by Stephen Lendman

Boston’s marathon bombings leave disturbing questions unanswered. Official accounts lack credibility. Mounting evidence suggests FBI responsibility. It doesn’t surprise.  Project Censored’s fourth top 2013 censored story headlined “FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States.” More on that below.

 

Post-9/11, George Bush declared war on terrorism. It continues under Obama. America needs enemies. When none exist, they’re invented.  Muslims are America’s target of choice. Numerous innocent victims are entrapped. It occurs when law enforcement officials or agents induce, influence, or provoke crimes that otherwise wouldn’t be committed.

Project Censored discussed Russia Today’s report. It headlined “FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US.”

Mother Jones covered the same issue. Its article titled “The Informant” said “(T)he FBI has built a massive network of spies (allegedly) to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots – or leading them?”

The FBI employs around 15,000 undercover agents. In 1975 they numbered 1,500. In 1980 it was 2,800. By 1986 it was 6,000.  They’re involved in sting operations designed to entrap. They’re well paid. They earn around $100,000 per assignment or more.

Law-abiding people are targeted. According to Mother Jones, “in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.”  FBI informants target Muslim communities. They seek members unhappy with America’s imperial war agenda. Mother Jones said their names are “cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records.”

“FBI agents may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical. Sometimes” a plot is proposed. Explosives and/or other weapons are provided.  Once “enough incriminating information” is gotten, an arrest follows. A press conference announces another “foiled plot.”

 

The process repeats ad nauseam. From fall 2010 – fall 2011 alone, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley examined 508 alleged terrorism prosecutions. They found:

 

• nearly half involved paid informants;

 

• sting operations targeted 158 defendants;

 

• agent provocateurs were involved in 49 plots;

 

• “with three exceptions, (all) high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings;”

 

• most often, “key encounters” between informants and targets aren’t recorded;

 

• proving entrapment is hard to impossible; and

 

• even when evidence is suspect or lacking, beating terrorism-related charges in court rarely happens.

 

According to defense attorney Martin Stolar:

 

“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents.”

 

The FBI “create(s) crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

 

Attorney General Eric Holder defends entrapment. He’s done so publicly. He’s done it by calling provocative targeting terrorism stings. He’s unapologetic.

 

In March 2012, he spoke at Northwestern University School of Law. “We are a nation at war,” he said.  “And, in this war, we face a nimble and determined enemy that cannot be underestimated.”

 

Justice Department lawyers and agents aim to “detect and disrupt terrorist plots, to prosecute suspected terrorists, and to identify and implement the (so-called) legal tools necessary to keep the American people safe.”

 

He defended disturbing practices involved, as well as military commissions and targeted assassinations of individuals alleged to be “imminent threat(s).”

 

He justified lawless practices on grounds of national security.

 

Earlier in December 2010, he addressed a San Francisco area Muslim audience. He called tactics used an “essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing terror attacks.” He did so despite evidence many times they’re used to entrap.

 

Attendees weren’t pleased. Muslim Advocates president, Farhana Khera said entrapment operations “may be getting people involved in (alleged) terrorism who otherwise would not have done anything.”

 

“These operations also divert investigators from actual threats and provoke widespread anti-Muslim sentiment,” she added.

 

According to Council on American-Islam Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper:

 

“We maintain concerns about FBI policies regarding informants in mosques and provocateurs in our community.”

 

“There’s a sense of being under siege in many Muslim communities. People just assume there are agents or informants in their mosque now. It’s a fact of life.”

 

Law Professor David Cole says beating terrorism-related charges is near impossible. He told Mother Jones:

 

“The plots people are accused of being apart of – attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building – are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury.”

 

It dares not convict. Members are intimidated to do so. Disturbing unconstitutional issues aren’t addressed. Prosecutorial and FBI claims about keeping Americans safe don’t wash. Many cases explain why.

