The Informants

Mother Jones
September/October Issue
—By Trevor Aaronson

The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

The bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies, some paid as much as $100,000 per case, many of them tasked with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States.

A MUST READ
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants

Islamic 'Pipeline to Extremism' Turns Out to Be Mostly FBI Set-Ups

The railroading of suspects into the justice system is reminiscent of tactics used by the FBI and prosecutors during the era of McCarthyism and COINTELPRO.

AlterNet.org
Foreign Policy in Focus / By Francis Njubi Nesbitt

December 7, 2010  |  

 

Photo Credit: cliff1066™

 

The recent rash of charges against Somali-Americans on “conspiracy to provide material support” to al-Shabaab, a Somali rebel group on the U.S. terrorism list, seems designed to send a clear message that any support for the militants will lead to criminal prosecution. It also demonstrates the ubiquitous presence of law enforcement in these communities.

The Obama administration must be careful, however, not to play into the hands of jihadists by overreacting or seeming to unfairly target Somali immigrants.

The recent arrest of Mohamed Osman Mahmoud, a 19-year-old Oregonian of Somali descent, is a case in point. Like other inept would-be terrorists who fell for recent FBI sting operations, Mahmoud was obviously incapable of pulling off any complex operation without the help of the FBI. His attempts to contact international jihadists had failed. FBI agents then contacted him, built the bomb, and provided the suspect with money to rent an apartment. His indictment states Mahmoud wanted to commit an act of terrorism since he was 15 years old. Although Mahmoud’s alleged views are deplorable, merely fantasizing about jihad is not a crime.


Radicalization

The media and policymakers argue that this is a process of “radicalization” that turns self-identified radicals into jihadists. The New York Police Department’s much-quoted 2006 analysis of radicalization, Radicalization of the West: The Homegrown Threat, argued that there are four identifiable stages (pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, jihadization) in the process of radicalization. Borrowing mainly from the European experience, the report ascribes “jihadist or jihadi-Salafi ideology” as what mainly “motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out autonomous jihad via acts of terrorism against their host countries.”

However, this assumption does not apply to all would-be militants. Some, like the Somali youth who joined al-Shabaab in 2008, may have been motivated by nationalism rather than anti-Americanism.
Analyzing the Mahmoud case in the context of the NYPD theory, the teen was only at the second stage -- self-identification. As the NYPD report indicates, there is no formula for determining who will move from “self-identification” to “jihadization.” Indeed, according to the report, both “indoctrination” and “jihadization” require close contact and support from spiritual and operational leaders. It seems, therefore, that the FBI became Mahmoud’s operational leader.

Another recent report, the American Security Project’s Enemies Among Us: Domestic Radicalization After September 11, focuses on the psychological motivations of individuals. The report uses adjectives such as ‘bewildering” and “unpredictable.” It argues that the only commonality identified is the eventual exposure of the so-called radicals to “radical Islam” at mosques, the Internet, or through friends and recruiters. “Alienation” is considered a major factor, but it is not clear why alienation turns to actual action or plans to act.

The Bipartisan Policy Center report entitled “Assessing the Terrorist Threat," released this year and timed to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, portrays the FBI as failing to understand that these incidents were not isolated. Rather, they indicate “an embryonic terrorist radicalization and recruitment structure had been established in the U.S. homeland.” The authors argued that the FBI, and Americans in general, seem to have been lulled into a sense of complacency by polls and statistics that showed that Americans Muslims as well-off and integrated.

The media and law enforcement officials continue to refer to these cases as “terrorism,” although so far there is no record of a person of Somali descent committing an act of violent terrorism in the United States. This amorphous definition creates the impression that Somalis, in general, are a threat. In March 2009, for instance, Deputy Director of Intelligence for the National Counterterrorism Center Andrew Liepman told a Senate hearing on al-Shabaab recruitment in the United States that some Somalis were susceptible to “criminal or extremist influence” because of their background.

According to Liepman, “Among Somali-Americans, the refugee experience of fleeing a war-torn country, combined with perceived discrimination, marginalization, and frustrated expectations, as well as local criminal, familial, and clan dynamics may heighten the susceptibility of some members of these communities to criminal or extremist influences.”

At this same congressional hearing, Philip Mudd, the FBI associate executive assistant director of the National Security Branch, said that the FBI believed there were deliberate efforts to recruit young people to fight for al-Shabaab. He stated the youths seemed to be motivated by nationalism, with the desire to defend their country from an Ethiopian invasion, rather than Islamist ideology, although the appeal was based on shared Islamic identity. Mudd also indicated that socio-economic conditions such as “violent youth crime and gang subcultures, and tensions over cultural integration may have played some role in the recruitment process.”

Do these activities indicate a growing alienation and anger among the 1.5 and second generation of Somali youth growing up in the United States? The vague accusations threaten to indict thousands of otherwise law-abiding Somalis who were outraged by the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006. The majority of parents and community leaders consider the United States a place of refuge from the chaos and violence that led to their flight from Somalia. They were as surprised and dismayed as other Americans when they learned that their children had joined the jihadist movement in Somalia.


Material Support

Providing “material support or resources” -- such as money, goods, personnel, and advice that can be used in terrorist activity -- to a group designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” is illegal and carries a 15-year sentence. Congress first criminalized material support in 1996 in order to deny terrorist groups with humanitarian offshoots the ability to raise funds in the United States. After 9/11, the 2001 Patriot Act broadened it to criminalize “expert advice or assistance.” In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the “material support” provision to include money and materials as well as “training” and “advice” -- even if for humanitarian purposes.

In August 2010, the Justice Department indicted 14 Somali-Americans on charges of providing “material support” to al-Shabaab and allegedly recruiting youth to join the militia. Twelve of the suspects from California, Minnesota, and Alabama were indicted for leaving the United States to join al-Shabaab. Six of the suspects are U.S. citizens. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that these indictments indicate the existence of a “deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters from cities across the United States.”

Three months later, prosecutors in San Diego charged five Somali-Americans with providing “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization. The group allegedly sent about $9,000 to al-Shabaab between 2007 and 2008, with some of the funds possibly transferred after the United States added al-Shabaab to its terrorist list in 2008. But in 2008, al-Shabaab was an insignificant threat to the international community, having emerged to resist an Ethiopian invasion supported by the Bush administration. The defendants included such community leaders as Mohamed Mohamed Mahmood, who has served as the imam of a Somali mosque for over a decade. Some of the defendants claimed that they were collecting funds for humanitarian projects in Somalia.

Also in November, prosecutors indicted a San Diego woman for allegedly sending $800 to two former Minnesota residents fighting in Somalia. The amounts sent by the defendants are minimal considering that al-Shabaab has other more lucrative funding sources including piracy in the Gulf of Aden and supporters across the oil-rich Arabian peninsula.

The “material support:” provision of the Patriot Act is already very controversial among human rights activist interested in Latin America and Asia where it has been used to deny refugee status to individuals forced to cooperate with rebel groups. This provision of law was also used to justify a recent raid on the homes of 14 peace activists (non-Somalis) who oppose U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and Israel/Palestine. The railroading of suspects into the justice system is reminiscent of tactics used by the FBI and prosecutors during the era of McCarthyism and COINTELPRO, both of which persecuted perceived “radicals” such as Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King, Jr.


