FBI Pins 'Terrorist' Nametag On 'Retarded Fool' Without A 'Pot To Piss In'

from the SAFER-THAN-EVER dept

Tue, Mar 17th 2015 2:51pm — Tim Cushing

The FBI's preference for easily-investigated terrorism is well-documented. We're routinely assured that all sorts of domestic surveillance tech and agency opacity is necessary to protect us from a whole host of threats, but for the most part, the terrorists "apprehended" by the FBI seem to be people who've had the misfortune of being "befriended" by undercover agents and/or confidential informants.

When over 90% of the funding, idea generation, transportation and motivation comes from those saving us from terrorism, we have reason to be worried. While the FBI performs its predatory handcrafting of "extremists," the real terrorists -- who don't need someone else to provide weapons, money and motivation -- are still going about the business of terrorism.

This isn't to say that all, or even a majority, of the FBI's anti-terrorist resources are devoted to digging a hole and filling it back up. But a portion of it is, and that portion is squandered completely. And these numbers, gathered by The Intercept, put the squandered portion at nearly 50% of the total.

Informant-led sting operations are central to the FBI’s counterterrorism program. Of 508 defendants prosecuted in federal terrorism-related cases in the decade after 9/11, 243 were involved with an FBI informant, while 158 were the targets of sting operations.

The (supposed) terrorist in this case -- who was 25 years old when FBI agents dressed him up as a terrorist (having provided the weapons and bomb-making material) and recorded a so-called "martyrdom video" written and directed by undercover agents -- was broke and apparently unable to aspire to anything, much less a series of bombings culminating in death-by-suicide-vest.

The agents referred to Sami Osmakac as a "retarded fool" without a "pot to piss in." According to The Intercept's in-depth report, Osmakac couldn't have financed his own glorious Muslim "revenge." He couldn't even afford to replace the dead battery in his '94 Honda. He had no money, no social life and no wheels. And yet, the FBI portrayed him as capable of doing the following:

After recording this video in a rundown Days Inn in Tampa, Florida, Osmakac prepared to deliver what he thought was a car bomb to a popular Irish bar. According to the government, Osmakac was a dangerous, lone-wolf terrorist who would have bombed the Tampa bar, then headed to a local casino where he would have taken hostages, before finally detonating his suicide vest once police arrived.

And yet, when it came down to it, the FBI had to supply everything, including a ride.

The FBI provided all of the weapons seen in Osmakac’s martyrdom video. The bureau also gave Osmakac the car bomb he allegedly planned to detonate, and even money for a taxi so he could get to where the FBI needed him to go.

To the government, Osmakac was a dangerous "lone wolf." To several psychiatrists and psychologists, he was a "very disturbed" young man. To the agents actually on the case, he was a joke -- a small-minded wannabe with minimal aspirations and "pipe dreams." The audio captured after the "martyrdom video" -- which was never meant for public consumption -- contains plenty of mockery from his FBI handlers.

“When he was putting stuff on, he acted like he was nervous,” one of the speakers tells Amir. “He kept backing away …”

“Yeah,” Amir agrees.

“He looked nervous on the camera,” someone else adds.

“Yeah, he got excited. I think he got excited when he saw the stuff,” Amir says, referring to the weapons that were laid out on the hotel bed.

“Oh, yeah, you could tell,” yet another person chimes in. “He was all like, like a, like a six-year-old in a toy store.”

Because Osmakac couldn't be counted on to follow through with the FBI's conceived plan, agents had to go on the offensive. They forced $500 into Osmakac's hands to use as a down payment on weapons. To the DOJ, the money that was hesitantly accepted was an indicator of Osmakac's willingness to kill for his ideology. But the FBI couldn't do it directly, or it would be open to claims of entrapment. Instead, it laundered it through a confidential informant -- who was also Osmakac's employer and who was paying the would-be terrorist out of his FBI paycheck.

Then, the FBI helped Osmakac load up a vehicle with pretend bombs and real weapons and pounced as soon as the task was completed. To be sure, Osmakac was a disturbed man with dreams of becoming a devout Muslim in another country, but he was also professionally diagnosed with schizophrenia -- something that certainly would have made him appear unhinged and potentially dangerous.

But would he have turned terrorist without the FBI's extensive help? That's a bit harder to answer, especially since the FBI kind of took a lot of the uncertainty out of the equation. Rather than simply surveil a possible threat, it stepped in to push him in a direction he'd only talked about -- and even then, in mostly delusional terms. But this is what passes for "investigation" with the FBI: sting operations, overactive informants and undercover agents, and no small amount of self-congratulatory backpatting when all the work is done.