 

In December 2010, the Washington Post headlined “Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque,” saying:

 

Craig Monteilh, aka Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle, spied on dozens of Irvine Islamic Center Muslims. He did so “in a quest for potential terrorists….But the FBI’s approach has come under fire from some Muslims.”

 

“In the Irvine case, Monteilh’s mission….backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.”

 

They reported him to the same FBI office that recruited him. He helped build terrorism charges against a mosque member. It collapsed.

 

The Justice Department “took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshipper, who Monteilh had caught on tape (allegedly) agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said.”

 

“Prosecutors (falsely) portrayed the man as a dire threat.”

 

Monteilh went public. He revealed FBI tactics. He said his “handlers” trained him to entrap Muslims in mosques, at home and at work.

 

He was a well-paid informant. Court records and other documents showed he got $177,000 tax free in 15 months.

 

Southern California Muslims cited a pattern of pervasive surveillance and entrapment. According to Islamic Shura Council of Southern California Executive Director Shakeel Syed:

 

“The community feels betrayed. They got a guy, a bona fide criminal (just out of prison for grand theft), and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques.”

 

“And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.”

 

Most FBI informants are either charged suspects, convicted felons, or undocumented immigrants facing deportation. In return for cooperation, leniency is offered.

 

Monteilh was a convicted felon. He was involved in ripping off cocaine dealers. He became a Drug Enforcement Administration asset. He later agreed to be an FBI informant.

 

According to Mother Jones, informants’ “first assignment is often a fishing expedition.” They’ve testified in court that “FBI handlers tasked them with infiltrating mosques without a specific target….”

 

They’re “directed to surveil law-abiding Americans with no indication of criminal intent.”

 

They’re told to infiltrate mosques without probable cause. They look for likely targets to entrap. Muslims are America’s target of choice. Innocence is no defense.

 

Guilt by accusation works. Prosecutors claim another war on terror victory. Innocent people suffer.

 

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaeve is Washington’s latest victim. Media scoundrels convicted him in the court of public opinion. Authorities claim he confessed. His last Facebook message said:

 

“This will be the last message before the police get me. I never ‘done’ it. They set me up. Father please forgive me. I am sorry it has come to this.”

 

It bears repeating. Innocence is no defense. Lies substitute for truth. Imperial priorities matter most.

America’s war on terror shows no mercy. It’s institutionalized. Everyone’s harmed. Freedom is fast disappearing.

America’s war on humanity continues. Full-blown tyranny looms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html  ||  Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/fbi-responsibility-for-us-terror-plots/

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org

The Boston Marathon bombings last week, which killed three and wounded over 170, were seized on to implement a far-reaching attack on democratic rights, including a police lockdown of an entire city. As with previous incidents, much remains unknown, including the motive of those who allegedly carried it out, whether others were involved and what connection the FBI and other government agencies had to them.

In a televised statement immediately after the capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the bombings, President Barack Obama told the American public: “Obviously, tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?”

However, it is the government that has released very little information about what it knows. Moreover, the Obama administration has decreed that Dzhokhar will be denied his Miranda rights, allowing CIA, FBI and military interrogators to question him without the presence of an attorney, thereby further limiting any information surfacing outside of what is vetted by the government and its intelligence agencies.

• How did the two brothers obtain the explosives used in the bombings?
• What relationship existed between the Tsarnaev brothers and the FBI and other US intelligence agencies?
• Did US authorities have any knowledge about the Boston bombing plot before it was executed?
• What role did US policy in relation to Russia and the separatist movements in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus play in the US government’s attitude toward the Tsarnaevs?

While much remains murky about these and other issues, one thing is clear: the Boston bombing, like virtually every other major terrorist incident, real or invented, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, was carried out by someone who was known to and under surveillance by US intelligence agencies.

Armored vehicles in downtown Boston [Photo: Jeff Cutler]

There have been increasing questions raised concerning the FBI’s handling of a request from a foreign government, presumed to be Russia, that it investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev on suspicion of involvement in Islamist terrorism.

