The Terror Factory

Starred review from October 15, 2012
Building off a story published in Mother Jones in 2011 (itself based on Aaronson’s tenure as an investigative reporting fellow at UC Berkeley), this sobering account presents convincing evidence of the FBI’s role in seeding terrorist plots in order to foil them and claim the honors. Aaronson, the associate director and cofounder of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, demonstrates how Hoover’s prodigal brainchild “built the largest network of spies” (many of them serial crooks and ex-cons) “ever to exist in the United States” in an effort to lure hapless outliers into trumped-up sting operations. The author cites a list provided by the U.S. Attorney General’s office enumerating hundreds of people prosecuted as terrorists since the 9/11 attacks; Aaronson alleges that many of these cases are the result of what amounts to wholesale entrapment of individuals recruited with government funds and expertise: “While we have captured a few terrorists since 9/11, we have manufactured many more.” He examines several hazy cases, such as that of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a young Somali-American party boy arrested in 2010 for conspiracy to detonate a bomb at the lighting of a Christmas tree in Portland, Ore., and weighs the strengths and weaknesses of the charges. Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue.

November 1, 2012
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting co-founder Aaronson debuts with a shocking report on the FBI's war on terrorism. The FBI, writes the author, spends $3 billion of its $5 billion annual budget fighting terrorism. Aaronson sets out to show that the "evidence in dozens of terrorism cases...suggests that today's terrorists in the United States are nothing more than FBI creations, impressionable men living on the edges of society who become bomb-triggering would-be killers only because of the actions of FBI informants." The author bases his conclusions on a database of 400 people prosecuted in the U.S. between 9/11 and March 2010, and his analysis of the kinds of threats represented, how many of the operations involved government stings using informants and whether the informants could be considered provocateurs. The author drew on the expertise of current and former FBI officials to interpret the data. His summary results show that the FBI has recruited a pool of about 15,000 informants, as it has pursued more than 500 prosecutions since 9/11. Three of these posed threats to people and property, 150 involved defendants caught conspiring with FBI informants and the others involved crimes like money laundering. Aaronson argues that the defendants may technically be terrorists, but the definition of the word is being stretched "to such a degree that credulity strains." He discusses how the FBI recruits informants through its use of the criminal and immigration statutes, pressuring likely targets to cooperate. He presents relevant case studies and provides detailed profiles of some of the key informants--e.g., Elie Asaad, who was paid $80,000 for his work in the Liberty City Seven case. A real eye-opener that questions how well the country's security is being protected.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.