this is pretty common if you look at all the FBI terrorism busts in recent history. look up Brandon Darby and the 2008 RNC arrests, the NATO 5, and the kids from Occupy Cleveland. and that's just in the anarchist community, there are several more incidents in the Muslim community that I just don't know off the top of my head.

there's a common joke in activist circles that whoever offers to bring the explosives is the pig. and it's hilariously/unconformably true.

go down this list, check out a few links: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11

I saw one that said Dallas and I knew nothing about it, so I clicked:

Smadi was in the United States illegally, and unaware he was under continuous surveillance, and that the other members of his "sleeper cell" were all Federal agents.[2] The agents in his "sleeper cell" had supplied him with inert chemical, so his bomb had not posed a real threat.[4]

Immigration officials were trying to determine how Smadi was able to work at a gas station, since he only had a 2007 tourist visa.[1][3]

Smadi was provided with a fake bomb by FBI agents posing as members of al-Qaeda.

I'm not even trying, here

Shades of Jose Padilla.

The second problem with the claim is that the dirty bomb plot would never, ever have worked. According to a 2003 CIA e-mail, Padilla and his alleged accomplice, Binyam Mohammed, had apparently taken seriously an Internet article that offered laughable instructions for creating an "H-Bomb." That article is still easy to find online, and is clearly tongue-in-cheek. It begins with the phrase: "Making and owning an H-bomb is the kind of challenge real Americans seek." It goes on to instruct those hoping to make a bomb to fill buckets with uranium and swing them above their head "as fast as possible."

Or the Liberty City Seven.

"Hey, do you like Allah?"

"Uhm, I guess. Also Jesus."

"Yeah, but mostly Allah, right?"

"Dude, you're weird."

"Don't you hate people who trample your religious freedoms?"

"Of course!"

"Don't you want to, like, blow them up?"

"NO..."

"Not even for money?"

"No!"

"Not even for, like, a lot of money?"

"...how much money, crazy man?"

"Like how much do you want?"

"How about, I dunno, fifty grand."

"Sure!"

"You have fifty grand?"

"Absolutely, my brother in bondage! Would you like some bombs with that?"

"No!"

"You can't have the 50 grand unless you take some bombs'n'shit."

"Fer real?"

"Fer real."

"Okay, give me fifty grand and some bombs, I guess."

"FREEZE MUTHERFUCKER HOMELAND SECURITY"

"goddamn it"

It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam. It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites "devils" in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York's Moors. Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santería-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot. Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek... This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names. Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they'd have been Black Panthers or Communists.

___________________________________

As far as The Intercept, Pando has a real hard-on against all things Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald. I would argue that Pando is, by and large, less credible than The Intercept, however.

When I heard this story, that's what I suspected it was: a plot conceived by the FBI to entrap someone on the fringe. I have very little faith in these efforts.

I once learned from an Air Marshal that it was typical for his colleagues to fabricate suspicious observations so that they could fill reports and demonstrate that they were doing there job. An expensive security apparatus needs to be justified, especially when it fails to stop the real thing.

We'd be better off spending these resources treating the causes of these attacks rather than pretending that we can stop the attacks themselves.

Go Pierre Omidyar.

House Speaker John Boehner claimed yesterday that “the National Security Agency’s snooping powers helped stop a plot to attack the Capitol

The FBI learned about Cornell from an unnamed informant who, as the FBI put it, “began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.”

lol. Snooping powers my ass.

Take a look at the cases mw talked about. This technique is nothing new and no judge has any motivation to stand up for the rights of accused terrorism suspects against the FBI.

It's the same logic that leads to so few justified pardons for the death penalty, no one wants to be seen as soft on crime. And no one has any motivation at all to be seen as lenient towards accused terrorists.

The FBI and those pro mass surveillance desperately need to justify their far-reaching methods in the face of public opposition, and, with that much political clout behind it, taking a stand downwind is political suicide.

I mean, the Intercept is just quoting the fucking judge (who prosecuted someone in a similar case) about the questionable methods blatantly used, and this brings about doubting the credibility of the news organization?