Steven Greffenius · @sgreffenius
10th Dec 2015 from TwitLonger
Is the FBI a PR agency or a law enforcement bureau?
The FBI is a PR agency that pretends it's a law enforcement bureau. So is the Department of Homeland Security, for that matter. They both crank out press releases, lapped up by their lapdog friends in the media, about what a great job they're doing. The FBI _still_ - after how many years of this laughable practice? - sets up poor suckers with terrorist stars in their eyes who want to join jihad. It works with them for a _long_ time to prepare them for arrest.
Imagine the research it takes for the FBI just to pick these poor people out. After they have recruited their target, the bureau runs prospective terrorist through an elaborate playbook, where they plot a terrorist attack together. At last - after the conspiracy is all worked out and the bureau has gathered all the "evidence" it needs - it drops the axe and makes the arrest.
Note that the axe falls on just one person, because all the co-conspirators are in law enforcement! The FBI would never work with a group, because a group of people would never be so trusting. A group would smell a rat much faster than an individual. The recruit becomes isolated from friends, because the FBI undercovers tell him to keep everything secret. Then whammo - the guy's in jail and he's never going to get out. He's lucky if he doesn't spend thirty years in solitary for planning some attack cooked up by the FBI. The FBI supplies him with money, equipment, building plans, contacts, the works. All he has to do is get arrested!
Now the FBI has their guy, and they can put out their press release. That's what the whole pretense is for: a press release to make the FBI look good! Of course the FBI adds, the public was never in danger. That is your clue that the plot was fake from the start. We had it all under control, folks. We just want to let you know we're on the job, protecting you from The Terrorists. You can rely on us, because we are vigilant. We watch your home while you sleep at night, and we watch your workplaces, too.
That's the message. Yet the elaborate conspiracies, with hundreds of agent hours devoted to development of fake plots, show that the agency doesn't know wtf it ought to be doing. If it did know what it ought to be doing, it surely wouldn't be engaged in transparently unproductive public relations. Honestly, what would you think if you bought a guard dog for your property, and the dog went up to everyone around with a wag of his tail to show what a good job he was doing? You would get another dog, and send the first one off to play with the children. That's what the FBI does with its stings and press releases. It's badge polishing. Give them all a pat on the head, and a gold star for their personnel records.
What do you hear from the FBI after the San Bernardino shooting? If they were honest, they might say, "Oh, sorry. We were so wrapped up catching fake terrorists, we didn't have time to find real ones. We can't do so many things at once, you know." Instead we have a new term invented by some apologist in the PR office: self-radicalization. Tell me, what does that mean? Does it mean that some people decide to gun down dozens of people on their own, whereas other terrorists depend on their handlers to push them into such an act? What does a Non-Self-Radicalized Terrorist look like? Is that someone who goes to an ISIS training camp, or do you just meet up with some local contact with an FBI badge in his coat pocket to get yourself radicalized?
The term implies that we can't catch self-radicalizing terrorists, because they don't throw off the signs that non-self-radicalizing terrorists do. We have our profile: you go to your mosque, from there you become part of a sleeper cell, then one day the cell awakes. You have to find those cells and root them out before they can do any harm. A couple in San Bernardino with a six-month-old child? Well, there's no way we can find people like that. It's not like they acquire a lot of weapons or practice their attacks ahead of time.
Some will say the FBI, with adequate investigation, should have been able to stop the San Bernardino massacre before it happened. Others will say that law enforcement officials canot prevent attacks of that type. We can say one thing for sure: setting up elaborate stings for gullible terrorist wannabes does not stop the real thing. Real attackers do not need the FBI's help, nor are they gullible.
The FBI has to understand that every time it mounts one of those ridiculous plots, it wastes scarce resources. Moreover, the bureau distracts itself from doing the preventive work it so proudly claims it is doing. It also has to understand something else: when attacks like the San Bernardino shooting occur while it is still pursuing criminals that it creates, it looks incompetent. Stupid is as stupid does.