While police in Watertown, Massachusetts closed in on the boat in which 19-year-old terrorist suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had concealed himself, FBI investigators in Chicago were snapping handcuffs on 18-year-old Abdella Ahmed Tounisi as he attempted to board an airplane bound for Istanbul. He intended to travel to Syria to fight on behalf an Islamic rebel group that seeks to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

There is reason to believe that the FBI had advance knowledge of the Boston Marathon bombing plot. On the other hand, we know that Tounisi was a pure product of the FBI’s terrorist factory: He was the latest in a long procession of socially alienated teenage Muslim males who have been lured into an FBI-orchestrated plot by the Bureau’s roving troupe of “terrorism facilitators.”

What makes the terrorism charges against Tounisi more remarkable is the fact that he is accused of seeking to enlist in the service of a terrorist group that is presently receiving material aid from Washington.

Tounisi had been targeted by the FBI last fall after a friend named Abdel Daoud was snared in one of the Bureau’s prefabricated terror plots.

The indictment against Daoud claims that he had “attempted, without lawful authority, to use a weapon of mass destruction” – in this case, a car bomb – in a terrorist attack against a Chicago-area nightclub. In familiar fashion, the Bureau’s informant/provocateurs sketched out the plot and provided the targeted patsy with all of the material necessities – including the dummy bomb.

Daoud playedhis scripted role to perfection – that is, he expressed entirely justifiable outrage over the U.S. Government’s relentless campaign to kill Muslims overseas, while allowing himself to be seduced by agents of that same malevolent government into committing a proseuctable act.

The affidavit filed by the FBI claimed that in a conversation with an informant Doud said he wanted the bombing to “send the message that the United States should `stop abusing people overseas.'” Like millions of Americans who see Muslims as an undifferentiated mass of hostility, Daoud reportedly saw Americans as anti-Muslim automatons, rather than as “regular people.”

“They’re like – more like robots, even the decent, nice people, most people in this country,” Daoud reportedly told the FBI provocateur. From Daoud’s perspective, this applied even to those who “hate the president” (who, let it not be forgotten, is killing Muslim civilians through drone strikes practically every day) and who opposed “the two wars.” This is because most Americans are still “for the war on terrorism,” insisted Daoud.

As the FBI carefully reeled in Daoud, it made a play for Tounisi as well, but he was savvy enough to suspect that the operation was a law enforcement sting. Rather than using what influence it had to encourage this wayward young man onto the path of probity, the Bureau redoubled its effort to entice him into a prosecutable act: It set up a website intended to recruit fighters for the Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusrah (JAN), which used to be called al Qaeda in Iraq.

After finding the website, Tounisi made contact with a purported recruiter for the group, who was yet another of the FBI’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of terrorism facilitators. It was the FBI’s asset who made arrangements for Tounisi to travel to Syria, by way of Turkey, to join the U.S.-supported terrorist group.

The FBI, whose chief occupation since 2002 has been the manufacture of ersatz terrorism plots, induced Tounisi into an act described as providing “material aid” to a foreign terrorist group. If he is convicted, he will be found guilty of carrying out the Obama administration’s official policy without official permission. He is not the only American presently facing the prospect of imprisonment on this charge. The administration has filed felony charges against a US Army Veteran from Arizona named Eric Harroun, who traveled to Syria to join the fight against Assad.

Harroun, who used his Facebook page to describe his role in the conflict, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction – namely, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher – while fighting on behalf of JAN.

JAN is the dominant element of the rebel “coalition” being supported by the US and NATO in its insurgency against the admittedly loathsome regime of Bashar al-Assad. JAN has demonstrated its worthiness as a recipient of taxpayer-extracted material support by carrying out undisguised acts of terrorism against civilians. Of particular interest in light of the Boston bombing is the growing role played by Chechen jihadists in the U.S.-backed JAN. Chechen Jidhadists were accused of carrying out the recent abduction of two Syrian Orthodox Bishops earlier this week.

As with Tousnisi, Harroun is accused of giving “material support” to a foreign terrorist group; as in the case of Daoud, he is charged with using a “weapon of mass destruction” – a rocket-propelled grenade launcher – “without legal authority.”

The relevant section of Title 18 of the US Code specifies that the term “weapon of mass destruction” applies to the following “destructive devices”: “[A]ny incendiary, explosive, or poison gas — bomb, grenade, rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces, missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, mine, or … any type of weapon (other than a shotgun or a shotgun shell which the Attorney General finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes) by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter….”

