A long investigative piece in Rolling Stone takes a hard look at the actions of the thousands of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that the FBI and local cops have convened, discovering that the supposed jihadis they stop are mostly hapless losers who get given money and plans by undercovers, or are just guys who seem suspicious and are either exonerated, or leave the country. The agents and cops that the reporter, Guy Lawson, interviews, are locked in a kind of circular reasoning — “We can’t tell you about the real terrorists because we’d tip our hand, but we know they’re out there because when we bust people they freak out and cop please rather than going to Guantanamo. And sometimes we catch illegal immigrants, too — who might be terrorists.”
But a closer inspection of the cases brought by JTTFs reveals that most of the prosecutions had one thing in common: The defendants posed little if any demonstrable threat to anyone or anything. According to a study by the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, only ten percent of the 619 “terrorist” cases brought by the federal government have resulted in convictions on “terrorism-related” charges –a category so broad as to be meaningless. In the past year, none of the convictions involved jihadist terror plots targeting America. “The government releases selective figures,” says Karen Greenberg, director of the center. “They have never even defined ‘terrorism.’ They keep us in the dark over statistics.”…
When I express skepticism at the nature of the cases being brought by the JTTF, and the wild-goose chases that seem to occupy its time, Fowler says people don’t understand the “threat stream” facing the nation. There are two reasons, he insists, that cases brought by the JTTF end up being discounted. First, defense attorneys manipulate the public to create the impression that the accused are hapless –but since very few cases actually go to trial, this explanation is unlikely at best. Second, Fowler says, the FBI itself minimizes threats to prevent panic. As an example, he cites the case of “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, who pleaded guilty to terror-related charges. Reid, Fowler insists, was a much greater danger to America than is commonly appreciated –a refrain that requires the word of the JTTF be taken on faith.
“The public is never going to see the evidence we have,” Fowler says. “We don’t want to reveal our hand or tip our sources. You cannot judge the nature of the terrorist threat to the United States based on the public record.”
(via Schneier)