(Prolly too late, though.)

[a] the prosecution’s filing for detention,

[b] all the press reports [fat-reduced & the filigree-removed],

[c] the agenda of the FBI/HS/USG/et al security & law enforcement bureaucracy in pressing for retention of endemic 4th amendment violations like 215s &

[d] the “1,001 [Arabian] tales” of wheelie-world’s very own Scheherazade, mary.

[1] US had no lead, no clue, no track, no consciousness whatsoever of Zazi, until Pakistani ISI types shared with USG military or CIA intel types that an American resident had been spotted in attendance at an idiomatically-not-at-all-shocking [in Pakistan] cultural retreat frequented by many among that country’s huge base of enthusiasts for Pray-and-exPlode.

[2] ISI enticed the hungry beast of USG intel some mouth-watering appetizers, in the form of predictably-intriguing multiple e-mail accounts & messages sent to the same bearing rudimentary designs for converting the mundane into mayhem, together with, significantly, lists of the mundane; no part of which accounts & messages would qualify for use in US courts under business or other records exceptions to the remaining atavism of the ancient pre-revolutionary rule against courts receiving & acting on hearsay in the context of an actual trial on an actual criminal charge, but all of which were either highly malleable & in that were readily adaptable for use in certain US court-supported [or at least court-tolerated] warranting practices under the intricate & well-developed labryinthe’s that exist & function & persist under a no-longer-discernibly-rationale labryinthe precariously fastened as with hardened bat guano to the broadest imaginable conceptions of terms like “cause”, “probable” & “reasonable”; and where not so adaptable, then might be amenable for use under one or more of a number of Congressionally-provided, presidentially-approved complete 4th amendment dodges which, to the extent they perchance yield actual or at least marketable fruit might also to at least some extent might be laundered back into said labryinthe;

[3] meanwhile young cross-homie Zazi, he of the not-quite-staggering intellect, was pressed with collegial importunings, reinforced by calling on mutual philosophical enthusiasms & even the fact of his bride’s continuing accessibility, to undertake a few yes inconvenient but nonetheless superficially ambiguous tasks, together with assurances that he would not be expected to carry down any nefarious pathway with them, but rather to maintain that blithe obliviousness to any such with which nature & circumstance appears to have blessed him, whilst being none too shy about scattering breadcrumbs during his meanderings;

[4] leaving withal the impression of one kind of conspiracy, where in reality there is nothing more than anxiety-producing mischief [albeit, a different, & only arguably lesser-god in the panteon of conspiracies].

Thus one has:

A. an indictment with no cohorts, &
B. an apparently compelling, & unarguably timely, demonstration of the ‘need’ for Congress to continue to endorse if not all then a critical selection from the panoply of said 4th amendment dodges.

Simile: Early on in the post-Vietnam boom in narcotics products, Asian, South American & Central American entrepreneurs desirous of setting up operations to import product into the US, with all the expected & consequent anxiety of great monetary & other risks, & without a lot of local intelligence on the ways of the DEA, border customs & other US law-enforcement-related, struck on two related ideas:

1. mules [largely ignorant & completely expendable], & then & thereafter

2. faux-mules [largely ignorant, completely expendable & designed either to expose strong spots & weak spots in the DEA et al net, or to invite said DEA et al on a merry, resource-eating, attention-diverting chase - the better to increase the odds of some other non-faux mules getting through].

In the arcane of narcotics importation & trafficking, this has long been referred to as a “dry conspiracy” – & both its use in a staggering wide degree of variation has been well-known to US law enforcement for coming on half a century.

Extrapolation: How difficult would it be to adapt such a tried-true concept to serve the interests of advancing Pakistani-US relations at certain levels?

Answer: Not so difficult.

Had no idea.

I remain quite sceptical regarding almost every aspect of this case.

There’s this from the NPR story:

Officials say FBI agents in Denver and New York had been tracking Zazi for some time — and experts analyzing the case say the way law enforcement gathered evidence against Zazi and possible co-conspirators may be a textbook case of how to conduct a terrorism investigation.

The AP/Yahoo story says this:

The CIA learned about Zazi through one of its sources and alerted domestic agencies, including the FBI, intelligence officials said.

U.S. intelligence organizations first became aware of Zazi in late August, a senior administration official said.

Getting at the truth will also be made difficult, from the NPR story:

Prosecutors have already informed Zazi’s lawyer and the judge in the case that much of the evidence they’ll present at trial came from a wiretap. They also said some of the evidence will include classified information — which means the case is likely to be complicated.

Where one sees the hand of the CIA, one should be mighty reticent about assuming we know anything like the truth. At the entrance to Langley, the motto “Ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free” (from John 8:32) is engraved on the floor…. that’s so people can walk all over it.