The Realest Shit I Ever Wrote

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

Read the whole thing. I've done some stories that I've been proud of. My piece with Judis about the bullshit Iraq intelligence, reported and written when I was a young lad of 22, that helped get Scooter Libby indicted. (Scroll down to point 12.) My piece for TPM catching State Department IG Cookie Krongard in a lie about his Blackwater connections -- snitched on, to me, by his own brother -- that contributed to his resignation in disgrace. My piece for the Washington Independent ID'ing Blackwater guards stealing guns from the Afghan police by pretending to be Eric Cartman. More Danger Room stories than I can link. 

But this, I think, is the story I'm the proudest of producing thus far. I hope you'll read it. And this is going to sound saccharine, but I wouldn't have been able to pull this off without the unyielding support and expert editorial guidance of Noah Shachtman. 

 

 

Comments

[TrembleTheDevil]

Really solid article, if you're looking for something unique to write about you might get a kick out of this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g8zu6/left_my_dod_counterterrorism_analysis_job_took_on/

[Greg Sanders]

Well done sir. I'm still flabbergasted by that chart about religion and militancy.

[fuster]

I believe that every word of your story is true and I REALLY don't wanna.

[mikey]

Very well reported. You truly are some kind of weird throwback ink-stained wretch.

Nice work.

Unfortunately, I do not find myself as shocked as I might have expected...

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

You might not want to believe any part of what the FBI presentation said, but refuting it requires more than just pointing at it in mock disbelief.

[Naelok]

Spenser...

Thank you. Really. I really am grateful for what you've done here.