NBC News depicts the foiling of “ISIS-inspired July 4 attacks” with a photo of a New York City cop guarding Coney Island. (photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Last week, in the wake of another vague terror warning issued by the government, FAIR reported how FBI terror warnings have a long history of always being wrong. Others also noted the FBI’s habit of issuing pointless terror warnings, including The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian’s Trevor Timm and FireDogLake‘s Kevin Gosztola. There was a general sense among many that the July 4 “warning” was just another empty terror warning meant to scare, provide CYA for the FBI and ultimately fizzle out like so many before.
And, in fact, the holiday weekend came and went, with the FBI “terror warning” hyped by the media foreshadowing nothing more than for two false alarms and a handful of canceled Fourth of July plans.
So it was curious, to say the least, when on Thursday the FBI asserted to CNN’s Jim Sciutto that “a number” of “ISIS-inspired” terror plots had been “thwarted” from “coast to coast” over the Fourth of July weekend:
US law enforcement efforts thwarted a number of terror threats in the last two weeks, including plots timed to the July 4 holiday weekend, US officials tell CNN on Thursday. The thwarted plots included targets “coast to coast.” In fitting with calls by ISIS to attack in any way possible, the attempted plots were unsophisticated, including guns, knives and other weapons.
Also fitting with recent patterns, investigators believe the plots, though not directed by overseas terror groups providing specific means of attack or specific targets, were “enabled” by actors abroad, including recruiting the suspects and encouraging them to carry out attacks on US soil.
(Note: the article was updated at 2:27 pm EST with a video of Sciutto directly addressing “terror warning” skeptics. A total coincidence, to be sure.)
The evidence for these plots? As usual, none was provided. Just the word of “US officials.”
About an hour later, USA Today and others would report FBI Director James Comey making similar claims:
FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that federal authorities disrupted an undisclosed number of plots timed to the July 4 holiday to “kill people in the United States.” The plots, Comey said, were linked to the Islamic State terror group.
More than 10 people have been arrested in the past four weeks on charges related to their association with ISIL. Some of those, Comey said, involved plots timed to July 4th. Comey declined to elaborate on the nature of the plots or where they were targeted.
Notice the weasel phrasing the media uncritically allow Comey to engage in: “timed to the July 4th weekend”; “related to their association with ISIL.”
No specifics were provided in the follow-up reports, either. Even noted FBI press release-reader Jim Sciutto would qualify his piece by adding, “No further details were immediately available about how the plots were thwarted.”
You get more of a sense of what actually was going on from Pete Williams’ NBC News report, if you do a little reading between the lines:
Comey added that those inspired by ISIS don’t make elaborate plans and often act on the spur of the moment.
“It’s actually hard to figure out when they’re trying to kill somebody,” Comey said. “And you cannot say, ‘Well, we’ve got to do it on the Fourth.’ Because you know you have people who are motivated to kill people, and they are unreliable in terms of when they’re going to act.”
So the arrests were of people without “elaborate plans” who are “unreliable in terms of when they’re going to act.” It’s not even clear that they were intending to act, since it’s “hard to figure out when they’re trying to kill somebody.” But not hard to get the media to report as fact that these plan-less, unreliably scheduled suspects who may or may not have been trying to kill anybody had “ISIS terrorist plots linked to the Fourth of July holiday.”
These plots, it should be noted, are not without political context. Just yesterday, as USA Today reports, FBI Director Comey testified before congress about the importance of being able to get around encryption software to “fight terror”:
The director’s comments come a day after testifying before members of Congress about the security risks posed by the government’s limited investigative capabilities as suspects increasingly use encrypted applications to “go dark.”
As the Washington Post reported on July 4, “lawmakers” also wanted to step up FBI surveillance of social media to prevent “ISIS recruiting online” by forcing social media companies to monitor and report “terrorist content.”
FAIR has contacted the FBI and asked for any specific thwarted plots. As of press time, none were provided. If they are, this post will be updated.
Updated to credit Kevin Gosztola’s work.
Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.
I have an unconfirmed report from inside my head that the bureaucrats running the nation’s security systems–the CIA, FBI, DIA, ODNI, NSA, NGA, TSA, INI, CGI, INR, TFI, ONI, MCIA, OICI, INSCOM, NASIC, et. al.–have budgets that must be expended by the end of this fiscal year (September 30) and need to maintain, if not expand their “mission” by countering enemies, foreign and domestic, real and imaginary.
You can’t run a security agency if you don’t have enemies. And you can’t support an arms industry without danger from those same enemies. It’s a win-win world, color coded for appropriate levels of anxiety, all in service to a credulous populace.
If this is what the FBI needs to do, so be it.
Fireworks and fearmongering on the Fourth
An American tradition
Ah it simple folks: it is “XXX” is the enemy, therefore any attacks that might possible happen MUST be the Result of enemy “XXX”
“” On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!””