FBI = Forever Bustin' Idiots

Foreign Policy's Passport blog asks a good question after this week's arrest of yet another hapless jihobbyist: how many more times can the FBI get would-be terrorists to fall for this?

We may well have an inexhaustible supply of domestic and imported Islamists who are willing, but not quite able all by themselves, to bomb our government buildings, metro stations, and public gathering places. But will they keep relying upon helpful strangers who offer to equip them with inert explosives and non-functional firearms?

I think they will, indeed, keep falling for the FBI's act. First of all, it is a plain statistical fact that fifty percent of every group will be below average. (Try to find an exception to that rule.) And, in the cases we've seen so far, the FBI's stingees seem to have come from somewhere on the left-hand side of the I.Q. curve. But I wonder if it's the best use of USG resources to play out these undercover comedies for months or years before arresting, or even just deporting, the dim bulbs.    

A would-be suicide bomber was arrested on Capitol Hill today after accepting what he thought was an explosive vest from undercover agents.

-- snip --

Roll Call notes that the story is similar to that of Rezwan Ferdaus, who was arrested last September in the midst of a plot to attack the Capitol with a remote-controlled aircraft. Ferdaus was also in communication with FBI agents posing as al Qaeda members.

The case is also similar to that Farooque Ahmed, who thought he was going to blow up the DC Metro system in 2010, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who thought he was going to blow up a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland Oregon in 2010, David Williams, who thought he was going to blow up a Bronx synagogue in 2009, and the "Fort Dix Five," who thought they were going to attack a New Jersey military base in 2006.

 In each case, undercover FBI agents spent months communicating and providing fake resources to the suspects before springing the trap. (This isn't even addressing the numerous sting operations run by the NYPD without the FBI's help, described by Louis Klarevas in his piece, "The Idiot Jihadist Next Door.")

The increasing frequency of these operations is bound to raise some questions about whether law enforcement agencies are pushing along the development of plots that the individuals involved might never have acted on without the longterm encouragement of their "al Qaeda contacts."

The other question is just how many times the FBI can get would-be terrorists to fall for this.

Read the entire Passport post here:

In this week's case, the martyr manqué was a Moroccan who entered the U.S. on a short-term tourist visa in 1999 and never left. Evidently, he is touring still. According to the criminal complaint, he came to the FBI's attention one year ago, at which point he was living in a rented room on a dead-end street in Arlington, Virginia, and probably couldn't have afforded a good meal of kabobs and rice.

It must have become clear to the FBI after just a few weeks that this sad-sack shahid had no intelligence value. If he could have come up with any genuine al Qaeda contacts, he wouldn't have needed to be spoon-fed every part of his planning, targeting, and weapons by his FBI handlers.

As a taxpayer, I say let's stop toying around forever with these guys. Charge them with conspiracy, or crossing a state line with intent to commit mopery, or any of a thousand other potential offenses, and be done with them. The FBI must have better things to do with its time and manpower. 

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"Ten Thousand Times Worse Than Attacking Government Buildings"

The State Department has offered its deepest sympathies to the families of the victims of yesterday's attack in Norway.

I'd like to see us do a bit more, and fly the Norwegian flag at half-mast from the Department's headquarters building as a gesture of solidarity, just as we flew the UK flag after the London subway bombings of July 2005. So far as I can find out, we haven't done that yet. If anyone knows differently, I'll be happy to be corrected.

A few thoughts about the attack and the attacker.

The immediate assumption on the part of many commentators that the attack had Islamist origins was, it now appears, completely unwarranted. However, there was some justification for that knee-jerk reaction. Last year, Norwegian police arrested three men of Uighur, Uzbek and Iraqi-Kurdish descent on charges of making explosives and planning to conduct bombings. So there is a real threat from that sector.

The Norwegian authorities seem to have underestimated the threat from domestic extremists. According to their threat assessment for 2011:

As in previous years, the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society in 2011. There was an increase in the activity of far-right extremist groups in 2010, and this activity is expected to continue in 2011. An increased level of activity among some anti-Islamic groups could lead to increased polarisation and unease, especially during, and in connection with, commemorations and demonstrations.

The suspect under arrest, Anders Behring Breivik, is being described as "far-right" by most news media today, but I'm not sure that's accurate. Norwegian news reports say he had been an active member of the Progress Party as far back as 1999. That is the second-most popular party in Norway, holding 41 seats in Parliament, so it isn't out of the political mainstream. Also, it seems to be more what we would call libertarian than right-wing (see this clip).

