FBI Stages Fake Terrorist Plot After San Diego Synagogue Shooting

Kurt Nimmo

Another Day in the Empire

According to Reuters:

Mark Steven Domingo, 26, a U.S. Army infantryman who recently converted to Islam, was taken into custody on Friday after undercover FBI operatives furnished him with what he thought were live bombs to be used in the attack, law enforcement officials said.

In other words, the FBI nurtured another would-be terrorist, set him up, and announced the arrest within a couple days of the synagogue attack. 

Authorities said Domingo, who had no prior criminal record, came to their attention because of a series of violent extremist messages he posted in online chat rooms, one of which called for “retribution” for the massacre of 50 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a gunman in March.

The FBI routinely trawls the internet searching for naive idiots declaiming hatefully on forums. It then contacts a selected target to ascertain the level of stupidity and malleability. The FBI then sends in operatives pretending to be fellow jihadists. The operatives manipulate the target into accepting inert duds as theatrical props. 

It’s fair to say Mr. Domingo was wholly incapable of carrying out a terrorist attack. He was capable, however, of spouting off in chatrooms, and later falling for FBI entrapment, and this made him an ideal patsy for the ongoing terror nonsense sent out 24/7 by the state and its corporate propaganda media. 

Domingo, who had purchased several hundred long nails to serve as shrapnel in the homemade pressure-cooker bombs, had also suggested attacks on Jews, police officers, churches, a military facility, Southern California freeways and the Santa Monica Pier during internet conversations with the FBI operatives, Young said.

Posting hateful nonsense on the internet is not illegal—not yet, anyway—and accepting a dud nail bomb sent during a government entrapment operation is not terrorism. 

It is safe to say Mr. Domingo wouldn’t be sitting in jail if the FBI didn’t require a propaganda event every few months to keep the forever war on manufactured terror churning along (and also showcase these efforts as part of its budgetary process). 

According to the criminal complaint, an FBI operative established contact with Domingo in a private online chat room in March, leading to discussions in which Domingo expressed support for Islamic militants and the desire to seek revenge for attacks on Muslims.

Reuters, of course, doesn’t mention this same MO has been used by the government multiple times to keep the heat turned up on the irrational fear Muslim terrorists are out there waiting for the right moment to strike and if not for a heroic FBI and its patriotic operatives, there might be a whole lot of dead people scattered about the Santa Monica Pier or on the notoriously chaotic freeways of Southern California.

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Ross Ulbricht Appeals Double-Life Sentence 'For Building a Website' to The Supreme Court

Aaron Kesel
Activist Post

Imprisoned Silk Road creator, Ross Ulbricht, has one last chance at reducing his sentence with an appeal to the Supreme Court. After that, his options in court for appealing his double-life sentence (for victimless crimes) will be extinguished.

Ross Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 for running the infamous darknet marketplace Silk Road. Ross admitted in trial that he helped create the site but denies that he was the only “Dread Pirate Roberts” (DPR) admin of Silk Road. Ross claims he sold the website and stated he was set up as the “ultimate fall guy.”

In fact, Ross Ulbricht’s defense team revealed in 2016, that one month after Ulbricht’s arrest (October 1st) on November 18, 2013, someone logged into “Dread Pirate Roberts” account on the Silk Road forum. The team has also disclosed that “evidence-tampering” may have taken place; these facts were documented in a discovery letter, Bitcoin Magazine reported.

“We have recently learned that someone using the Dread Pirate Roberts account logged into the Silk Road forum nearly seven weeks after Ross was arrested. A record of this was buried deep within the five to six terabytes the government produced in the discovery. The evidence shows that the last login by DPR was made November 18, 2013, four days before the Silk Road forum was taken offline on November 22, 2013. Ross Ulbricht was arrested on Oct. 1, 2013, and has been in custody ever since.”
Lyn says that the recently uncovered evidence is mentioned in the demand for additional discovery that was sent to the AUSA in Maryland:
“There is a record in the database for every account, showing the most recent login. We don’t know when that person or persons originally gained access, or how many times they logged into Silk Road as DPR. We don’t know how many DPRs there were. What we now know from the discovery evidence provided by the government is that the last time someone using the DPR account logged into the Silk Road Forum was November 18, 2013, when Ross Ulbricht had been in prison for nearly seven weeks.”
She continues:
“Joshua Dratel, Ross’ lawyer, said a long time ago that we only know the tip of the iceberg regarding the corruption in this case. This week we have seen another big chunk of ice revealed: evidence tampering and apparently at least one additional DPR. If this backup of the forum database had not been saved or discovered; if logins made by DPR after Ross’ arrest were not found, no one would be the wiser. This begs the question: how much more is there? Unfortunately we may never know, as it’s the nature of digital evidence that it’s easily changed, planted or deleted without a trace. That my son — or anyone — would get a life sentence without parole based on vulnerable digital evidence, especially when it’s been corrupted, puts us all in peril.”