Changing Directions

These so-called counter-radicalization policies focus on individuals rather than structures, symptoms rather than root causes. A more proactive domestic approach would include policies that prevent radicalization instead of focusing on arresting and prosecuting perpetrators. The aggressive and overt policing and prosecution of marginal cases may deter some, but has the strong potential to breed anti-Muslim and anti-American sentiments at home and abroad. The retaliatory arson attack on the mosque, where the Portland bombing suspect allegedly worshipped, is but one example.

There is an urgent need to change direction by establishing “pipelines to integration” to counter the efforts to establish a pipeline to extremism. Such pipelines could include tackling poverty and unemployment by expanding English as a Second Language classes, after-school programs, job training, and citizenship programs in Somali communities. These, in turn, would engage the youth in positive alternatives to the lure of extremism, gangs, drug dealing, and prostitution. In addition, integrating Somalis into the larger community, while respecting their cultural heritage and traditions, requires cultural competency training for law enforcement personnel, teachers, and other public officials.

Somali immigrant youth, often children of immigrants themselves, are in danger of losing connection with their ethnic heritage and values. This dilemma of being neither American nor Somali leads them to search for identity and belonging that some satisfy by turning to religion, following a radical preacher, or in rare cases joining a jihadist group. The overwhelming majority of Somalis, even those who oppose U.S. policies abroad, do not join jihadist groups. For those few who do, it is the exposure to particular personal and communicative networks that turn radical thought into violent action. Trying to identify and neutralize the few youth who attempt to join al-Shabaab does not even begin to deal with the problem.

---

Francis NJubi Nesbitt is a Foreign Policy in Focus contributor. He is the author of Race for Sanctions: African Americans against Apartheid, 1946-1994 and is currently completing a book on U.S. foreign policies in the Horn of Africa.

The FBI vs. Muslims - what went wrong

M. Salahuddin Khan

San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/08/EDGI1GNNDT.DTL#ixzz17jMndJ8O

 

The FBI is critically important to our country's war on terror - not in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but right here at home. It is tasked with finding the homegrown terrorists who mean us harm. I know a former regional director of the organization personally. He is utterly conscientious and concerned not only for America's security but also for the integrity of his venerable institution. These days, America's domestic security is very much wrapped up in its dealings with the American Muslim community. What is evident is that the Muslim community and the FBI need to develop a partnership and work toward a common goal.

But if developments in Irvine are to be believed, the FBI has been the one entrapped by its own bungled attempts to entrap supposedly "amenable" members of the Irvine Muslim community.
The affair, recently reported by the Washington Post, dates back to 2006. A convicted felon, Craig Monteilh, who was already an FBI informant, was persuaded (financially and otherwise) to spy on the local mosque's worshipers. Ultimately, Monteilh, who used the name Farouk al-Aziz, managed to get a couple of worshipers to agree to join him in bombing a mall. Unknown to al-Aziz, however, they went directly to the imam of the mosque, who reported al-Aziz to the authorities.

Stories of this nature will continue to surface from time to time amid the nationwide paranoid clamor for some kind of surveillance. They serve to illustrate the slippery slope upon which we appear to have placed ourselves. Moreover, they underscore the kind of unplanned success to which a nearly vanquished al Qaeda is still able to lay claim. Its members must surely be smirking as American society exposes hairline fractures that herald further erosions of liberty, which are antithetical to the country's fundamental values. Weakening these pillars of our democracy fulfills the most desired nihilist objectives of al Qaeda and its ilk.

A 2010 joint study by Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina identified the positive impact of America's mosques on tamping down tendencies for impressionable young Muslims to become radicalized. The Irvine story provides an affirming data point for this analysis and demonstrates a poverty of intelligence at the FBI. The agency failed to engage the Muslim community through its mosques to better leverage their leaders to continue the good work. Instead, not only is there a concerted effort at furtive infiltration but also a driving away of the very leaders that might have proved a valuable asset in the authorities' much-needed efforts to prevent homegrown terrorism.

What is doubly disturbing, if al-Aziz's accounts are to be believed, is that the FBI handler he worked with told him, "Islam is a threat to national security." If this is indeed more than an isolated sentiment, then it undermines government assertions of the importance of partnering with U.S. Muslim communities (who must be forgiven for responding cynically).

It would be tragic if the opportunity to work together to prevent radicalism is lost through such shortsighted attempts to entrap mosque members.

M. Salahuddin Khan is the author of "Sikander" ( www.sikanderbook.com).

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/08/EDGI1GNNDT.DTL#ixzz17jMTv09w

Wajahat Ali: Time for FBI to stop spying on American Muslims (The Guardian)

Time for FBI to stop spying on American Muslims
Wajahat Ali

The Guardian, 12/7/2010

The recent arrest of the potential Christmas tree bomber is reflective of the FBI's myopic strategy of using glitzy, expensive sting operations and dubious confidential informants to further erode Muslim American relations instead of concentrating on effective partnerships to combat radicalisation. The FBI is promoting the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old Somali-born teenager accused of attempting to detonate a car bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, as a triumph of effective law enforcement. Instead, the operation reeks of gratuitous self-adulation, requiring 6 months of time and precious expenditures to "uncover" a dummy terrorist plot wholly scripted and concocted by the FBI in the first place.

Although many argue that this was simply entrapment, evidence does indicate that Mohamud became increasingly radicalised and voluntarily continued with the FBI's fake terror plot. Regardless, CAIR attorney Zahra Billo told me, "The FBI seek out troubled people – nobody is arguing that some of these individuals aren't deeply troubled – and then enable and facilitate their aspirations. It is the FBI's job to stop operational terrorists. It is not the FBI's job to enable aspirational terrorists."
Attorney General Eric Holder recently suggested the use of such sting operations were "part of a forward-leaning way" in which law enforcement could proactively find those individuals committed to harming Americans, and a study revealed that 62% of terror prosecutions relied on confidential informants. But recent episodes suggest these tactics are neither "forward-looking", nor effective. Instead, they contribute towards a deepening, polarising wedge between law enforcement officials and some of their most important assets in the war against extremism: Muslim American communities.

Recently, a former FBI confidential informant, Craig Monteilh, humorously codenamed "Oracle", revealed he was paid $177,000 tax-free by the FBI to infiltrate and entrap a southern California Muslim community. The convicted forger, who went by "Farouk al-Aziz", was served with a restraining order by the mosque after he repeatedly pestered attendees with absurd conversations about engaging in violent jihad. Not to be deterred, the FBI heavily relied upon Oracle's superlative evidence, consisting of taped conversations, to indict an Afghan-American language instructor for allegedly making false statements regarding his ties to terrorists. Moreover, prosecutors alleged he was the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's security coordinator.

Surely, this bombshell discovery paved the way for a successful prosecution and conviction? Nearly a year and a half later, the judge agreed with the prosecutors to dismiss the case citing lack of an overseas witness and "evidentiary issues". The result is a widening distrust of the FBI, since "the community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic shura council of southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.

In the deeply flawed 2005 Lodi terror case, the FBI boasted of capturing two, alleged high-level terrorists, Hamid and Umer Hyatt – Pakistani father and son immigrants, who drove ice cream trucks for a living – based on the evidence of an unreliable Pakistani-American informant, codenamed "Wildkat". Indeed, his fact-finding lived up to his name, since he told the FBI he saw al-Qaida's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, at his Lodi, California mosque. Although the FBI [thankfully] conceded his reporting as false, they nonetheless proceeded to pay him nearly $300,000 to infiltrate the sleepy Muslim community and scour for terrorists. His taped conversations with Umer Hyatt reveal him badgering and allegedly conning Umer to make incriminating statements. Furthermore, videotapes of the Hyatts' absurd alleged "confessions", which former veteran FBI agent James Wedick Jr reviewed and concluded were a result of illegal questioning and coaxing, nonetheless convinced a jury to convict Hamid of providing material support to terrorists and making false statements to the FBI.

