Here’s a different This American Life episode. I think its a better example then “The Convert”, which seems to have basically been a fuck-up from top to bottom by the FBI, and so while interesting, is kind of hard to generalize from.
The case in the other episode, on the other hand, is the outcome of a successful operation of the same type. The guy convicted really did think he was helping terrorists, and the FBI gets a conviction against him.
But even in that case, the whole thing just seems pointless. I don’t feel bad for the man in the story, he’s kind of pathetic, but he seemed to be OK with helping to kill innocent people, so I don’t feel bad he’s in jail. But I don’t really feel any safer that he’s in jail either. He had a vague willingness to carry through a terrorist plot when it was dropped into his lap, but he wouldn’t have come up with the plot himself, and even if a real terrorist approached him with a ready-made plot, its pretty obvious he wouldn’t have actually been capable of actually helping them. Once the FBI made the fake terrorist plan for him, they then had to go get the resources for him to help with it.
Meanwhile, there’s presumably actual people out there with self-motivated plans to do evil and the ability to carry those plans out. I’d be much happier if the FBI spent all the time, money and resources it wasted concocting a terrorist plot out of one old mans fantasies and instead used them to protect us against people that are actually doing bad things. The opportunity cost seems huge, even when things work out.
And then as the Convert shows, when things don’t work out, the damage can be immense.
Also, a lot of people are desperately poor and homeless because they’re suffering from mental illness. cf. the guy who was so out of it he kept urine in his apartment. I can imagine that at least some of these are not so much understanding and wanting to facilitate a bombing, as understanding that some guy wants to give them a lot of money, and he’s not real clear on the details of why, but a quarter mil would buy a lot of food/shelter/drugs.
They’re taking advantage of people who aren’t capable of being “terrorists” except with a ton of help from law enforcement. You tell the hobo who talks to angels to drop a package off at city hall and you’ll give him a sandwich, of course he’ll do it. That doesn’t mean he had any criminal intent. He’s as much a victim as the people he would have bombed (except not really bombed, since the entire thing wasn’t even real).
Also noting the intent to discredit the Occupy movement, which colors this a LOT. Gotta keep those proles in line, yeah… wouldn’t want the poor getting ideas that they deserve to be treated fairly if they don’t pay for it…
QtM: I think I heard snippets of that on the car radio a couple weeks ago. Was that where one of the infiltrator’s targets described himself and his friends as a bunch of guys who spent WAY too much time playing soccer on the XBox? How dangerous… !!eleventy!
It’s not just that these cases are a waste of time, they also do real harm to our society:
As mentioned, they alienate a segment of Americans and teach Americans to be afraid of Muslims;
They create a climate of fear in society by suggesting that we are constantly under threat of attack, it is manipulative and false;
This climate of fear allows the public to be accepting of further erosion of civil liberties;
Do I really need a fourth?
Yeah, you can find a nut job somewhere who will agree to do anything. I bet I could find someone willing to try to blow up the moon for the right price. That doesn’t mean I want my government to spend its time and resources protecting me from mad moon bombers and lunartics.
