The Best Terrorists We Could Find ─ A Decade on the Domestic Front of the War on Terror

In the aftermath of 9/11, the intense political pressure to keep up the appearance of success in the War on Terror led to a pattern of dubious and expensive prosecutions by the Department of Justice. The case of Hemant Lakhani, an Indian-born, British businessman, is a particularly chilling example. Hailed in 2005 as one of the most significant arrests in the war on terror, Lakhani was convicted of attempting to provide material support to terrorists after being caught red-handed with a Russian-made missile he believed he was selling to a Somali terrorist group. But Lakhani, it turned out, was no great catch. Less a seasoned weapons merchant than a bumbling businessman, he had been lured into an elaborate sting operation entirely of the government’s invention.

Lakhani’s story, along with many others like this, form the backbone of The Best Terrorists We Could Find, the first comprehensive and fully reported look at ten years of terrorism-related cases in the federal court system: the alleged terrorists that have been caught, the plots that have been foiled; the perverting effect these investigations and prosecutions have had on the US criminal justice system; and the human cost this domestic War on Terror has imposed on innocent Americans.

Bartosiewicz shows how the policy of pre-emptive justice has been dangerously translated into cases relying heavily on paid criminal informants with money-making agendas, on sting operations where the government’s behavior veers suspiciously towards entrapment, and on the questionable crutch of the ?material support to terrorists” statute (the government’s legal front of choice in domestic terrorism cases), which has been used ad absurdum to artificially pump up conviction rates.

In the tradition of John Grisham’s The Innocent Man and Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, The Best Terrorists We Could Find is a powerful work of investigative narrative non-fiction that reveals a Potemkin war of bogus investigations; politically compromised expert witnesses; the rise of a new star chamber in the federal courts; and rampant racial profiling against Muslims. The result is a string of shameful convictions of individuals who are not terrorists and a serious hobbling of the government’s response to real threats.

Petra Bartosiewicz has written for Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, the Associated Press, Fortune Magazine, Salon, Hustler Magazine, the New York Times, New York Newsday, and has reported for NPR’s ?This American Life.” ?The Arms Trader,” her one-hour documentary on the Hemant Lakhani case for ?This American Life” was a finalist for the 2005 Livingston Awards and the Scripps Howard Awards. She holds an M.A. and a M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, for which she received fellowships provided by the Lorana Sullivan Foundation and the president of the university, Lee Bollinger.