My column today, pivoting off the recent arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, is on how the FBI's terrorism sting operations have strained law enforcement's relationship with the American Muslim community but how the stings themselves don't necessarily amount to entrapment just because the plots are false:
South Texas Law Professor Dru Stevenson says the stings are attractive for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they sow paranoia among terrorist recruiting networks. He adds that an entrapment defense in these cases is difficult to mount because of the standards in the federal court system.
"The defendant has to show that he was not predisposed, it is not at all enough to show but for the inducement he would not have committed the crime," Stevenson says. "Any evidence that you were already interested in doing this type of thing is probably going to be fatal to your entrapment defense." Federal agents know that--which is why at some point during the investigation, they gauge the target's commitment. According to the arrest warrant in the Mohamud case, agents reminded Mohamud of the potential casualties, and asked if he was "serious." Mohamud also allegedly tried to contact alleged terrorist operatives abroad in order to seek training, prior to federal agents becoming involved.
What American Muslim leaders say they want is some sort of process through which the government and the community partner together to intervene earlier in the radicalization process. That already happens in some cases where there's a viable local partner in the community, but the folks I talked to think there should be some kind of national process put in place.
This isn't like local police trying to meet quotas for arrests and parking tickets -- the federal government genuinely believes they're heading off threats before they become operational. Nor do I think it's like the cynical buy-bust operations used to arrest people who buy drugs or solicit prostitutes, both of which target a large number of people unlikely to do harm to others. Ideally, there would be system to facilitate more earlier interventions, and therefore fewer cases like these. But I do think that asserting a willingness to kill innocent people crosses a line that looking for a fix doesn't. Whether it actually amounts to a crime, though, depends on the specific circumstances -- the Newburgh Four case looks more like it crosses a line than this recent Oregon case, since the informant there actively dissuaded the target from backing out. But most of what we know so far comes from the government side, so we'll see.
Bottom line, though, is that these cases do strain an essential relationship with a community that, in the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, has "provided critical assistance to law enforcement in helping to disrupt terrorist plots and combat radicalization." As one Muslim leader put it to me, you don't want a situation where Muslims are afraid to pick up the phone and call the FBI.
