Pre-Terrorism

by Zoë Pollock

Petra Bartosiewicz probes our disturbing efforts to catch domestic Muslim "terrorists." Sting operations have been set up where the government provides "the script, the arms, the cash, and other props, and offers logistical support." Bartosiewicz traces the trend back to FBI director Robert Mueller's memo in the days after 9/11, pushing a policy of “forward-leaning—preventative—prosecutions":

This memo, which detailed policies for “preemptive” operations, explains how, nearly a decade into our “war on terror,” Justice Department officials can claim we’ve caught hundreds of people domestically whom we call terrorists, while at the same time, according to the DOJ’s own statistics, only one person—an Egyptian immigrant who opened fire on an El Al ticket line at Los Angeles International Airport in 2002—has actually committed an act of terrorism on American soil.

Instead, the U.S. government has amassed more than 1,000 federal “terrorism-associated” prosecutions by expanding its investigative purview beyond actual attacks, or even “ticking time bomb” threats, to focus almost exclusively on a theoretically unlimited array of potential threats. To catch a successful terrorist under this system would constitute a failure of law enforcement, because the perpetrators would have already committed the act. Rather, these agents are seeking “pre-terrorists,” individuals whose intentions, rather than actions, constitute the primary threat.