So, the FBI creates work for itself to justify its existence?

What a revolting development...

The FBI has been using this same entrapment tactic to catch so-called sexual predators on the internet. In many instances they will pretend to be an underage person to seduce someone older or they will actually create child porn websites and then arrest anyone who downloads content from it. I'm sure they use the tactic on drug users too. I would not be surprised to learn that there are actually FBI agents who pretend to be drug dealers who arrest anyone who tries to buy from them.

It's entrapment and it's wrong, but they get away with it.

So we have a U.S. government entity that planned a terrorist attack against the United States and recruited an individual to carry it out.

Um....I'm sorry, but isn't that just about the ultimate definition of the word "treason" one could possibly come up with?

Oh, wait...the planners then arrested the person they recruited to carry it out. So it's all good.

Um.....how do you like your fascism? I prefer mine really overt and blatant, dressing on the side.....

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."

What a nation of cowardly ignoramuses we are!
Tony Vodvarka

Security by Monty Python.

Glenn,
Oh ye of little faith....

.....but a lot if insight!!!

Shades of the days of the FBI Cointelpro ops.

You forgot that the timing is also fortuitous to the FBI request before the Congress to expand its surveillance without need for any authorization.

My fellow readers with an understanding of how an empire plays on the "young and disaffected" for their our self-fulling purposes...The is just the tip of the iceberg before the impending collision with the masses. Truth will make us all free.

Thank you Brother Glen for posting the legal shenanigan's of our empire in actions of fear...

Thank you Glenn for bringing forward this important point. Who is this young man, what's his history. We he be allowed to speak? Is he an impressionabe teenager befriended and rewarded emotionally or tangibly? And if he does hate our foreign policy, well that's a pretty understandable position and not a crime. Yet.

Whether creating plots, or allowing plots to move forward, even to the point of facilitating, is standard practice. But this is purely for propaganda, and attention needs to be paid to it.

From the initial reports it does sound like a firehouse arson operation — firemen starting fires so they can put them out.

Sadly, it seems part of a larger national trend, an Orwellian one really, of not just the FBI, but of other police forces increasingly facilitating criminal activity to assure easy arrests.

Great fun to see a Republican senator get set up in a Minneapolis mens' room, and also comical to think the public good requires a veteran cop, a police sergeant, to be paid to sit all day on a public toilet with his pants down in hopes of encouraging a morals violation.

But the ugly reality of sting operations, whether for national security or victimless crimes, is it's doubtful there would have been a crime if the police hadn't instigated one — that in itself should be a criminal act.

Thank You, Glenn Greenwald. We all need to question authority, and I love the title of the column, too.

What if innocent people had actually been killed, had their "brilliant" plan gone awry? Who would bear the blame?
How would it be spun, for spun it would be.
Or covered up.
Or shrugged off as necessary sacrifices for the "war on terror", with the appropriate speeches, testimonials, monuments. Fox coverage.

Aren't you all sick of this?

Hey Glenn Greenwald, check this out:

"Five years ago, Portland became the first city in the nation to withdraw from the FBI-led [Joint Terrorism] task force."

So Portland decided that it didn't want to invite the Gestapo to meddle in the city's affairs.

Gee, I wonder why the Gestapo chose Portland as the best place to fabricate its crime. And the timing fits right in with the Fox "news" War Against Christmas narrative.

And you now what? It might have worked!

"Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Police Chief Mike Reese have discussed for months whether Portland should rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency group that investigated Friday's failed plot to set off a bomb downtown."

Adams said. "If I believe there is a compelling public safety reason to change Portland's existing relationship with the JTTF, I will not hesitate to propose one to the City Council."

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/11/portland_mayor_police_chief_di.html

At least that knuckle-headed teenager can count on three squares, a roof over his head, and access to health care- that's better than can be said for millions of Americans who aren't foolish enough to fall into an FBI trap.

I still remember when the "drug war" was instituted, and the authorities began to train and hire people to "narc' on others. To me, the so-called "narcs" were much worse than the drug users, and others involved with drugs, and not just from a moral standpoint, but also from a legal framing of the issues. For the "narcs" it was OK to break the laws. And, all of these policies continue -- and are intensified in order to justify the war on terror as it spreads around the world, perpetrated by MIC, U.S. corporations, the U.S. government -- Republicans and Democrats as well, etc.

Greenwald is like a playwright creating a tragicomic farce of a confederacy of dunces suffering paranoid delusions. This can’t possibly be real, can it? Which act is this, and when is the curtain call?

i heard an official, i suppose it was someone with the fbi say on NPR this morning, "that at no time was the public in danger". That seemed to me complete admission that the whole affair was a setup.

Well TSA, you can back off now! It appears that the most recent "terrorists" are going back to the Tim McVeigh "home grown variety" vehicle acts.

Haven't the last 2 bizarro acts been with motor vehicles? The NY one and now Portland?
Vans and SUVs are now to be suspect, EVERYWHERE! Will the local police soon begin fondling the lines at Motor Vehicle registration?

Apparently too, it's such a bad world world economy that plane tickets are much too expensive for even the "terrorists." Let's ban that icky polluting fertilizer too, especially that one called 'Round Up." Who named that one, ICE?

The government has been known to infiltrate all kinds of groups, including environmental ones, and hoping to incite anarchy. Doesn't this affect your credibility?

Wouldn't it have been more positive, FBI to stop the kid once he was e-mailing to those he thought were terrorists? ( if that was even true) You all should see that video 'Scared Staright," and work in that area. Wouldn't the e-mails have been enough proof of some anti-American thinking? Was street theatre so necessary?

There have been several drug dealing cases where the FBI "evidence" was thrown out because they actually provided the house and all the drug making condiments. Wasn't that a lesson to you?

U.S. Government you are walking a very fine line, as many do not trust much of what you say. One poster has said that Portland told the FBI, thanks but no thanks, and now we have this? That is a very interesting conundrum to find; what is true anyway and who can we believe?

Oh, John Cleese, please make a world wide video called, 'Scared Smart," as maybe humor could permeate the global miasma. Oh, and FBI. please don't tell us that this is Bradley Manning's fault too! If he could do ALL of the wikileaks work and this, well, then there really is a Superman, and what do we need you for?

Another note:

The Islamic Center in Corvallis where he was a student and lived was torched last night.

Any bets on the perpetrators?

Like private prisons, terrorism is a growth industry. How long before spy agencies are completely privatized?

In criminal law, entrapment is constituted by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability. However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime. Government agents entrapped him if three conditions are fulfilled:

1. The idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime.
2. Government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime.
3. The person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him.
-Wikipedia

I once met someone who claimed to be a member of the Socialist Equality Party. She invited me to several events and I attended a few. She then tried to persuade me to join but insisted that I had to sign a document calling for among other things the overthrow of the government using force if necessary. I objected to signing it because I am not an advocate of violence. She argued that our nation was founded in a violent revolution and that force may be necessary. I said, “You may be right about that, but I am not signing any paper calling for violent overthrow of the government.” We parted ways to this day.

Later on, someone else claiming to be from their organization called me soliciting funds (material support?) in exchange for a book on Marxist philosophy, and also touched on the topic of revolution.

I still read their website, wsws.org, but I am not certain whether the people I dealt with were really SEP members or posers working to getting me to sign something I wouldn’t have dreamed of signing on my own. I always wondered if government agents were trying to entrap me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

We should be thankful that the FBI conducted this sting operation. If the CIA had done it, they would have used a real bomb.