Why G-Men Convert to Spies: The Means, Motive & Opportunity (Part II)<\/p>\n
Robert Folsom | July 3, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n For more than two years, the Socionomics Institute has followed the growing global trend toward polarization<\/strong>. This volatile trend pits authoritarians against anti-authoritarians, and promises to become even more explosive as negative mood deepens.<\/p>\n The authoritarian side is clearly becoming more strident. In part one<\/a> of this article I showed that the FBI had shifted its focus from law enforcement to domestic spying, in an effort that spends several billion dollars annually and relies on a 15,000 domestic spies. Since 9\/11, this has led to the prosecution of about 500 alleged domestic terrorists.<\/p>\n Here are a few facts about those prosecutions.<\/p>\n That’s the overview, but the full story becomes clear only after a close look at the cases themselves. If you’ve ever closely followed and read about the highest-profile cases that the FBI announces publicly, you know where I’m going. Most of these cases begin when an informant hears or solicits a remark from a deeply disgruntled person, expressing some wish to act out their anger.<\/p>\n Then, having heard the “motive,” the informant and the FBI provide the means and the opportunity for that person to “act.”<\/strong> What follows is the stuff of a bad movie: As a recent Rolling Stone<\/em> article put it, “the alleged terrorist masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage.”<\/p>\n One especially notorious example was a 23-year old in Lodi, CA, who was convicted of training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan. The New York Times<\/em> reported that the “informant in the case, a convenience clerk who was paid more than $200,000 over four years in salary and expenses, could be heard on tape angrily ordering [the suspect] to seek terrorist training.” A retired FBI agent who reviewed the case described it this way: “It’s shameful, because I’ve never seen the department do this before.”<\/p>\n Similarly, the “Liberty City Seven” who allegedly planned to blow up the Sears Tower in 2006, the Hemant Kakhami case in 2005 prosecuted by then-U.S. attorney Chris Christie, and the very recent case of the three individuals loosely affiliated with the Cleveland “Occupy” movement who allegedly tried to blow a bridge: and, as many would content, each case involved informants who helped the FBI carry out “sting” operations that target people or groups whose defining attribute was hapless incompetence.<\/p>\n As negative social mood grows, cases like these will increasingly be seen as the government taking expressions of anti-authoritarianism and making them synonymous with terrorism.<\/p>\n This particular battleground is but one of many in the growing conflict between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians. I invite you to learn more by reading Alan Hall’s April-May 2010 study on the topic. You’ll find it in the all-access archives that are open via a subscription to The Socionomist<\/em>. Follow this link to begin<\/a>.<\/p>\n Andrea Dibben contributed research<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n