The FBI has a long post-9/11 history of ginning up plots to foil; the pattern is generally “find an inept loner who may have said something weird online, and then entice him to take part in a ‘plot'”. The issue is, of course, that (a) the aforementioned loner is typically the only non-cop involved; and (b) in the absence of the fabricated plot, it’s exceedingly unlikely that these inept doofuses would have ever become involved in any domestic terror efforts at all.

But, hey, the Feds get headlines, and people get promoted, and in the absence of real plots people might start to wonder why we spend so much money on security, so it keeps happening. (As has been previously noted, if you’re in security, the absence of existential threats is itself an existential threat.)

Well, now we have something even worse. Turns out, that Chinese professor at Temple they arrested was never actually doing anything wrong, and the FBI could have known this from day one had they bothered to check their own evidence.

Temple University physics professor Xiaoxing Xi made headlines back in May, when he was indicted for allegedly sharing “sensitive” information with colleagues in China about a piece of laboratory equipment used in his superconductivity research. Xi maintained his innocence from the start. On Friday, he was vindicated: the U.S. Justice Department dropped the charges against him, with a vague statement about new information coming to light.

This “new information” came in the form of several sworn affidavits from leading scientists confirming that schematics Xi sent to Chinese scientists had nothing to do with the proprietary device. Apparently nobody involved in the investigation thought to run their case past knowledgeable scientific experts before bursting into Xi’s suburban home with guns drawn, ransacking his house, and leading him off in handcuffs in front of his wife and daughter.

I mean, come ON people! If you’re going to drag a man’s name through the mud, you have an obligation to be RIGHT.