FBI Agent Apparently Egged on ‘Draw Muhammad’ Shooter – The Daily Beast

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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10 Responses

  1. Damon says:

    This isn’t news. The real news is no one seems to give a damn that we’re paying our gov’t to agitate people into attacking us.Report

  2. Kazzy says:

    Well, if a guy watching ISIS videos but having no actual contact with ISIS can be considered an ISIS member because he pledged allegiance to them slightly before going on a rampage, then surely this means this guy was a bonafide sworn FBI agent.Report

    • j r in reply to Kazzy says:

      I would say don’t let this sort of thing get sacrificed on the alter of hating the other side. It’s a pretty big deal that every time we hear about some homegrown terrorist being busted for a terror plot, it turns out that the FBI found that person on a chat room somewhere and basically handed him a “how to be a terrorist” starter pack.

      There is the question of how just it is and then there is the whole other concern of what happens one day when the authorities nudge some guy along the path and then lose track of him?Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to j r says:

        When you need an other to hate, if none are handy, it’s useful to create some.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to j r says:

        @j-r

        I think it depends on how much “help” is needed. If a guy was on the edge, yea, let’s identify him.

        But at the same time, if we can identify people on the edge before they tip, shouldn’t we try to tip them the right way first?

        But letting the guy complete his mission? For fucks sake… There is blood on the FBIs hands here.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Hendricks’s arrest means that every major U.S. attack was linked to FBI investigation before it happened, Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told The Daily Beast.

    There are a lot of little things that I very much don’t like about a lot of the follow-ups of a lot of the attacks.

    The Tsarnaev investigation had that weird thing where Ibragim Todashev was shot by an FBI agent? That was weird.

    The California shooting where the news people broke into the apartment and ran around rifling through stuff? That was weird.

    The Pulse shooting where the guy’s wife disappeared after the shooting? That was weird.

    The whole explanation of the FBI grooming these guys in order to arrest them before they do anything in order to pump up their own numbers (but, occasionally, these guys go off a little prematurely) is too much of a conspiracy theory to really give it much credence… but then you see that the attacks were *ALL* linked to the FBI and you can’t help but think that there’s something weird here.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

      “FBI: the cointel Pros.”Report

    • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

      I don’t know. I think there’s way too much evidence corroborating the FBI’s malfeasance for it to be conspiracy theory. I think the FBI knows there isn’t much they can do to stop the true lone wolf/self radicalized murderer but they also know they can never admit that. They go around agitating losers and crazy people into phony plots then patting themselves on the back for foiling them and making people feel safe that the authorities aren’t completely impotent.

      Now the idea that they might chose not to foil a plot they themselves engineered in order to further some agenda gets into some weird territory…Report

  4. Dark Matter says:

    There is an old joke from the 80’s(?) about how half the members of Communist cells were FBI agents.

    The thing is, we probably want about as many ‘infiltrators’ as potential terrorists, and if you think 911 was a good thing, then you’re already pretty far over the line.

    With the information in front of me, I can’t tell the difference between the FBI doing what we want them to and the FBI creating problems… and what’s worse, I’m not even sure there is a difference.Report