While the rest of the world is concerned with ISIS, Hollywood enjoys portraying domestic terrorism as a major threat to our national security. This trend continues on NBC’s Blindspot by making U.S. citizens, including a veteran, the bad guys.
On Wednesday’s episode “Name Not One Man,” the FBI intercepts information that a farmer, Jared Wisnewski, in upstate New York may be tied to a terror threat. When Agents Reade and Zapata investigate, they discover automatic weapons and materials for bombs. When he's brought in to the FBI, a startling discovery is made: an FBI agent enlisted Jared as an informant to entrap local pipeline protestors into becoming terrorists.
Jared: Are these really necessary? I'm an informant for you guys.
Weller: You're not in our system, and our informants don't usually make bombs in their backyard.
Jared: Agent Boyd can vouch for me.
Weller: He's on his way in, but right now, you're gonna start talking to the both of us.
Jared: I run a farmers’ co-op upstate. A lot of us in the community were angry. The government is pushing us off our land. First, in the '90s, it was a freeway. Now, it's a gas pipeline. People can't make a living anymore. Agent Boyd was concerned that the anti-government sentiment could lead to a homegrown domestic cell. He wanted me to keep an eye on things, report back. I identified a few key people that were angrier than others and passed those names along.
Weller: All right. So, how does passing on a few names turn into a terror attack?
Jared: It was Boyd's idea.
Reade: Come again? Are you saying an agent told you to start building anfo bombs?
Jared: He wanted me to gauge the group's interest in acting on their anger. The pipeline is
gonna break ground on March 25th. He wanted to know if that was an enticing target. I brought it up. People went along.
Reade: March 25th. Genesis 3:25. That's the codename for your pipeline attack?
Jared: Genesis means the beginning, and we were gonna end it.
Weller: By what, blowing it up?
Jared: Boyd and his team were gonna swoop in before anything got deadly.
Weller: What you're describing is entrapment. Now, my office does not radicalize people or create a terror cell just to take them down.
Reade: Agent Boyd.
Boyd: I can explain this.
Weller: My office, now.
When Weller questions Boyd about the operation, Boyd explains it’s necessary to “root out this kind of stuff.” Boyd then cites Ruby Ridge, Cliven Bundy and Timothy McVeigh as past examples of domestic attacks.
Seems as though Hollywood wants to draw a parallel to the current Keystone Pipeline and its media-fueled protests. Ironically, the protestors in this episode appear as right-wing Americans, when in reality it is the left attempting to sabotage the pipeline.
Maybe the next episode will be about some terror-crazed tree huggers? Doubtful.
