Hat tip Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)
That is exactly the question Steve Emerson asks in the below IPT article. Supposing an informant had tipped off the FBI to their plans and been able to place undercover agents into the plot.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3985/the-boston-bombing-and-the-case-for-fbi-stings
Yes, we would have had no bombing, no deaths and no loss of limbs. Instead there would have been cries of entrapment from the people like CAIR, MPAC, ISNA and ICNA. I would suspect that there would have been quiet relief within the majority of the US Muslim communities. Unfortunately, most seem to be afraid of getting on the wrong side of the above organizations, so we don't hear much about it.
The Emerson article mentions examples of plots that were thwarted by FBI undercover agents and the resultant cries of entrapment. In addition, there was a Boston case involving one Tarek Mehanna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Mehanna
It does not seem that there was any undercover contact in this case, but guess who took the lead in protesting the prosecution and conviction of Mehanna in Boston.
The Islamic Cultural Center of Boston in Roxbury. The same group with ties to Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, convicted terrorist Abdurrahman Alamoudi, and exposed by Americans for Peace and Tolerance head, Charles Jacobs, who was excoriated within his own Boston Jewish community by rabbis too absorbed in interfaith activities with said mosque.
And to think that the head imam of this mosque, Suhaib Webb, was slated to speak at last week's interfaith memorial-until he was replaced by Governor Deval Patrick, who is quite familiar with the mosque. (But that is another story.) To have had the head of this mosque speak would have profaned the very service itself.
To their credit, the FBI has prevented several attacks similar to the one in Boston. This one stayed under their radar. It still remains to be seen what errors were made two years ago when the Russians alerted the FBI to the older brother and the investigation went dry. Unfortunately, these things happen when agents and investigators are swamped by cases and leads. For the moment, we should be thanking all of those involved in the Boston investigation for solving the crime and bringing these two men to justice.
The veracity of your fantasy depends very much on how the prevention of the tragedy was publicized.
ReplyDeleteIf the FBI had said "We have two crazy punks in custody who tried to set off shrapnel explosives at the Boston Marathon, and the older one seems to have had some sort of infatuation with Chechnya, where there parents came from, they have relatives in Maryland who disown them," I doubt CAIR would have said anything.
If the FBI publicized it in Fousesquawkian rhetoric about Jihad in America, it might well have provoked some defensive backlash.
Sort of like the way you would talk if someone blamed Waco on Michelle Bachman.