Stings or False Flags - When Portraying Terror, Does It Matter?

More "terror" in New York -

The jury in the Bronx synagogue bomb plot case was told Wednesday that the informant who provided the four suspects with phony bombs and missiles was paid $97,000 by the FBI.

The FBI gave Pakistani immigrant Shahed Hussain $44,000 for expenses and $53,000 for "his services" over a three-year period, agent Robert Fuller said.

Fuller, the first prosecution witness in the trial that started Tuesday, showed the jury one of the unexploded bombs the would-be terrorists planned to use to blow up one of two Riverdale

Defense lawyers contend that without the informant - who they say entrapped the suspects - their bumbling clients would never have tried to blow up two synagogues in Riverdale and shoot down missiles.

James Cromitie, 44, and co-defendants David Williams, 29, Onta Williams, 34, and Laguerre Payen, 28, were caught in May 2009.

Hussain met them at an upstate mosque, where he was sent by the feds. The trial continues today in Manhattan Federal Court. The four suspects face life in prison if convicted.

The Real Effect
We're so lucky that we have the FBI to pay arrest these individuals and arm disarm them. Almost every one of these headline seizing terror plots have a Federal agent lurking in the background dispensing taxpayer cash to "terrorists". Let's view the simplified terror cycle of progression -

• A Federal agency either suspects, or drums up an inkling that their might be some "terrorists".
• The agency has an interest in catching "terrorists" as this increases their budget and salary. A conflict of interest when it comes to being a witness.
• In order to catch these "terrorists", the agency hires an "informant". These individuals are generally quite shady and perhaps may have been "terrorists" themselves at one point, but offered a deal to go catch more "terrorists".
• What informant in their right mind would pass up freedom and cash to go prison? An obvious conflict of interest.
• The more "terrorists" he catches, the more useful he is and the more pay he gets.
• If things look sketchy, the informant can always carry out the act himself.
• The "informant" sets up the "terrorists" by asking and sometimes outright bullying individuals into expressing interest in attacking targets.
• The "informant" is supplied ammunition by the agency.
• This ammo should be fraudulent, but could be real.
•  If real, this provides a previously non-existent terror risk. The very thing the agency is supposed to be preventing.
• If things go really wrong, you can always blame it on the "terrorists".

• The agency catches the "terrorists" or if business is slow, the "informant".
• The media stops the presses and proclaims the good news to the public. 
• The public perceives there is a large real existential risk that exists.
• They demand more protection from the agency. 
• They pay more protection money in the form of taxes and increased security presence. (Think Homeland Security) 
• The agency gets raises and grows. (After all, lots of "terrorists" out there.)
• Go to step 1.

As you can see, there are quite a few incentives for the agents, the informants, the terrorists and the businessmen behind the security to promote terror. In our example above, the informant got $97,000 from the FBI and was going to blow up synagogues, a fact that I'm sure the ADL was quick to trumpet as anti-Semitic. This creates the perception that the Muslims are out to get us, regardless of the truth.