The request came in advance of a six-month visit that Tamerlan made to Russia beginning in January of last year, during which he stayed with his father in Dagestan and visited Chechnya, where several members of the family live.

In a statement released in the wake of the Boston bombings, the FBI acknowledged that Russian authorities had determined that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a “follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”

The FBI said that in response to this request it “checked US government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history.”

The statement concluded that the FBI “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011.”

The Russian media has reported that Russian security services again contacted the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in November of last year.

Both of the parents of the two suspects have provided accounts of the FBI’s role that contradict the agency’s public statement.

The mother of the two brothers, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, a naturalized US citizen, told Russia Today that the FBI agents had told her that “Tamerlan was an extremist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremists’ web sites.”

“It is a setup,” she added. “He was controlled by FBI for three to five years. They knew what my son was doing. They knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going… So how could this happen? How could they, they were controlling his every step, and they are telling today that this is a terrorist act.”

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, the young men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that the FBI had visited the family’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at least five times looking for Tamerlan. He said: “They said there were doing preventive work. They were afraid there might be some explosions on the streets of Boston.”

The father said that he had been present at one FBI interrogation in which agents had told his son, “We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything.” Like the mother, he insisted that his sons had been “framed up.”

Russian sources reported that both parents had subsequently been questioned by Russia’s Federal Security Service, after which they cut off further contact with the Western media.

Reports of FBI involvement with Tamerlan Tsarnaev have led to criticism by US lawmakers, including South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has called for the younger brother to be treated as an “enemy combatant” and turned over to the US military. He said in a Sunday television interview that “the ball was dropped” by the FBI.

There have been no explanations forthcoming about how “the ball was dropped.” And without either of the two suspects or anyone else providing a motive for the bombings, much is unclear.

Among the explanations that have been suggested is one from the Israeli web site Debka, citing “counterterrorism and intelligence sources,” who it said had concluded that the two brothers were “recruited by US intelligence as penetration agents” to gain access to jihadist networks in the Russian Caucasus, but then “turned coat and bit their recruiters.”

It has been widely charged that Washington has offered covert support to Chechen and other Islamist separatists in the Caucasus, who have waged two wars with Russian forces in 1994-1996 and again in 1999.

Chechen fighters have also been reportedly active in the Western-backed Islamist militias fighting to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Videos supporting this war for regime change were found on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel, along with other Islamist material. The channel had some 700 subscribers. Moscow Times quoted Russian “intelligence expert” Andrei Soldatov as questioning the FBI’s handling of the case. “He was very open about his beliefs,” he said of Tamerlan. “I’m at a loss as to why the FBI didn’t pay attention to him then.”

A web site backing the Islamist groups in the North Caucasus posted a statement on Sunday denying any link between them and those who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings. “The Caucasus fighters are not waging any military activities against the United States of America,” the Kavkazcenter.com web site said. Servers for the site are located in the US.

A Russian intelligence source also told AFP, “At the moment we have no credible information about the Tsarnaev brothers’ involvement with the Caucasus Emirate movement,” the main Islamist organization in the region. The group has previously claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks such as the bombing of the Moscow airport in January 2011 in which 37 died and bombings of its metro system in 2010, which killed over 40.

As to whether the government had prior knowledge of the Boston bombing plot before last Monday’s explosions at the Marathon finish line, participants in the event have cited what they saw at the time as unusual developments. The coach of the University of Mobile’s cross-country team, Ali Stevenson, told the Alabama media that he found it odd that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought out at both the starting and finish lines.

“They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it’s just a training exercise,” he said. He added that he had also observed “law enforcement spotters” on roofs at the start of the race. “Evidently, I don’t believe they were just having a training exercise,” Stevenson said. “I think they must have had some sort of threat or suspicion called in.”

