Sometimes FBI agents are a crack squad of crime solvers who swoop in and meticulously collect information to foil criminals. And then sometimes they’re agents who forget to put charged batteries into a voice recorder and thereby fail to document a crucial conversation in a life-and-death case.

The lawyers for Mohamed Mohamud, the 19-year-old Somali Portlander who is charged with plotting to bomb Pioneer Square, are most likely going to argue that Mohamud was the victim of FBI entrapment. As the president for the Center for Constitutional Rights explained after Mohamud’s arrest, “These are a bunch of 19-, 20-, and 21-year-old young people who wouldn’t be involved in this kind of criminal activity without heavy FBI inducement… You can push kids a lot. Especially if they don’t have any money.”

In the original affidavit, the FBI mentioned that it was missing a recording of Mohamud’s first meeting with FBI informants due to technical difficulties. Well, now those technical difficulties have been spelled out in court documents reported in The Oregonian: “Put simply,” they wrote, “it was human error.” A recorder was turned on hours before the key meeting and “ran out juice” before the event actually took place. D’oh.

Though written reports of the meeting were transcribed by agents, it definitely confuses the key issue in this trial not to have a recording of that first meeting.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

6 replies on “FBI Failed to Record Crucial Mohamed Mohamud Conversation”

  3. The FBI has dealt with entrapment claims in the past. They are professionals, not bumbling fuckups. The conversation they didn’t record is the meeting that FBI knew it most needed to record to avoid the extremely predictable claim of entrapment, to prove that this was a Mohamed Mohamud bomb plot and not an FBI bomb plot. It’s the piece of evidence that they *KNOW* they need in order to convict Mohamud.

    Coupled with the push for the JTTF in Portland, the fact that, with all their professional meticulousness, the FBI managed to miss recording this crucial conversation is very compelling evidence that it may be an FBI bomb plot and entrapment.

  4. Yeah. The conversation could have been really boring. Why just the other day I was talking to a guy I didn’t know and I was all “Fuck America” and he was all “Why don’t you do something about it?” and I was like “naw, I’m not interested” but quicker than shit he’d convinced me to try and FUCKING BLOW UP THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE GATHERED IN A PUBLIC SPACE.

  5. “A recorder was turned on hours before the key meeting” They have some great audio of the food court at Pioneer Place, anyway. May be useful to future anthropologists.

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