The boys who cried wolf

June 24, 2006

By any reasonable measure, the Bush administration’s track record on exposing dangerous terrorist plots isn’t terribly impressive. When Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002, the president described him as al Queda’s chief of operations and emphasized the significance of his capture. Bush was wrong. The plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be. Jose Padilla was not actually prepared to detonate a dirty bomb in DC. Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge eventually conceded that flimsy evidence led the administration to raise the threat level in 2004.

So when news reports surfaced this week that federal officials had nabbed seven terrorists training in Miami to, among other things, attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, it seemed like great news and a key development in protecting Americans from terrorists on U.S. soil. But then there’s that track record to consider, which reminds us that administration announcements like these aren’t always what they appear. The media treated the capture of the “Miami 7” as a very big deal, but was it?

Maybe not.

A plot to topple the Sears Tower in Chicago and attack the F.B.I. headquarters in Miami was “more aspirational than operational,” a top bureau official said Friday, a day after seven Florida men were arrested on terrorism charges. […]

News of the arrests touched off widespread television coverage of the plot against the Sears Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world. But details of the indictment disclosed Friday at news conferences in Washington and Miami presented a less alarming picture.

“Less alarming” seems like a more-than-fair description. These alleged terrorists had no weapons, no bombs, no expertise, and no money. They didn’t behave or operate as terrorists. They apparently swore an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden, but it now appears possible that the FBI informant who infiltrated the group had suggested the idea. For that matter, these guys weren’t even Muslims, but instead practiced their own hybrid religion that combined Islam and Christianity.

Their “plots” against the United States were “embryonic at best.” The New York Daily News described the group, which was more a cult than a terrorist network, as the “7 Boobs.”

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that the capture of these lunatics is trivial. These people clearly wanted to kill innocent people and commit domestic terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials deserve kudos for infiltrating the group and stopping these would-be terrorists before they became dangerous.

That said, anyone who claims that the administration just broke up a plot to attack the Sears Tower is overstating what’s occurred here. The “Miami 7” could hardly attack a convenience store.

Moreover, this seems to be a pattern with the Bush gang. There’s a major announcement that receives blanket coverage about terrorist plots — which turns out to be far less significant than advertised. Dick Cheney said yesterday that this cult in Miami was “a very real threat.” Except, after scratching beneath the surface just a little, there’s ample reason to believe that’s not the case.

Chalk up one more example of the boys who cry wolf….

June 24, 2006 at 11:22 am

These people clearly wanted to kill innocent people and commit domestic terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials deserve kudos for infiltrating the group and stopping these would-be terrorists before they became dangerous.

I think this remains to be seen. They may have been entrapped and their civil liberties may have been violated. The only good thing I have to say about these arrests at the moment is that there were arrests. They could have gotten the Padilla treatment, declared enemy combatants, shipped off to a Navy brig, and held incommunicado. At least the judiciary will have a chance to pass judgement on the governments case.

BushCo’s plan — with the knowing and intentional, even gleeful, participation of the CCCP — is to hype the fear, brag that they bagged another TERRAH cell. Then, when the farfare dies down, they move on to another blaring of the fear horn by the (mis)administration and the CCCP. It’s only later that the courts call “bullshit” on each and every one of these so-called TERRAH plots and throw it out of court. The CCCP, at that point, has had its collective eyes distracted to the next shiny thing dangled by The Royal Buffoon, and the fuck-up events previously touted as “successes” never get mentioned again.

The CCCP is a Bizarro World facsimile of what used to be our proud and effective fourth estate, just as what now passes for “American Values” is a remarkably sad duplicate of old-style Cold War Soviet-bloc repression. A fitting memorial to the golden anniversary of the Prague Spring crackdown by Moscow’s totalitarianists.

America…. may she rest in peace.

I get the point. Make them look even more terrorizing if finding them born in the USA isn’t enough.

Let’s speculate. What were they, the Miami 7 actually up to? Could they have hatched up a scam to defraud al-qaida? It’s easier for me to buy that than that they are dangerous mad bombers. So don’t put me on the jury.

What are the deatails, (where the devil lives)? They came up with a couple of plausible targets. One a big building. The al-qaida hates big bulidings. The other a government building. The al-qaida hates governments. With those two they might trick al-qaida into forking over what they really want, money. Once they have the cash in hand to buy the dynamite all they have to do is pick up the phone and call the FBI, finger their al-qaida contact(s) and be big heroes as well as rich.

Now we can piece the whole thing together and get a clear picture. HS had them under surveliance and saw they were a pack of stumble bums that were doomed to failure. So they’re making all the hay they can by arresting them and thus looking real good to the inastute public as possible with, “look everyone we’re really on the ball” when in reality they have been wasting tax dollars.