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Council on Foreign Relations calls for COINTELPRO-style actions against Americans who hold "unacceptable views"

Kurt Nimmo
Newsbud 
via sott.net

 Foreign Policy, the house organ of the Council on Foreign Relations, has reposted an article by Daniel Byman, a government insider and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Byman's article, Should we treat domestic terrorists the way we treat ISIS?: What works-and what doesn't, calls for a police and surveillance state focus on domestic "rightwing terrorist" individuals and organizations.

Byman's point of departure is Stephen Paddock, the millionaire accused of killing 58 people attending and country and western festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. The government has yet to establish a political or religious motive for the attack, and yet Byman writes Paddock fits "a stereotype of a right-wing terrorist more than a jihadist one."

From there Byman conflates Paddock's alleged violence with that of James Alex Fields Jr., the "white supremacist" who drove a car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville. "Fields' use of a car to drive through a crowd resembles nothing more than the vehicle attacks that we've seen in Barcelona, Berlin, London, Nice, and other cities in the past two years," Byman argues.

From there Byman wanders far afield. He pairs the 2015 attack on a Planned Parenthood Clinic and a black church in Charleston to the sniper attack in Las Vegas. He argues the government should treat domestic terrorism incidents the same way it treats attacks by the Islamic State.

"It is all well and good to label left- and right-wing violence at home as terrorism, but what if the U.S. government went beyond rhetoric and truly treated these groups as it treats Americans suspected of being involved with jihadist organizations like ISIS?" he writes.

Byman has a solution for "deplorable" activism falling outside the parameters of "legitimate mainstream" protest - establish "new rules" to neutralize Americans who hold unacceptable political views. "Treating domestic groups the way we do American individuals tied to designated foreign groups would make a profound difference," he writes.

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Terror in Britain: What did Prime Minister May know?

John Pilger
Counterpunch

 The unsayable in Britain's general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions - such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist "assets" in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst - remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal "review".

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a "hardline Islamic state" in Libya and "is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida". The "smoking gun" is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in "battle": first to remove Mu'ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a "terrorist watch list" and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a "political target" in Britain. Why wasn't he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the "lone wolf" spin in the wake of the 22 May attack - thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump's apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest weapons customer. 

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FBI undercover stings foil terrorist plots – but how many are agency-created?

McClatchy DC

 

Announcements of foiled terrorist plots make for lurid reading.

Schemes to carry out a Presidents Day jihadist attack on a train station in Kansas City. Bomb a Sept. 11 memorial event. Blow up a 1,000-pound bomb at Fort Riley. Detonate a weapon of mass destruction at a Wichita airport — the failed plans all show imagination.

But how much of it was real?

Often not much, according to a review of several recent terrorism cases investigated by the FBI in Kansas and Missouri. The most sensational plots invoking the name of the Islamic State or al-Qaida here were largely the invention of FBI agents carrying out elaborate sting operations on individuals identified through social media as being potentially dangerous.

In fact, in terrorism investigations in Wichita, at Fort Riley and last week in Kansas City, the alleged terrorists reportedly were unknowingly following the directions of undercover FBI agents who supplied fake bombs and came up with key elements of the plans.

“What I get concerned about is where the plot is being hatched by the FBI,” said Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent. “There has been a clear effort to manufacture plots.”

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The FBI ran a child porn site to catch predators, and now the accused are crying foul

Kevin Krause
The Dallas Morning News

When Daryl Glenn Pawlak logged into a large child pornography website and downloaded images using his work computer, he was charged with receipt and possession of child pornography.

The operator of the website that was exploiting children, however, was not arrested.

