Moe Tkacik notices a strange paragraph in Dana Priest and William Arkin's latest Top Secret America report:
The need to identify U.S.-born or naturalized citizens who are planning violent attacks is more urgent than ever, U.S. intelligence officials say. This month's FBI sting operation involving a Baltimore construction worker who allegedly planned to bomb a Maryland military recruiting station is the latest example. It followed a similar arrest of a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen allegedly seeking to detonate a bomb near a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. There have been nearly two dozen other cases just this year.
As Tkacik notes, neither of the plots named was ever in danger of actually happening, because they were all part of elaborate FBI sting operations. That's pretty relevant given that Top Secret America is ostensibly about the intangible gains of an ever-expanding national security state.
Tkacik is mistaken the Post for ignoring the issue however--it was the Post who first reported that members of a California mosque targeted by the FBI had tried to turn in their informant as a terrorist. The government tried to prosecute the guy who dimed the informant out anyway, before ultimately dropping the case.
