03/17/15 – Trevor Aaronson – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our guest today is Trevor Aronson.
Hey, Trevor, how are you?
Great, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you on.
Here you are writing for The Intercept, and I was telling them before, the book is The Terror Factory, and it's really great, and as you write it up in there, there are 50 cases, at least, out of a few hundred bogus terrorism prosecutions in this country since September 11th.
There are approximately 50 that are just outright entrapment jobs, like the poor kid in Lodi, California, or the Miami 7, or whatever.
Pick your ones from the Northeast, the pizza plot.
There are a couple of different pizza plots, and the Brooklyn Bridge, and all these.
Anyway, it's such great work that you've done there.
The book is The Terror Factory, and now this new one is called How the FBI Created a Terrorist.
It's the story of a guy named Sammy Osmekak.
Is that right?
Osmekak is how it's pronounced.
Okay.
Well, I'll go ahead and back off and let you take it from there, Trevor.
Yeah.
It's a story that came out yesterday called The Sting, How the FBI Created a Terrorist, and it's about a case in Tampa, Florida, involving a young man named Sammy Osmekak, who was convicted last year, and in November, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in a plot to bomb an Irish bar in Tampa, and then take hostages at a local Native American casino.
What's interesting about this story is that it's kind of a new wrinkle in my research over the last few years on FBI sting operations, in that for the first time, we have a transcript that shows what the FBI agents were saying as they were working on the sting operation.
As you noted, the FBI has a proclivity for making it possible or providing the means and opportunity for someone to commit an act of terrorism who just doesn't have those means and opportunity.
Often, they are mentally ill or economically desperate, and the criticism of these cases is that the FBI is then setting them up in elaborate stings to commit crimes that they never on their own could have had the capacity for.
What's interesting about Sammy's case is that the undercover agent who was leading the sting operation would go back to the Tampa field office and would go back and talk to his FBI colleagues, and he wasn't turning off his recording equipment, and so this was picking up the conversations he was having in private with the other FBI agents.
Boston like Nixon.
Boston like Nixon, exactly, exactly, and so the FBI agents, there are two things that are concerning.
One is that the FBI agents' comments are mean-spirited and certainly suggest that they didn't think that this guy was dangerous.
They call him a retarded fool who doesn't have a pot to piss in.
They say that his terrorist ambitions are wishy-washy and it's a pipe-dream scenario.
They make fun of his paranoia and the fact that he doesn't have any money, but the more troubling concern, the greater concern, I think, is that the central piece of evidence in the case was that Sammy Azmikash had given an undercover agent posing as a terrorist $500 for weapons that were to be used in this plot, and at trial, the government made a big deal about this.
What these transcripts show is that Sammy didn't have any money and that they needed to orchestrate, to satisfy the Justice Department, Sammy having $500 so that he could give to an undercover agent.
So they had an informant give Sammy a job, and then they funneled the money, which was the FBI's money, through the informant to Sammy Azmikash, and then Sammy Azmikash used that money as a down payment on the weapons, so essentially the plot was the FBI laundered money through an informant, and then Sammy used government money to purchase government weapons, and that was something that the jury never heard.
These transcripts were sealed under a protective order.
The government basically argued national security, saying that their release would reveal investigative techniques and law enforcement strategy.
We obtained the transcripts through a source and then based our story yesterday on those transcripts.
Wow.
Yeah, and you mentioned in here about the judge sealing some other stuff, too, that was really important.
I don't remember what it was right offhand, but it sure looked like he was kind of in on it with the FBI, sealed the transcripts of every bit of it, not just the part, I guess really more importantly what you just said about how they had orchestrated getting him the job and all that, but the part about them making fun of the guy and calling him a retarded fool as well.
This is the kind of thing where if this was an episode of Matlock or something, the judge would be mad as hell, and the judge would be using the term the government as though he's not part of it.
He's an independent, separate judiciary, and his job is getting mad when the executive branch tries stunts like this, but instead it seems more like he's a part of the executive branch, too.
