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I'm really having trouble reconciling this new FBI that is suddenly bound by due process and red tape with the one that was pulling people into unmarked airport rooms without legal counsel for texting in Arabic for the last 20 years.
In 2003, when I was living in Cairo, an expat friend (white, Catholic, US citizen) made a joke about how surreal it would be to take one of the guided tours of Lebanon Hezbollah was offering. A few weeks later, he flew back to the US. The FBI was waiting for him at the gate.
They interrogated him for 3 hours. Didn't let him use his phone. Had access to his financial records. Asked him about his contacts in Cairo, his contacts at home, his Muslim friends. (Including your humble servant.)
The fallout from this was like a Kevin Bacon game of all our mutual acquaintances. They showed up at the house of a friend of a friend in Maryland. They put a friend who had never even set *foot* in Cairo on the special 'SSSS' airport security list. It took him years to get off.
And yet now we are meant to believe that *this same FBI* couldn't do a blessed thing about a coup attempt that was planned on public platforms months in advance. I have...real trouble buying it.
I wouldn't want to unleash that hell on another community, by the way. This is not me saying let's build a police state. This is me saying, based on personal experience, that it doesn't smell right.
