Last week’s arrest of 20 year old Ohio resident Christopher Lee Cornell for allegedly plotting to shoot up the US Capitol was yet another in dozens of spectacular FBI takedowns of dangerous homegrown terrorists out to do us harm. Or was it?
As has been the case at least 49 times since 9/11, these bone-chilling terror plots are actually conceived by the FBI and sold to usually a hapless target, often one with severe financial and/or mental problems.
Such appears to be the case with Cornell, who was unemployed, living with his parents, and spending his days in the fantasy world of endless video games. Until he met an FBI informant. Soon he had purchased two AR-15 rifles, 600 rounds of ammunition, and, we are told, determined to commit a terrorist act against the US Capitol.
His father is not buying the government’s story, claiming son Christopher is a “peace-loving momma’s boy.”
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins Ben Swann to discuss this strange phenomena of the FBI actually developing terror plots and selling them to carefully selected targets via coercive and incentivized informants.
McAdams points out the perverse incentives shared by the media, FBI, US legislators, and the informants themselves in these ever more spectacular plots. The media, of course, thrive on breathless, 24 hour don’t-dare-turn-off-your-television breaking stories involving diabolical plots with perpetrators so undistinguished they be our own neighbors! The FBI benefits by being seen as active in thwarting plots before they can bear fruit — they are keeping us safe! Lawmakers can demonstrate justification for the privacy-killing legislation they pass which they promise is keeping us safe, and they can push even more 4th Amendment killing surveillance with little public resistance. Informants have the incentive to convince or coerce their targets into taking one positive step toward planning a terrorist attack, because at that point an arrest can be made and they are rewarded with a reduced prison sentence or even a large amount of money.
In a sense, as in economics, because terror plots are “subsidized” by these institutions we see more and more of them.
Watch McAdams and Swann discuss whether these are actual terror plots, or government set-ups:
