Homeland Security Theater in Chicago

The diabolical nature of the State is sometimes revealed in small but crucial details. The criminal complaint against alleged would-be bomber Sami Samir Hassoun offers a very good example: The Lebanese expatriate, who is a legal resident of the United States, is accused of “attempting, without lawful authority, to use a weapon of mass destruction against people and property in a manner that would have affected interstate and foreign commerce….” (Emphasis added.)

That formulation implies that the government whose agents carefully lured and entrapped Hassoun has the “lawful authority” to use a weapon of mass destruction against domestic targets. This is worth keeping in mind as we examine behavior of the Regime’s secret police in this manufactured “terrorist” incident.

Hassoun’s arrest triggered the predictable headlines and commentary describing yet another daring interdiction of a Jihadist plot by the Homeland’s valiant defenders, oh may they be praised forever. In fact, the criminal complaint specifies — albeit in footnotes — that Hassoun was not motivated by Islam or any other religion, and that he wasn’t interested in killing or harming anybody until long after he fell under the influence of a paid federal provocateur and two FBI agents posing as terrorist financiers. Rather than advancing the “Islamist agenda,” Hassoun — who wanted to bring down Mayor Daley’s administration — allegedly suggested that Muslims could make useful scapegoats.

“Although Hassoun was clear that he was not motivated to attack Chicago based on any religious ideology, he nevertheless suggested that once attacks had taken place, the participants distance themselves from their actions by sending an attribution video to the media claiming responsibility for the violence in the name of a fictitious extremist organization,” claims footnote 22 on page 15 of the complaint.  “Call it, `the jihad in U.S.’ Just make something up. You know? Just make it up so, like, when you put it, all the heat is transferred to them. You know? There’s no heat in the street.'”

This is to say that Hassoun supposedly proposed a “false-flag operation.” Where on earth would he get an idea of that kind?

In keeping with standard operating procedure in FBI-orchestrated terror charades, one of the undercover agents posing as a potential employer actually tried to rile up Hassoun over Washington’s role in cultivating misery and bloodshed in the Arab world: “UC-2 [one of the FBI agents] state his purported purpose: `want[ing] to change how our country [i.e., the United States] treats our people back home.’ In response, Hassoun stated that he was differently motivated: `Mine is a kind of different concept than this.’ Hassoun explained he saw attacking Chicago as a means of creating chaos to gain political control of the city and its sources of revenue.”

On another occasion, Hassoun mused that fomenting public panic over threats to security would create a situation that would “take that Daley out and put some of our guys in.” This sounds like something a Republican might say, rather than the motive of a hardened Islamic radical.

Hassoun first came to the attention of the FBI “in or about the spring of 2009,” at which time the Bureau decided to pair him up with a paid informant/provocateur.  Special Agent Samuel Hartman, who wrote the affidavit, points out that this decision was based on “information relating to Hassoun that is unrelated to this matter” — a statement suggesting that the Bureau was trolling for patsies and learned something about Hassoun that they considered an exploitable vulnerability. For about a year, the FBI’s snitch and, eventually, the two undercover operatives carefully manipulated the young man into participating — for pay — in a plot to carry out various disruptive acts.

Hassoun’s ideas, notes footnote 15 on page 10 of the affidavit, included the use of a “device that appeared as a toy that when activated would cause a minor explosion that would not cause injury, but would expel tiny notes containing ominous warnings.” He also suggested that he and his supposed friends “could design a bomb that would not explode, but be deployed in a manner that it would appear that it was discovered prior to a planned detonation.”

While spit-balling proposed “plots” with the provocateur, Hassoun repeatedly emphasized his opposition to bloodshed: “No killing. There is no killing.” His insistence on avoiding lethal violence extended beyond “civilians” to include the police, as well: “When you hit the police, you don’t kill the police.” He was willing to “harm” the police — most likely through humiliation, rather than actual violence — as a way of discrediting them, but he appears to have been resolutely opposed to actual violence. Until, that is, the undercover Feds showed up and started gently guiding him in a more militant direction.

Hassoun was arrested near Wrigley Field on September 19 in the possession of a dummy bomb provided by his “employers,” who told him that the purported explosive “would likely destroy half a city block if not more.” By that time the young man had been paid $500 and promised much more, as well as the means to escape to a secure location in California.

Attorney Myron Auerbach, who is representing Hassoun, is considering a defense strategy based on federal entrapment. “My client didn’t bring anything of his own to this incident,” he correctly points out. “Things were given to him.”

In related news, Shahed Hussain, the Pakistani-born FBI provocateur who confected the so-called “Newburgh 4” bombing plot, recently admitted under oath that the FBI sent him to a terrorist training camp in his home country in December 2009. This happened while he was playing the role of a wealthy terrorist recruiter in the employ of the Pakistani group Jaish-e-Mohammed as part of a “sting” targeting four marginalized, desperate losers.

“Jihad Central” isn’t found in Riyadh, Tehran, or — as some earnest but misled people insist — Moscow. It’s in Virginia — specifically, Langley and Quantico.

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5:04 pm on September 22, 2010