US Journalist: FBI Creates Fake Terrorist Plots

I haven’t given totally up on journalism, just yet, and once in a while I discover something that looks very much like the real thing. Last week On the Media published a new book called “Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War On Terrorism,” based on the work of investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Trevor Aaronson. According to the book, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have built a net work of 15 000 informants and infiltrators in Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots. FBI has used phony terrorist plots to justify spending $3 billion every year on counterterrorism, the book says.

“This is investigative reporting at its best. This is a story that the major media has been afraid to look at, much less commit the resources to report it out.”

Lowell Bergman

“The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror shows how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim victory in the war on terror,” the publisher, On the Media, writes in a presentation.

The book is an outgrowth of Trevor Aaronson’s work as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, which culminated in an award-winning cover story in Mother Jonesmagazine, On the Media continues.

The Terror Factory reveals shocking information about the criminals, conmen and liars the FBI uses as paid informants, as well as documents the extreme methods the FBI uses to ensnare Muslims in phony terrorist plots—which are in reality conceived and financed by the FBI.

The book offers detail into how the FBI has transformed from a reactive law enforcement agency to a proactive counterterrorism organization – including the full story of an accused murderer who became one of the FBI’s most prolific terrorism informants – and how the FBI has used phony terrorist plots to justify spending $3 billion every year on counterterrorism.

Sounds like another conspiracy-inspired, fictionalized and sensationalized marketing attempt?

Well, take a look at some of the reviews:

“This is investigative reporting at its best. This is a story that the major media has been afraid to look at, much less commit the resources to report it out. Now Trevor Aaronson has done it. For the first time a documented investigation into the domestic terrorism program is available to the general public. And the story this dogged reporter tells has been garnering growing attention. Is it possible that we have in fact created the very threat we fear? Are we in danger of destroying the fabric of our freedom in our panic to preserve it? Read Aaronson’s groundbreaking report and make up your own mind.”

(Lowell Bergman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of Investigative Reporting)

“This is the kind of journalism that should prompt Congressional hearings. The Terror Factory offers a rare combination of meticulous data-driven reporting with personal narratives about the lives ruined – and careers made – by the FBI’s rampant use of informants. Aaronson is an expert guide through a hidden counter-terrorism network of con men, and through the changes in technology and the FBI itself that paved the way for this new era of law enforcement. The Terror Factory is a damning exposé of how the government’s front line against terrorism has become a network of snitches at the end of their ropes, and FBI agents desperate to thwart a terrorist plot even if it means creating one.”

(Will Potter, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege)

“A disturbing window into America’s war on terror. In story after story, Aaronson reveals in detail how the FBI and its informants are creating crime rather than solving it. This is an important piece of journalism.”

(Alexandra Natapoff, author of Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice)

Kinda blending, wouldn’t you say?

I probably would have dismissed this as a too-good-too-be-true case…if it was not for one thing:

There’s more.

More documentation

Here at econoTwist’s, several strange anti-terror operation have been noticed. Incidents where the circumstances have been somewhat weird.

Remember these stories?

And this seems to have become a hot topic on other websites, too.

Techdirt.com has posted the following stories lately:

Perhaps there is something to Trevor Aaronson’s book, after all…