Monday, September 27, 2010

Liars for Hire: The Alchemy of Provocation

 
Patsy du jour: Hassoun
For reasons the FBI has yet to disclose, in 2009 the Bureau became interested in a young man named Sami Samir Hassoun, who had immigrated to the United States from Lebanon. 

 Although his family came from a Shia-dominated region of that country, Hassoun was never particularly religious. He was, according to friends, exceptionally intelligent (he attended an elite school, studied medicine briefly, and is fluent in English and French as well as Arabic) and given to boasting.

Chicago restaurant owner Joseph Abraham recalls that Hassoun "wanted to make fast money" and lusted after personal fame. He succeeded in becoming a global celebrity of sorts on September 19 when he  was arrested by a throng of FBI agents and Chicago cops  after he deposited what he thought was a powerful bomb outside a bar near Wrigley Field.

 The device had been manufactured at an FBI counter-terrorism lab in Quantico, Virginia, and supplied to Hassoun by two undercover FBI agents posing as terrorism financiers. The agents paid the young man $2,700 to quit his day job -- and promised him a great deal more -- to work full-time brainstorming various terrorist plots against targets in Chicago. 

 "My client didn't bring anything of his own making to the incident," maintains Hassoun's defense attorney Myron Auerbach. "Things were given to him." Hassoun, according to his friend Joseph Abraham (who knew him as a delivery man for a nearby bakery), had a fertile imagination, a gift for self-dramatization, and occasional difficulty in telling the unadorned truth. All of those traits appear to have worked in unfortunate synergy to get the young man into trouble. There is little in Hassoun's background to suggest a future career in terrorism, absent the FBI's intervention. Why did the FBI approach him in the first place?


Hassoun had no criminal record or background in violent or radical groups. According to FBI Special Agent Samuel Hartman, who swore out the criminal complaint against Hassoun, the decision to pair him up with an undercover provocateur was based on “information relating to Hassoun that is unrelated to this matter." This suggests, at least to hardened cynics like myself, that the Bureau was trolling for patsies and learned something about Hassoun that they considered an exploitable vulnerability. 
Although he was never particularly religious, Hassoun's family came from a Shia-dominated region of Lebanon. Seeking to escape the political violence afflicting their home country, Hassoun's family migrated to the Ivory Coast, only to return after that country experienced one of its frequent military coups before eventually immigrating to the U.S. 
Perhaps the FBI's talent scouts learned of Hassoun's background and believed it would make him receptive to the Bureau's standard terrorist recruitment pitch, which lures Muslims into "sting" operations by playing on their understandable resentment toward Washington's foreign policy.
After Hassoun had been prepped by the FBI's paid provocateur, he was approached by two undercover agents (identified in the complaint as "UC-1" and "UC-2"). According to the FBI affidavit, “UC-2 state[d] 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.”
 For about a year, the FBI team of alchemist provocateurs worked to transmute the impulsive musings of an immature college-age man into a "terrorist plot." At first, he didn't give them much to work with.
 Hassoun’s original ideas, reports footnote 15 on page 10 of the FBI's 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 FBI's undercover 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’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 (for the most part in footnotes) that Hassoun was not motivated by Islam or any other religion. 
The document also indicates that he wasn’t interested in killing or harming anybody until long after he fell under the influence of the FBI's little troupe of Homeland Security Theater players. Rather than advancing the “Islamist agenda,” Hassoun 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," Hassoun is quoted as suggesting. "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? Here's a thought: Might he have learned something about this tactic from the friendly people at the FBI, who are masters of the art of manufacturing phony terrorist plots?

In this connection it's interesting to note that Shahed Hussain, the Pakistani-born FBI provocateur who confected the so-called “Newburgh 4″ bombing plot in New York, 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. 
Provocateur-Prevaricator Hussain on the stand.
On the witness stand, Hussain -- who, in addition to being a veteran con artist, appears to be the scion of a wealthy Pakistani family that knew Benazir Bhutto -- has been repeatedly rebuked by Judge Colleen McMahon (who has actually referred to the trial as an "un-terrorism case").  When finally cornered by the attorneys representing those targeted in his sting, Hussain's answers did nothing to help the prosecution's case.

"Everything coming out of your mouth was a lie for that 11-month period when you were meeting with these men, right?" asked defense attorney Vincent Bricetti.


