We reprint this piece below from the World Socialist Website for our readers interest. Facts For Working People and this blog are is not affiliated to the WSWS.
By
Karl Eisner
20 February 2013
On February 8, federal authorities arrested a San Jose man for
attempting to set off a car bomb outside a bank in Oakland, California.
The charges filed against Matthew Llaneza, 28, stem from a months-long
operation staged by the FBI’s South Bay Joint Terrorism Task Force. The
event is the latest in a long series of bogus terror plots hatched or
otherwise encouraged by the federal government.
According to the sparse criminal complaint submitted 10 days ago, the
government’s involvement with the Arizona native—a recent Muslim
convert—dates back to November of last year, when undercover FBI agent
Christopher Monika met with and convinced Llaneza that he was “connected
with the Taliban and the mujahedin in Afghanistan.”
How or why Llaneza first became a target of the FBI goes unmentioned
in the official narrative, but over the next several months Monika and
Llaneza allegedly met several times to organize the bombing of an
Oakland Bank of America branch—supposedly chosen because “the name of
the bank and Oakland’s location as a center of protests made it an
appropriate target.” The operation came to an end on February 8, when
Llaneza tried to detonate an inoperable car bomb and was promptly
arrested.
At no point did the plot pose a “threat to the public,” notes a press
release from the US attorney’s office. Like a number of high-profile,
supposed terror operations foiled by the US government over the past
decade, every stage of the sham conspiracy had been created and
carefully managed by the FBI. Virtually all of the key elements in the
plot were in fact supplied by the federal government: a rented storage
unit in Hayward, an SUV to deliver the would-be car bomb, the fake
explosives and the expertise needed to assemble them.
According to the affidavit, Llaneza’s greatest tangible contribution
to the scheme was the purchase of two cellphones and a nine-volt battery
(on an outing with his undercover FBI handler, no less) that were later
assembled by the authorities into a phony trigger device. Until
February 8, when Llaneza took the lead and tried to detonate the inert
explosives in Oakland, most of his involvement seems to have consisted
of tagging along with his government sponsor.
There have been no allegations that Llaneza, depicted by the
government’s criminal complaint as a calculating and committed
pro-Taliban terrorist, had any ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Absent
any co-conspirators, any evidence of involvement with a terrorist
organization, or even any evidence of independently trying to establish
that involvement, undercover agent Monika was Llaneza’s sole connection
to, and undoubtedly the driving force behind, the entire operation.
By all accounts, Matthew Llaneza is a mentally ill individual. Santa
Clara county court documents from 2011 describe the man as psychotic and
suffering from bipolar disorder, a record that was almost certainly
known to the FBI before it began its sting operation in November of last
year. Llaneza was involuntarily hospitalized and placed on a 72-hour
psychiatric hold by authorities in April 2011, after acting strangely
and becoming combative at his father’s San Jose home. Police records
show Llaneza claimed to be suicidal, with a history of substance abuse
and mental health problems.
When police later discovered Llaneza’s ownership of an AK-47 assault
rifle, brought from Arizona and illegal under California’s gun laws, he
was convicted on weapons charges and sentenced to a brief jail term.
“You would not have to spend more than a few minutes with him without it
being painfully obvious that there were some severe psychological
issues,” said Cameron Bowman, Llaneza’s former defense attorney. Legal
proceedings against the accused are currently on hold until March 8,
pending a possible review of his mental state and legal competency.
In light of the circumstances surrounding past
government-manufactured terror plots, the FBI—known for its mass
surveillance of and fishing expeditions for “radicals” among the Muslim
population—most likely found in Llaneza another easy mark: a mentally
unstable, suggestible figure who could be counted on to play his
assigned part in a terror farce first created, and then thwarted, by the
state security services.
With the help of a servile corporate media, these staged terrorist
conspiracies are designed to put flesh on the bones of the Obama
administration’s “war on terror” propaganda. When a genuine Al Qaeda
plot to blow up a California bank is nowhere to be found, the Obama
Justice Department simply invents one—all to keep alive a supposedly
ubiquitous terrorist threat, cited for more than a decade to justify a
permanent state of war abroad and police-state measures at home.
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