Academic

Ex-CIA Pillar on FBI terrorism stings

By Tung Yin

Paul Pillar, formerly a long-time CIA agent, has a blog post defending FBI terrorism stings:

Being willing to kill innocent people in a terrorist attack?even a phony contrived one?makes someone a bad guy in my book. And taking actual steps to implement an operation that one believes will kill people, even if the operation is actually phony, is enough of a terrorist act to prosecute anyone who does so. The FBI deserves our compliments for using ingenious ways to get such individuals out of circulation.

Pillar's post is worth reading, but I think it presupposes much of what it seeks to justify -- that is, if we assume that the FBI has properly identified someone who is predisposed to engage in terrorism and then provides merely an opportunity (as opposed to the idea) to commit terrorism, then yes, stings make sense.  But if the Mohamed Mohamud case goes to trial, those threshold issues will presumably be contested.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on December 29, 2010 (boomark / email).