That's because it was the FBI. And federal prosecutors are defending the agency's decision to secretly hijack and peddle child porn for two weeks as part of a sting operation. During that time, tens of thousands of images of child pornography were uploaded to the site. "Not only was the government the largest distributor of child pornography ... it was also the largest exploiter of children," Pawlak's attorney said in a court filing. "This conduct is the essence of outrageousness, and a serious need for deterrence exists."

The case has ignited debate among legal scholars and defense attorneys about internet privacy and the FBI's decision to keep such a website up and running while more children were harmed.

Dozens of defense attorneys have filed motions to suppress evidence from the controversial child pornography sting, called Operation Pacifier. In some cases, federal judges have granted those motions. But most attempts to get charges thrown out have failed, legal experts say, even though some judges have ruled that the government violated the law and acted inappropriately.

Joining legal challenges nationwide, Pawlak's attorneys are trying to get the charges dismissed, arguing that the government went too far by using a single warrant in Virginia to hack the computers of people all over the country, including his client.

The American Civil Liberties Union compared it to Operation Fast and Furious, a failed sting operation run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives beginning in 2009 that resulted in 2,000 firearms winding up in the hands of criminals.

In that case, ATF allowed people to illegally buy the guns to traffic to Mexico in the hopes of tracking them to Mexican drug cartel leaders. But that didn't happen, and instead the agency lost track of the guns, including two that were found at the scene of the 2010 murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The FBI declined to comment about Operation Pacifier. The U.S. attorney's office in Dallas said in court filings that it acted within the law and that dismissing the case would give people like Pawlak a "free pass" for trolling the web for photos and videos of children being sexually abused.

"The FBI's process here should be encouraged, not deterred," a prosecutor in Dallas said in a court filing.

Defense attorneys say the matter will eventually be resolved in the appellate courts, if not the U.S. Supreme Court.

Historically, the government has taken down such websites immediately.

Douglas Anderson, chair of the University of North Texas' philosophy and religion department, said the government was conducting a cost-benefit analysis, weighing damage to children against catching people who download child porn.

He said he was surprised children were used in such a calculation.

"It's a moral conundrum for anyone who takes the view that we are committed to protecting them in all ways," Anderson said. "They're weighing it against these kids' lives."

World opinion says we have a basic duty to protect children, Anderson said.

"You'd have to have something pretty overwhelming to offset damaging more people," he said. "It would have to be awfully extreme to allow even one child to be harmed."  

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FBI Policy Of Manufacturing Terrorism Plots Reaffirmed By Appeals Court

Shadowproof

 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that provides further support for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its policy of inducing individuals, typically Muslims, to plot acts of terrorism. The appeals court additionally backed the outcome of the notorious FBI sting operation against the Newburgh Four.

Mohamed Mohamud is a young Somali American man who was convicted of attempting to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, after he was targeted in an FBI sting operation. He is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence.

His defense appealed a district court decision that affirmed his conviction. They challenged the fact that Mohamud’s “defense of entrapment” was rejected. They also challenged a district court’s decision not to suppress information collected through surveillance under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

At trial, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals notes [PDF], Mohamud’s defense maintained a “teenager with no criminal record had neither the means nor the intent to commit domestic terrorism” until he became involved with an undercover FBI contractor, who went by the name of Bill Smith, and FBI agents, who went by the names of Youssef and Hussein. However, the government contended Mohamud’s actions before he was targeted by the FBI, such as articles he wrote for “Jihad Recollections,” indicated his “readiness to commit such a horrific act of violence” and proved he was “predisposed” to commit a crime.

James Cromitie, one of the Newburgh Four convicted of domestic terrorism offenses and sentenced to 25 years in prison, claimed the government persuaded him to engage in the plot and violated his due process. But the Second Circuit determined there were no violations of his rights, even if the government “invented all the details of the scheme” because Cromitie had expressed desire to “do something to America” and “die like a martyr.”

The Second Circuit additionally concluded government agents were permitted to target a person’s religious affiliation in order to “probe the attitudes” of an individual who may want to “do something to America.” They are allowed to “learn whether his religious views have impelled him toward the violent brand of radical Islam that poses a dire threat to the United States.”