If such prior knowledge did exist, this raises another question. In all but a handful of cases, every major terrorist plot reported in the US over the past decade has been the product of a sting operation organized by the FBI or other police agencies. In almost all of these cases, those arrested and prosecuted for terrorism would never have had either means or even the intention of carrying out such acts without the guiding hand of covert informers and agent provocateurs.

This pattern goes back at least to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, in which a former Egyptian army officer, Emad Salem acting as a paid FBI informant, had actually participated in building the bomb, claiming that the original plan had been to substitute harmless powder for the explosives.

Were the Boston bombings the result of such an operation that got out of control? Or did sections of the state know about it and it was allowed to go forward?

How the Boston Marathon bombing plot unfolded and what motives lay behind it are still not known. Only one thing is certain: whatever the source of this terrorist atrocity, it will be used by the US government as a pretext for further escalating militarism abroad and repression at home.

By William Boardman

This is one of the great untold stories of the Iraq War, how just over a year after the invasion, the United States funded a sectarian police commando force that set up a network of torture centers to fight the [Sunni] insurgency.

Recent News of Old War Crimes in Iraq
Death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq, and General David Petraeus are among the featured atrocities in a recently-released new British documentary — “James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq”  — the result of a 15-month investigation by Guardian Films and BBC Arabic, exploring war crimes long denied by the Pentagon but confirmed by thousands of military field reports made public by Wikileaks. 

The hour-long film explores the arc of American counterinsurgency brutality from Viet-Nam to Iraq, with stops along the way in El Salvador and Nicaragua.  James Steele is now a retired U.S. colonel who first served in Viet-Nam as a company commander in 1968-69.  He later made his reputation as a military advisor in El Salvador, where he guided ruthless Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s.

When his country called again in 2003, he came out of retirement to train Iraqi police commandos in the bloodiest techniques of counterinsurgency that evolved into that country’s Shia-Sunni civil war that at its peak killed 3,000 people a month.     Steele now lives in a gated golf community in Brian, Texas, and did not respond to requests for an interview for the documentary bearing his name.

“James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq”  is online 

News coverage of this documentary has been largely absent in mainstream media.  The Guardian had a [1]report[1], naturally, at the time of release and DemocracyNOW had a long [2]segment[2] on March 22 that includes an interview with veteran, award-winning [3]reporter[3] Maggie O’Kane, as well as several excerpts from the movie she directed.

The documentary is available [4]online[4] at the Guardian and several other websites.

“James Steele” opens with a montage of soldiers, some masked, taking prisoners, some hooded, as the woman narrator sets the stage: 

“This is also the story of James Steele, the veteran of America’s dirty war in El Salvador. He was in charge of the U.S. advisers who trained notorious Salvadoran paramilitary units to fight left-wing guerrillas. In the course of that civil war, 75,000 people died, and over a million people became refugees.

“Steele was chosen by the Bush administration to work with General David Petraeus to organize these paramilitary police commandos.” 

U.S. Counterinsurgency Requires Secret Prisons, Torture, Death Squads

The documentary concentrates on the creation and activities of the Iraqi police commandos who executed American policy in the face of Iraqi resistance the U.S. had never anticipated, having expected to be greeted as liberators.  There are only glancing references to the policy failures that created the crisis, such as disbanding the army and most of the government of Iraq or assuming that six U.S. police professionals would be sufficient to train a civilian police force capable of keeping peace in a nation of 30 million people.

Steele was in Iraq early in 2003 as an “energy consultant” with easy access to authorities like Gen. Petraeus, even though what he actually did in Iraq remained a mystery to most people.  As the Sunni insurgency developed, Steele was brought in to organize counterinsurgency.  Though still, technically, a civilian, he worked closely with Gen. Petraeus and reported directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Steele set about working with Iraqi officers to organize “special police units” under military control, as the notion of a civilian police force faded.  By April 2005 there were nine battalions of these police commandos operating in Iraq, with some 5,000 in Baghdad alone.

