatedly found incompetent to stand trial because of mental
illness. Psychological examinations found him to be “paranoid,” “childlike” and
unable to understand the legal proceedings against him.
His defense attorney, Paul
Shorstein, said a federal court may make a decision in the next few weeks on
whether Goldberg can be tried. Shorstein said Goldberg was not a real
terrorist.
“He was sort of pretending to be somebody and playing the role,”
Shorstein said. “He’s not a threat to anybody. It’s not a terrorism case — it’s
a mental health case.”
Still, these investigations
could help thwart terrorism, said Dru Stevenson, a law professor at South Texas
College of Law in Houston who has studied how such undercover cases prevail
over entrapment defenses.
By locking up people who would
be willing to carry out terrorist acts, the stings can reduce the potential
recruiting pool for real terrorists looking for willing followers, Stevenson
said. And the knowledge that undercover FBI agents and informants are out there
could make that recruitment more dangerous, difficult and slow for actual ISIS
plotters.
However, do we really think ISIS is going to use social media idiots
for plots. I wouldn’t, I would only trust plotters I personally knew and
trained, e.g. the 9-11 hijackers. Why would a hard
core ISIS or al Qaeda terrorist trust an unknown stranger except to use her or
him as a patsy like the FBI does.
“If the choice is between waiting
for the person to find some real terrorists to get involved with, or giving
them a phony plot, I’m fine with giving them a phony plot,” Stevenson said.
Taking the Boston Marathon
bombers as an example, he said, “Those are the kind of people I wish someone
had caught in a sting before they hurt a lot of people.” Mr. Stevenson, if you
look closely at the Boston Marathon evidence and photos it was a staged event
that used mercenaries and crisis actors. The alleged perpetrators were working
once again with the FBI.
So far, no defendant in the
Islamic State sting cases has successfully argued entrapment.
But the sheer volume of cases
that depend on sting operations in which FBI agents supply the plot says
something about the reality of the terrorist threat, said Karen Greenberg,
director of the Center on National Security, which authored the Islamic State
prosecutions report.
Most of the potential terrorists being prosecuted have a lot in common,
Greenberg said. Their average age is 26, 77 percent are U.S. citizens, a third
are converts to Islam and a third live with their parents. Nearly 90 percent
are active on social media. Only a handful had any link to Islamic State
members overseas.
“If you take away the undercover
cases to see what are the real organized terrorism cases, we’re not seeing it,”
Greenberg said. “What do we have? The threat is different from what we’re being
told.”
Friends, basically what we are
dealing with here are what we called “knuckle heads” in Iraq. These people are
dummies, idiots and pawns in the terrorist game and war.
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