He might as well be an FBI agent, this judge.
We do see a lot of that in these cases where the federal judges aren't willing to push back on the government's claims of national security privilege and seal records like this.
I've read these transcripts many times.
There's nothing that I can see that is particularly sensitive to law enforcement strategy or national security unless it is techniques on how to set someone up, which is what this shows.
It doesn't reveal the sources.
Even the informant who we do identify in the article is not mentioned by name in this story.
It does mention the names of some FBI agents, but none of that is particularly sensitive to national security.
So that the government argued that this particular transcript would damage the law enforcement strategy of the U.S. government if it came out is simply laughable, and it is concerning that a U.S. district judge was willing to seal these transcripts based on that claim alone.
Yeah, sure.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
I guess now I'm, you know, claiming mind reading or whatever, but I guess the judge wouldn't hesitate if it was somebody else, you know, out of his favor to conclude that the reason why is to obstruct justice, to prevent the jury from knowing the truth about what a scam this whole thing is.
If they showed the jury, the FBI agents joking and calling this guy, quote, a retarded fool, and at the same time that they're telling this jury that this guy's Al-Qaeda in America going to kill you if we didn't stop him and save you, that might piss the jury off.
They might find him not guilty.
It's certainly possible.
You know, it's worth noting that the jury, not having heard this evidence, took six hours to deliberate and find Sami Azmakash guilty.
You know, I mean, I think a valid question is, you know, what effect these transcripts, if provided to the jury and used by the defense, you know, might have had in that deliberation.
Yeah, it's, I don't know.
Well, I guess that could be grounds for appeal, right?
That they kept all this stuff from the defense and the, and the, well, anyway, and the jury too.
But hang on one sec, y'all.
We'll be right back.
It's Trevor Aronson.
He's at firstlook.org slash the intercept.
How the FBI created a terrorist.
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All right, guys, welcome back to the show.
Sorry that took so long.
This is how it goes.
I'm talking with Trevor Aronson.
He does heroic journalism.
This one's at the intercept.
How the FBI created a terrorist about this poor guy who was basically crazy.
I don't know exactly what kind of, you know, I'm not a doctor.
I'm just saying he was a nobody and they entrapped him into this elaborate so-called terrorist plot.
I'm sorry, I want to get back to the story of who this guy is and how they entrapped him because that's all very interesting.
But at the break there, I was asking about the we were talking about how the judge sealed all this stuff that you got in this exclusive leak to you that you wrote about here.
All the transcripts and is it the audio too, I guess, of the meetings?
Was it just the audio or is it the transcripts?
Sorry.
It's just the transcripts.
I wasn't able to put in the audio.
But yeah, anyway, they hid all this apparently from the defense and the jury.
So is the defense appealing based on this because that's the Brady rule that they have to turn over everything, right?
So the defense, I believe, was given access to this as part of the protective order, but they were prohibited from telling the jury anything about it as part of the seal, as part of the order.
The process was kind of two-part.
The first part was that a federal magistrate judge had sealed the transcripts in full and placed them in a protective order and then prevented their release as part of the trial in any way.
After Sami Asmakash was convicted and sentenced, they were unsealed in part.
Only part of the transcripts were unsealed and they were heavily redacted.
The government allowed, excuse me, the judge allowed the government to redact anything that it believed, you know, hurt law enforcement strategy or investigative privilege.
And so for that reason, the transcripts that you can now get in the court file are limited and what is available is heavily redacted.
What we're providing as part of this story is the full transcripts, unredacted, you know, showing how Sami Asmakash's thing was put together from the transcripts, excuse me, from the conversations among private FBI agents.
Yeah, that's a hell of an exclusive that you got there.
So now to get to the story here, if I read it right, you have the informant, Dabas, however you say it, his side of the story is that this guy came to me and said he wanted some guns so I called the FBI on him, what was I supposed to do?
So what's your answer to that?
