The Wichita One

The Internet lit up Friday afternoon with reports that a 58-year-old employee (or former employee; reports vary) at the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport in Wichita, Kansas, had been arrested by FBI agents while attempting to drive a truckload of explosives onto the tarmac.

The explosives were dummies, officials claim; at no time was the public in any danger.

We should all breathe a sigh of relief. Our people were on the job, battling evil on our behalf.

But the devil's always in the details, and it's quite possible this would-be terrorist was of the FBI's own making.

How's that? It's a tactic of the FBI, used with great fervor since George W. Bush declared a "War on Terror". 

The process works like this: FBI agents entice convicted criminals — sometimes really classy ones like child molesters and violent thugs — with promises of leniency and even money, to work for the FBI as informants.

These informants are then used to identify people — often very unintelligent and easily manipulated people — who have expressed extremist views, and then encourage these individuals to join with the informant or to act as a "lone wolf" in planning and carrying out a violent offense.

The practice is documented in The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism, a book by award-winning journalist Trevor Aaronson, reviewed by former FBI agent Michael German here.

Rarely do these individuals have the real desire, let alone the ingenuity and resources, to commit an act of terrorism. "They may have a history of angry anti-government rhetoric," writes German in his review, "but they take no steps toward terrorist acts until they receive encouragement and resources from government agents."

"Aaronson takes pains," he continues, "to avoid portraying those caught in the stings as completely innocent of malice. But he demonstrates that they almost universally lack violent criminal histories or connections to real terrorist groups. Most importantly, while they may have talked about committing violent acts, they rarely had weapons of their own and lacked the financial means to acquire them." The FBI walks them through the process, "only to bust them in a staged finale."

In one such case, the "Newburgh Four" in 2009, "ringleader" James Cromitie was apparently quite hesitant to become involved, but the FBI's informant overcame this by offering him $250,000! The judge in that case actually said, "Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie".

Hmm.

There are many similarities between the cases described by Aaronson and the incident in Wichita on Friday: the suspect spent months plotting the bombing; the FBI new of and had access to his explosives in advance; he came "under scrutiny" after contact "with someone he thought was a like-minded individual but [who] turned out to be an FBI employee"; he was under "constant surveillance". Finally, like knights on white horses the FBI swooped in at the last second to save the day.

"FBI employee" is a handy euphemism for "informant".
 
In Aaronson's research he interviewed an FBI agent who justified this questionable tactic, on the grounds that "To catch the devil you have to go to hell."

Looked at another way: thwarted terror attacks keep the American people in fear, clamoring for more, and more powerful, government in the name of "security".

The full extent of the FBI's involvement in this particular case remains to be seen; it may never be known. But terrorists are being manufactured for public consumption. Fear is the profit, raising the question of who exactly is the devil.