Aside from a miscarriage of justice, perhaps the most poisonous result of such belligerent law enforcement procedures, is a "chilling effect" on the Muslim American community, in which citizens legitimately feel fear and alienation from, and a deepening mistrust of, their government, as a result of such harassment. "Time and again, Muslims prove themselves to be good and smart when it comes to reporting potential crimes. The problem with this method of law enforcement is that strains the very relationships that are critical to effective community policing," says Billoo.

In a country where 60% of its citizens claim to not know a Muslim and 45% regard Islam as a religion that promotes violence, these self-aggrandising displays of "successful" prosecutions also contribute to the volatile climate of anti-Muslim bigotry and reactionary rhetoric. Recently, Glenn Beck delved into his hyperactive, paranoid imagination to produce the utterly baseless statistic that nearly 10% of Muslims are terrorists. Although many of Beck's audience will not question the veracity of his "facts", a comprehensive study undertaken by Duke University reveals that the number of radicalised Muslim-Americans remains very small. The study reports that "Muslim American communities have been active in preventing radicalisation… This is one reason that Muslim American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."

Thus, a Senegalese Muslim immigrant was the first to witness and report failed jihadist Faisal Shahzad's burning car in Times Square. A Muslim American community in Virginia went to local law enforcements and the FBI after discovering troubling videotapes left by five youths who allegedly went to Pakistan to commit jihad. A convert to Islam tipped off the FBI about the Christian militant group, the Hutarees, who were planning a terrorist attack on American soil. Even the Nigerian underwear bomber's own father warned British authorities that his son was radicalised and could potentially harm himself and others.

Undoubtedly, radicalisation and terrorism are real threats, which afflict all US citizens, regardless of race or religion. Perhaps the FBI should now cease treating most Muslim American citizens as potential suspects, whose privacy rights and civil liberties are now curtailed in clumsy ways – such as faulty GPS tracking devices sloppily attached on their cars. Perhaps the FBI needs to spend its considerable (taxpayer-paid-for) resources to re-engage them as partners and allies – instead of contributing to the heightened climate of fear and paranoia by employing shady informants with cheesy, comic-book codenames.

--

Wajahat Ali is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. He is a writer and attorney, whose work, The Domestic Crusaders is the first major play about Muslims living in a post 9/11 America. He is the Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com. His blog is here

The FBI's "ACORN" Moment

Adam Serwer

12/6/2010

The American Prospect

Having offered a very qualified defense of the FBI's use of informants in some terrorism cases last week, this story from The Washington Post, about an FBI informant named Craig Monteilh who was simply ordered to infiltrate a California mosque without an actual target, reads more like one of James O'Keefe's video schemes than a terrorism investigation:

In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.
A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.
"They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,'' Ayloush recalled. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist."
Ayloush reported the FBI's own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.

So this guy thinks he's in a car with a terrorist -- and he does the rational thing, which is pretend he's on the same page, because after all, the guy is a terrorist and might kill him -- and the FBI's response is to use this as evidence that he's willing to kill innocent people. Mentioning O'Keefe isn't a diss -- the parallels are striking -- ACORN workers filed police complaints after supposedly "playing along" on some of the videos. Niazi did what, ideally, the FBI would have wanted him to do -- and they tried to nail him anyway. Given that the government acknowledges a toxic relationship between the American Muslim community and law enforcement would be a disaster for terrorism investigations, one wonders why the FBI was busy trying to make a case against the kind of person who will drop a dime on someone they believed was a terrorist.  Prosecutors ultimately dismissed the case, but it's extraordinary that it even got as far as a courtroom.

This strikes me as a pretty clear indication of a systemic problem. According to Montieilh, "He was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation's largest." If that sounds like racial profiling, it is -- but the FBI's operations guide basically allows investigations into "concentrated ethnic communities" if "these locations will reasonably aid the analysis of potential threats and vulnerabilities, and, overall, assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis." That's basically a license to start snooping around on people for almost any reason. This case occurred years before the Obama administration took office, but Attorney General Eric Holder kept the expanded guidelines put in place by the last administration -- it's probably time to revisit them.

Tension grows between Muslims & FBI after informant infiltrates mosque

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:47 AM

IRVINE, CALIF. - Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.

"This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle," he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. "It's November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we're hot."

The undercover FBI informant - a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh - then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.

But the FBI's approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.

In the Irvine case, Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.

Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his "handlers" trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.

Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh's tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI - he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months - but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.

Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.

Citing Monteilh's actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.

"The community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.

"They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques," Syed said. "And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."

FBI and Justice Department officials say that the Monteilh case is not representative of their relations with the Muslim community and that they continue to work closely with Muslims in investigating violence and other hate crimes against them. Officials also credit U.S. Muslims with reporting critical information in a variety of counterterrorism cases.

The bureau "relies on the support, cooperation and trust of the communities it serves and protects," FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said, adding that agents conduct investigations "under well-defined investigative guidelines and the law, and in close coordination with the Department of Justice."

Officials said they have gone to great lengths to maintain good relationships with Muslims, including meetings hosted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Last week, FBI officials met to discuss law enforcement and other issues with predominantly Muslim Somali community members in San Diego and Minneapolis.

Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office, declined to comment on Monteilh, citing Monteilh's lawsuit. He said that in certain circumstances, if there is evidence of a crime, FBI agents may "conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque."

But he said the agency does not target people based on religion or ethnicity.

"I know there's a lot of suspicion that that's the focus, that we're looking at the mosques, monitoring who is coming and going. That's just not the case," he said.
The 'chameleon'

Monteilh's career as an informant began in 2003. Like many other informants, he was familiar with the inside of a prison cell. He had just finished a sentence for forging bank notes when local police officers he met at a gym asked him to infiltrate drug gangs and white supremacist groups for a federal-state task force.

"It was very exciting," Monteilh said in an interview with The Washington Post. "I had the ability to be a chameleon."

Monteilh, who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs 260 pounds, had worked as a prison chaplain before he was incarcerated. Married with three children, the Los Angeles native said that after he became an informant, an FBI agent on the task force sought him out. Law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about informants, said Monteilh was promoted from drug and bank robbery cases because his information was reliable and had led to convictions.

In early 2006, Monteilh said, he met with his FBI handler at a Starbucks.

"She asked if I wanted to infiltrate mosques," he said. At a follow-up session at a doughnut shop, he said, his new handler told him that "Islam is a threat to our national security."

Law enforcement sources said that the FBI trained Monteilh and that he aided an existing investigation. Monteilh, however, said he was ordered to randomly surveil and spy on Muslims to ferret out potential terrorists. Agents, he said, provided his cover: Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots. His code name was "Oracle."

Monteilh said he was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation's largest. He was told to target the Islamic Center of Irvine, he said, because it was near his home.

FBI tactics were already a sensitive issue at the Irvine mosque, a stucco, two-story building that draws as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers. With tensions rising between law enforcement and Muslims over allegations of FBI surveillance, J. Stephen Tidwell, then head of the FBI's Los Angeles office, spoke at the mosque in June 2006.