Sami disputes this in whole, I mean, what the government claims is that Sami had come to the store through a mutual contact, a man named Russell Dennison, whose story is unclear and somewhat suspicious.
Russell Dennison had encouraged Sami's extremism and then introduced him to this man named Abdul Dabas who owned a Middle Eastern market.
The FBI and Dabas say that Asmakash asked if he had any black banners or Al-Qaeda flags and then that was the basis for the sting operation to begin.
Sami says that he never made that claim and that it was Dabas who was kind of the one encouraging him to take a job with him.
So the timeline of when the government targeted Sami Asmakash is a little suspicious.
You either have to believe that he was introduced miraculously to an FBI informant and that began the sting operation or you have to question, for example, the government's filing of a FISA notification saying that he was subjected to some sort of FISA surveillance.
There's a question of whether the government might have used parallel construction, which means that they identify a target through bulk surveillance and then use an informant to essentially manufacture a new predicate, a new reason to start the investigation, which in this case could be the black banners comment.
But Dabas, you know, in my interview with him, he's now in Gaza, says that Sami came to him, asked for black banners, also asked if he could provide him any weapons and that he was just doing his civic duty in reporting Sami to the FBI.
He was paid $20,000, it's worth noting, for his work on the case.
And it should also note that he says that he wasn't motivated by the money, that he was doing it out of his kind of civic obligation.
But now you weren't able to pin down whether the red bearded guy, his friend that did the introduction, Denison, whether he was actually an FBI informant or not.
Denison's story is really interesting.
He's an American born convert to Islam who did time for a minor drug offense in Pennsylvania, where according to some videos he posted on YouTube, he suggested that that's when his faith was really kind of hardened and grew stronger, was when he was in prison.
Denison would dress in sandals and a soap and in a very kind of conservative style.
And he encouraged Sami to do the same.
And they in turn would make videos about, you know, ranting about nonbelievers and American culture and talking about Islam in these videos.
And it was Denison, according to Sami's family, that really encouraged him towards kind of his extremism.
And it was also Denison who miraculously introduces Sami to the FBI informant whose shop is 45 minutes away from Sami's.
So that on its own is fairly suspicious.
Also what's interesting is after Sami's arrest, the FBI interviewed Denison at Tampa Airport, where he said he was going to Detroit and later was going to Jordan to teach English.
And in the interview with the FBI agent, Denison tells him that he knows a man named Abu Khalid Abdul Latif, who was another mentally ill man who was targeted in an FBI sting operation, just like Sami's, but in Seattle, Washington.
And so it's pretty suspicious that this man happened to know two people who were targeted in an FBI sting operation.
Sami's family thinks that Denison is somehow a government agent, maybe not with the FBI, maybe another government agency, and that his job is to draw out and bring to FBI informants people who are identified through bulk surveillance or other means by the government.
All right.
Now, I mean, I guess it makes sense, right?
If you're the FBI and you got to entrap somebody, who do you entrap?
So it's somebody who's, you know, I guess, in effect, at least of low IQ, if they're kind of stuck in mental illness and not able to really differentiate, you know, up from down in numerous ways, that sort of counts for stupidity in a sense, right?
For ease of manipulation.
And here, again, as you say, and you quote them directly, calling him a retarded fool, the FBI agents calling their prey in this case, a retarded fool, well, what was wrong with him?
He was schizoaffective.
What's that?
Yeah.
So he was diagnosed, after his arrest, he was seen by six psychologists and psychiatrists, two of whom were appointed by the court, two of whom hired by the defense, and the final two hired by the prosecution.
The four that were hired by the defense or appointed by the court diagnosed Sami Asmakash with schizoaffective disorder.
It's a psychotic disorder that means that you have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, you know, from life, from dream.
And there's transcripts in the undercover recordings when they were operating the sting on Sami Asmakash, where he even talks about this.
I mean, he talks to the informant about how he has a dream and he thought it was real.
