The FBI identified Wright as the leader of the months-long plot that aimed to strike a blow to corporate America.
But that effort would never come to pass. Wright was unwittingly chatting up an FBI informant for months leading up to the day he tried to set off what he thought were explosives.
Instead, it was fake C4 provided by the FBI, part of a sting operation that led to his arrest.Once again, the FBI has shoved us into traffic and then yanked us back onto the sidewalk, yelling "I just saved your life!" Not that that comes across as majorly dysfunctional or anything...
(h/t to Noah D in comments.)
At least they are learning, and using fake explosives these days.
ReplyDeleteMcVeigh had a rental truck full of real explosives when the BATFE stooges who thought they were setting him up for a bust lost track of him.
IIRC, most law-enforcement agencies (including the Federal Bungling Investigators) cannot actually DO anything until the perp DOES something to begin with. Simply building a bomb with fake C4, planting it, and walking away still leaves the person in "innocent" status. Until they press the big red button or dial that cellphone to make with the ka-frikky-boom, they're innocent. To me...if you're looking to buy high explosives (without a darn good reason), you should be put on the alert list. If you start building an explosive, teams should be monitoring your every move. The minute you pack it up and put it in the car, the wrath of Uncle Sam should drop upon your head. Just my opinion, of course.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the same tactic applied to the Occupy dimwits in Ohio who wanted to blow up a bridge? What's different about this one?
ReplyDeleteTrue, but I see a difference between going out looking to buy C4, and having somebody trying to sell you C4 with a persistence level somewhere between Girl Scout In Cookie Season and Used Car Dealer.
ReplyDeleteI could go into any coffee house in a college town and find a couple dozen armchair Bolshevik revolutionaries that, with a bit of careful grooming, prodding, and some fake explosives, could be the next 'Cleveland 5'. Perhaps right in time for budgetary hearings!
Joseph,
ReplyDeleteThese are the Occupy dimwits from Ohio.
This might be a crazy, stupid thought, but bear with me.
ReplyDeleteWhat if - just a what if, I'm not actually advocating anything like this, it's just a thought experiment - what if the undercover FBI agent took a look at this guy, who doesn't even measure up to the lowest denomination of 'small-time hood', who is obviously mentally ill to some degreel, and steered them towards something...less active? That 'smoke bomb and steal bank signs' plan would be the perfect thing to tip off the local PD to. And then the FBI could go back to, I dunno, guys who want to fly planes into buildings or set up jihadi training camps in Virginia.
I know, crazy, but sometimes you gotta throw out the really wacky ideas.
Noah,
ReplyDeleteFBI need moar budgets!!!
Can't get there with just tipping the locals off.
Yeah, "tipping the locals off" doesn't really seem to be in the FBI playbook. You can't expect them to leave this sort of thing to amateurs, after all...
ReplyDelete"Special Agent in Charge"
ReplyDeleteDon't see anything in that title that indicates a willingness to be a team player from an institutional point of view.
As I recall from Criminal Law class in law school, a conspiracy requires an "overt act" in furtherance of the conspiracy. Say Joe Schomoe and Joe Doaks decide breaking into stores just before Christmas is a good way to get money for Booze, Broads, and Bling. Merely making the agreement doesn't set the conspiracy in motion yielding them a free holiday at the Graybars Motel. Only after they make the agreement, when one goes to the hardware store to buy a hammer, pry bar and screwdrivers is there an overt act necessary to the furtherance of the conspiracy. Those tools are completely innocent without the conspiracy, btw. Doubtless we all have them in the garage.
ReplyDeleteI think that letting the conspiracy go to the point of detonation ensures that soft-headed juries don't let the accused off with an excuse of "He was buying tools to work in his garage and the conspiracy was just blowing steam like a blogger". Mr. Wright pushing the button eliminates that defense.
Plus, agents keeping their role secret and merely getting an anonymous star on the wall in the lobby of FBI HQ doesn't seem to fit with the FBI playbook of establishing a Ten Most Wanted list and knocking them off in a loud, splashy and flamboyant manner.
I wonder if it smelled like real C4?
ReplyDeleteWindy Wilson,
ReplyDelete"Say Joe Schomoe and Joe Doaks decide breaking into stores just before Christmas is a good way to get money for Booze, Broads, and Bling."
But suppose, while they're sitting there fantasizing aloud, Agent Roe at the next table over says "Hey, I've got a hammer right here, and the address to the store! You want me to drive you there?"
I wonder when someone is going to start doing a Chris Hanson on FBI investigators.
ReplyDelete"Hi, are you here to arrest the guy you've encouraging to blow up federal buildings and supplying with fake C4? You can have a seat over there if you like, Agent... Lynch, is it? ... but it doesn't matter because there are hardwire cameras on UPSes covering every angle of this room and the whole property, and we're all wearing wireless mikes and bulletproof vests, thankyouverymuch, and this interview is currently being streamed live to several offsite locations. Do you recognize this lump of fake C4 with your thumbprint on it?"
Dad-ratted freelancers will sometimes trip things up.
