Starvin Larry

I’ve commented several times of the FBI tactic of recruiting disaffected use, convincing them (via paid informants) to embrace terrorism, providing them with plans and materiel, then swooping in the break up the (FBI-created) plot, producing many headlines and much self-congratulation. Jenifer Fenton takes a look at this practice in a longish article in Al Jezeera America:

The recent arrests on terrorism-related charges of six young Somali-Americans from Minneapolis and others throughout the United States have prompted renewed questions over the issue of entrapment, and over the degree of real security achieved by disrupting plots that law-enforcement had helped shape.

The six, ages 19 to 21, were charged with conspiracy to aid and support a terrorist organization, and are accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also called ISIS).

“These were focused men who were intent on joining a terrorist…