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Posted on 03/16/2008 3:32:36 PM PDT by hadit2here
The Fear Factory
The FBI now has more than 100 task forces devoted exclusively to fighting terrorism. But is the government manufacturing ghosts?
It was late November 2006, and twenty-two-year-old Derrick Shareef and his friend Jameel were hanging out in Rockford, Illinois, dreaming about staging a terrorist attack on America. The two men weren't sure what kind of assault they could pull off. All Shareef knew was that he wanted to cause major damage, to wreak vengeance on the country he held responsible for oppressing Muslims worldwide. "Smoke a judge," Shareef said. Maybe firebomb a government building.
...
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.
"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."
Excerpt. Go here for complete article.
OK, this is from the Rolling Stone, however a blind squirrel does occasionally find an acorn. Don't know if this actually is an acorn, and as a lefty source, it tends to deteriorate towards the end into an admin bashing. But nobody can honestly say that gubmint thugs, more and more, won't do anything to justify their budgets and power, viz. BATFE, IRS, FBI, CIA, etc. "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
-–Thomas Jefferson
"It is not the function of Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
--Robert Houghwout Jackson (1892-1954), Associate Justice, US Supreme Court
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
-- James Madison
I think your lefty friends over at DU are calling.....
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
He’s guilty. We don’t need no stinkin trial.
Just hand him from the nearest tree.
Truth For Muslims is bringing a comprehensive, biblical response to Islam in America.
This is nothing new, and in fact has been SOP for the FBI for decades.
All of this is an excuse to enslave us and modify our seemingly innocuous behavior.
I could probably accept that if I could go anywhere in this country, have a beer and a smoke and talk to like-minded individuals, but I can't do that anymore. Not because I don't want to, but because the risk of incarceration is too high.
Fear is the catalyst for loss of freedom.
I’ll start defying the inevitable tide as soon as I detect the tide might be moving the other way......anywhere.
How charming. So it’s “lefty” now to want to remain free from government? How peculiar. Here, I’ve always thought it to be a CONSERVATIVE trait. You know, small government, big individual freedom and all. How odd that it’s now turned on its head and become a characteristic of the far left (socialist/communist camp). Or is it only that Bush has that magical talisman after his name? You know, the (R)...
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).
It’s a shame this doesn’t appear to be the case in this day and age.
This statement is laughable! What color is the sky in your world of paranoia? Ours is blue.
I'll ask you the same question - what color is the sky in your world of paranoia? Ours is blue.
Look, nimrod, do you suppose the FACTS might be verifiable? That being the case, WHO CARES who printed the story? Sadly, I would bet the facts are correct as this sort of thing has been trademarked by the Feebs. It’s their main stock in trade. Set up a crime, find a “criminal” (or create one), then bust him and “prevent” the crime. It’s WHAT THEY DO. Besides leave 900 files they shouldn’t have to begin with in the private quarters of the white house. Your FBI in action.
And MY sky was a very nice blue today, with the barest hints of clouds. Stop being so full of yourself.
Try it sometime, but don't ask me to come bail you out.
Urgent complaints that the FBI could not decipher bugged conversations between members of a Brooklyn mosque and Afghan terrorists because it lacked translators were included in the documents former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger removed from the National Archives.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/boulet200409300818.asp
It wouldn't surprise me if they still have a shortage, so they befriend loners like Shareef, who they can, in english, encourage to try to blow up something.
Al-Arian was investigated by the FBI for a decade and finally brought to trial in 2005, prosecuted by the Department of Justice in Tampa. In April 2006, Al-Arian pled guilty to one count of “Conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Specially Designated Terrorist.”
This is the same Al-Arian who once told an audience of Muslims, “Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death. Why do we stop?” (emphasis added)
And yet, the same FBI that sought to convict him as a terrorist is now advertising for recruits on a pro-Al-Arian (and pro-terrorist in general) website. The pro Al-Arian orientation is part of a long and documented history of pro-Islamic terrorist features published by WRMEA during the past 15 years. Reviewing just about any issue of this Saudi-financed magazine would clearly determine its pro terrorist bias.
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