Years ago, the police would sometimes attack prostitution by sending a female officer out on the streets to solicit customers. She would approach a man who looked interested and offer him sex for money. If he said “okay”, she arrested him.
Eventually, courts began to dismiss these cases because of something called “entrapment”. The judge was not convinced that the suspect would have committed the crime had the police not proposed it to him.
That’s not fair, because the police can be selective about who they propose crimes to, and what kind of crimes they propose. What if the police targeted a convention of Baptist ministers? It’s not silly to imagine that they could easily round up a dozen or so suspects even from that pre-selected group.
For the same reason, if it is true– I don’t know if it is or not– that an undercover police officer offered to obtain the ammonium nitrate for the “terrorists”, there should be a serious problem with the case.
There should be.