A "heavy" thought about the Dix six

Back in the Vietnam protest days, informers routinely spurred activists into illegalities. Anyone conversant with that history could have predicted this.

The six-against-Dix scenario always carried a funky smell: Any such attack would last maybe twenty seconds, and that's an insanely generous estimate. Why would six mayhem-minded maniacs (Albanians, as it turns out) give their lives to accomplish so little mayhem?

An informer had entered the group, offered to lead it into battle, and "seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects."

And when efforts to finally get the more potent weapons seemed close to producing results, the informer presented a list of possible arms that could now be bought. The list included fully automatic machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. But it was the men who scaled back their ambitions.

As suspect Dritan Duka noted, "There was some stuff on that list that was heavy..." The New York Times coyly deletes the expletive which followed.

At first glance, we can understand the way the Feds were thinking: Let's convince potentially violent dolts to expose themselves to charges involving illegal weapons. But what if someone -- like, oh, say, a President with sagging poll numbers -- wants the dolts to use the heavy shit?

The fact that Duka didn't jump at the opportunity to go shopping at the Big Boys' Store indicates he may have been one of those all-bark-no-bite jihadis. Anyone hoping for a longer-than-twenty-second assault would want to carry some heavy shit, right?

"Let's attack the Fort, but ixnay on the grenade launchers -- after all, we don't want folks to say we lacked sportsmanship." Do you really think the six thought that way?

So maybe the Dix six were hauled in precisely because they lacked the testicles to play their assigned roles.

Consider: These guys could have been dragged off at any time. They were working illegally. They drove without licenses, and they received citations frequently during the "planning" period. I couldn't get away with that kind of behavior and neither could you, but these guys had a stay-out-of-jail card.

Consider, too, the historical parallels. The informer in the Dix six case passed himself off as former Egyptian military officer. The ring which carried out the first World Trade Center plot in 1993 was infiltrated by a former Egyptian army officer named Emad Salem. You think it could be the same guy...?

From Wikipedia:

Salem, initially believing that this was to be a sting operation, claimed that the FBI's original plan was for Salem to supply the conspirators with a harmless powder instead of actual explosive to build their bomb, but that the FBI chose to use him for other purposes instead... He secretly recorded hundreds of hours of telephone conversations with his FBI handlers...

In December 1993, James M. Fox, the head of the FBI's New York Office, denied that the FBI had any foreknowledge of the attacks.

One could also draw a parallel to the "Miami plot" of a year ago. Remember how that one turned out?

But court records released since then suggest that what Gonzales described as a "deadly plot" was virtually the pipe dream of a few men with almost no ability to pull it off on their own. The suspects have raised questions in court about the FBI informants' role in keeping the plan alive.

Final question (for now): In the Dix case, how did the Feds first come to target those six guys? Their own families apparently had no concept of their inclinations.

Take a big whiff. Smell the funkiness?

(Comments are on again, but I can switch 'em off like that. As always: If you dig not my rules, you need another blog.)

(Comments are off again. Took the trannies less than five minutes. Their efficiency is admirable.)