"Yes" Hussain answered.


When working as a paid FBI informant, "it's helpful to be a really good liar, isn't it?" Bricetti continued, eliciting a grudging affirmative response from the witness. 


"I love to work for the FBI," Hussain explained. "I enjoy the work I do, that's why I do it."

As the jury chokes on Hussain's malodorous testimony, the prosecution has been reduced to abject whining. "The government is entitled to a fair trial," simpered Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Halperin, who considers it entirely unfair that the defense is permitted to challenge the credibility of the FBI's hired liar. 

It's entirely likely that a purulent personality of that kind is at the center of the most recent terror charade in Chicago. If so, it would be fascinating to see what would ooze out of him under cross-examination during Hassoun's trial. 


As cases of this kind accumulate, it's becoming incontestably clear that  “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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20 comments:

MamaLiberty said...

Talk about "useful idiot." There are far more worthy places to blow up than Chicago. They're doing a fine job of it all by themselves and don't need any help.

I got a big laugh out of the idea that the prosecutors are whining about the government "getting a fair trial." What a novel concept.

Doc Ellis said...

This from Liars for Hire: The Alchemy of Provoation by Will Grigg

As the jury chokes on Hussain's malodorous testimony, the prosecution has been reduced to abject whining. "The government is entitled to a fair trial," simpered Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Halperin, who considers it entirely unfair that the defense is permitted to challenge the credibility of the FBI's hired liar.  At http://tinyurl.com/2e2p63d

and this from: An Open Letter to Buzz Franklin by Bill Anderson

So, let us deal with the next paragraph, which is a doozie:

Combined with the dynamics of the internet blogosphere, it created an environment hostile to the State's ability to receive a fair trial and portrayed the victims and their families in a false and negative light. This was an integral, purposeful and shameless part of the defense strategy. This will result in child victims and their supportive family members refusing to come forward for fear of a similar portrayal in the public. My office has never tried cases in the media and we won't start now.

Buzz, give me a break. This is pathetic. At http://tinyurl.com/36phorr

demonstrate to me that small minds vomit alike.

Thank you, Will and Bill.

Doc Ellis 124

MoT said...

Jihad Central has numerous "roots" but I gather that one of them, besides the obvious CIA etc., would be 1600 Penn. I'm beginning to think that the White House is really just a PR and spin device for the ones who really run the show.

MoT said...

Jihad Central has numerous "roots" but I gather that one of them, besides the obvious CIA etc., would be 1600 Penn. I'm beginning to think that the White House is really just a PR and spin device for the ones who really run the show.

Saladin said...

"By deception thou shalt do war" is the motto of the Israeli Mossad. Looks like that disease is contagious.

Arthur Itarian said...

Of course we have to bribe Lebanese prep school boys to deposit fake bombs in front of bars. People need to be reminded why the federal government has to backscatter-scan grandpa's genitals!

IF WE DON'T ALLOW THE TERRORISTS TO WIN THEN THE TERRORISTS HAVE ALREADY WON.

Anonymous said...

As best I can recall: "We have met the enemy and he is us" - Pogo

In Male Fide
Sic Semper Tyrannis

Anonymous said...

Anyone who disagrees with government policy must assume anyone advocating violence is an agent provocateur, most likely paid by the FBI. The safest course is to ostracize him. Wasting his time is an honorable pursuit but risky. For example, tell him you want to blow up a bus, but are worried you will burn your lips on the exhaust pipe. The risk is that government prosecutors will not get the joke.

LibertarianBlue said...

The sad part is that alot of people eat up this garbage. The FBI and its cronies know that Arabs, Muslims and anyone from that area cause stigma for alot of people. The Muslim Community center in NYC is more or less the most recent and nationally know event. So they know that not too many people will come to their defense.

Thank You Will for once again shedding the light on the oppressive workings of the state.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Let us think carefully about this for a minute: Since 9/11/01, EVERY SINGLE alarm and terrorist plot has been either instigated or abetted by the government.

Remember the Orange Days and Purple Days and Duct-tape Days, plus the Underwear Bomber allowed to get on the plane over the objections of the check-in crew at the counter, to the various groups of dumb-asses who have been entrapped by the FBI?

Not to forget Saddam's drones which could reach Washington or New York in 45 minutes carrying vials of powdered sugar (Colin Powell's song and dance before the UN) and Saddam's stockpile of atom bombs and ties to Al Qaeda?

