For example, in September 2010 authorities in Chicago announced charges against 21-year-old Sami Hassoun for planting what he thought was a backpack carrying a bomb in a trash can near Wrigley Field. Instead, it was a fake that had been supplied by an FBI informant. The evidence was damning, since Hassoun was recorded discussing the attack and other potential plots over the course of a year.
But the evolution of the case was more complicated. Hassoun, who had lived through wars in the Ivory Coast and Lebanon before immigrating to the United States, showed signs of mental instability and tendencies to fabricate even before he was approached by an informant in 2009, his defense attorneys said.
Desperate for money, he was receptive to the informant’s offers to pay him to develop schemes against the government, many of which were outlandish, such as poisoning Chicago’s water supply and making a bomb out of baking soda. Hassoun’s own justification for an attack was also illogical, as he expressed hope that a bombing might inspire Chicagoans to rise up against Mayor Daley, whom he blamed for joblessness.
Yet the informant kept pushing Hassoun to come up with more ideas for attacks and other criminal activity; at one point, he told Hassoun that he could teach him how to deal heroin—which prompted FBI agents to chastise the informant about engaging in entrapment.
Eventually the informant brought the fake bomb to Hassoun, who agreed to plant it. “Given the facts, it seems extraordinarily improbable that Sami, a 21-year-old with no technical skill in the science of bomb-building, could have or would have engaged in a terrorist attack in Wrigleyville without the government’s efforts and the informant’s participation,” argued Hassoun’s attorneys.