The Terror Factory
Inside the FBI's Maufactured War on Terrorism
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than fifteen thousand informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror. The paperback edition of The Terror Factory includes all new information on the FBI's counterterrorism efforts related to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, as well as how the government has used (potentially illegally) FISA information in sting cases.
Trevor Aaronson is an investigative reporter for Al Jazeera America. He has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly Prize, the international Data Journalism Award, and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Building off a story published in Mother Jones in 2011 (itself based on Aaronson's tenure as an investigative reporting fellow at UC Berkeley), this sobering account presents convincing evidence of the FBI's role in seeding terrorist plots in order to foil them and claim the honors. Aaronson, the associate director and cofounder of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, demonstrates how Hoover's prodigal brainchild "built the largest network of spies" (many of them serial crooks and ex-cons) "ever to exist in the United States" in an effort to lure hapless outliers into trumped-up sting operations. The author cites a list provided by the U.S. Attorney General's office enumerating hundreds of people prosecuted as terrorists since the 9/11 attacks; Aaronson alleges that many of these cases are the result of what amounts to wholesale entrapment of individuals recruited with government funds and expertise: "While we have captured a few terrorists since 9/11, we have manufactured many more." He examines several hazy cases, such as that of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a young Somali-American party boy arrested in 2010 for conspiracy to detonate a bomb at the lighting of a Christmas tree in Portland, Ore., and weighs the strengths and weaknesses of the charges. Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue.