And Osama bing deliberately allowed to escape? The commander in Afghanistan in 2001 begged and pleaded with the Pentagon for just 500 US troops on the ground, and Osama would have been caught, but the Pentagon refused, left the capture to Osama's old allies the Pakistani military, and Osama "escaped." Nobody in the government wanted that man testifying under oath on the witness stand. Because, you see, he might have told the truth.

ALL OF IT has been bullshit - a farce and a series of false-flag operations by the government to keep the American people fearful and compliant in their own slavery. This latest bullshit Will tells us about is just more of the same.

They have quite correctly assessed the dumb-ass American public's gullibility and naivete as approaching one astronomical unit - i.e., infinite. Like Charlie Brown and the football - we fall for it every time.

Now, here is the BIG, BIG question, which nobody - NOBODY - in America seems to draw the connection between all these false-flag operations and scare tactics, which must by now be almost a hundred in number:

WHAT DOES ALL THIS BULLSHIT AND DECEPTION TELL YOU ABOUT THE DAY OF 9/11/2001 ITSELF???

Yes, children? Anybody? Do I see any hands in the class, children? YOU, Johnny.

No, Johnny, it does NOT tell us George Bush had boogers up his nose.

Oh shit, I'm wasting my time here.

- Lemuel Gulliver.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Let us think carefully about this for a minute: Since 9/11/01, EVERY SINGLE alarm and terrorist plot has been either instigated or abetted by the government.

Remember the Orange Days and Purple Days and Duct-tape Days, plus the Underwear Bomber allowed to get on the plane over the objections of the check-in crew at the counter, to the various groups of dumb-asses who have been entrapped by the FBI?

Not to forget Saddam's drones which could reach Washington or New York in 45 minutes carrying vials of powdered sugar (Colin Powell's song and dance before the UN) and Saddam's stockpile of atom bombs and ties to Al Qaeda?

And Osama bing deliberately allowed to escape? The commander in Afghanistan in 2001 begged and pleaded with the Pentagon for just 500 US troops on the ground, and Osama would have been caught, but the Pentagon refused, left the capture to Osama's old allies the Pakistani military, and Osama "escaped." Nobody in the government wanted that man testifying under oath on the witness stand. Because, you see, he might have told the truth.

ALL OF IT has been bullshit - a farce and a series of false-flag operations by the government to keep the American people fearful and compliant in their own slavery. This latest bullshit Will tells us about is just more of the same.

They have quite correctly assessed the dumb-ass American public's gullibility and naivete as approaching one astronomical unit - i.e., infinite. Like Charlie Brown and the football - we fall for it every time.

Now, here is the BIG, BIG question, which nobody - NOBODY - in America seems to draw the connection between all these false-flag operations and scare tactics, which must by now be almost a hundred in number:

WHAT DOES ALL THIS BULLSHIT AND DECEPTION TELL YOU ABOUT THE DAY OF 9/11/2001 ITSELF???

Yes, children? Anybody? Do I see any hands in the class, children? YOU, Johnny.

No, Johnny, it does NOT tell us George Bush had boogers up his nose.

Oh shit, I'm wasting my time here.

- Lemuel Gulliver.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

PS: The American people have been raised on a 70-year-long 3-generational diet of Keystone Kops, Bruce Willis, James Bond 007, Keanu Reeves, Star Wars and Rambo. Where there is a simple question and a simple answer, we like to see drama, cars flying through the air, robot geese with bombs strapped to their little feet, Tesla death rays, Russian plasma weapons, and assassins cunningly disguised as nuns.

Regarding the planes which hit the Pentagon and fell in Pennsylvania: Yes, children, there WERE bits and pieces of the planes found lying about at the scene. Some of them quite large, with paint and logos all over them. How do you suppose they got there? You going to tell me that right after the Russian missile hit the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ran out of his office carrying in his arms a couple of tons of airplane parts from where he had been hiding them under his desk, and strategically distributed them about the lawn outside, without being spotted by the dozens of news cameras?

Grow up.

Stop amusing yourselves with fantasy and drama. This is NOT a game or an adventure movie we are living in. It is the murder of millions of real live, breathing and bleeding people, and the theft of TRILLIONS of dollars of our hard-earned money. This is our blood, sweat, and bitter tears being ground out of our miserable hides. This is NOT Fantasy Island or The Wheel of Fortune or Terminator III.

