Faux-Victories and the Spread of Fear: Les Agents Provocateurs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-gitlin/agents-provocateurs_b_3509981.html

This is but one link in a long story that can absorb a reader for many hours. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have a long history of using Agents Provocateurs... planted infiltrators which not only gather evidence but seek to provoke political dissidents or criminal elements to commit crimes.

Sometimes it's hard to put together a case. Police always prefer to get confessions and when it comes to certain categories of crime...it's much easier to make the case if you can catch them in the act.

What's the easiest way to do it? Manufacture the plan for them and set them up. It's easy to gather evidence when you've created it.

...And it's an easy way to destroy your adversaries.

...And it can create very powerful propaganda.

The FBI under Hoover used provocateurs to infiltrate the student movements and the war protestors. They infiltrated the Civil Rights movement and used provocateurs to wage war on the Black Panthers. Of course many of these groups were not breaking the law at all. They were exercising constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech. And many were outraged to learn the government was using tax revenues and political power to crush people who were not assenting to Hoover's way of viewing the world... twisted and strange as it was.

After 11 September 2001, the Bush administration brought in sweeping changes that eliminated many constitutional rights and empowered the military-law enforcement sector beyond anything previously imaginable. This was enhanced by the technological abilities that were present with the advent of the Internet age. Hoover couldn't have even dreamed of the surveillance, data collection and analytical technology available to the Federal Government in the 21^st century.

Despite all this there have been a few 'close calls' when it comes to terrorism. The United States is unable to completely dominate every foreign airport and it has a hard time stopping lone-wolves...self-recruited Jihadists who, acting alone can inflict damage if they're able to learn the techniques required to carry out an operation.

So far passengers on airplanes and watchful members of the public...not law enforcement... have stopped the most dangerous and viable terror attempts.

But aside from these actual close calls, there have been a rash of much publicised sting operations which have netted supposed terrorists.

And yet in almost every case these are people that would have never had the knowledge or capability to carry out an actual attack. These are people haunting chat rooms that are picked up by undercover FBI agents who turn provocateur.

These would-be-jihadi's are basically guilty of thought-crime and are entrapped. They FBI convinces them they're part of a conspiracy and set them up in a pseudo-operation. When the accused party presses the non-operative button on an FBI supplied bomb, the Feds sweep in and arrest the guy and two things are accomplished...

They get the media attention they want...they're the hard-working law enforcement officials that are 'keeping us safe'.

And... the equally fooled public is kept in a state of perpetual angst and fear.

Which (call me a cynic) is what those who wish to expand American power want. The military actions of the 1990's were not very popular. The public saw no need to intervene in obscure geopolitical conflicts. People complained about the US playing the role of the world's policeman. This simply demonstrates that they don't understand what's happening and why the US is involved in these parts of the world. It has nothing to do with good will, altruism or any notion of moral responsibility.

But after 2001, the United States government can act boldly and even if the public has grown weary of nonsensical wars... there's enough fear and acceptance of covert action that the government can act with little fear of a public backlash.

Ironically millions of dollars are wasted chasing down created criminals...and the real threats are still slipping through. Like the War on Drugs this has become a self-sustaining paradigm... a state of perpetual war... one that is being created as much as it is being fought.

Let me say that again... it is a paradigm of perpetual war that is being created as much as it is being fought.

Ask yourself why?

The Right was happy to accept the use of provocateurs in the 1960's and certainly today in the War on Terror paradigm. But how quickly they forget...

In the 1990's Randy Weaver was set-up by undercover FBI agents who sold him illegal shotguns and the government used this as a justification to go after him. He was a white supremacist but that's not the point. It led to a huge shoot-out...the disaster at Ruby Ridge. That, coupled with Waco the following year fueled Right-wing conspiracy theories throughout the Clinton years... fed the militia movement which in turn drove the government to become more suspicious.

People forget that in 1993 America was finished. We were soon going to be Communist. Clinton was a traitor. Get your guns and your gold...it's all over.

Well, not quite. In fact those invested in the market did pretty well.

Over the past few years, I've brought this up to some of the Glenn Beck/Limbaugh disciples I know and they really truly have forgotten. I haven't. Because back in 1993 I was a pagan and I was right there with them. Rush Limbaugh was my prophet and I was convinced that America under the Clinton's would soon perish.

Of course the Goldwater faction was saying the same thing back in the late 1960's.

It would seem there are certain people that don't understand how the system works. And there are others who profit off this kind of hysteria. Limbaugh admitted the Clinton/Obama years are his best in terms of business.

The point is... this type of law enforcement sets a bad precedent and is destructive to society. Some may applaud it now, but as the culture shifts...how long before such agents are sitting in Christian churches? We know that post 9/11 there were agents infiltrating Left-wing groups. Do you think that as the Christian Right becomes radicalised that the FBI and other government agencies won't look to infiltrate those groups?

I would be very surprised if it isn't already happening. And it's not because Obama is the big liberal boogeyman. He's hardly proven to be that. In terms of militarism, foreign policy, the growing police state etc... he's as bad as Bush was, if not worse.

It's not about a war against Christians, but if it ever does turn to that, it's a shame that the precedent for provocateurs has already been long established and for decades was supported by Christian political inclinations.

I would like to see law enforcement lose a great deal of their powers...no provocateurs, no torture, no TSA, no Patriot Act, and no Department of Homeland Security.

This is not because I'm saying it's Christian to stand against these actions and agencies. They're not Christian anyway and I want nothing to do with them. But for the peace of Babylon...get rid of these things.

I don't like to see any organization consolidate power...not Wal-mart, not the banks and certainly not any government which has blended the powers of the CIA, military and police.