The End of a B-Movie Terror Trial
Who knew Time could be so deliciously snarky:
The End of a B-Movie Terror Trial
If you were watching the movie version of the terrorism trial that ended Thursday in Miami, FL, you might walk out around the time the seven suspects take an oath to al-Qaeda in a warehouse. The scene would feel so contrived, such a low-budget mockumentary of itself, that you might not be able to stomach another second.
The fact that this videotaped scene was in reality the centerpiece of the government’s case against seven defendants accused of conspiring to wage war against America is a testament to the strange challenges of trying to preemptively prosecute the war on terrorism.
[...]
The entire situation was concocted by the government. The warehouse was paid for by the FBI, and the defendants moved their operations there at the suggestion of an undercover informant who was also paid by the FBI. The swearing-in ceremony was led by the informant — who at another point also suggested a plan to bomb FBI offices in Miami. “The case was written, produced and directed by the FBI,” defense attorney Albert Levin said in his closing arguments.
[...]
But the heavy reliance on informants has led to cases that sometimes appear to exist in the land of make believe. At one point during the Liberty City investigation, Batiste suggested to the informant that they could blow up the Sears Tower so that it would fall into Lake Michigan and create a tsunami. “Where did you get this idea?” Batiste’s attorney later asked him on the stand. His answer was believable: “Just from watching the movies.”
And from the earlier Times article linked in the first blockquoted paragraph above:
When alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, 32, presented an FBI informant he thought was an al-Qaeda operative with a list of materials necessary for jihad, it did not include explosives. Instead Batiste asked for $50,000, radios, uniforms and steel-toed boots. Was the plan to blow the Sears Tower up or kick it down?
Hey, and lest anyone forget, when this story broke back in June of last year the nuttersphere lurched into full panic/gotcha mode, alternately fretting about “homegrown jihad” and chiding the left for not taking this story seriously. This insightful ReidBlog post, written by a black woman from Florida, got the goat of a few hyperventilating pro-war bedwetters at the time. She wrote:
Guys. Take a deep breath. Liberty City is not Peshwar. It’s the hood, man. These are probably some militant brothas working out and doing marshal arts and fancying themselves revolutionaries. The idea that they had a serious plot going, or that they had any conceivable ties—familial or otherwise—to actual terrorists, is laughable. Prediction: this will go the way of the dirty bomber and the two yokels who were supposed to blow up electrical transformers in South Florida but wound up trying to buy a couple of AK-47s with a bad credit card. They’re doing 5 years apiece for some low-level violation today, after getting the Ashcroft treatment not long before the 2002 midterms.
Spot.Fucking.On.
I’ll give you one guess who penned this overwrought response to her post:
…Because really, the idea that a bunch of ‘hood negroes are capable of more than watching old Jim Kelly movies and playing pretend revolutionary? That’s just crazy talk! The black man is naturally lazy and shiftless, you see—and so his threats are idle ones, even when they come dressed in starched white Karate gear and tied up nicely with a cloth blackbelt bow.
Alas, what J Reid seemed to miss, in her eagerness to brush this off as insignificant, is that the group of “brothas” had no real ties to al Qaeda because the part of al Qaeda was played by undercover federal agents. Does that mean the silly “brothas” didn’t pose a threat? Well, thankfully, that’s now a moot question.
You can’t handle the moot!
FLASHBACK: Jon Swift applied the appropriate amount of derision. Snakes on a plane!
Posted by Kevin K. on 12/14/07 at 11:20 AM • Permalink
Trackbacks (0) •
Categories: News • Politics • Bedwetters • Nutters • Poliblogs •
Share this post: 
