FBI Breaks Up Another Of Its Own Terrorist Plots

Arun Gupta, Z Magazine:

The U.S. government described the five as hell-bent on sowing terror to fulfill their "violent anarchist ideology." In reality, the FBI supplied ten pounds of inert plastic explosives to drifters, suicidal, drug addicts and emotionally troubled. Like hundreds of post-September 11 cases against Muslim-Americans, the FBI conjured up the terrorism it takes credit for preventing.

The FBI's most valuable asset was a paid informant and con artist, Shaquille Azir, who played father figure to the lost men, molding their childish bravado and drunken fantasies into a terrorist plot. Azir drove the five around — who lacked cars and drivers’ licenses according to friends — and provided them with jobs, housing, beer, pot and prescription drugs. Every time the scheme threatened to collapse into gutterpunk chaos, Azir kept it on track.

FBI tapes reveal Azir led the brainstorming of targets, showed them bridges to case out, pushed them to buy C-4 military-grade explosives, provided the contact for weapons, gave them money for the explosives and demanded they develop a plan ... The group was nabbed at an Applebee's after futilely using cell phones to detonate the charges, as they had been instructed.

It is nearly impossible to find a thwarted terrorist plot in the U.S. since 9/11 - and there are dozens, perhaps hundreds - that does not have the FBI's fingerprints of entrapment all over it.