And you know, that certainly supports this idea that, you know, he was having trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy.
And that, according to psychologists and psychiatrists hired by the defense, made him easily manipulated by the government.
You know, it's worth noting, as in all cases like this, you know, each side hires an expert and usually the opinion of the experts are in conflict with each other.
The prosecution's experts were psychologists and psychiatrists who found that Sami Asmakash was not psychotic, but instead suffered from depression and acclimation disorder, which basically just means he had trouble acclimating to U.S. culture.
But I also think it's worth noting that the independent psychologists and psychiatrists appointed by the court agreed with the defense experts in that Sami Asmakash had schizoaffective disorder.
And so obviously someone who has trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy is going to be someone who is much more easily convinced to do something by a strong-willed FBI informant.
And the government, excuse me, and the defense's claim to the trial was that he was manipulated in this way.
Well, and you talk about here how his grand plan is to blow up five bridges all around Tampa, Florida.
And then, you know, he's basically, he's talking about that Batman movie, right?
Where they isolate Manhattan or whatever.
And then they will all cower before him.
In other words, it's make-believe.
This is make-believe.
This is not a thing that's even happening at all.
The most that's happening about it at all is everything that the FBI informant is doing with the FBI's money and guns to make it seem as though something is happening.
That's basically it.
Right.
You know, I mean, it's interesting that when he's asked what he would like to do, his idea is not necessarily a manageable one where he'd get a bomb or he'd get even a gun.
It's that he would want to blow up all of these bridges simultaneously, which is something that perhaps even a military operation would have difficulty doing.
So, I mean, it does show kind of that he wasn't, you know, he wasn't grounded in any reality that you and I are, and that he was just kind of like, you know, as he was being asked these things, he was coming up with these wild ideas that should have suggested to the FBI that, you know, this guy isn't all there, you know, he's fairly crazy.
Yeah, well, and, but now, so just how guilty did they trick him into being before they slapped the cuffs on him?
What did they get him to do, really?
They provided to him an AK-47, which was non-functional, but Sammy didn't know that.
They provided him with a car bomb, or what he thought was a car bomb, and they even gave him taxicab money so he could get to where they needed him to go.
And then they also helped him make a so-called martyrdom video where he talked about why he believed what he believed and why he was going to go forward with this attack, which, of course, when they made this video, which the government recorded with its own camera, Sammy was wearing a suicide vest and an AK-47, all provided by the government.
In the final scene, in the final stage, they get Sammy Azmakash to take the car bomb from the undercover agent's car and put it in his own car, and then as he backed out of the hotel where they were at to go deliver the bomb, he stopped, arrested, and convicted.
So they brought him up to the final stage, and that's what they made clear to the jury, that, you know, look, he was going to do it, this shows that.
But in reality, he was only going to do it because everything was provided by the government.
He'd been manipulated over several months, and frankly, he was not, you know, all there mentally, and yet the FBI was able to use all of this to portray to the public and portray to the jury that this was a dangerous man who would have struck, who would have committed significant violence were it not for the government intervening in this way.
You know, the thing about it is, is that responsibility is a quality, not a quantity.
So the FBI can be 100 percent guilty of entrapment and really playing a prank on the rest of us is, you know, exploiting this poor guy to do it.
And well, at the same time, he is over 18, he, you know, is an individual with agency and was tricked into, you know, was successfully tricked, nobody could trick Trevor Aronson into going through with something like this, right?
So, you know, I don't know, are you sure that if you're on the jury, he deserves to be acquitted?
I mean, maybe this whole thing can be a giant scam by the FBI, but also he's guilty too.
What do you think?
No, I agree.
And that's what makes this topic so difficult and so gray in many ways, because the people that are caught in these sting operations, like Sami Asmaqash, you know, I'm not making the argument that these are angels, that these are perfect people, and they were, you know, productive law-abiding citizens.
I mean, certainly the people that are caught in sting operations are deeply troubled.
Some may have committed minor offenses in the past.