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Filed Under: entrapment, fbi, informers, own plot, terrorism

27 Comments

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Richard (profile), 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:18pm

Squandered Portion Sums
Surely they need to add to the squandered portion the cost of keeping the victims in prison at public expense. That must make a difference.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:31pm

Finally!
So, I'm guessing that was the last one. The motherland is safe now. No more terrorists remain. The FBI has done it.

Because, of course, all the real threats were already taken care of before they went after this one. Right?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:32pm

They got someone ready willing and able to commit a war crime/ terrorist act before he could follow through... good.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:33pm

"terrorists"
yeah right, lets just put that tag on everyone who opposes the current regime.
Thanks to the massive corruption and the friendly favor based politics the entire fucking system can be easily wrecked by a dozen guys. The mass-surveilance is not about terrorists, they know that they couldnt stop a real attack. Its entirely about damage control once one happens.
Sad thing is, they are getting paid for their shitty job.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:37pm

Arrest the stingers?
I wonder what would happen if one of the sad souls being targeted by these stings, drew them along then at a point close to the culmination, called the cops?

I've got two Internetz that says the FBI still pushes the prosecution. Any takers?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:40pm

Re: Arrest the stingers?
Im pretty sure this has happened before multiple times
and the FBI just told him to play along.
Then ofcourse arrested him.
USA, land of justice and whatever else thats popular at the moment...
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Thrudd, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:43pm

Re: Arrest the stingers?
Who says it has not already happened?
Who is to know unless someone blows the whistle publicly?
Ah right, those are called traitors.
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nasch (profile), 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:48pm

Re:
They got someone ready willing and able to commit a war crime/ terrorist act before he could follow through... good.

Other than "able" and maybe "ready", yeah.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 3:51pm

Re:
Though it's entirely debatable as to whether or not he actually "could follow through..." It sounds like the guy might just as easily have gotten suckered into a pyramid scheme (if he'd actually had enough money to do so). When the FBI interferes with the natural course of a person's life by encouraging them, funding them, and equipping them, they've essentially made being stupid/vulnerable/gullible/poor/suggestible/etc a crime.

This is no better than the cops setting up Jesse Snodgrass to buy them pot and then arresting him for it.

These "terrorists" and "drug dealers" need people to look out for them, not exploit their vulnerabilities to justify some government agency's bureaucratic budgetary existence.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 4:07pm

Is this the FBI's version of job security?
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That One Guy, 17 Mar 2015 @ 4:40pm

easily-investigated terrorism = Creating your own government sponsored false-flag "terrorism."
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Padpaw (profile), 17 Mar 2015 @ 4:56pm

Here is a random thought.

Could the FBI and other alphabet agencies be creating fake terrorism plots as a smokescreen to hide the real terrorism plots they have a hand in? focus the publics attention on the fake plot getting busted while the real one slides by unnoticed
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Padpaw (profile), 17 Mar 2015 @ 4:57pm

Re:
dissent is terrorism protesting is terrorism, making fun of the government is considered terrorism.

Kind of loses its potency when everything and everyone is associated with terrorism
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Guy Robaugh, 17 Mar 2015 @ 5:52pm

What makes you think...
There are NO REAL TERRORISTS!!.

Semi-literate thinking apes like yourself know full well of the FBI's proclivities (think COINTELPRO) for manufacturing yet cannot even muster the brain cells to realize the whole God damned thing is a scam.

The so-called "War On Terror", which makes the Cold War and the War On Drugs look like amateur hour, is the fruit of the CIA/Mossad/MI5/6/RAW.

Get rid of the so-called "intelligence agencies" and lo & behold, "terrorism" will be gone overnight.

You think that 2 massive towers hit by 2 mosquitoes will demolish into their own footprints? What about WTC 7? No plane hit that one.

1984 is paradise compared to what's in store for us.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 6:05pm

They are a joke.
Yet more reasons not to respect the FBI in the least.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 6:15pm

Terrorism, A Play!
Written, funded, and performed by the FBI.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 7:07pm

Re: Re:
Messing with mentally retarded, or borderline mentally retarded (and I don't mean to offend them), easily persuadable people is just predatory. There are many mentally unstable people that can be convinced to do anything without knowing what they're really doing because 'smarter' people told them to do it. This is almost preying on the mentally insane. This isn't how we should treat them.

