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Would-Be Bomber Arrested In Kansas; Planned Suicide Attack on Ft. Riley

Posted by timothy on from the well-that's-not-nice dept.

The Associated Press (as carried by the Boston Herald) reports that a 20-year old Topeka man has been arrested as he attempted to arm what he believed to be a thousand-pound bomb outside Ft. Riley, Kansas. John T. Booker Jr. is alleged to have planned an attack in conspiracy with others who were actually FBI agents; Booker's postings to Facebook in March 2014 about his desire to die as a martyr brought him to the FBI's attention, and the FBI sting operation which ended in his arrest began after these posts. Booker had been recruited by the U.S. Army in February of last year, but his enlistment was cancelled shortly thereafter.

9 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. masdf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So once again, the FBI entraps someone by convincing them to carry out an attack so that they can stop it and pretend to be heroes. How about actually stopping attacks that you haven't yourself created? Oh, right. That count is still at zero. And I guess you need to justify all your bullshit somehow.

    1. Re:masdf by BitterOak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So once again, the FBI entraps someone by convincing them to carry out an attack so that they can stop it and pretend to be heroes. How about actually stopping attacks that you haven't yourself created? Oh, right. That count is still at zero. And I guess you need to justify all your bullshit somehow.

      Actually, stings like this may prevent actual attacks from occurring by providing a deterrent. Would you join such a conspiracy if your co-conspirators might be FBI agents? Operations like these send a message out to would-be terrorists: you're not safe planning attacks in this country.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    2. Re:masdf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This does *not* make us safer. Quite the opposite, really. They use people like him to promote their own agenda. That is, they want to "prove" that everyone is a terrorist and they need more money and approval to stomp all over our rights, and you shouldn't complain about it.

      What happens when one of their sting operations don't go according to plan? Maybe their guy goes a little nuts and decides to do things his own way, ends up killing or hurting a lot of innocent people. The FBI in this case could have stopped it by behaving appropriately instead of pressuring and reassuring him that doing evil was the way to go. Maybe without the FBI egging him on, he wouldn't have done anything.

      Here, they found someone that was exhibiting some obvious mental problems. Instead of getting him the help he clearly needed, they decided to make a show out of it for their own propaganda machine.

    3. Re:masdf by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

      What is your evidence that he had mental problems?

      Apparently you didn't comprehend the story either. According the TFA, he was "mentally ill and was acting strangely only days before his arrest, according to a Muslim cleric who said he was counseling him at the request of the FBI.". The cleric went on to say that "the agents told him that Booker suffered from bipolar disorder, characterized by unusual mood swings that can affect functioning."

      So he had mental problems according to the FBI and the person that was counselling him.

    4. Re:masdf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      > Apparently you didn't comprehend the story either.

      Dude, its Cold Fjord, he has a mental illness where he only sees the most extremist right-wing version of anything he reads. His visual cortex is physical incapable of processing any words that might even hint at a more sane interpretation.

    5. Re:masdf by mellon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      17.3.

      Dumb question. The job of the FBI is to arrest people who commit crimes. They should arrest exactly those people, and no other people. Of course it's an imperfect science, and they will miss some criminals and arrest some innocent people. But a key demographic they should avoid is arresting people who wouldn't have committed crimes without their help, because it is explicitly not their job to instigate criminal activity.

    6. Re:masdf by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That doesn't make him less dangerous.

      What makes him dangerous is filling his head with dangerous thoughts. The vast majority, if not all, of the people whom the FBI have entrapped in the past are some of the more vulnerable members of society: people without a strong social support structure, part of a marginalised community, often poor, often unemployed, and so on.

      It's a fundamental axiom of modern policing that the best way to stop crime is to stop people from becoming criminals in the first place. If someone is at risk of becoming a criminal, the best thing you can do is divert them away from that as early as possible. For the FBI to turn a non-criminal into a criminal is not just a failure, it's sociopathic.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    7. Re:masdf by Livius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      let's remove all security with respect to airplanes. Care to fly now?

      Yes. Since it's reduced my airfare, and massively reduced inconvenience, personal indignity, and time wasted at airports, and only marginally compromised air travel security.

  2. Alternative title by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Informative

    FBI sets up naive person and then arrests him when he follows instructions from his FBI handlers.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!