The FBI says it caught a terrorist — preventing Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud from killing scores of people at a Portland, Ore., Christmas tree–lighting ceremony on Nov. 26. Some civil libertarians are suggesting that the bureau, whose undercover agents provided the bomb, orchestrated the "attack" to chalk up a counter-terrorism win. Would Mohamud, 19, have acted if the FBI hadn't guided him — or even encouraged him — along the way? Does that make him any less guilty? (Watch an AP report about anti-Muslim backlash)
Sure smells like entrapment: This wouldn't be the first time the FBI "found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner," says Glenn Greenwald in Salon, then "entrapped" him by persuading him to join a terrorist plot they hatched. And given the money and support agents provided to Mohamud and their mysterious failure to record one key conversation, I wouldn't trust the FBI's version of what happened.
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