Nice Work By the FBI

[BoSoxGal]

Exactly; it's the difference between conspiracy and attempt.

[Gob]

what's the difference in sentence for those?

[Scooter]

I'm sorry to be so thick but I still don't see the pantomime connection.

If you are insisting that he was led to do something beyond his will by deception.

I say he was only deceived in the matter of who he thought he was working with...

And not even the slightest doubt is created in your mind by the fact that the only expressed desire to carry out a terrorist act was that elicited in conversations with FBI agents, and that the only planning he carried out to accomplish said act was done in cooperation with them?

[Gob]

Sources say as the suspect continued contact with the undercover agents, his plans became more ambitious, and he eventually decided to become the first terrorist suicide bomber on US soil.

[Rick]

And not even the slightest doubt is created in your mind by the fact that the only expressed desire to carry out a terrorist act was that elicited in conversations with FBI agents, and that the only planning he carried out to accomplish said act was done in cooperation with them?

At this time?

Not a whole lot, as proceedings and more information unfolds this may change.

He has still not been tried ad convicted, so there is an assumption of innocence.

The FBI has an obligation to provide as much information/evidence for their case as they can collect I believe they tried their best to collect that.

Now it will be up to the judiciary.

[liberty]

Sources say as the suspect continued contact with the undercover agents, his plans became more ambitious, and he eventually decided to become the first terrorist suicide bomber on US soil.

One can only wonder why....

I for one don’t believe that is beyond the realm of possibility that FBI agents would manipulate a suspect into doing something that he would only talk about otherwise. Whether a person is a federal agent or a Supreme Court justice no one should have power to do whatever they a want. Hopefully supervision does its job and the actions of agents are kept I within limits. Power should always be limited, but that is an American concept.

[Jarlaxle]

what's the difference in sentence for those?

A few years versus life without parole, most likely.

[Lord Jim]

That is not a quote of mine, it comes from the article...

It's not at all surprising to me that the information released to the public would not include what this guy said and did (and who he said it to or where he said it) that brought him to the FBI's attention initially. They'd be completely burning their sources and methods to release that.

[Scooter]

Except that they did say - it was something he supposedly said and did in the presence of an FBI informant.

What they don't say, is whether it was the FBI informant himself that did and said the things prompting him to do and say the things that brought him to their attention; the criminal complaint appears to have been very cleverly crafted to suggest otherwise while never coming right out and saying that the "individual" was someone other than the informant.

[Rick]

It's not incumbent upon an informant to make a case.

All they have to do is say hey there's this guy...

[Scooter]

That's right, that's all they have to say.

But we also have a right to know, if the informant says, "this guy handled a gun that someone brought out," whether the person who brought out the gun was the informant. A point on which the criminal complaint appears to be deliberately vague.

[Rick]

That's right, that's all they have to say.

But we also have a right to know, if the informant says, "this guy handled a gun that someone brought out," whether the person who brought out the gun was the informant. A point on which the criminal complaint appears to be deliberately vague.

I don't know that that is a correct based on an affidavit, I'm not a lawyer but I think all that is necessary at this point is "probable cause" and according to the one I linked to they do...

[Scooter]

What I'm saying is that the entire tenor of the situation changes if the informer was merely an observer, as opposed to the informer being the person who instigated the course of events. As it is, the wording of the complaint leaves it completely open as to which of those is the truth.

[Rick]

According to the affidavit, an FBI informant brought El Khalifi, who was arrested Friday, to the attention of law enforcement in January 2011 after he told others at an Arlington residence that "the group needed to be ready for war."

From here

This suggests to me that these were the words of El Khalifi and that he needed no prompting...

[Scooter]

From the complaint:

In or about January 2011, a confidential human source reported to the FBI that El Khalifi met with other individuals at a residence in Arlington, Virginia, on or about January 11, 2011. During this meeting, one individual produced what appeared to be an AK-47, two revolvers and ammunition. El Khalifi expressed agreement with a statement by this individual that the "war on terrorism" was a "war on Muslims," and said that the group needed to be ready for war.

Who was the "individual" who brought out the weapons and made the statement? Was it the informant himself, which is completely plausible based on the wording? Was it "Hussien", who was working with the FBI? Or was it some other person who had no connection to the FBI? Of the three possibilities, the last is the least likely, because of the FBI's own conclusion that El Khalifi was working alone.

And what was the context in which El Khalifi said that the group needed to be ready for war (which were NOT his exact words, not being placed in quotatiion marks in the complaint)? Had someone said, "the Yankee Dog is killing Muslims around the world, and we need to bring the war home to him"? Or had someone said, "There are conflicts smouldering all over the globe right now, and any one of them could end up involving the United States"? Because "need[ing] to be ready for war" takes on a completely different meaning in each case.

[Rick]

You are correct, I don't know the source for CNN but it does differ from what is on the affidavit.

Guess I'll just hide & watch...

[loCAtek]

Obviously, the FBI were waiting to see if there were more individuals the suspect was in contact with who posed a greater national threat.

That he was such small fish, explains how/why the media got ahold of this.