Geeky Randy
Premiering at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival in April, this HBO-distributed documentary details the backgrounds of four men that the Federal Bureau of Investigation tied to the 2009 Bronx terrorism plot. Pieced together mainly through hours of unreleased footage that was recorded by Shaheed Hussain, a Pakistani businessman working as an FBI informant; interviewees include family members of the accused, as well as the local Newburgh Muslim community. A troubling, enraging and brilliant examination of entrapment (whether or not you believe that is what actually happened). It is inevitable that this documentary will lean in favor of the defendants, as this type of subject is difficult to be neutral when the media's portrayal of the accused has been anything but "innocent until proved guilty".***½ (out of four)
Robert J. Maxwell
Interesting documentary. A few years ago, when the nation was pulling its hair out over the threat of terrorism, just as it is now, the FBI sent an agent to the smallish city of Newburgh, New York, not far from the Bronx. His mission, should he choose to accept it, which he did: Recruit a couple of jihadists from a local Mosque and enlist their aid in blowing up some airplanes and Jewish Temples.The final recruits turned out to be four young black men, most or all of them with some jail time behind them, one of them retarded, and all of them desperate for cash.The FBI agent, about whom we learn little except that he had a record for fraud and other crimes that was the equal of any of his recruits, drives into Newburgh in a brand new, shiny BMW, and begins hanging around the mosque. He's from the Middle East. He wears expensive clothes and shades. Sometimes he switches from one expensive car to another. He offers them hundreds of thousands of dollars and suggests they can begin new lives in Latin America. To the black kids of Newburgh, this is like honey to bears.As the gang and their suave leader pile into a white van with weapons, the television show begins. The police, the FBI, are all prominently featured in footage as the war on terror successfully foils a Moslem plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. The FBI recruiter disappears from the scene, presumably paid off and operating somewhere else.It quickly became apparent that the four kids thought they were pulling a scam on the agent, instead of vice versa. I realize that it sounds unlikely that an august agency like the FBI would pull off such a cheap public relations non-event but in any case it worked and the four black kids wound up in jail, just as guilty of being raving religious extremists as Jessica Lynch was guilty of being a heroine.The documentary doesn't hide which side it's on. We only hear from relatives and legal figures who believe the quartet was bamboozled. But it convinced me. Not once does any of the street-smart band talk about jihad or religion or Mohammed or Allah or anything else except money and their plans for the future as millionaires.At any rate, the ploy worked for the agents of social control. Another terrorist plot spoiled by our ever-alert Garde Impériale. The four street rats get lengthy sentences in the slams.What a disgrace.