In Cromitie’s case, his defense argued the government informant exploited a relationship to “manipulate Cromitie into agreeing to the planned attacks” on a synagogue and military targets at a National Guard base. But the Ninth Circuit believes the “illusory cultivation of emotional intimacy” is allowed. Even though the government informant offered Cromitie, a poor black man, $250,000 in cash, a barbershop valued at $70,000, a new BMW, as well as a two-week vacation, this was not deemed an entrapment scheme that violated his due process.

At sentencing, Judge Colleen McMahon declared, “The essence of what occurred here is that a government, understandably zealous to protect its citizens from terrorism, came upon a man both bigoted and suggestible, one who was incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own…I suspect that real terrorists would not have bothered themselves with a person who was so utterly inept…Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.”

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Whose Plot in Ohio? A "Home Grown Terrorist" or Just Another FBI-Created "Illusionary" Threat?

Common Dreams

Christopher Cornell, arrested in Cincinnati on Wednesday on terrorism charges after he bought two M-15 semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, had been engaged by an FBI informant who appears central to fomenting the plot. That person, in return for the effort, was promised "favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case." (Photo: Public domain)

The parents of Christopher Lee Cornell, who was arrested in Ohio on Wednesday for alleged threats to attack the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., say it is clear from their vantage point that the FBI used an informant and money to encourage their son to do things he would never, and could never, have done on his own.

Arrested by the FBI after purchasing two high-powered assault rifles and ammunition at a local gunstore near Cincinnati, various news outlets have reported the case of Cornwell as a typical in terms of its relation to other so-called examples of "home-grown terrorism."  The Christian Science Monitor reported some of the specifics of the case as follows:

Gun store employees had been instructed by FBI agents to sell Mr. Cornell the guns and ammo. The young man, who paid $1,900 in cash, was described by employees as shy but talkative. As soon as Cornell walked to the parking lot, agents tackled and arrested him. Included as part of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) making the arrest were state and local law enforcement agencies as well as US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the US Secret Service.

Cornell became known to the FBI last summer when he began voicing support for the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) in the form of statements, videos, and other content posted to his Twitter accounts. “Defendant Christopher Cornell also voiced his support for violent jihad, as well as support for violent attacks committed by others in North America and elsewhere,” according to the criminal complaint filed Wednesday with US Magistrate Judge Stephanie Bowman.

The FBI soon enlisted an undercover informant in return for what the complaint says was "favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case." The informant made contact with Cornell via Twitter, then the two began communicating through another instant messaging service.

In its languge, CSM described it as "a textbook case of a lone wolf terrorist inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State."

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Muslims sue FBI: kept on no-fly list because they wouldn't turn informant

Boing Boing

A suit brought by four Muslim-American men with no criminal records asserts that the FBI put them on the no-fly list in order to pressure them to inform on their communities. Brooklynite Awais Sajjad, one of the plaintiffs, says that he was denied boarding for a flight to visit his sickly grandmother in Pakistan in 2012, and that subsequently, the FBI told him they would remove him from the no-fly list only if he worked as an FBI informant. Sajjad's has tried all the official means of getting himself removed from the no-fly list, without any success. Sajjad's co-plaintiffs tell similar stories. 

The case echoes that of Dr Rahinah Ibrahim, the first person to successfully appeal being placed on the US no-fly list. In her case, it emerged that she had been put on the list due to an administrative error (an FBI officer ticked the wrong box on a form) and that subsequently the DHS, Justice Department and FBI conspired to use state secrecy to cover up their error, even though they knew that there was no conceivable reason to keep Ibrahim on the no-fly list. 

Sajjad and co will have to overcome the same secrecy privilege and the same culture of ass-covering indifference to innocence from the FBI and its allies in government. I don't like their chances, but I wish them luck. 

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FBI Bust Another Handcrafted 'Terrorist' For The Crime Of Thinking About Supporting A Terrorist Organization

Tech Dirt 

from the snared-in-the-FBI's-(en)trap(ment) dept

The FBI's string of thwarted, self-created terrorist plots continues unabated. Why look for terrorists when you can just craft them yourselves? Digital Fourth has the rundown on the latest "coup" by the agency.

The news this morning is full of the arrest of yet another American on charges of “attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.” Nobody’s suggesting that 20-year-old National Guardsman Nicholas Teausant of Acampo, CA is a terrorist, or that he provided any help whatsoever to terrorists, or that he was in contact, ever, with any actual terrorists. But, the media breathlessly report, he’s still facing charges that can put him in jail through to the 2030s.

