Catching real criminals and terrorists is hard

It is so much easier to make them up. [Link]

Earlier this year, we noted that the FBI had quietly changed its own description about how it was primarily focused on "law enforcement" to claiming that it was now primarily focused on "national security." That is, over the past decade, the FBI has shifted from being a law enforcement agency, looking to stop crimes, to an intelligence agency, spying on Americans and searching for "terrorists." Of course, this focus has meant that it has basically ignored tons of criminal activity including things like mortgage fraud, which helped create the economic crisis a few years ago. Instead, the FBI has expended so much effort on creating and busting its own fake terrorist plots. 

As we've seen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over again, the FBI seems to spend an awful lot of time creating totally fake terrorist plots, luring some gullible individual into the plot (where every other participant is FBI, and where all the "weapons" are fake) and then arresting the individual and scoring big headlines about stopping another "plot" -- despite the fact no plot would have existed without the FBI. 

When new FBI boss James Comey took the job, he had suggested that he might move the FBI back towards a law enforcement agency, but according to the NY Times, he's been convinced to stick with focusing on terrorism plots. He insists that the risk is much bigger than he thought before he was in the job, though all of the examples he gives are of terrorism happening overseas, not in the US. Given that it must be a lot easier to concoct bogus terrorist plots and ensnare gullible individuals, than it is to track down actual criminals, it's not hard to see why many in the Bureau might have pushed Comey to continue these current efforts.