Willamette Weekly has an informative, if snarky, list of numbers and stats about FBI counterterrorism operations, including last year's Portland bomb sting case. Perhaps the most cutting ones:
Approximate length, in minutes, of that meeting, at which the Pioneer Courthouse Square plot was first discussed: 30
Minutes of that meeting successfully recorded, on account of dead batteries in the FBI’s bugging device: 0
Hours of other video and audio recordings of Mohamud the government did manage to capture during its investigation: “hundreds”
(and)
Rough share of sting cases that went to trial in which government agents failed to record crucial meetings: “most”
I've heard about the last quoted stat. If true, it certainly doesn't make the government look very good. I wonder if that is something that the defense team will be able to present to the jury, or whether it, even if relevant, would be kept out under Fed. R. Evid. 403 as inviting so much collateral litigation (as the government would no doubt seek to justify what happened in each individual case) as to waste time and/or confuse the jury.
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