It looks like the FBI has recieved another black eye as it now appears as those five Middle Easterners who had supposedly sneaked into the US are not the threat they were thought to be.
Some are claiming this was a stunt orchestrated by the White House. I’d be more inclined to place blame on faulty intelligence and poor casework rather than intentional malice. It’s quite possible that the FBI did pick up chatter that implicated the five – chatter that was mistaken or deliberate misinformation.
Another, more sinister possibility is that this is all a smokescreen: al-Qaeda agents did slip into the US, using the identity of five random people as a cover. While this incident is embarrassing to the FBI, I’d rather see mistakes made from vigilence than mistakes made by complacency.