"If we're going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you," he said, according to a video of his speech. ". . . The FBI will tell you we're coming for the very reason that we don't want you to think you're being monitored. We would come only to learn."

Two months later, in August 2006, Monteilh arrived at the same mosque. He had called earlier and met with the imam. That Friday, he took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before hundreds of worshipers.

Worshipers said that in Monteilh's 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day and waiting in the parking lot before the 5 a.m. prayer. Monteilh said he was told by the FBI to take notes on who opened the mosque each day.

Worshipers said his Western clothes gave way to an Islamic robe, a white skullcap and sandals, an outfit Monteilh said was chosen by his handlers. As he grew closer to Muslims, he said, the FBI told him to date Muslim women if it gained him intelligence.

Worshipers noticed that Monteilh often left his keys around the mosque, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who speaks often at the mosque.

"It seemed strange to people," Ayloush said.

Inside the car remote on the bundle of keys was a microphone that recorded Muslims at the mosque, in their homes and at a local gym. Monteilh, who told people he was a fitness trainer, used the gym to seek out Muslim men.

"We started hearing that he was saying weird things," said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who knew Monteilh from the mosque and gym. "He would walk up to one of my friends and say, 'It's good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad."

Worshipers said Monteilh gravitated to Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan-born Arabic-language instructor who was a regular at Friday prayers.

In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.

A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.

"They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,'' Ayloush recalled. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist."

Ayloush reported the FBI's own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.

Still, Monteilh's mission was collapsing. Members of the mosque told its leaders that they were afraid of Monteilh and that he was "trying to entrap them into a mission," according to Asim Khan, the former mosque president. The mosque went to Orange County Superior Court in June 2007 and obtained a restraining order against Monteilh, court records show.

Soon afterward, Monteilh said FBI agents "told me they wanted to cut me loose." After he vowed to go public, he said, he met with three agents at the Anaheim Hilton, where an FBI supervisor threatened him with arrest.

"She said, 'If you reveal your informant status to the media, it will destroy the Muslim community's relationship with the FBI forever." Monteilh said.

The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh's allegation.

At a subsequent meeting, Monteilh said, he signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $25,000 in cash. An FBI letter to Monteilh's attorney, on file in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, says Monteilh signed the non-disclosure agreement in October 2007.

But Monteilh was arrested in December 2007 on a grand-theft charge and ended up back in jail for 16 months. In January, he sued the FBI, alleging that the bureau and Irvine police conspired to have him arrested, then allowed his informant status to become known in prison, where he was stabbed.

The FBI and police have denied the allegations, and the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. But the judge allowed Monteilh to file an amended complaint, with similar allegations, in September. The case is pending.
A case unravels

In the meantime, the case against Niazi unfolded. He was indicted in February 2009 by a federal grand jury on charges of lying about his ties to terrorists on immigration documents. In court, prosecutors said that jihadist materials were found on Niazi's computer and that he had wired money to an alleged al-Qaeda financier. Prosecutors said he is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's security coordinator. Much of the evidence was FBI testimony about Niazi's recorded conversations with an FBI informant, who sources say was Monteilh.

"Frankly, there is no amount of bail or equity in a home that can protect the citizens of this community" from Niazi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deirdre Eliot said in arguing for his detention.

Within days of Niazi's indictment, Monteilh revealed his informant status in a series of interviews with Los Angeles area media.

"I think the FBI treated me with the utmost treachery," he said in the interview with The Post.

In subsequent months, Monteilh sought out Niazi's attorneys and told them he was ordered to entrap their client.

A year and a half later, on Sept. 30, prosecutors summarily moved to dismiss the case against Niazi, and a judge agreed. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles cited the lack of an overseas witness and "evidentiary issues." Sources familiar with the decision said Monteilh's role - and his potential testimony for the defense - was also a factor.

Niazi declined to comment. His attorney Chase Scolnick said he is "very pleased with the outcome. It is a just result."

In recent weeks, Monteilh said, he has been approaching Muslims at a local gym and apologizing for "disrespecting their community and religion." Monteilh, who is now unemployed, says he regrets his role in the Niazi case and was glad when the charges were dropped.

On a recent Friday, more than 200 men sat on the carpet for prayers inside the Irvine mosque, most of them in khakis or jeans. During the sermon, the imam offered some advice.

"If an FBI agent comes in and says, 'You're under arrest,'â??" he told the crowd, they should pray to Allah - and then call a lawyer.

As worshipers milled around outside, they said they support the FBI's role in fighting terrorism but feel betrayed by the infiltration of their sacred place.

"The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,'' said Kurdi, the Loyola student. "They can't have it both ways."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Mosque shuns FBI informant

Aljazeera
12/5/2010

An FBI informant who attempted to infiltrate an Islamic community centre in the quiet Californian town of Irvine scared Muslim worshippers so much with his talk of violent jihad that they took out order against him, the Washington Post reported.

The FBI claims its use of such informants has prevented more attacks since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Yet its officials have said that they do not target Muslims - an argument that has long been taken with a dose of scepticism by some commentators.
 
The latest case follows revelations that a man who tried to bomb a Christmas ceremony in Portland, Oregon, did so not only whilst under FBI surveillance, but had been provided with fake explosives by its undercover agents.

Making matters worse for the agency, Craig Monteilh, the convicted fraudster whom the FBI sent into the mosque to spy on its members, has gone public and is suing the investigative agency.

The two cases are reviving criticisms over the government agency's apparent surveillance of Muslims in the US.

Southern Californian Muslim community leaders have expressed outrage over the FBI's methods, saying it undermines any efforts to build trust.

"The community feels betrayed," Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, told the Post.

"They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques," Syed was quoted as saying. "And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."

Trial by Entrapment (Adam Serwer - The American Prospect)

A new case in Oregon reignites concerns over how the government catches terrorists.
Adam Serwer | December 3, 2010 | The American Prospect

A plot to bomb the D.C. subway system. An attack on American troops at Fort Dix, New Jersey. An attempt to kill Americans holding a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.

All of these potential terrorist attacks sound frightening, but not a single one was ever in danger of actually happening. They were all part of a series of elaborate sting operations orchestrated by the government in its attempt to be proactive about preventing domestic terrorism. It didn't want to wait for body counts on the evening news.

"One of the things that the Department of Justice decided to do in the wake of 9/11 was to focus on prevention and preemption," explains Karen Greenberg of the New York University Center on Law and Security. "If you focus on prevention or preemption, what you're talking about is informant or undercover cases."

The most recent sting, involving an FBI-facilitated plot by a 19-year-old Somali American named Mohamed Osman Mohamud to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, has reignited concerns in the Muslim community about whether these FBI operations, which involve scary-sounding plots that make for sensational headlines, amount to entrapment and strain the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community. Muslim community leaders say they are torn between their desire to engage with law enforcement and offer themselves as the first line of defense against terrorism and their concern that the FBI's sting operations sometimes amount to fabricating terrorism threats that wouldn't otherwise exist.

While the government has had a stunning success rate in trying terrorism-related cases in civilian courts, only 1 percent of which end in acquittal, the propriety of the FBI's sting methods will be tested by Mohamud's lawyers, who have accused the government of entrapment. The Mohamud case, like almost one-third of the domestic terrorism cases involving Islamic extremism, relied in part on the vigilance of a Muslim informant -- reportedly Mohamud's own father, who told the authorities he was concerned about his son being radicalized. Federal agents later posed as terrorist recruiters to Mohamud who was ultimately arrested for allegedly planning a bombing alongside his "accomplices." Shortly after the indictment was announced, someone set fire to the Oregon mosque Mohamud was known to attend.