ReplyDeleteAnyone remember that movie "Hopscotch" ? (Walter Mathau/Ned Beatty)
ReplyDeleteIt had the best FBI acronym ever: "Fucking Ballbusting Imbeciles"
As a major critic of this nation's Homeland Security tactics*, I still have to defend the Feebs on this one.
ReplyDeleteWe're still a nation of laws. How do you deal with a guy who says that he wants to blow up some courthouses and such? Let him go? No. Kill him? We're not doing that, just yet. Put him in Gitmo? Well, we've been doing some of that over the last 11 years, and I'd rather that we didn't. What you do is make a good case against him, and you put his ass in prison.
Well, the ways to make a case against him are varied, but the most direct and most benign way is to let him do the deed that he wants to commit, but make sure that his weapon is impotent. So we supply him with fake C4. Then, when he tries to use it, we lock him up forever, because we still don't kill people who simply try to murder lots of his fellow countrymen.
Then, when we're successful in this, it's kind of a Damn'd if you do and Damn'd if you don't sitch. But I think that it needed doing. Yes, a simple bullet to his head upon hearing that he was a cra-cray domestic terrorist would have been cheaper and simpler, but I honestly don't want to live in that country. I want my government to have to prove it up in a court before they take my life.
____________________________
*I want to abolish the TSA, pull out of Afghanistan, close the Gitmo prison, stop any email harvesting and sneak-a-peak and other PATRIOT Act stuff.
@ MattG:
ReplyDeleteI may be missing the point, but it seems to me the issue is "Would this individual - and others in similar circumstances - have actually done anything if the FBI hadn't been there egging them on? And providing the necessary tools and other hard-to-get items?"
In other words, are these manufactured events?
It seems like the number of FBI informants in the ranks of terrorist facilitators is somewhat close the percentage of KKK members that were FBI informants in the late 60's.
ReplyDeleteCourse, the question is while they're busy setting up the left half of the terrorist bell curve, who's watching/looking for the ones on the right side?
@ shovelDriver,
ReplyDeleteYep. That seems to be the crux.
I would rather turn back the clock, and forbid any law enforcement agency or member to attempt to deceive anyone about anything. I find any form of entrapment, misleading statements, deceit, or intimidation to be an infringement of the Fifth Amendment.
And I would like to make it a crime for a candidate to later go back on campaign comments and promises. Especially if it misleads campaign donors.
It's ALL about budgets and getting $$ to continue 'law enforcement'... sigh
ReplyDeleteI recall that one of the other recent bustings of wannabe tangos included tapes of the Feebs actively trying to talk the wannabe out of it. "There are other ways of showing your devotion to Allah..."
ReplyDeleteFWIW.
Tam has the issue clearly in hand it's a matter of how much goading they did.
ReplyDeleteVicki Weaver and her 11 year old son died because an ATF snitch browbeat her husband into cutting a shotgun an inch too short.
Didja get a good look at Wright's mug shot? Dude made Nick Nolte's drunk & disorderly pix look GOOD...seen better lookin' heads on an iodine bottle. o_O
ReplyDeleteSo, what happens to the FBI/other agent, if it turns out the plotter has his own explosive, which he swaps out for the fake stuff?
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, if it did happen that way, would we ever find out?
"To me...if you're looking to buy high explosives (without a darn good reason), you should be put on the alert list. If you start building an explosive, teams should be monitoring your every move. The minute you pack it up and put it in the car, the wrath of Uncle Sam should drop upon your head. Just my opinion, of course."
ReplyDeleteTwenty years ago, I worked with a guy who owned a large farm in MS. He made his living as an equipment/field service tech at hospitals. His idea of fun was to build explosives, or buy them, and blow things up in the far back 40. His hobby was explosives. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people like him around the US. My point is that just because you deal in explosives, without a badge, doesn't make you a bad guy.
Gotta say, Will has a point here. Now it's a given that most of these "terrorists" and wannabes are about as sharp as a marble but, you'd think they'd do several test runs. Drive by the location, go out in the wilderness and test the explosive and detonation system; but again, these guys really aren't that bright.
ReplyDeleteNow addressing other statements, yes some of these incidences may never have happened without the pressuring of snitches and certain agents. Usually in those cases it will come out that the individual pressuring had ulterior motives. Some cases, however were all the schmuck who got busted.
I bet that first paragraph will get me a stern talking to at some point. . .
"Usually in those cases it will come out that the individual pressuring had ulterior motives."
ReplyDeleteGiven the frequently demonstrated penchant of law enforcement types covering for their co-workers, as documented by the FBI's own annual reports available on the bureau's website, I would say that "Usually in those cases, we the public will never know . . ."
"Would this individual...have actually done anything if the FBI hadn't been there egging them on? And providing the necessary tools and other hard-to-get items?"
ReplyDeleteIf a jury says "no" after a trial, then it's "not guilty".
That's the entrapment defense.
staghounds,
ReplyDeleteThing is, they managed to badger the cretin into a guilty plea, so no jury's going to get a chance at it.
