British Filmmaker Christopher Morris Explains the FBI

Now that the chair Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker threw at his hostage-taker is headed to the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, I hope it isn’t too rude to note that numerous all-too-quickly-memory-holed questions remain about January’s crisis at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Those unknowns all suggest the type of farce that ensues when supposedly crackerjack national spy agencies get tangled up in the comic-book plots of inept jihadis, who most likely would never have made it out their own basements if the aforementioned security agents hadn’t given them that final and just-as-often initial boost they needed to live out their dreams. Given the complexities involved, it should come as no surprise that this kind of elaborately witting-unwitting collusion can sometimes go horribly wrong. On one side of the equation are people who seem to be barely able to master the basics of what most of us understand to be everyday reality—perfect marks for those who believe themselves to be the protectors of that reality, a role they pursue with light oversight and fewer legal limits on their tactics and behavior than citizens in a democracy might hope for.