"When the FBI engages in tactics that involve fabricating fake terrorist attacks, it undermines that faith in the community," says Hussam Ayloush, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' California branch, who worries that the stings give the false impression of an American Muslim community eager to harbor terrorists. "We have a fake, FBI-manufactured terrorist incident resulting in a real terrorist attack on the Portland mosque."

Other community leaders are reluctant to use the word "entrapment" to describe the FBI's operations but insist that the cases may sometimes blur a line between radicalization and actual criminal behavior. What is needed, they say, is for the government to partner with the Muslim community in order to intervene earlier in the radicalization process. "We want to see a division of labor -- that law enforcement focuses on criminal activity, and when it comes to ideas, thoughts, and behaviors, you allow experts in the community to deal with that issue," says Haris Tarin, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "If that exists, you won't have this conversation about entrapment."

This already happens on an ad-hoc basis, according to Mohamed Elibiary of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, who has worked with government officials in the past to intervene in cases involving young Muslims in danger of being radicalized. "The Joint Terrorism Task Force has community-based partners, who are vetted and whom they are comfortable bringing into the loop if the subject is 'fixable,'" Elibiary says. But he agrees that there needs to be a formal process instituted on a national level. "As long the FBI does these cases alone in the community, this is the kind of reaction you're going to get."

South Texas College of Law professor Dru Stevenson says the stings are attractive for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they sow paranoia among terrorist recruiting networks. He adds that an entrapment defense in these cases is difficult to mount because of the standards in the federal court system.

"The defendant has to show that he was not predisposed; it is not at all enough to show but for the inducement he would not have committed the crime," Stevenson says. "Any evidence that you were already interested in doing this type of thing is probably going to be fatal to your entrapment defense." Federal agents know that -- which is why at some point during the investigation, they gauge the target's commitment. According to the arrest warrant in the Mohamud case, agents reminded Mohamud of the potential casualties and asked if he were "serious." Mohamud also allegedly tried to contact alleged terrorist operatives abroad in order to seek training, prior to federal agents becoming involved.

Alyoush concedes that "from a technical legal perspective," many of these cases might not amount to entrapment. "However," he says, "there is something immoral, or at least questionable, about the FBI luring confused, socially alienated, and sometimes unstable individuals into becoming terrorists."

These cases also trouble some civil libertarians, who under other circumstances would be more forcefully questioning the fairness of the stings. "Obviously there are some imperfections in the federal court system, but this is a triage situation," says one prominent civil-libertarian attorney. "The emergency is dealing with issues like Guantánamo, military commissions, and indefinite detention without trial."

Those concerned that the stings cross a line are worried it's already too late, since no one in any of these cases has ever successfully argued entrapment. "Have we already accepted the notion that if it's terrorism, forget it on 'entrapment,' because if you would do this under any circumstances, then you're going to suffer the penalty?" Greenberg says. "In terms of the record, that's the case."

Adam Serwer is a writing fellow at The American Prospect and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also blogs at Jack and Jill Politics and has written for The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Root, and the Daily News.

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

By Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
11/28/2010



The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who -- with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents -- allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon.  Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it.  Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.

What's missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism.  All of the information about this episode -- all of it -- comes exclusively from an FBI affidavit filed in connection with a Criminal Complaint against Mohamud.  As shocking and upsetting as this may be to some, FBI claims are sometimes one-sided, unreliable and even untrue, especially when such claims -- as here -- are uncorroborated and unexamined.  That's why we have what we call "trials" before assuming guilt or even before believing that we know what happened:  because the government doesn't always tell the complete truth, because they often skew reality, because things often look much different once the accused is permitted to present his own facts and subject the government's claims to scrutiny.  The FBI affidavit -- as well as whatever its agents are whispering into the ears of reporters -- contains only those facts the FBI chose to include, but omits the ones it chose to exclude.  And even the "facts" that are included are merely assertions at this point and thus may not be facts at all.

It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal intent on carrying out a serious Terrorist plot that would have killed many innocent people, in which case they deserve praise.  Court-approved surveillance and use of undercover agents to infiltrate terrorist plots are legitimate tactics when used in accordance with the law.

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI -- as they've done many times in the past -- found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a "Terrorist plot" which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI's own concoction.  Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts -- and an uncritical media amplifies -- its "success" to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government's vast surveillance powers -- current and future new ones -- are necessary.

There are numerous claims here that merit further scrutiny and questioning.  First, the FBI was monitoring the email communications of this American citizen on U.S. soil for months (at least) with what appears to be the flimsiest basis: namely, that he was in email communication with someone in Northwest Pakistan, "an area known to harbor terrorists" (para. 5 of the FBI Affidavit).  Is that enough to obtain court approval to eavesdrop on someone's calls and emails?  I'm glad the FBI is only eavesdropping with court approval, if that's true, but certainly more should be required for judicial authorization than that.  Communicating with someone in Northwest Pakistan is hardly reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Second, in order not to be found to have entrapped someone into committing a crime, law enforcement agents want to be able to prove that, in the 1992 words of the Supreme Court, the accused was "was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested."  To prove that, undercover agents are often careful to stress that the accused has multiple choices, and they then induce him into choosing with his own volition to commit the crime.  In this case, that was achieved by the undercover FBI agent's allegedly advising Mohamud that there were at least five ways he could serve the cause of Islam (including by praying, studying engineering, raising funds to send overseas, or becoming "operational"), and Mohamud replied he wanted to "be operational" by using exploding a bomb (para. 35-37).

But strangely, while all other conversations with Mohamud which the FBI summarizes were (according to the affidavit) recorded by numerous recording devices, this conversation -- the crucial one for negating Mohamud's entrapment defense -- was not.  That's because, according to the FBI, the undercover agent "was equipped with audio equipment to record the meeting.  However, due to technical problems, the meeting was not recorded" (para. 37).

Thus, we have only the FBI's word, and only its version, for what was said during this crucial -- potentially dispositive -- conversation.  Also strangely:  the original New York Times article on this story described this conversation at some length and reported the fact that "that meeting was not recorded due to a technical difficulty," but the final version omitted that, instead simply repeating the FBI's story as though it were fact:  "undercover agents in Mr. Mohamud’s case offered him several nonfatal ways to serve his cause, including mere prayer. But he told the agents he wanted to be 'operational,' and perhaps execute a car bombing."

Third, there are ample facts that call into question whether Mohamud's actions were driven by the FBI's manipulation and pressure rather than his own predisposition to commit a crime.  In June, he attempted to fly to Alaska in order to work on a fishing job he obtained through a friend, but he was on the Government's no-fly list.  That caused the FBI to question him at the airport and then bar him from flying to Alaska, and thus prevented him from earning income with this job (para. 25).

Having prevented him from working, the money the FBI then pumped him with -- including almost $3,000 in cash for him to rent his own apartment (para. 61) -- surely helped make him receptive to their suggestions and influence.  And every other step taken to perpetrate this plot -- from planning its placement to assembling the materials to constructing the bomb -- was all done at the FBI's behest and with its indispensable support and direction.

