Last week, the New York Times and major news agencies across the nation heralded the FBI for preventing a terrorist plot to harm hundreds attending a Christmas lighting event in downtown Portland, Oregon. Arrested for the alleged plot was 19 year old Mohamed Osman Mohamud who, according to the FBI, "had been dreaming of committing a terrorist act."
Undoubtedly, preventing an attack on hundreds of innocent people is always good news but the oddity here is the extent to which the FBI actually planned and orchestrated the "foiled" attack for Mohamud.
The FBI "let the plot play out, assisting Mr. Mohamud with the details, providing him with cash, scoping out a parking spot near the square, sketching out the plan on paper. At the end of September, Mr. Mohamud mailed bomb components to agents he thought were fellow operatives who would assemble the device."
As it seems, Mohamud had no experience in bomb making, no training in the logistics to carry out such an operation, little financial resources, and apparently no connections to the very dangerous people that do. But the FBI made it all possible and still claim they stopped an imminent threat.
Why all the theatre, then? Maybe it's to get Portland to return to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. A measure rejected by the city in 2005, with strong support from the ACLU of Oregon, because of the Task Force's penchant for spying on war protesters and peace activists.