I support the plea bargain boycott.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most devastating pieces of public resistance if it could be pulled off.
If everyone arrested for every crime insisted on a trial, by jury when possible, it would shut down the legal system and clear out the fishing cases in a heartbeat.
Woodman:
ReplyDeleteTraffic court would collapse. Which would be a good thing.
"@ MattG:
ReplyDeleteI may be missing the point, but it seems to me the issue is 'Would this individual - and others in similar circumstances - have actually done anything if the FBI hadn't been there egging them on? And providing the necessary tools and other hard-to-get items?'
In other words, are these manufactured events?"
@shovelDriver: No, you've not missed the point, but I suppose that I didn't make clear that my point is, in any successful sting like this, the defense attorney HAS to raise the question of entrapment. It is the first question on all of our minds in any case involving a sting, whether it's a plot to bomb a bridge, or a contract killing of a spouse, or even just a simple prostitution or drug sting. Having participated in stings, I can tell you that it's the first hurdle that we look at: How to show probable cause to believe that the actor was intent upon committing the crime of his own accord.
And just about every convict that I've ever met told me that he was badgered into a plea. But you know? I've been in the court room when the judge takes those pleas. In the end, it's a defendant who is told the full nature of the charges, explains them back to the judge, and declares openly and explicitly to the judge that he did what he's being charged with.
Pro tip for revolutionaries:
ReplyDeleteThe guy always talking about blowing up the Man?
THAT'S the FBI informant.
It looks to me like the real terrorist organizations operate just like the FBI does in these cases: find a low-grade moron who's incoherently angry about something, and set him up in the terrorist business.
ReplyDeleteIn most cases, I bet these stooges couldn't conspire or terrorize themselves out of a wet paper bag.
The dangerous folks are the ones who find and employ the stooges.
I doubt the FBI's strategy here is going to signficantly reduce the supply of angry morons.
No sympathy for the angry morons, but no kudos to the FBI for this latest performance in Security Theatre of the Absurd, either.
Alath
Carmel IN
Back in my lost youth in the Movement we referred to them as the Feeble Bureau f Instigation. Feel free to claim this title as your own creation.
ReplyDeleteVery, VERY well said, Alath.
ReplyDeleteRandyGC: "Course, the question is while they're busy setting up the left half of the terrorist bell curve, who's watching/looking for the ones on the right side?"
ReplyDeleteThere aren't very many on the right side. People who are sane and smart will generally find better things to do than blowing something up - especially in the USA, where we really do have opportunity for all that are capable. The sane and not stupid are especially unlikely to volunteer for suicide missions. Bin Laden recruited from countries where the economy, society, and religion are all so fouled up it's difficult for an American to comprehend, and yet he still only got 19 barely competent recruits - and he used them all up in one day.
It's not that there's *no* danger from high-IQ terrorists. Ted Kaczinski managed to kill a few people, but what he could do was severely limited by being too nuts to play well - or at all - with others. (Don't believe the movies. You can't just place an order at Minions-R-Us, you have to recruit criminally-minded henchmen one at a time, and then they are *criminals*. They'll knife you in the back and steal your stuff when it seems like a better bet than your plan.)
At least in our sort-of-free country, any evil genius who isn't nuts will go into something like politics or banking. They might be more dangerous to our society than any terrorists, but (given the narrow constitutional definition of "treason") the FBI usually has no jurisdiction over their actions...
There is always an engineering solution. One should take a random (small!) sample of the alleged C4 and one of the alleged detonators out into a field and attempt to set it off as a test.
ReplyDeleteBut then, anybody smart enough to do that is prolly smart enough to smell a provocateur. You know what they say: The guy in your group who is most enthusiastic about blowing stuff up Right Now, that guy is the Fed.
On a related note, Claire Wolfe has posted her long awaited book on snitches.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/2012/11/27/the-anti-snitch-book-is-now-live/
markm,
ReplyDeleteBy "right side of the curve" I was referring more to relative operational training as opposed to IQ.
i.e. people with enough training (either prior service .mil, not necessarily US, or terrorist training of some type, and not necessarily Islamic (IRA for one comes to mind)) and information to acquire the tools they need without being led by the hand by an FBI shill.
Most likely they would be acting as "lone wolf" operators, the hardest to ID and stop, but certainly more dangerous than the clowns like those in the referenced story.
P.s. I just realized that I automatically took the anti-.gov position on this question. That's pretty sad, seeing that I really am a Founding Stock American. What have you people done to my country?
ReplyDelete"Your" country?
ReplyDeleteWell, one of the first things we did, 'way back at the beginning, was get rid of the ridiculous concept of inherited respectability.
This ain't "your" country any more than it is any Tomas, Raoul, or Heinrich who has their citizenship papers, so piss off with your bullshit notions of "Founding Stock Americans"; that went out with the Know Nothings.
What are you, some kind of livestock?
Oh, wow, Tam!
ReplyDeleteWe need those pure lines. They make wonderful out-crossings! Then the cross-breds can be put to useful purpose.