There are so many possibilities, but the design of the system assures that we cannot be confident of ever getting the truth. One thing that is odd, however, is that the FBI thinks that the best way to prevent al-Qaeda from recruiting Muslims in our country is for them to recruit them first. Send an undercover agent into a mosque with no particular target and see if you can convince someone to enter into a sinister plot. Then arrest them. Have a press conference.
When you do that over and over, eventually you’ll wind up creating a problem when none existed. And, if that ever happens, you can be damn sure that we’ll never find out about it. It’s this policy that should be questioned rather than making any serious attempt to assert that “Misha” was an agent or informant whose plan backfired. The problem isn’t that that is what happened, but that it could happen and we’d never know.
Setting aside things like entrapment and incitement, any policy with such potential for disaster seems misguided to me.
Dude..
COINTELPRO
As old as apple pie
I don’t know how the whole entrapment thing works but I imagine there has to be some radicalization efforts on the part of the FBI. Its a dangerous game to play.
It’s virtually every one of those “home-grown plots” that the FBI has “foiled” since 2001. It always turns out that the conspirators are losers who couldn’t tie their shoes without help from the FBI informant who does all their plotting for them, buys the explosives for them, and then brings in the cops just before they’re about to make their move. It’s in all the newspapers, but only the hippies call it “entrapment”. The TV and radio and newspapers call it catching terrorists, but it’s not obvious that there would be any terrorists in the US without the FBI at all. Only in this case (this is how the hypothesis would go) the brothers would be more able than the usual crew and moved without the informant’s help.
Cited in Booman’s link is very thorough:
It is a somewhat chilling read if seen as a history of a shifting organisational model for the agency; from law enforcement to domestic intelligence:
Say what one will this is not a haphazard activity.
Just wait till the FBI tries this one too many times, and gets their undercover provocateur summarily shot in the head.
“He said he was Al Qaida! And he was plotting attacks!” would be the defense, which is EXACTLY as much legal justification as Obama has for CIA drone strikes.
That the multi-billion dollar asset forfeiture program has not made us a ‘stakeholder’ in the illegal drug trade why suddenly get all squeamish over soliciting acts of terrorism? The human costs have to be comparable.
Organisationally Federal agencies might seem incapable of performing their primary functions; but consider their enthusiasm, diligence and determination when it is time to carve up the budget or expand their respective jurisdictions; then their true purpose, and the scope of their achievement, becomes clear.
I’d say “as well as”, not “rather than”. The particular hypothesis answers so many hard questions is such a simple, realistic, non-paranoid way that it almost has to be true, and I’ll bet it can be shown.
It definitely does not have to be true. It’s one possible explanation, but there are many others.
Just imagine that the Russians are pissed at us for embarrassing them over something or other. So, they use their penetration of the Chechen diaspora in Boston to identify a soft-headed fool who can be “recruited” by an Armenian (i.e. anti-Muslim Christian) who has recently “converted” to Islam into some kind of small-time jihad attack against America. The Chechen-American has no idea that his handler is actually working for the Russians instead of for any Islamic organization. He’s invited to get some training in jihad using a visit to his parents in Dagestan as a pretext. Once that is set up, the Russians contact us to say that they are concerned that this individual is becoming radical and is planning to travel to Dagestan to receive jihadist training (setting up the patsy). The FBI checks him out and don’t find much. They ask the Russians for more info. None is forthcoming. Then the Russians seed the idea in the CIA’s head. When the guy comes back and sets off bombs, the Russians warned us about him and our agencies are embarrassed. In this scenario, he wasn’t a patsy, although he wouldn’t have known who was inciting him. But he could have been a patsy if he didn’t want to actually follow through.
This kind of shit went on constantly during the Cold War. The motive could be as simple as avenging a similar embarrassment we inflicted on them, or as complicated as fucking us for getting a bunch of Russians killed in some plan the American people know nothing about.
I’m not saying that any of this happened, but that is how this game is played. Plausible deniability and ratfucking are the two main principles of the war between the intelligence agencies.
Just one grandstanding opportunity for Putin would pay the freight never mind putting the kibosh on any neo-conservative sponsored Chechen shenanigans for some time to come.
A native Armenian named Misha with a red beard who converted to Islam and radicalized a Chechen to go on jihad against… whom, America? This is the most implausible thing I’ve heard about the entire bombing. First of all, Armenians, native or otherwise, who are bent on being radical have their own cause — avenging the loss of their land to Muslim countries — Turkey and Azerbaijan. Armenians don’t go looking for other peoples’ causes, and they especially don’t join up with Muslims. But even if all this were true, it would be short work to get a lead on a red-bearded Armenian named Misha from among the Armenian community, or the Islamic community, for that matter. With a story that outlandish, Misha would stick out like Kosher ham.
Anything can happen, but it sure is a weird and improbable story.
The thing is, we can draw exactly no conclusions from it.
If “Misha” were posing as a radical convert to Islam, he could also have been posing as an Armenian.
We’ll see. Short and balding is totally plausible. Red-bearded and named Misha? We’re talking about compound probabilities that get quite close to zero.
Fake beard as well?
Ethnic Russian from Armenia?
Much less close to zero. We’d have to find out what “native” means.
Russia was my first theory (I posted on it twice at my own place like a fool when there was still virtually no information out). Putin is the king of false flag operations that almost always involve demonstrating that Chechen freedom = Al Qa’eda, even when his particular aim is just to get somebody killed for criticizing him. Since he especially wants Americans to believe that Chechen independence is an Al Qa’eda plot (and Chechens are somehow running the Syrian resistance), how perfect is this incident? Plus the six months Tamerlan spent in Dagestan would be exactly when he got his training from the FSB entrappers (not realizing they were working for FSB). And finally the clever Russians asking the FBI about him as a way of establishing his identity and their own role.
But it just wouldn’t add up to a story. It was like a bad novel where the characters just act out the author’s theory without any credible motivations of their own. I don’t think Russia uses true believers of this kind. Of course I know way more about this stuff from reading John Le Carré than from any acquaintance with reality, but as soon as I saw the Misha story I thought bingo, that’s what happened.
yeah, but otherwise how would we have caught the guy who was gonna take down the brooklyn bridge with blowtorches? or the guy who was gonna reverse the laws of thermodynamics by blowing up a gas line that would have destroyed JFK airport? or the liberty city, miami guys with their FBI-funded boots and uniforms? think of how much damage they would have done if we had left them alone. no, don’t think of that.
Mykyta Panasenko Arrested.
Apparently not a scary Muslim. Just a very white guy that was originally from Kiev, Ukraine. Motive? Who knows?
Casual reply.
Nah, I think the FBI has it right.