Nation of Fear How to Create and Capture “Terrorists” in the Name of Security

 David Shipler, author of Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America (2012), notes that most men like Nafis who get caught up in the FBI dragnet “seem ambivalent, incompetent and adrift, like hapless wannabes looking for a cause that the informer or undercover agent skilfully helps them find”. Furthermore, Shipler writes, “The stings initially target suspects for pure speech—comments to an informer outside a mosque, angry postings on web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas—then woo them into relationships with informers, who are often convicted felons working in exchange for leniency, or with FBI agents posing as members of Al Qaeda or other groups.”