Bob Graham Pursues Claims of Saudi Ties to Sept. 11 Attacks

Senator Bob Graham continues to ask questions about the 28 pages redacted from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. The Senator asserts that the FBI is covering up the connection between the attacks and the Saudi Arabian government.

Government Agents ‘Directly Involved’ In US Terror Plots

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial “sting” operations “were proposed or led by informants”, bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

The FBI Again Thwarts Its Own Terror Plot

The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade — much of it valid — but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.

Question About American Enemies

One reason Endless War is endless is because the US is so adept at creating and strengthening the Enemies who then need to be dispatched (and that’s independent of how American actions are the principal cause of the anti-US animosity which ensures the War continues).  Orwell famously highlighted the propaganda that “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia,” but does the US ever have any enemies that it did not at some point in the recent past fund, arm and/or cooperate with extensively?

Terrorists For The FBI

Mother Jones has published a major, multi-article feature looking at different aspects of the FBI’s recruitment and entrapment of “terrorists”. Check it out here.

How a Clueless "Terrorism Expert" Set Suspicion on Muslims

Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why. Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its legitimization in mainstream media, and the privilege granted to so-called experts is a common pattern. The danger of such speculation is that it adds little knowledge but causes real harm by spreading fear and loathing of Muslims, immigrants and other vulnerable and routinely demonized populations, and whether intentional or not, assigns collective guilt to them.

The Meaninglessness of "Terrorism"

For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.  The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates.

The "Visa Express" Program

Why make it easier for one of the leading countries that sponsors terrorism, including “al Qaeda,” which happens to be Bush friendly, to issue visas to get into the United States at a time when the OBL threat level was so high? It just seems suspiciously convenient that this program was implemented. History Commons: “Visa […]

Newburgh 4: Terrorist Takedown or FBI Fantasy?

James Cromitie’s lawyer, Vincent Briccetti, writes that once [FBI informant] Hussain “cynically” turned Cromitie from an angry and disaffected man into someone motivated by money and spiritual reward, “the government designed, funded, supplied, engineered and directed every detail of an … entirely fake terrorist plot.” David Williams IV tells his story to the Village Voice.

CIA Agent Davis Accused of Orchestrating Terrorism

Both Pakistani and Indian news organizations are claiming, based upon intelligence sources, that Davis was involved in not just intelligence work, but in orchestrating terrorist activity by both the Pakistani Taliban and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benezir Bhutto and the capture and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Multiple calls to members of both groups were found by police on some of the cell phones found on Davis and in his car when he was arrested in Lahore.