As kpete and others have pointed out, a man desribed by law enforcement as an "key figure" in the JFK gas line plot had been employed by CIA-connected Evergreen Aviation. See,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1038783; The picture that is emerging of 63-year-old Russel Defreitas, an immigrant from Guyana, is that of a down in his luck small-time con artist and drug dealer, who talked a motley group of Caribbean expatriots into an unlikely terrorist attack on a major New York Airport. See,
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liprof0604,0,7416105.story?coll=ny-main-breakingnewslinks This is very much like a string of similar "terrorist" plots broken up in recent months involving flim-flam men and their unsophisticated accomplices.
There's a common thread that runs through almost all of these cases; the central role of an Agent Provocateur - most recent terrorist plots feature an organizer recruited by an intelligence or law enforcement agency, without which there would not have been any sort of realistic threat worth investigating.
That agent assumes leadership or key subject matter expertise within a group, and provides the necessary resources -- money, connections, knowledge and access to weapons (usually provided by the intel agency) -- that the group would have otherwise lacked on its own. Often, the agent provocateur inspires others to violence, selects the targets, makes the bombs, and skips out of town one step ahead of the actual attack or otherwise disappears permanently. Again, with the assistance of the sponsor or an allied service.
Without the agent provocateur, the "conspiracy" would never have reached the point where the intelligence or law enforcement agency had "actionable" intelligence.
This is, indeed, a very old pattern, going back at least to the time of the Russian Czars, whose secret police ran the most violent terrorist factions within the revolutionary movement. Agents provocateur, working more or less wittingly for the secret police, enabled horrific bombings and assassinations, and provoked or guided the others to commit criminal acts. Since the 1880s, this has been a proven device for authoritarian states to crack down on political opponents and derail reform movements.
The role of the Agent Provocateur is different from a mere informant, who may be a follower or someone who has limited access to the organizational leadership. Informants are often "turned", but it can be said that the true agent provocateur is created.
We see the roles of agents provocateur as well as informants in plots that have resulted in mass casualties --the '93 WTC bombing, Oklahoma City, the East Africa embassy attacks, 9/11, 7/7, Madrid -- and in those plots that are rolled-up before they reach fruition. They are easily spotted in cases where it seems unlikely that those arrested could have mounted an actual attack.
We see it again in the JFK Plot. As AP reports:
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/new-york-airport-terror-plot/20070602123409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001Informant Helped Thwart JFK Terror Plot
Convicted Drug Dealer Began Working for Feds in 2004
By LARRY McSHANE
AP
NEW YORK (June 3) - A convicted drug dealer who agreed to pose as a wannabe terrorist among a shadowy group now accused of plotting to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport secretly fed information to federal investigators in exchange for a lighter sentence.
His surveillance trips to the airport with the suspects, travels abroad to meet with supporters and assurances he wanted to die as a martyr in an attack on an underground jet fuel pipeline gave counterterrorism agents insight and evidence that experts say was otherwise unattainable. And his help once again demonstrated the growing importance of informants in the war on terrorism , particularly as smaller radical groups become more aggressive.
SNIP
"In most cases, you can't get from A to B without an informant," said Tom Corrigan, a former member of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force. "Most times when an informant tells you what is going on, speculation becomes reality."
According to court papers and investigators, the informant began working for the government in 2004, after his second drug-trafficking conviction in New York
SNIP
He was sent to meet with the JFK plot's alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas in 2006 and was introduced by an unidentified third party. . . . The informant was convincing. Defreitas, according to a federal complaint, believed the informant "had been sent by Allah to be the one" to pull off the bombing.
In this case, what the media is calling an informant is actually an agent provocateur. This is the now the preferred tactic in counterterrorism operations, and is a feature of virtually all recent cases where those arrested seemed to lack essential skills and competence to have pulled off an actual mass casualty attack.
Authorities said the JFK case and last month's arrest of six men suspected of plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., illustrated the need for inside information.
"These have been two significant cases back-to-back where informants were used," Corrigan said. "These terrorists are in our own backyard. They may have to reach out to people they don't necessarily trust, but they need - for guns, explosives, whatever."
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said they were examples of terrorism growing in the U.S.
SNIP
Last year, informants played a major role in two other terror cases. In June 2006, an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative helped bring down a plot to blow up the Sears Tower. Five of the seven men arrested in that alleged terrorist group were U.S. citizens.
In May 2006, an NYPD informant's testimony led to the conviction of a man plotting to blow up the busy Herald Square subway station in midtown Manhattan.
The sad fact is that the use of agents provocateur can be a highly risky tactic. Incompetently run, or hijacked by third parties, such operations can have catastrophic results. As we saw on 9/11 and 7/7, intelligence and law enforcement can set off chains of events that lead to "intelligence failures" resulting in massive losses of life that would otherwise have been unlikely to have happened.
Counter-terrorism operations using agents provocateur seem to a permanent fixture of the Global War on Terrorism. Tightly controlled, and carefully targeted at truly dangerous groups, they are a legitimate law enforcement technique.
But, these operations are all-too-often abused and mismanaged. Despite the demonstrated risks, states continue to run operations employing agents provocateur because -- come success or failure in preventing terrorist attacks -- they rationalize other political objectives, such as mobilization of public support for wars, and the justification of further authoritarian measures. These operations are essentially self-perpetuating.
The point of cultivating this particular plot wasn't so much capture of dangerous intending terrorists - it was obviously never going to amount to much -- like similar cases, it was turned into a publicity stunt by the authorities.
Doesn't really matter that most of the terrorist plots broken up of late have been on the improbable side, and clearly cases where entrapment is a major legal issue.
The value of these arrests hasn't been to prevent mass casualty attacks as they feed the public perception that America is facing a mounting domestic threat from within by Islamic and immigrant communities.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying there aren't real terrorists. There are some people who would love to kill thousands of Americans -- and, who have the will and the means to try it -- but these aren't them. Once again, the Bush Administration and publicity-hungry local politicians have diverted resources from the real threats, making Americans less safe.
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