Assuming Breivik is guilty as charged - and there are plenty of surviving eyewitnesses who can identify him, as well as what appears to be a photo of him walking among the victims on Utøya Island - there is a big reason why he was able to carry out two devastating attacks without being detected and intercepted. Unlike those three plotters who were arrested last year, Breivik acted alone.

Our experience with domestic terrorism in the United States, which probably holds true for other nations as well, has shown that "lone wolf" actors are about twice as likely as others to execute their plots:

More than 40% (35 cases) of terrorist plots from 1999 to 2009 were planned or carried out by single individuals, or “lone wolves” (individuals not directly under the command structure of a group or movement but who sympathize with a particular cause). “Lone wolves” have also been more successful in executing attacks; nearly 30% of plots by single actors reached execution, compared to a 16% average execution rate by small and large groups.

Why are individual terrorists so much more successful than those who work in groups? There are lots of reasons. They have no meaningful associations with suspects known to the police, they neither seek out nor respond to solicitation by undercover agents, they don't go to 'how-to' websites nor make phone calls to Pakistan for help with building bombs, and they don't engage in precursor criminal activity such as stealing explosives. Regarding that last point, Brievik owned a farm and could buy a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer without attracting any attention. In short, they don't do any of the things that foiled the would-be bomber from Denver, and the one from Portland, and the one from the DC Metro area, and all of their hapless jihobyist cohort.

Above all else, the most striking thing about the attack was the choice of a Labor Party youth camp as the main target. Most of the victims were between 14 and 19 years old. It was a choice calculated to cause the greatest possible shock, and one that even terrorist groups almost never commit. It was up there on a par with the Beslan and Maalot school massacres, almost off the scale.

As a witness quoted in the WaPo's story this morning said:

“Attacking the government is one thing, but attacking innocent youth at a political camp, that’s beyond horrible and ten thousand times worse than attacking government buildings, attacking defenseless children.”

"Beyond horrible" indeed.

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OBL Validates R Bureau's Counterterrorism Communications Strategy

It seems that the late Osama Bin Laden believed the West had beaten him in the public image battle within the Muslim world, and he was searching for a re-branding strategy when he abruptly assumed room temperature.

Osama wanted new name for al-Qaida to repair image:

As Osama bin Laden watched his terrorist organization get picked apart, he lamented in his final writings that al-Qaida was suffering from a marketing problem. His group was killing too many Muslims and that was bad for business. The West was winning the public relations fight. All his old comrades were dead and he barely knew their replacements.

Faced with these challenges, bin Laden, who hated the United States and decried capitalism, considered a most American of business strategies. Like Blackwater, ValuJet and Philip Morris, perhaps what al-Qaida really needed was a fresh start under a new name.

The problem with the name al-Qaida, bin Laden wrote in a letter recovered from his compound in Pakistan, was that it lacked a religious element, something to convince Muslims worldwide that they are in a holy war with America.

-- snip --

At the White House, the documents were taken as positive reinforcement for President Barack Obama's effort to eliminate religiously charged words from the government's language of terrorism. Words like "jihad," which also has a peaceful religious meaning, are out. "Islamic radical" has been nixed in favor of "terrorist" and "mass murderer." Though former members of President George W. Bush's administration have backed that effort, it also has drawn ridicule from critics who said the president was being too politically correct.

That effort to "eliminate religiously charged words" from the USG's messaging to the Muslim world goes back at least as far as 2008 - remind me, who was President then? - when the leak of an official document from the Counterterrorism Communications Center caused a big internet stir about how the State Department had supposedly banned the word "Jihad" from its lexicon.

At least, that was the internet meme of three years ago. Google "State Department bans the word Jihad" for examples. Typically weasel-wording obscurantist Foggy Bottom political correctness run amok, etc., etc.

But today, it looks like that communications strategy had its intended effect. OBL believed that he and al Qaeda had failed to associate themselves with the Ummah, the commonwealth of Islamic believers, in the eyes of the Muslim world, where they were increasingly seen as merely terrorists rather than noble Jihadis. The fact that the USG refrained from branding them Jihadis may have contributed to the failure of OBL's strategy. Anyway, we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot for a change.

Those guys at the Counterterrorism Communications Center in International Information Programs ought to be taking a bow right now. By the way, does the Counterterrorism Communications Center still exist?

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