If the suspects were going to be successful in contacting al-qaida they would be a leg up on HS and that would bring a treasure trove of info, real terrorists and the like to HS. If the group actually managed to get some significant dollars out of al-qaida what would they have done with the money? Bottom line. If HS thought they were about to make contact with al-qaida they should have let it go until they got all the info etc that would bring. Arresting them at the stage they were tells us HS didn’t think they would make it. They’re guilty alright. Guilty of being dumb, dumber, dumbest. That goes for all concerned including John Q who is the real victim here, not of terrorist threats but government agencies feathering their own nests.

Perhaps a look at the origin of terrorism will give some insight to the whole mess. The oldest record of terrorism is about 5,000 years old and is still working well today. The greatest terror possible is hell that was invented by the first Pharaoh popularily known as Scorpion. It’s the same hell people are threatened with in church today proving Christianity is at least 5,000 years old and the first terrorist organization of record.

Hell is terror max – http://www.hoax-buster.org for the rest of that story. The Bible is a proved hoax. This archaeological find may free the world of terrorism. It’s our best hope at present.

I’m betting we’ll find this is nothing more than a pathetic group of losers playing fantasy games, and being egged on by an informant. Even the legal experts on CNN that I saw yesterday were dismissing the indictment as one of the thinnest they’d ever seen, with no substance but a discontented group of young people conjuring grandiose schemes of revenge against society.

They probably should have been charged with malicious mischief, sentenced to some community service, and told to engage in Dungeons and Dragons the next time they feel like role playing fantasy games.

This is pathetic. One would think, in all these years, they might have foiled a couple dozen real terrorist plots, or what’s all this for?

One of the most annoying consequences of the Bush regime’s tragi-comic pursuit and display of these very marginal players is that they have forfeited the credibility of what we always thought was our most competent law-enforcement agencies. Nowadays, when I see the Attorney General (whoever he may be) swaggering before the TV cameras and telling us how they have, once again, prevented a holocaust of terror, my predominant impulse is to yawn. They couldn’t catch Osama, so we feasted on John Walker Lindh; Mohammed Atta was dead, so we got Zacarias Moussaoui; couldn’t do anything about A.Q. Khan passing nuclear technology to the Norks, so we got Jose Padilla, instead. And now these seven guys in Miami. Is this just to show the American public that if Canada can root out terrorists, then by God, so can we?

This whole atmosphere resembles nothing so much as the anarchist hysteria that swept the country in the wake of the Chicago Haymarket riots, and that formed the mindset eventually led to the sedition laws of the WWI era.

–“There are still people out there who are trying to do everything they can to kill Americans,’ Cheney said. —

Americans killed as a result of the 7 Boobs’ plans: 0

Americans killed as a result of Dick Cheney’s plans: 2500+

Let’s not forget Hemant Lakhani, the braggart and shlub who was recruited by the FBI into being a middleman between a fake terrorist group and some fake arms smugglers with a fake missile.

How many more of these “cells” are we going to see between now and November? And is anyone going to remind the President that we are supposedly “fighting them in in Iraq so we won’t fight them here?”

If the conservative punditry attempts to use this to score “tough on terror” political points, every one of the liberal surrogates should be remind them that yet one more of the administration’s reasons for occupying Iraq (fighting them there vs here) is bumper-sticker rhetoric that has no substance. And they should follow with, “But thank God this group turned out to be a bunch of wanna-be’s who had to be coaxed into taking some ‘klingon blood-oath’ by the FBI informant.”

Everyone of these “terror cell in the US” stories should be “lose, lose” for the GOP.

D*mn! They told me if I took LSD I’d have flashbacks, and now I have the late 60s in full re-run mode before my eyes. Almost like it was yesterday, with the undercover FBI-guy saying he knows where to get some explosives &tc…

My default mode is “boy who cried wolf” and that’s where it’s going to stay until another 100-story building comes tumbling down. Then I’ll toggle into “they’ll do anything to win an election” because, frankly, there’s something mighty fishy about all this.

Add this to the training of real terrorists. They see how the FBI operates and avoid any infiltration or entrapment, absolutely. By going after these easily infiltrated crack pots, the government reveals its methods to the really bad guys. The irony in this is that the Bush admininstration plays the anti patriot card on those who have revealed their secret, illegal eavsdropping. But, when they play the patriot card themselves for PR purposes by picking this low hanging fruit, are they not also giving away secrets to the enemy?