John Mueller, who holds the Woody Hayes Chair on National Security Studies at Ohio State University, points out that under federal statutes dealing with WMDs “not only is a hand grenade a weapon of mass destruction … so is a maliciously designed child’s rocket even if it doesn’t have a warhead. On the other hand, although a missile-propelled firecracker would be considered a weapon of mass destruction if its designers had wanted to think of it as a weapon, it would not be so considered if it had previously been designed for use as a weapon and then redesigned for pyrotechnic use or if it was surplus and had been sold, loaned, or given to you (under certain circumstances) by the Secretary of the Army.”

The WMD designation would likewise apply to “all artillery, and virtually every muzzle-loading military long arm for that matter,” continues Schneider.

For the Regime and its acolytes, “terrorism” is committed when private individuals, singly or in groups, emulate the criminal violence of the State without receiving official permission. That principle was explained – with admirable candor – by Bill Clinton during an interview published in the December 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Clinton defined terrorism as “killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.” (Emphasis added.)

By reverse-engineering this definition we learn that “killing and robbery and coercion” carried out with “state authority” isn’t terrorism; it’s public policy. We can also infer that the “war on terror” is not meant to bring an end to such violence, but rather intended to eliminate challenges to the State’s monopoly on criminal violence.

Accordingly, an act of politically motivated armed violence carried out by “non-state actors” can be described as an act of WMD-involved terrorism if it is carried out without what the Regime calls “legal authority.” On the other hand, exactly the same acts can be consecrated as “official policy” when they are committed by “non-state actors” who operated on behalf of the Regime.

Three days before the Boston Marathon Bombing, the foreign policy establishment celebrated the opening of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance in Iran. This is the political front group for the so-called People’s Mujahadeen (or MeK), a Washington-backed Islamo-terrorist group that has carried out bombings and assassinations in Iran during the past decade. During the 1970s, the group staged several terrorist attacks that left U.S. citizens wounded or dead. It was part of the revolutionary coalition that brought Khomeni to power in 1979, but was forced to flee to Iraq following a purge. During the ten-year Iran-Iraq war, the MeK carried out attacks against Iran on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Created in 1965 as part of a Soviet-sponsored international terrorist network that waged wars of “national liberation” throughout the developing world, the MeK was listed as a terrorist organization from 1997 until last September, when it was removed from the State Department’s terrorism roster following a high-pressure campaign that included scores of prominent elected officials and veterans of the National Security “community.”

Several members of Congress, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), received significant cash donations from MeK’s supporters as part of the de-listing campaign. Other paid supporters of the MeK included Newt Gingrich, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey (who supervised prosecution of federal “material support” cases on much flimsier evidence), retired General Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General James Jones, former National Security Adviser to Barack Obama.

Every U.S. official who lobbied on behalf of the MeK committed the federal offense of providing “material support” to a listed terrorist group. Under the Anwar al-Awlaki precedent, each of them was liable to summary execution by drone strike. Indeed, under the Abdel al-Awlaki codicil to that precedent, each of their children was likewise a fair target for a drone strike because of what White House mouthpiece Robert Gibbs would describe as the lethal irresponsibility of their parents.

As with the JAN in Syria, the Iranian MeK is considered a valuable asset in Washington’s program to foment warfare throughout the Middle East – by providing luridly unreliable but politically useful “intelligence” about the Iranian nuclear program, and carrying out assassinations and other acts of officially sanctioned terrorism within the country. One measure of the MeK’s value to the Regime is found in the fact that the office for the group’s political front group is located less than one hundred yards from the White House.

According to press accounts, Dzhokar Tsarnaev (communicating through a dense haze of painkillers and other pharmaceuticals) admitted to planting the Boston Marathon bombs and told investigators that he and his brother — like Tounisi, Daoud, and dozens of other young men their age who had been shepherded into FBI-orchestrated false flag operations – were aggrieved over the U.S. government’s unremitting state terrorism against Muslim populations abroad.

The fact that the FBI had previous contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as well as “multiple” warnings about his potential involvement in terrorism, would suggest culpable incompetence on the part of the Bureau – if it weren’t for the fact that the bombing so perfectly fits the template from which scores of FBI-directed plots have been struck. This, when coupled with the fact that authorities were conducting a bombing “drill” on the day of the marathon, suggests that something other than official incompetence is involved.

If the Boston Marathon bombing plot was a case of “lone wolf” terrorism rather than an episode of Homeland Security Theater that went off-script, it would be an anomaly – albeit a fortunate one for those who presume to rule us, given that they profit from the bloody misfortune of the population they supposedly protect.

The Best of William Norman Grigg