It's impossible to conceive of Mohamud having achieved anything on his own.  Before being ensnared by the FBI, the only tangible action he had taken was to write three articles on "fitness and jihad" for the online magazine Jihad Recollections.  At least based on what is known, he had no history of violence, no apparent criminal record, had never been to a training camp in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else, and -- before meeting the FBI -- had never taken a single step toward harming anyone.  Does that sound like some menacing sleeper Terrorist to you?

Finally, there is, as usual, no discussion whatsoever in media accounts of motive.  There are several statements attributed to Mohamud by the Affidavit that should be repellent to any decent person, including complete apathy -- even delight -- at the prospect that this bomb would kill innocent people, including children.  What would drive a 19-year-old American citizen -- living in the U.S. since the age of 3 -- to that level of sociopathic indifference?   He explained it himself in several passages quoted by the FBI, and -- if it weren't for the virtual media blackout of this issue -- this line of reasoning would be extremely familiar to Americans by now (para. 45):

Undercover FBI Agent:  You know there's gonna be a lot of children there?

Mohamud:  Yeah, I know, that's what I'm looking for.

Undercover FBI Agent:  For kids?

Mohamud:  No, just for, in general a huge mass that will, like for them you know to be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.  And then for later to be saying, this was them for you to refrain from killing our children, women . . . . so when they hear all these families were killed in such a city, they'll say you know what your actions, you know they will stop, you know.  And it's not fair that they should do that to people and not feeling it.

And here's what he allegedly said in a video he made shortly before he thought he would be detonating the bomb (para. 80):

We hear the same exact thing over and over and over from accused Terrorists -- that they are attempting to carry out plots in retaliation for past and ongoing American violence against Muslim civilians and to deter such future acts.  Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture:  that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world -- invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries -- torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death  -- and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims -- an amazingly small percentage -- harbor anger and vengeance toward them and want to return the violence.   And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse:  that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism -- rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

UPDATE:  A very similar thing happened last month when the FBI announced that it had arrested someone who was planning to bomb the DC Metro system when, in reality, "the only plotting he did was in response to instructions from federal agents he thought were accomplices."  That concocted FBI plot then led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers' bags.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, the mosque sometimes attended by Mohamud was victimized today by arson.  So the FBI did not stop any actual Terrorist plots, but they may have helped inspire one.

Terror Cases Strain Ties With Some Who Can Help

By WILLIAM YARDLEY and JESSE McKINLEY
The New York Times
12/1/2010

PORTLAND, Ore. — The arrest in a plot to bomb a popular Christmas tree-lighting ceremony here has renewed focus on the crucial but often fragile relationship that many Muslim communities have with federal law enforcement agencies.

Many Muslim leaders nationwide say they are committed to working with the authorities to fight terrorist threats and applauded the work in Portland. But some say cases like the one in Oregon, in which undercover agents said they helped a teenager plan the attack, risk undermining the trust of Muslim communities that federal agents say is essential to doing their jobs.

The failed Portland plot is one of several recent cases, from California to Washington, D.C., in which undercover agents helped suspects pursue terrorist plans. Some Muslims say the government appears to be enabling and even sensationalizing threats that can lead to backlashes against Muslim communities.

On Sunday, a mosque in Corvallis, Ore., was firebombed. It had been attended by the Portland suspect, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized American citizen from Somalia.

“Unlike the so-called plot at Pioneer Square, that was a real terrorist attack, against a house of worship,” said a man who attends the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, another mosque where Mr. Mohamud worshiped.

“What the F.B.I. did can be seen in Corvallis,” the man said, one of several people who spoke with a reporter but refused to give their names out of concern that they would bring negative attention to the mosque.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. defended the Oregon investigation and others this week as part of what he called a “forward-leaning way” that law enforcement is “trying to find people who are bound and determined to harm Americans and American interests around the world.”


Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said law enforcement was going too far.


“ ‘Forward-leaning’ seems to be basically if someone has not crossed the bridge, we will push them forward, we will tip them over the edge,” he said. “And that is not how a government should be treating its citizens.”


“My worry would be that the F.B.I. is pushing to a point where it becomes difficult to trust the F.B.I.,” said Mr. Ayloush, who added that he was a graduate of an F.B.I. Citizens’ Academy. “When people start doubting, then they might feel like, ‘Well, maybe it might make things worse if I call,’ and we don’t want this.”

Amid the tension, Muslim leaders say their communities are doing more than ever to help in investigations — a fact they say is overlooked by many Americans.

A November report by the Muslim Public Affairs Council said Muslim communities had helped law enforcement agencies foil almost 4 of every 10 Qaeda-related terrorism plots since the Sept. 11 attacks. The report is based on information the group draws from news media accounts, affidavits, academic studies and other sources.

“There is an enormous countertrend that has emerged within the last few years,” said Alejandro Beutel, the author of the report. “People are saying: ‘This is a serious issue, and we are dealing with this. We are not tolerating this.’ ”

Even as federal law enforcement officials have been criticized, they say their investigations have been strengthened by their outreach efforts and good relations with Muslims, including here in Oregon.

Leaders of mosques, including those attended by Mr. Mohamud, regularly attend meetings with law enforcement officials. And Mr. Mohamud’s father, Osman Barre, provided information before his son’s arrest about his increasing radicalization, officials have said.

Dwight C. Holton, the United States attorney for Oregon, said he would travel to Washington next week to meet with Mr. Holder to discuss Oregon’s participation in a new Justice Department program called Enhanced Muslim Community Outreach.

“The minute I heard about this program, I signed Oregon up,” Mr. Holton said, adding that the meeting was scheduled before Mr. Mohamud’s arrest. “It’s so important to do this outreach, and this program will allow us to do even more work, to do more face-to-face meetings with not just the community leaders but with members of the community.”

The events in Oregon have put many Muslims in unexpected and uncomfortable roles.

Shahriar Ahmed is a jovial 55-year-old engineer and a self-described member of a group of “nerdy folks” with postgraduate degrees living in suburban Portland. He is also the president of his local mosque, Bilal Masjid, with skills that he said leaned more toward fund-raising than faith-building.

“I’m not a theologian by trade,” said Mr. Ahmed, who knows only enough Arabic to get through his prayers. “I’m just good at begging for money.”

But with the arrest of Mr. Mohamud and then the fire in Corvallis, Mr. Ahmed has been fielding questions on topics ranging from Islam in general to how the aftermath could affect worshipers at his mosque. For him, the broader questions are not necessarily the most pressing.

“My 11-year-old son started crying in the back of the car,” Mr. Ahmed said, recalling a conversation about the fire. “I could not make him stop. He was saying: ‘Is our mosque going to get burned? Is our mosque going to get burned?’ ”

Colin Miner contributed reporting from Portland, Ore.; Isolde Raftery from Eugene, Ore.; and Malia Wollan from San Francisco.

In U.S. Sting Operations, Questions of Entrapment (NY Times)

By ERIC SCHMITT and CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The arrest on Friday of a Somali-born teenager who is accused of trying to detonate a car bomb at a crowded Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore., has again thrown a spotlight on the government’s use of sting operations to capture terrorism suspects.

Some defense lawyers and civil rights advocates said the government’s tactics, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, have raised questions about the possible entrapment of people who pose no real danger but are enticed into pretend plots at the government’s urging.

But law enforcement officials said on Monday that agents and prosecutors had carefully planned the tactics used in the undercover operation that led to the arrest of the Somali-born teenager, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen. They said that Mr. Mohamud was given several opportunities to vent his anger in ways that would not be deadly, but that he refused each time.