For good analysis of this issue, I suggest people read this:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/miam-j24.shtml

(“There is every indication that this latest purported terrorist )threat—described by some media outlets as “even bigger than September 11”—was manufactured by the FBI, which used an undercover agent posing as a terrorist mastermind to entrap those targeted for arrest.”

(…)

“The four-count indictment presented by the Justice Department in a Miami federal court on Friday contains not a single indication of an overt criminal act or even the means to carry one out. The brief 11-page document consists almost entirely of alleged statements made by the defendants to the FBI informant, referred to in quotes throughout the indictment as “the al Qaeda representative.”

(…)

“Elements of the federal indictment are so self-incriminating as to border on the ludicrous. Among the charges are that the defendants “swore an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda.” Who administered this oath? The “al Qaeda representative,” AKA, the paid informant of the FBI.

Aside from this “loyalty oath” solicited by the FBI, only one of the seven defendants is accused of any overt act, outside of driving the FBI informant to meetings.

The only action with which this one individual is charged—all else is words—is taking pictures of the FBI headquarters in Miami. Who supplied the camera? The “al Qaeda representative”—i.e., the FBI agent provocateur.

The indictment further charges two of the accused with driving “with the ‘al Qaeda representative’” to a store in Dade County, Florida to purchase a memory chip for a digital camera to be used for taking reconnaissance photographs of the FBI building. The document does not say who paid for the chip, but there is hardly room for doubt.

In one of the more curious sections of the indictment, one of the accused, Narseal Batiste, is accused of asking the FBI informant to provide various items for his group, including footwear, for which he provided a “list of shoe sizes.” Apparently the FBI delivered the shoes.”

(…)

“In his press conference, Attorney General Gonzales asserted that the Miami group represented a “new brand of terrorism” created by “the convergence of globalization and technology.”

What these words mean is anyone’s guess. There is no indication that those charged, who were living in a warehouse in the poorest city in America, had access to any technology, and their supposed contact to the wider world was an informer planted by the FBI. The suggestion that the seven men were a “home-grown” terrorist group inspired by contact with Al Qaeda elements over the Internet is supported neither by evidence nor the charges contained in the government’s own indictment.”
(…)

“What is highly noteworthy is that the federal government decided to intervene in this situation to concoct a phony Al Qaeda connection and trumped up “terror plot.”

What is the government’s motive in manufacturing such a plot? Whose interests are served? Under conditions in which the majority of the American people have turned against the Iraq war and support the withdrawal of American troops, the Bush administration is desperately attempting to once again link its neo-colonial venture in Iraq with a supposed “global war on terror” waged to defend the American people against another 9/11.

To sustain such a fiction, fresh evidence of terrorist threats is periodically required. And it has been forthcoming on a regular basis. Every several months another “conspiracy” is unveiled, invariably involving an FBI informant and hapless individuals ensnared in a plot orchestrated by the government.

Until now, these “sting” operations have been targeted at Muslim immigrants. Last month, for example, Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Siraj in New York City was found guilty of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in a “plot” that the evidence indicated was based entirely on suggestions from an FBI informant. The FBI agent provocateur taunted the defendant with photographs of Abu Ghraib torture victims and demanded to know how, as a Muslim, he could fail to take action.

Similarly, in Albany, New York two years ago, the FBI recruited a Pakistani immigrant, promising him leniency on minor fraud charges, to ensnare two other immigrants in a fictitious scheme to help a non-existent person buy a weapon for a fake terrorist plot.

These provocations and conspiracies are symptomatic of a government that is both ruthless and desperate. Confronting a population that is increasingly hostile to its political agenda of reaction at home and war abroad, it is driven to manufacture an endless series of terrorist threats aimed at disorienting and intimidating public opinion.”

I’d recommend reading the entire post.

Well Paul you said it all, 2500 to zip. But they were thinking about it. Thinking about what? The same thing Chaney thinks about, money. We’ll never know what they would do with it but as you pointed out we do know what Chaney has done for it.

Mission accompolished! Saddam is gone. No more WMDs. Time to bring the ones still alive home. Mission accompolished. Well, unless someone was lying about the mission. Now tell me again, we’re staying the course. What course? Mission accompolished already! Now what’s the problem worth American lives?

Wake up Democrats. Let me hear it loud and clear. Mission accompolished. The discussion is whether or not the mission was worth it and not staying the course. The course is ended. Louder!!! Mission accompolished. It’s not staying the course or not it’s mission accompolished or not. Mission accompolished. Hooray for our boys and girls. Well done now come home. Don’t let Rove make staying the course or cut and run the issue. It’s mission accompolished time instread. Make him define the course we’re staying. Make that the issue. It’s can’t be Saddam or WMDs so what is it? What course and why are we staying? Mission accompolished already.