For instance I've met and dealt with autistic people and children in the past. They aren't bad people at all but they tend to be of the kind that try to follow directions and whatnot without necessarily thinking about what they're doing. It's not hard to imagine a nefarious person could easily deceive these people into doing all sorts of crazy things. It almost seems like the govt is preying on borderline, easily influenced, people with mental conditions that can be easily persuaded to do anything. If anything this is just sad and it should be the government under criticism here.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2015 @ 10:32pm

Well, seeing as the US encouraged, supplied, and funded the organizations that are now considered terrorist groups, I don't see the issue.
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David, 18 Mar 2015 @ 1:35am

Useless
Proving somebody can be suckered into planting a bomb and then arresting him for that is useless. You'd need to arrest all children if that were a point. Admittedly that's pretty much the approach of the U.S. education system but it would be delusional to expect 100% coverage.

It's like going in a cutlery store, proving that you could murder someone with a kitchen knife, and then arrest the store keeper for unlicensed weapon trading.

The threat are not people who have so little wit that they can be turned into tools. The threat are those who have both the wit and intent to turn others into such tools.

And the FBI is apparently in the business of funding and teaching people how this is done, make them taste and refine their powers of manipulation, and give them all the free practice legally that they'd ever want.

What could go wrong?

Osama bin Laden was at one time trained in a CIA-run training camp if I remember correctly. And he's rather the rule than the exception regarding actually dangerous "master minds" of terrorism which got their training at the hands of the U.S.
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Reality bites, 18 Mar 2015 @ 5:27am

Feral bumbling Incompetents - criminals on the taxpayer payroll
Sadly the drooling feral's couldn't recognize a real plot if it was served up to them printed out in double spacing.
9/11 being the example, only drooling cretin's couldn't connect the dots months before.

It would appear the only "plots" the fbi can "solve" are the ones they write.
I am really sick of the fed psycho's being paid to to imprison the mentally ill.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2015 @ 7:46am

Back of the envelope
So if the FBI is wasting half of its counter-terrorism budget on homemade plots, we're half as safe as if they spent all their budget on real terrorists (assuming, for the moment, that there are enough real terrorists to go around). Or, if there aren't enough real terrorists to go around, wasting half their budget on homemade plots means they are overfunded and we should be using that excess to fund more important projects.

Based on your political persuasion, that could be funding real military projects for use against foreign enemies, putting a few drops in the entitlement bucket, reducing the national deficit, or solving traditional crimes. If I recall correctly, there have been allegations that the FBI is so concentrated on terrorism projects that traditional crimes they should be investigating are going unhandled. This bust seems like a perfect example of why they need to get back to what they were supposed to be doing.
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nasch (profile), 18 Mar 2015 @ 8:24am

Re: Back of the envelope
So if the FBI is wasting half of its counter-terrorism budget on homemade plots, we're half as safe as if they spent all their budget on real terrorists (assuming, for the moment, that there are enough real terrorists to go around).

That also assumes that the FBI spending money on counter-terrorism makes us safer from terrorism. This is an assumption I have not seen any proof of.
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Padpaw (profile), 18 Mar 2015 @ 8:37am

Re: Back of the envelope
the FBI made a statement to the effect they were no longer focusing on non terrorist related threats. Because the threat of terrorism takes up so much of their time and yadda yadda
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nasch (profile), 18 Mar 2015 @ 9:07am

Re: Re: Back of the envelope
the FBI made a statement to the effect they were no longer focusing on non terrorist related threats.

Not quite, they said they were focusing more on terrorism and less on white collar crime, not that they are now focusing exclusively on terrorism.
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John Fenderson (profile), 18 Mar 2015 @ 9:18am

Re: Re: Re: Back of the envelope
Yes, but considering how little they cared about white collar crime in the past, that amounts to the same thing as saying they are ignoring it completely now.
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Baron von Robber, 18 Mar 2015 @ 9:21am

Your Federal Bureau of Instigation at work.
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David, 18 Mar 2015 @ 11:16am

Re: Back of the envelope
So if the FBI is wasting half of its counter-terrorism budget on homemade plots, we're half as safe as if they spent all their budget on real terrorists (assuming, for the moment, that there are enough real terrorists to go around).

You are also assuming that training terrorist recruiters and giving them all the materials and experience and waiver from control and power they need to do their job is neutral with regard to terrorism.

Since Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA, that seems audacious.
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