“One question [about the synagogue case] that has to be answered is: did the informant go in and enlist people who were otherwise not considering trouble ?” said Kevin Luibrand, who represented a Muslim businessman caught up in another FBI sting three years ago. “Did the government induce someone to commit a crime?”

The other question that US security experts were debating was how much had been achieved by assigning more than 100 agents to a year-long investigation of three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant, none of whom had any connection with any known terrorist group. “They were all unsophisticated dimwits,” said Kindlon.

Unsophisticated dimwits and bumbling holy warriors. Shades of Liberty City, where on the third try, the Government finally got their guys.

As Ethan Brown wrote yesterday, the informant in the Bronx Synagogue case is the same informant used by the Government in Terry's case. Terry, in the Aref case, was the first lawyer in a criminal case to file a motion to dismiss based on Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program.

Ethan has more on the use of informants in the Bronx case