You left out my favorite quote from the coverage:

leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, as a “Moses-like figure” who would roam the streets in a cape or bathrobe, toting a crooked wooden cane and looking for young men to join his group.

There’s something that’s just too whacked-out about all of this “Miami 7” stuff. I’d like to find out who this so-called “informant” really is—and see whether he’s been chatting with someone connected to the administration. That would be a nice series to bombard Tony with during next week’s press-gaggle. We might even give it a name:

“Snow Flake and the Seven Boobs.”

And in other news: Osama bin Laden is still out there, nearly 5 years after Bush declared he’d get him “dead or alive”.

And the reason Osma is still out there – we have 30,000 troops where he is and 130,000 troops where he is not.

Rauch

“Is this just to show the American public that if Canada can root out terrorists, then by God, so can we?”

heh, as a Canadian I’m not so sure that our incident won’t amount to much more than a hyped up Miami 7. As more news coverage happens up here it seems to appear more and more that these were foolish kids being led by the nose. I’m somewhat worried that the Conservatives (thankfully with only a minority gov) are trying to employ the politics of fear up here.

If our governments thinks arresting a bunch of homeless borderline retards is security, then we’re in big trouble.

Why isn’t the FBI investigating people who aspire to blow up abortion clinics or gay bars? The latest credible terrorist arrest in this country, after all, was not the result of a tax-dollar-funded investigation by the FBI, but simply the result of concerned family members turning in their son who was preparing to bomb an abortion clinic and actually had the means to do so.

BushCo has proved itself once again to be “master of the meme”. They use a really pathetic bit of news to whip up a few frenzied headlines and frothing talking heads for a day or two, then after the real facts come out they just stop talking about it.

But by then the damage has been done. The thought-form has been planted into the subconscious of the average voter that “Bush caught bad guys who were going to hurt us. Bush is a hero and we should vote for whoever he tells us to. If we don’t, we’ll die!!”

It’s subliminal programing without all the technical stuff. Sad that some people still fall for it.

Entrapment + thought crime + agent provocateurs = a bureacracy of law enforcement caught up maintaining its illegitmate importance over the people, meeting self-imposed quotas, and being helpful to its political leaders who need external and internal threats in the news prior to ELECTIONS.

Look, the Miami 7 are wacky bozos, and we’ve always had them and always will, but accepting it as reasonable and worthy that our national police “infiltrated” this group before they had done any criminal activity is allowing yourselves to be in a police state.

The seven boobs appear to the terrorist cell equivalent of Santorum’s intert chemical weapons of mass destruction.
The terror-peddlers are scraping the bottom of the barrel, at a time when the public is getting wise.
Each new fumbled attempt becomes more and more a cartoon parody of fear mongering, and opens more eyes to the frayed con game that once worked so well.

Well, I guess you get the policing you pay for.

There might be some value in hunting down every schizoid cult of disgruntled people. Eventually, they might have actually held up a convenience store for funding and exposed themselves in the process. But what will have been the total cost of preemptively pursuing, trying and jailing these people under terrorism sentences?

This seems like classic “narcing” with the unfortunate but apparently not uncommon side effect of the plant egging them on to get a more sensational bust. As such I only see minor problems with the execution. The issue is the post-politicizing of the arrest by the administration and the acquiescence of the media.

I have many more issues with proactive sting operations like government-run kiddie porn sites that lure in the weak, stupid and tempted. I call it rule by social psychology instead of rule by the principle of law. I don’t see the government promoting the temptations of satan as an essential governmental process. In this case, not so much. The story is almost all about the post-arrest propaganda and not a criticism of law enforcement.

I agree with the first commenter. Its yet to be seen if there will be trial or they will be held incommunicado.

I can only imagine, that such lunatic groups will always continue to exist, enamored by ideological frenziness. More along the lines that ‘crime will always exist’. As much as it is important to stop crime when it is about to happen, I think it is very practical to imagine measures to stop the spread of conditions that promote crime.

possibly this administration has become the prime example of ideological frenziness. take ‘gay marriage’. that should even be a term in the first place as if something is odd about it.

The Miami 7 are about as dangerous as Jose Padilla. The Bushies said he was building a dirty radioactve dirty bomb in his spare time. His day job was stuffing burritos at Taco Bell. I wonder how many extra shifts you would have to work at the Bell in order to be able to afford to buy fissible uranium on the black market?

“For that matter, these guys weren’t even Muslims…”

And we all know that’s a requirement for terrorism.

For a good laugh, see Jon Stewart’s take on the “Miami 7” press conference by Alberto Gonzales. C& L has it here.

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