Sami Asmaqash certainly was an example of someone who was deeply troubled and had had problems and may have committed some sort of crime.
So I'm not saying Sami Asmaqash would have been someone you would have invited over for dinner and would have become, you know, the nicest guy you know, because he wasn't.
But at the same time, that doesn't mean that he is a terrorist who should be prosecuted under laws and sentencing guidelines that were written with the, you know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's of the world in mind.
And that's really what's happening.
I mean, the problem is, and the difference is that, yes, these guys are kind of bad guys.
You know, they're not the nicest people, but they're not terrorists.
They don't have the capability to commit the types of crimes that the government is making it out for them to commit through these sting operations.
And so while you can argue that, yes, maybe Sami Asmaqash is guilty of something, you know, maybe he is someone who should be in a mental health system and may have been someone who would have been picked up in a mental health system were the United States one better funded than it is.
But he is not the hardened terrorist that he's portrayed to be.
And he certainly is not the person who could have delivered a car bomb on his own and could have acquired an AK-47.
You know, the FBI agents in the transcripts we obtained even joke about the fact that Sami Asmaqash has no clue, no clue whatsoever, how much a weapon costs on the black market.
And so, you know, that's the type of person you're talking about for capability.
He had no money.
And even if he had money, he'd have no idea how much money he'd need to buy the weapon he'd want.
And so I think that's the difference.
I mean, the difference is that, yes, these guys are not the nicest people, but they're not the terrorists that they're portrayed to be by the FBI.
Right.
And, you know, we see this over and over and over again, is that they're usually very simple people like the kid, like Lodi, California, or the Brooklyn Bridge and the subway plot where they found the retarded kid down at the bookstore.
It's just the only question is, who can we trick into saying they love Osama?
That's really the only that's the only quality that they're searching for is who can be manipulated.
But now, is it OK if I keep you one more second here or you got to go?
No, of course.
OK, cool.
I wonder and I'm sorry, I forget now whether this is in the book or not.
It's been a few years.
But have they had to adapt just how entrapped somebody can be before a case gets dismissed in order to to accommodate this bogus domestic terror war since September 11th?
You know, I mean, arguing entrapment is a difficult defense, no matter what you're charged with.
You know, you could be charged with conspiring to rob a bank.
The problem with entrapment is that you have to say, yes, I did it, but I wouldn't have done it were it not for the government agent overwhelming my will.
And I think that's a workable defense for other types of crime.
For a Muslim charged with terrorism, you know, in a climate where we are still very afraid of another attack, I think it's almost a possible defense.
I think it's almost impossible for a jury to have empathy for someone in that situation, particularly when they're not aware that this is, you know, a kind of stock and trade for the government in, you know, setting people up in sting operations.
And so for that reason, the government has has received little, if any, pushback from the judiciary and from juries on this type of case.
You know, Sammy was the 12th person to argue entrapment following one of these sting operations, and he wasn't successful.
In fact, no one has been successful arguing entrapment after a terrorism sting operation.
And I think that's only further emboldened the FBI to use these types of tactics because, you know, the FBI really has two checks on its power, Congress and the courts.
And Congress really isn't providing much oversight.
And the courts are letting these cases through and even seeing like in this one, you know, the ceiling of transcripts under national security privileges that are kind of highly questionable in their justification.
And you know, for that reason, the FBI for the last decade has has really had carte blanche in and in working these types of cases.
And you know, if you judge its success by the number of arrests and the number of convictions, you know, this is a great program.
But really, it's about judging it on whether these people were actually terrorists, and whether this is keeping us safer as a result.
All right.
Hey, thanks for coming back on the show.
Sure.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
As always, I enjoyed it.
Great.
And great work.
That's Trevor Aaronson.
Everybody's at firstlook.org slash the intercept.
How the FBI created a terrorist.
The book is The Terror Factory, and there's also an article like that at Mother Jones dot com where he goes, you know, the full litany for you there.
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