Hapless 'terrorists'

I didn't blog about the great bust of the terrorist plot in NY yesterday because I had a feeling the initial details were overstated. And sure enough, nearly everything they said was wrong. The guys didn't meet in prison. One of them is apparently a schizophrenic. And they didn't have any kind of plot going until the informant arrived. The informant sounds a little dicey too.

He had no way of knowing that the stranger’s path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years’ probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.

The stranger’s behavior aroused the imam’s suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.

Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his “team.”

Sounds like entrapment to me, just like the other so-called dangerous terrorist plots the Bush era investigators 'thwarted.' As The Nation put it:

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.

It's also useful to note that neither were they caught because of any NSA surveillance sweep or Patriot Act inspired snooping. This was straight up law enforcement work.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]