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The Terror Factory is an important new book by journalist Trevor Aaronson, who studied over 500 cases of “domestic terrorism” and found most are tainted by FBI misbehavior; Kevin Gozstola of FireDogLake returns to update us on the Bradley Manning trial at Fort Meade.Aaronson conducted a careful review of more than 500 cases of so-called “domestic terrorism” since 9/11, and found a pattern of infiltration by an army of 15,000 FBI informants into Muslim communities. In many cases, these informants were paid to entrap suspects and provoke plots that were often suggested by the informants. Suspects in these stings were enabled with explosives and detonators, only to be arrested when they tried to detonate them.
Aaronson offers many examples, and we talk about the case of Mansour Arbabsiar, who allegedly tried to kill the Saudi Ambassador in an improbable plot that was clumsily linked to Iran. We talk about FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces and their coordination with local law enforcement agencies and DHS Fusion Centers. And we touch on the expiring term of FBI Director Mueller and his nominated successor, James Comey. More at Aaronson’s website.
At 46 minutes in, Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake returns with a good recap of recent developments in the Bradley Manning trial. He discusses the prosecution’s selection of just 117 cables of the 250,000 released by WikiLeaks, and that these 117 are not the controversial ones. He describes the testimony of Admiral Woods about the Guantanamo files that were released, and the attempt to describe this data as secret–even though most of it is in Andy Worthington’s book, The Guantanamo Files. We also talk about the rejection of a request for an injunction to require timely release of court documents, and the attempt to place a value on a huge email list in order to make its release a more serious offense.