“I am confident that there is no entrapment here, and no entrapment claim will be found to be successful,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. “There were, as I said, a number of opportunities that the subject in this matter, the defendant in this matter, was given to retreat, to take a different path. He chose at every step to continue.”

Mr. Holder called the sting operation, in which Mr. Mohamud was under the scrutiny of federal agents for nearly six months, “part of a forward-leaning way in which the Justice Department, the F.B.I., our law enforcement partners at the state and local level are trying to find people who are bound and determined to harm Americans and American interests around the world.”

A study this year by the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which tracks terrorism cases, found that of 156 prosecutions in what it identified as the most significant 50 cases since 2001, informers were relied on in 97 of them, or 62 percent. The entrapment defense has often been raised, but as of September, it had never been successful in producing an acquittal in a post-Sept. 11 terrorism trial, the study found.

The Portland case resembles several others in which American residents, inspired by militant Web sites, have tried to carry out attacks in the name of the militant Islamic movement only to be captured in a sting operation, with undercover F.B.I. agents or informers playing the role of terrorists and, as in this case, supplying a fake bomb.

In September 2009, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, was arrested and charged with placing a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper. In October, Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the Washington Metro after meeting with undercover agents and discussing his plans and surveillance activities, the authorities said.

Some Muslim leaders in Oregon questioned how the sting operation there was carried out.

Imtiaz Khan, the president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mr. Mohamud worshiped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.

“They’re saying, ‘Why allow it to get to this public stunt? To put the community on edge?’ ” Mr. Khan said.

Mr. Khan said he and other Muslim leaders met regularly with the F.B.I. and other federal officials. In May, he was among a group of Muslim leaders in the Portland area who issued a statement condemning an attempted bombing in Times Square and thanking law enforcement for its “outstanding work” in the case.

Jesse Day, a spokesman for the mosque and Islamic center, said the circumstances of Mr. Mohamud’s arrest had stirred “some distrust, a little bit, in the tactics” of law enforcement.

The government’s 36-page affidavit filed in the Oregon case lays out a crucial conversation between Mr. Mohamud and an F.B.I. informer at their first meeting, on July 30, 2010. According to the affidavit, the informer suggested five ways that Mr. Mohamud could help the cause of Islam, some of which were peaceful, like proselytizing, and some of which were violent and illegal.

Mr. Mohamud, the affidavit said, immediately picked a violent crime: becoming “operational,” by which he said he meant putting together a car bomb. The informer then offered to put Mr. Mohamud in touch with an explosives expert, setting off the chain of events that led to his eventual arrest.

Defense lawyers may have an opportunity to challenge the government’s account of that conversation. According to the affidavit, while most of the conversations between the informer and Mr. Mohamud were recorded, that one was not “due to technical problems.”

Still, in subsequent recorded conversations, the affidavit said, Mr. Mohamud picked the target, said he had wanted to commit such an attack for several years, and repeatedly demurred when told he could walk away if he did not have it “in his heart” to go through with it.

The question of how far the police may go in inducing the subject of an investigation to commit a crime turns on whether the facts show that the defendant was already predisposed to carry out a crime should the occasion arise.

Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia University professor of criminal law and former federal prosecutor, said it was largely up to juries to decide whether to accept a defense of entrapment, which in practice is often hard to win. “These are jury questions that by and large go against the defendant, although every case is different,” Mr. Richman said.

The Justice Department also has rules on how far investigators may go in facilitating a subject’s criminal activity. The F.B.I.’s domestic operations guide, which was overhauled in 2008, notes that courts have found it to be “legally objectionable” when government agents lead a political or religious group “into criminal activity that otherwise probably would not have occurred.”

The guide also has a long section of rules on what undercover agents and confidential informers can and cannot do, but it is almost entirely redacted from a publicly released version of the document.

F.B.I. officials have said the bureau requires legal reviews and higher-level approval of activities involving undercover agents and confidential informers to avoid putting convictions at risk with entrapment accusations. But they have made clear that once someone voices an intent to commit a violent act, undercover agents and informers are allowed to respond by offering to help the subject of the investigation obtain weapons.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a would-be terrorist who has expressed his desire to launch an attack, or a would-be drug dealer who has indicated an interest in moving a kilo of crack cocaine,” said Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s national security division. “So long as that person has expressed an interest in committing a crime, it’s appropriate for the government to respond by providing the purported means of carrying out that crime so as to make a criminal case against him.”

William Yardley contributed reporting from Portland, Ore., and Scott Shane from Washington.

Was FBI grooming Portland suspect for terror?

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

PORTLAND — FBI undercover operatives helped fund Mohamed Osman Mohamud's would-be terrorism plot to detonate a car bomb during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on Friday at a crowded public square in the heart of the city.

Operatives helped him find components needed to create a bomb and schooled the 19-year-old Somali-born man in how to set off the explosives.

The sting operation enabled the FBI to amass a formidable amount of details about what a grand-jury indictment Monday charged was Mohamud's attempt to use a car bomb as a "weapon of mass destruction."

But Mohamud's attorneys and some local Muslims are raising questions about whether the operatives who posed as co-conspirators played their role too well.

Defense attorney Steve Sady questioned whether the operatives were "basically grooming" Mohamud to try to commit a terrorist attack.

"The information released by the government raises serious concerns about the government manufacturing a crime," according to a statement released by Sady and Steven Wax, public defenders assigned to represent Mohamud.

Mohamud, through his attorneys, pleaded not guilty on Monday.

Law-enforcement officials say that they gave Mohamud plenty of opportunities to opt out of the bomb plan and that he was committed to carrying out the crime at the time, place and location of his choosing.

"I am confident there is no entrapment here," Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday in Washington, D.C. "There were ... a number of opportunities ... that the defendant in this matter was given to retreat, to take a different path. He chose at every step to continue."

The handling of the case by the Justice Department and FBI won praise from some in Portland, including Mayor Sam Adams, who as a city commissioner earlier in his career voted in favor of removing the city from the joint terrorism task force formed by the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies.

"I think this was a really smart response with the federal, state and local law enforcement that resulted in preventing someone with what looks like clear criminal intent to do harm, to do harm with a weapon of mass destruction," Adams told KOIN-TV in Portland.

Still, Imtiaz Khan, president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mohamud worshipped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.

"They're saying, 'Why allow it to get to this public stunt? To put the community on edge?' " Khan told The New York Times.

The case is the latest in a series of sting operations that have involved FBI undercover operatives or informants posing as terrorists to help make a case against would-be bombers.

One of those cases involved four men who sought to blow up two Jewish synagogues in New York with the help of an FBI informant who provided fake bombs. Despite claims of entrapment, they were convicted in October. Also this year, a Jordanian man who sought to use a decoy bomb provided by the FBI to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper pleaded guilty to an attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and received a sentence of up to 30 years.

The Portland sting ended in high drama Friday when Mohamud allegedly made a cellphone call that was supposed to detonate the bomb at the tree-lighting ceremony, where 10,000 people had gathered.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Portland quickly released a 36-page affidavit detailing the sting operation.

But defense attorneys attacked the prosecutor's office for turning the affidavit into a news release to promote the case, and also questioned why the Justice Department waited so long to make an arrest. By busting Mohamud during his attempt to detonate the mock bomb, rather than in an earlier phase of the operation, the Justice Department may have compromised Mohamud's ability to receive a fair trial, Wax said.