Stop amusing yourselves with fun speculations and get down to the real, bitter, nasty TRUTH: We are all, every one of us, being FUCKED and have been being FUCKED daily, weekly, monthly and yearly for the last 30 years.

Yes, children, the pain you feel in your hearts and in your lives and in your guts these days is not indigestion or an enlarged prostate. It is the result of being FUCKED for 30 years by the Money Elite and their lapdog politicians - of BOTH bloody, fucking so-called "parties."

Now someone is going to get on my case for being vulgar.

Well, let me stop you right there. What is truly vulgar is not my mouth, but what is being done to 99% of the men, women, and little innocent children in America. And all over this sorry, goddamned planet.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

- Lemuel Gulliver.

Anonymous said...

Gulliver is right, follow the money and those who 'create it'. The world may never be free of tyrannts big and small, but times are sure better when there is no money monopoly at all! When was the most inventive period in American History? And when did the USA become a big international player? Considering the Civil War which in following the money Lincoln saved the Union by doing what the government should do, print money interest free and the USA was not divided and torn apart by civil war and England and France did not plunder the spoils because international bankers lost the day! It took the rest of the 19th century to remove Lincoln's 'Greenbacks' and all the while, Edison, Bell, Ford, etc. invented and produced things that revolutionized the world and made America great! Most of all hope and opportunity were at a much greater supply. Ford doubled his workers salaries because he new they would be his best customers, tire factories in Akron Ohio were paying such good wages that young single men from across the nation arrived and bought silk shirts to use as work clothes in the factories! All this as an indirect result of Lincoln's two or three years of printing the interest free 'Greenbacks'. Fastest way to eliminate war and terror is to cut the financial life line. End the Fed, allow the US government to print money free of interest, end foreign wars and entanglements, and the surplus be returned to the people with ending the income tax and fixing our infrastructure.

99 said...

Bravissimo, Will.

Anonymous said...

It's so predictable. Terrifying, really.

Anonymous said...

Seek and ye shall find, eh?

Not twenty minutes later I find the answer to my questions:

Albert Pike On The Hierarchies Of Truth

“Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So God Himself incapacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the masses away from the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to its capacity.”

— Albert Pike

via http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/09/29/albert-pike-on-the-hierarchies-of-truth/

P.M.Lawrence said...

The Ivory Coast hasn't had frequent military coups, but only two.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

"What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not even life itself that they can call their own. They suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a Hercules nor from a Sampson, but from a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly and effeminate in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament; not only without energy to direct men by force, but with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman! Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice? Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted? If two, if three, if four, do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance surprising but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case one might be justified in suspecting a lack of courage. But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice?

(Continued.....)

Lemuel Gulliver said...

(Continued from above...)

"It is indeed the nature of the populace, whose density is always greater in the cities, to be suspicious toward one who claims to have their welfare at heart, and gullible toward one who fools them. Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yokes, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books."

Etienne de la Boetie, "The Politics of Obedience: A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" written in 1574.

Read an abridged version of the essay here:

http://www.mind-trek.com/treatise/edlb-vs.htm

- Lemuel Gulliver

Lemuel Gulliver said...

(More...contintuation from last part...)

"Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else. The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, "Long live the King!" The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. A man might one day be presented with a sesterce [Roman coin] and gorge himself at the public feast, lauding Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality, who on the morrow, would be forced to abandon his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty of these magnificent "Emperors" without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree stump. The mob has always behaved in this way - eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured."

"They did not even neglect, these "Roman Emperors," to assume generally the title of "Tribune of the People," partly because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the defense and protection of the people. By this means they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely used the title and did not abuse it. Today there are some who do not behave very differently; they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning "public welfare" and "common good." The earliest Kings of Egypt rarely showed themselves without carrying a cat, or sometimes a branch, or appearing with fire on their heads, masking themselves with these objects and parading like workers of magic. By doing this they inspired their subjects with reverence and admiration, whereas with people neither too stupid nor too slavish they would merely have aroused, it seems to me, amusement and laughter. It is pitiful to review the list of devices that despots have used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread. Indeed they always fooled their victims so easily that while mocking them they enslaved them the more....It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration."

- Etienne de la Boetie.