When officials stress that the public was never in danger, you should take them at their word. Why? Because it’s very likely the DC “metro plot” was never real. It was, in short, nothing more than an entrapment exercise. Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post:
Officials stressed that the public was never in danger. Still, Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said it was “chilling that a man from Ashburn is accused of casing rail stations with the goal of killing as many Metro riders as possible through simultaneous bomb attacks.”
Here’s what likely happened: Someone (a friend, relative… whomever) had a vague conversation with Farooque Ahmed about attacking the DC metro system. This person became concerned enough to alert law enforcement, who sent in an undercover agent, posing as an al Qaeda member, to meet and evaluate Ahmed.
The undercover agent and Ahmed then probably developed plans to case various metro stations. That’s because in order to prosecute him, the law enforcement would need demonstrable evidence that Ahmed took action to execute an attack plot. It’s tough to get a conviction by testifying that Ahmed really, really wanted to do something, but never did anything beyond that.
If (a big if) this is what happened, it opens serious issues: Would Ahmed have surveyed the attack locations had he not come in contact with the undercover agent? To put it another way — did law enforcement “create” a terrorist out of someone who was otherwise just talking a big game? And, as evidenced by the District Attorney’s comments, is law enforcement content to reap the benefits of the positive press coverage?
Much of this is informed speculation on my part, but if the public was allegedly never in danger, why did we need to hear about it in the first place?
