FBI Agents Suggest Blowing Up Government Buildings

Jim Bovard
Jul. 09, 2006

The case of the Miami terrorists keeps getting more ludicrous. The local Miami CBS station had a write-up yesterday on the latest federal court proceedings:

Earlier in the day, the FBI admitted that two people working for the agency
planted the idea of blowing up government buildings, including and FBI office in
Miami, with members of an alleged South Florida terror group known as the
Liberty City 7.

This is the same type of scam that occurred routinely during the FBI COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Yet, despite the FBI?s long history of such shenanigans, the vast majority of television coverage of the arrest of the ?terrorists? was craven - or perhaps beyond craven - treating the words of federal officials as the equivalent of the Word of God.

The Miami bust occurred at the same time that the New York Times revealed the massive warrantless surveillance of bank transactions.

I argued at that time that people should, at a minimum, be skeptical of the feds? claims - both on the Miami case and on the financial spying.

Instead, the vast majority of the media swallowed the Miami hokum - and most of the conservative media denounced the New York Times for treason for revealing government spying.

I am starting to wonder whether the logic courses are the strongest part of the curriculum of American journalism colleges?