When The Body Count Rises, the New York Times Notices

With more and more bodies left on the streets during the night, with secret prisons spreading across the country, with reports of disappearances and torture proliferating, the New York Times took notice, at least to the extent of publishing a Sunday magazine cover [5]story[5] on May 1, 2005, by Peter Maass titled, “The Salvadorization of Iraq.”  By then, anyone who wanted to know the level of American-sanctioned brutality in Iraq would have had little difficulty doing so.

Conditions worsened and reports kept coming throughout 2005 and 2006.

On October 2005, one of the Iraqi generals involved in the secret prisons fled Iraq and spoke out publicly from Jordan about what was happening in his country.  Steele came to visit the general in Jordan, the general recalled, apparently to see if the general had any evidence — pictures, documents, tapes that could give Steele cause for concern.  None have yet appeared.

Of course American media did not pursue the terror-fighting-terror story very hard, and the U.S. government denied most bad news.  At a news conference on November 29, 2005, a reporter asked a timid question about the killings and Sec. Rumsfield said he had not seen any reports.  Following a week follow-up question, he said he had no data from the field — even though the truth was that Steele had reported six weeks earlier that the Shia death squads were operating effectively from his perspective.

U.S. Was Cold, Heartless, Ruthless, and Finally Fruitless

In the documentary, Steele is described as a cold and ruthless man by an Iraqi who knew him.  “He lacks human feeling,” the Iraqi general says, “his heart has died.”

The moral vacuity of the American leadership during the Iraq war is illustrated in an exchange at a press briefing on international human rights law, in particular the treatment of prisoners, that illustrates Sec. Rumsfeld’s polite but ignorant numbness:

GEN. PETER PACE: 

It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD:

But I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.

GEN. PETER PACE: 

If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.

When a Cover-up Works, No One Is Held Accountable

Sec. Rumsfeld, presumably never present during inhumane treatment of a prisoner, apparently never made any effort to stop it, or to report it, or even to know about it.  In that he was following the classic pattern of a cover-up as articulated by Nixon fund-raiser Maurice Stans during Watergate: “I don’t want to know, and you don’t want to know.”

The Guardian/BBC investigation into torture and death squads on Rumsfeld’s watch started after Wikileaks provided the Guardian with almost 400,000 previously secret U.S. Army field reports, whose release is attributed to Bradley Manning.  The Pentagon has not disputed the truth of the documents.  The government has arrested and tortured Manning, 25, a former intelligence officer, who is currently on trial in a military court where he has pled guilty to 10 of 22 charges for which he could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.  The prosecution is demanding a life sentence.

After the Stele documentary was released March 6, the Guardian invited comment from the Pentagon.  Having declined to take part in the documentary as it was being made, the Pentagon [6]said[6] it would study the film and perhaps comment at a later date.

Unhappy with the documentary in a completely different way is Kieran Kelly whose [7]blog[7] critiques the movie under the headline: The Guardian’s Death Squad Documentary May Shock and Disturb, But the Truth is Far Worse — a claim he argues at length.  For example, he criticizes the movie’s acceptance that “only” 120,000 Iraqis died in this American war, and he wonders how that “fact” squares with a million widows in Iraq?

Realistically, ten years after the American invasion, the Iraq war isn’t close to over.  It’s just that, having prompted the Iraqis to kill each other the U.S. has left them to it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vermonter living in Woodstock: elected to five terms (served 20 years) as side judge (sitting in Superior, Family, and Small Claims Courts); public radio producer, “The Panther Program” — nationally distributed, three albums (at CD Baby), some runner-up awards; reporter and columnist (Rutland Herald, Valley News, Vermont Standard, others); teacher at Woodstock Country School, for which I was commissioned to write the history, “Institutional Denial”; TV writer (“That Was The Week That Was,” “Captain Kangaroo,” others). Guiding principle: “nobody really knows anything.”