FBI Stings Against Suspected Terrorists: “Kramer Jihadists” Versus the “Known Wolf” of Orlando

• In Event: Patterns of De/Radicalization: Criminological Approaches to Demystifying Terrorism

Abstract

This paper examines FBI sting operations designed to provoke individuals into terrorist activity so that they can be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for decades. The FBI has conducted dozens of these stings since 2009, involving hundreds of confidential informants and supported by multi-million dollar budgets. Typically, the FBI has focused on vulnerable young Muslim men with mental health or drug problems. Similar to the “broken windows” approach to urban law enforcement, FBI agents trawl cyber neighborhoods of the Internet looking for what they call “Kramer Jihadists” (after the bumbling Seinfeld character) who espouse violence against the United States. The FBI’s mission is to lure these opinionated but criminally inept young men into conspiracies where agents can provide them with the tutelage and encouragement necessary to turn relatively harmless people into would-be mass murderers—never once considering how such a costly method of wrecking lives might be converted into soft power approaches to save them. Yet the FBI stings have prevented few authentic threats of lone wolf terrorism. Even when the FBI had such a truly dangerous loner as Orlando gunman Omar Mateen in the crosshairs, a sting did not prevent him from committing the greatest act of terrorism witnessed in America since 9/11. Moreover, the FBI sting against Mateen may have backfired, with devastating consequences.

Author

• Mark S. Hamm, Indiana State University