http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/how-to-foil-a-terrorist-p_b_50474.html
How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps
By Nora Ephron
1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist
plot.
This is not easy.
2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot.
You must have an incentive.
The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison
term.
Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be
able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal
case, preferably one involving terrorists.
3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in
any way deter you.
Necessity is the mother of invention:
if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk,
deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in
the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist.
4. Now the good part begins.
Money!
The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist
out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself
making recommendations to him about possible targets and weapons that
might be used in the impending terrorist attack that your very own
terrorist is going to mastermind, with your help.
It will even buy you a computer so you can go to Google Earth in order
to show your very own terrorist a "top secret" aerial image of the
target you have suggested.
5. More money!!
The FBI will give you even more money to travel to foreign countries
with your very own terrorist, and it will make suggestions about
terrorist groups you can meet while in said foreign countries.
6. Months and even years will pass in this fashion, while you
essentially get the FBI to pay for everything you do.
(Incidentally, be sure your lawyer negotiates your expense account
well in advance, or you may be forced -- as the informant was in the
Buffalo terrorist case -- to protest your inadequate remuneration by
setting yourself on fire in front of the White House.)
7. At a certain point, something will go wrong.
You may have trouble recruiting other people to collaborate with your
very own terrorist, who is, as you yourself know, just an ordinary guy
in a really bad mood.
Or, alternatively, the terrorist cell you have carefully cobbled
together may malfunction and fail to move forward -- probably as a
result of sheer incompetence or of simply not having been genuinely
serious about the acts of terrorism you were urging it to commit.
At this point, you may worry that the FBI is going to realize that
there isn't much of a terrorist plot going on here at all, just a case
of entrapment.
Do not despair: the FBI is way ahead of you.
The FBI knows perfectly well what's going on.
The FBI has as much at stake as you do.
So before it can be obvious to the world that there's no case, the FBI
will arrest your very own terrorist, hold a press conference and
announce that a huge terrorist plot has been foiled.
It will of course be forced to admit that this plot did not proceed
beyond the pre-planning stage, that no actual weapons or money were
involved, and that the plot itself was "not technically feasible," but
that will not stop the story from becoming a front-page episode all
over America and, within hours, boilerplate for all the Republican
politicians who believe that you need to arrest a "homegrown"
terrorist now and then to justify the continuing war in Iraq.
Everyone will be happy, except for the schmuck you shmikeled into
becoming a terrorist, and no one really cares about him anyway.
So congratulations.
You have foiled a terrorist plot.
Way to go.
________________________________________________
Harry
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