Are we really dealing with an epidemic of ‘homegrown terrorists’ or are terror plots ‘created’? This is a question on many people’s lips which has now been answered in a fascinating expose by the American ‘Mother Jones’ magazine. The work, led by Trevor Aaronson, an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley describes the involvement of paid FBI informants in as many as half of American terror plots. The article also claims that all except three of the high profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were FBI sting operations. The informants are often illegal immigrants or criminals that the FBI can coerce into working against the Muslim community in return for protection from the law. These individuals are incentivized with large sums of money to not only spy on the American Muslim community but in some cases honey trap individuals into planning acts of terror. Informants have in some cases not only incited talk of violence but provided transportation, money and the means to commit deadly acts that were unlikely to have occurred otherwise. Conversations are tapped and then relayed back to the FBI resulting in convictions.
Whilst much of the financing of FBI investigations is said to play a preventative role in a post 9/11 world, it is argued that most of these cases would not otherwise have occurred and are simply FBI attempts to drive prosecution numbers upwards so it can be claimed that they are winning the ‘war on terror’.
For the full story visit www.democracynow.org or motherjones.com
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