Mohamud came to Oregon as a young boy from Somalia. He thought of Portland as an area overlooked by law-enforcement officials. "They don't see it as a place where anything will happen," he told an FBI undercover operative, the affidavit says.

Yet, in the nine years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Portland has been the scene of significant terrorism investigations.

One investigation, which included surveillance of a Portland mosque, resulted in the 2002 indictment of a group of men, including a former intern from the mayor's office, for conspiracy to levy war against the United States and other charges. A high-profile case in 2004 involved a bungled fingerprint analysis that ended up with a Portland-area Muslim, Brandon Mayfield, charged with involvement in a bombing case in Madrid, Spain. Those charges were withdrawn, the FBI apologized and Mayfield settled the case for $2 million.

The FBI investigations have spurred interfaith outreach efforts by Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders to promote understanding and tolerance.

"These issues brought a lot of people to the forefront to try to understand the Muslim community," said Iman Mikal Shabazz, director of the Oregon Islamic Chaplains Organization.

Shabazz said those efforts will continue. But he noted that Mohamud's arrest and a Sunday arson at a Corvallis mosque where Mohamud sometimes worshipped have created fresh concerns among many area Muslims.

"There is a heightened sense of awareness," Shabazz said. "The biggest concern is for children who need to go to school and women who need to go shopping."

Information from The New York Times is included in this report. Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com. Times researcher David Turim contributed to this report.

Residents condemn bomb plot, criticize FBI (MSNBC/AP)

By TIM FOUGHT
The Associated Press
updated 11/29/2010
MSNBC.com

PORTLAND, Oregon — Some residents of this famously liberal city are unnerved, not only by a plot to bomb an annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony last week but also by the police tactics in the case.

They questioned whether federal agents crossed the line by training 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed O. Mohamud to blow up a bomb, giving him $3,000 cash to rent an apartment and providing him with a fake bomb.

The FBI affidavit "was a picture painted to make the suspect sound like a dangerous terrorist," said Portland photographer Rich Burroughs. "I don't think it's clear at all that this person would have ever had access to even a fake bomb if not for the FBI."

Mohamud's defense lawyer said in court on Monday that agents groomed his client and timed his arrest for publicity's sake.

Public defender Stephen Sady focused on the FBI's failed attempt to record a first conversation between Mohamud and an FBI undercover operative. "In the cases involving potential entrapment, it's the initial meeting that matters," Sady said.

Attorney General Eric Holder defended the agents on Monday, rejecting entrapment accusations.

Once the undercover operation began, Mohamud, who officials said had no formal ties to foreign terror groups, "chose at every step to continue" with the bombing plot, Holder said.

To be sure, many Portlanders were unsettled that a terror plot could unfold in their backyard — in Pioneer Courthouse Square, as thousands cheered the tree lighting — and not in much higher-profile cities such as New York or Los Angeles.

At a time when people are focused on body scans and intrusive pat-downs to prevent terrorist attacks, some Portlanders wondered if the FBI had gone too far and unnecessarily scared residents.

"What is distressing about the incident is not so much that the FBI arrested or otherwise intervened," said resident Joe Clement, 24, "but that the FBI used him to create a scenario that scared a lot of people."

It is not unusual in Portland for actions by federal agents to be met with skepticism and criticism.

Portland was the first city in the nation to pull its officers from the FBI's terrorism task force in 2005. The move came after the FBI wrongfully arrested a Portland attorney as a suspect in the 2004 Madrid train bombings — a mistake that prompted an FBI apology.

"I don't think there will be much serious debate as to whether or not (Mohamud) should have been a person worth looking into," said resident Christopher Frankonis, 41. "Portland being Portland, and Portland being liberal, it will understand and accept" it.

But Portland being what it is, residents will "still want answers to questions about how it all went down," he said.

The Portland plot was reminiscent of other recent arrests. A 34-year-old Pakistani-American was accused of targeting the Washington, D.C., subway system in October and authorities say a 19-year-old Jordanian man tried to bring down a Dallas building with a truck bomb in Sept. 2009. In both cases, federal agents had set up elaborate ruses to ensnare the men.

In Mohamud's case, the FBI set up a sting operation to investigate him after receiving a tip.

Two undercover federal agents led Mohamud to believe he could detonate a bomb with a cell phone, helped him choose an apartment in Portland and instructed him to buy the equipment necessary to trigger the fake device.

Authorities say he parked a van full of explosives near the square on Friday night and was arrested shortly after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would blow up the bomb. He was charged with attempting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction.

Kim Bissett said she moved to Portland because it is a liberal city. She said most of the anger was from the suburbs, not from city residents.

"The angriest people are those from the suburbs, not necessarily Portland, which is very accepting," Bissett said.

A fire on Sunday destroyed part of the Salman Al-Farisi Islamic Center in Corvallis, a college town about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Portland. Mohamud occasionally worshipped at the center while attending Oregon State. No one was injured.

Police believe the fire was intentionally set and increased patrols around mosques and other Islamic sites in Portland.

At a news conference in Washington, Holder also said the FBI was investigating the fire. If the blaze is related to the arrest or to an attack on Islam, it "is something that I personally decry," Holder said.

"It is not something that is consistent with who we are as Americans," he said.

While leaders in the Somali community in the U.S. condemned the plot, some, including a friend of Mohamud, were concerned about federal agents possibly luring him into breaking the law.

Mujahid El-Naser, 20, said he didn't believe Mohamud would have gotten involved in the plot without FBI encouragement. El-Naser, who has played basketball with Mohamud, said he never heard him express extremist views.

"If you talk with someone enough, they'll be convinced they need to do something," said El-Naser, who gathered outside the federal court building with a couple of dozen people before a court hearing where Mohamud pleaded not guilty.

Mohamud's lawyer asked a judge to order the government to preserve whatever devices, storage media or locations might have been used for a July 30 meeting at a downtown Portland hotel.

At the meeting, an FBI affidavit said, Mohamud talked of "putting stuff in a car, parking it by a target, and detonating it." While the undercover agent was equipped with audio recording equipment, it didn't work, for reasons the affidavit left unexplained.

Sady said preserving the evidence would allow defense experts to examine it, and Judge John Acosta granted the request.

A defense of entrapment must prove that the government planted the idea of a criminal act in an innocent person's mind and brought about the crime so the government could prosecute it.

Key to the defense is showing the defendant wasn't predisposed to act criminally before the government got involved.

In this case, the FBI affidavit said it was Mohamud who picked the target of the bomb plot, that he was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could die, and that he could back out.

Mohamud "was told that children — children — were potentially going to be harmed," Holder added.

Authorities said they allowed the plot to continue so they could gather enough evidence to charge him with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams said he will review the city's decision to remove itself from the Justice Department's Joint Terrorism Task Force, a cooperative among state, local and federal law enforcement.

"We have a new federal administration," he said. "There have been changes to federal practices and federal laws."

Mohamud was investigated for rape in 2009 but never charged. The Benton County District Attorney's Office didn't find a reason to charge Mohamud with a crime after a woman whose name was redacted in the documents filed a sexual assault complaint.

Mohamud had sex with the woman in an Oregon State dorm room on Oct. 31, 2009. He said in the documents that he and the woman were "a little tipsy" when they left a fraternity party and returned to his dorm room.

Tests on the woman failed to show any controlled substances or common pharmaceuticals in her body.

Mohamud's attorney, Steven Wax, could not immediately be reached for comment.

___

Associated Press writers Jonathan Cooper, Tim Fought and Pete Yost in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.