The more you dig into the story, the more ridiculous it becomes. And Alex Marthews digs in deeply. The propellant (if you will) for this latest thwarted terrorist plot is little more than a campfire story.

Well, seems that he was on a camping trip sometime last year – or maybe not; investigators couldn’t corroborate that the camping trip ever happened – but anyway, afterwards, Teausant is reported to have said to some guy that he had been on a camping trip and had talked with friends about “blowing up the LA subway,” but that they hadn’t done anything because “they” had been “tipped off”.

Unfortunately for Teausant (but fortunately for America!), the "somebody" he relayed his camping conversation to was an FBI agent. Recognizing that Teausant needed a little more prodding to turn against his own nation, the agent connected him with a terrorist tutor of sorts (another FBI agent). This agent/mentor suggested Teausant travel to Canada to further radicalize and then sent more FBI agents to arrest him at the border. Voila, another terrorist attack thwarted.

Teausant is now facing charges of "attempting to provide material support" to a terrorist organization, a crime that seems to be treated just as severely as actually providing material support. As evidence of Teausant's terrorist proclivities, agents cited posts to his "online photo account" which said such things as desiring to see America's downfall and "I would love to join Allah's Army but I don't know where to start."

They also cited the following evidence, which exposes the USA's contradictory and arbitrary determination of who does and does not qualify as a terrorist.

Also, Teausant was apparently trying to figure out how to go to Syria and fight against Bashar al-Assad. This horrifying offense was committed at the same time that the US government was … trying to figure out how to go to Syria and fight against Bashar al-Assad. Last time I checked, Assad was a brutal dictator. But the winds have changed, and now that some of the people fighting against him are Sunni radicals inspired by, but actually repudiated by, al-Qaeda, I guess that makes Assad now a staunch American ally and defender of secular values?

Here's some more of the government's evidence.

The complaint said Teausant referred to himself as a convert to Islam but did not give details about when or why he may have done so. He met the informant through a mutual acquaintance, the document said. Among Teausant’s plans was to appear in videos for the group, without covering his face — to be “the one white devil that leaves their face wide open to the camera,” he was quoted in the complaint as saying… The complaint also states that Teausant told the informant he has an infant daughter, and had arranged for his mother to get custody of the girl if he disappeared. At one point, the informant questioned him about whether he was serious about his plans, given that he talked a lot but did not seem to follow through.

So, while there are indications that Teausant could have wandered down the path into Islamic radicalism, at the point he was arrested he had done little more than talk smack around the campfire with some other young men (Teausant is only 20) and talk further smack with undercover agents. But as usual, it looks as though the FBI had to do most of the legwork to convert this person into a potential terrorist. It was the FBI, not Teausant, that arranged to get him an "application" to join a violent Al-Qaeda-linked group. It was the FBI that pushed him towards Canada to further his terrorist education. And it was the FBI that convinced itself that Teausant was enough of threat to lock up for a potential 15 years, even though he had never actually "provided material support" to a terrorist organization.

The FBI now gets to chalk up another win in the "terrorist captured" column despite having done little more than arrest a guy who talked a lot, but wasn't big on following through. Sure, there's always a chance Teausant would have done all of this on his own, but rather than sit back and keep an eye on him, the FBI proactively made his moves for him… and arrested him for following the undercover agents' bidding.

Marthews points out how completely bizarre this is in a land where free speech is considered a right.

In a more sensible legal environment, Teausant would walk free because, let me think now, because we have a First Amendment and he is entitled to say whatever dumb thing he wants to so long as he doesn’t actually harm anyone, and the FBI informant and agent would be being charged with entrapment.

That's the way it should work, but that's not the way it does work. The counterterrorism money train comes off the rails if government agencies fail to capture terrorists. So, rather than restrict themselves to investigating terrorist organizations and sniffing out plots, the FBI has chosen to pad the books with ringers. Teausant may have made some poor decisions and said some unwise things, but even the FBI's preponderance of evidence fails to portray him as much more than a dumb kid with stupider dreams. And rather than allow the events to play out, and possibly expose the FBI's alleged terrorist sympathizer as an ineffectual pretender, it set him up for a date with the penal system. All the while, the accolades and money keep rolling in, ensuring the FBI's terrorist manufacturing apparatus will keep humming smoothly.
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See also:  The Terror Factory