Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured) lies awake at night worrying about the threat to the homeland from home-grown terrorists.
“It’s a very serious threat. I think what it says is that the scope, our scope, has to be broadened. We can’t think that it’s just a bunch of people in caves in some part of the world,” Holder told ABC News on Wednesday. “We have to be concerned about the homeland to the same extent that we are worried about the threat coming from overseas.”
The threat, as Holder sees it, is increased by the failure of the American people to fear the next attack.
“I worry a little that the American people, from the general population, has become a little complacent that we don’t understand or realize that the threats are still real, that the danger is out there, is still tangible, that we still have to be as vigilant as we need to be,” Holder told Pierre Thomas of ABC News.
The federal government remains vigilant, Holder proclaims.
During his interview, Holder reminded Thomas of the FBI’s successful foiling of several recent terrorist plots. ABC News writes:
During his tenure as attorney general, federal authorities have thwarted numerous terrorist plots hatched within the U.S., and Holder told ABC News that the threat of homegrown plots warrants as much attention as international terrorism. In December, the FBI arrested two Florida brothers, Raees Alam and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, alleging they had sought to obtain explosives and carry out a terrorist attack in New York City. The two were charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
If that were true, it would be very praiseworthy. It isn’t.
Consider this account of one of the federal government’s successful “stings” as covered by The New American:
Following a series of similar widely ridiculed so-called “sting” operations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last week that it had foiled yet another “terror plot” that, like virtually every supposed “terrorist” case in recent years, was created and managed from start to finish by the FBI itself. This time, the dupe was a 28-year-old California man, Matthew Aaron Llaneza, with a documented history of mental illness, who apparently believed his government handlers were helping him wage “jihad.” Critics, however, say the whole scheme smacks of entrapment and a waste of taxpayer money.
Llaneza was arrested by federal agents on February 7 in Oakland after he supposedly tried to blow up a bogus bomb the FBI helped him create. According to authorities, the mentally ill San Jose suspect planned to detonate the fake explosives outside a Bank of America branch. The alleged plan, officials said, was to start a “civil war” by making it appear as if the attack had been carried out by “anti-government militias,” sparking a crackdown by the government on right-of-center dissidents.
“Unbeknownst to Llaneza, the explosive device that he allegedly attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” the FBI admitted in a press release celebrating the arrest of its mentally unstable stooge. The man was charged in a criminal complaint with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against property used in an activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.” If convicted, he could face life in prison.
According to the government’s court filings, the mentally ill man met with an undercover FBI agent late last year under mysterious circumstances. The federal official somehow managed to convince the naïve dupe that he was connected to the “Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan” — Islamist forces that were originally armed and trained by the U.S. government before becoming official enemies. From there, federal handlers worked with the man to develop the half-baked plot and the fake bomb to blow something up.
So, rather than dismantling dangerous conspiracies aimed at killing Americans, Holder and his gang are cooking up fake plots and recruiting weak and gullible Americans into believing they are a part of the operation just long enough to convict them and claim credit for their vigilance.
And, it’s not as if this were a one-time event or an undercover operation gone wrong. The New American lays out the case against the federal government convincingly later in the article:
Of course, this is hardly the first time in recent memory that the federal government has used similar strategies to convince naïve and often mentally unstable individuals to participate in criminal activity. The New American has documented multiple cases just in the last year where the FBI used taxpayer money and even convicted felons to coax fools or mentally challenged individuals into committing fake acts of terror. Oftentimes federal agents lead the plot from start to finish before arresting their stooge and calling a press conference to pat each other on the back.
In October of last year for example, federal agents convinced a naïve 21-year-old Bangladeshi that he was a member of al-Qaeda, giving the alleged entrapment victim fake bombs to blow up the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York before swarming in and arresting him. In reality, there was no al-Qaeda, there was no threat, there were no bombs, and the only alleged “plot” the FBI “foiled” was the one it hatched with its stooge, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis.
Earlier that year, the FBI concocted a similar half-baked plot, using a convicted felon to trick a group of young self-styled left-wing anarchists into trying to blow up a bridge near Cleveland. Again, the whole plot was run from beginning to end by federal agents and their “confidential informant” — a convicted criminal and con man.
A separate case in 2009 in which a government informer also convinced mentally unstable individuals to plant fake bombs in New York even drew criticism from the judge who oversaw the case. “The government made them terrorists,” the presiding magistrate observed. Even the establishment press — the New York Times included — has been forced to speak out about the increasingly absurd “terror” plots invented and “foiled” by federal officials.
In spite of all this evidence of his duplicity and contemptuous attempts to fool the very people he claims to be sleeplessly protecting, Holder keeps to the party line.
“When we stop these attacks, that’s an indication that the threat is real, it’s ongoing, and we have to be very serious about stopping people who continue to want to do harm to the American people,” Holder told ABC News.
From the intentional arming of Mexican terrorists (the Fast and Furious operation) to the creation of kabuki home-grown “terrorist plots,” it seems that the real threat to the homeland comes not from the predators, but from the protectors.
Photo of Attorney General Eric Holder: AP Images
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at [email protected].
