In a time when trust needs to be rebuilt, this is what is happening.

Well, it's been three days since the hostage-taking in Colleyville, Texas, so theoretically enough time to take some sort of perspective.  While the facts may change or be further clarified, it seems that by now we have a pretty good picture of what happened.

A British national of South Asian cultural origin (Pakistani) with a criminal record and who had been investigated by the British police for possible terrorism links, was allowed to travel to the US.  Soon after arriving, he illegally purchased a gun which he then used to take four hostages in a Jewish temple in Colleyville, Texas, during their Sabbath morning services.  

His demands were for the release of a Pakistani Islamic terrorist, Aafia Siddiqui, serving an 86-year sentence for terrorism.  You have to go to the Jerusalem Post to get a reasonably clear picture that this was no garden variety imprisoned terrorist.  

Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist who moved to the US in 1990 on a student visa and subsequently studied at the University of Houston before transferring to MIT, where she triple-majored in biology, anthropology and archaeology, later receiving her PhD from Brandeis University, as reported in Peter Bergen’s book The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda. After marrying anesthesiologist Amjad Mohammed Khan in an arranged marriage, Siddiqui had two sons and a daughter in 1996, 1998 and 2002.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Siddiqui insisted to her husband that the family move to Pakistan, and when they did, she wanted to move to the country’s border with Afghanistan to provide medical aid to Taliban militants fighting against the US, according to Harper’s Magazine.

After becoming increasingly interested in Islam and jihad, Siddiqui began to attract the attention of the FBI when she and her husband bought $10,000 worth of body armor, night-vision goggles and militant manuals such as Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, The Anarchist’s Arsenal and How to Make C-4, according to reports in Harper’s, The Guardian and Boston Magazine.

Siddiqui’s marriage began to fall apart due to physical abuse from Khan, as well as her growing interest in jihad, until the couple divorced in 2002, according to Deborah Scroggins in Wanted Women.

Khan suspected that Siddiqui had become involved with extremist groups, and she did end up marrying suspected al-Qaeda member Ammar al-Baluchi in 2003. Baluchi is a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The US government alleged that Siddiqui was involved in a plot by an al-Qaeda cell to commit attacks in the US, the UK and Pakistan. The cell, led by KSM, planned to sabotage gas stations and underground storage tanks, and poison or destroy water-treatment facilities, Scroggins wrote.

When Siddiqui disappeared with her children on what she claimed was a trip to Islamabad, the FBI released a “worldwide alert” for her and Khan, according to Scroggins and the BBC.

In 2004, then-attorney-general John Ashcroft said Siddiqui was one of the suspects on the FBI’s list of the seven most-wanted al-Qaeda fugitives and was a “clear and present danger to the US,” Scroggins and The Los Angeles Times wrote.

Siddiqui was later arrested by US Army troops and FBI agents in Ghazni, Afghanistan. During her questioning, she allegedly picked up one of the soldiers’ rifles and fired two shots at them, shouting “Allah Akbar,” The New York Times reported. The soldiers successfully disarmed her.

Back in Texas, after one hostage was released, ten hours later, the others exited the building.  Shortly thereafter, the FBI entered the building.  It appears, according to a Washington Post account, that the hostage-taker was subsequently shot by the FBI.  

The story as presented at the time, and affirmed by the FBI, was that the hostage taking had nothing to do with the congregation being Jewish and that the hostages were freed by the FBI.  Both the FBI and the mainstream media professed to be puzzled by the hostage taker's motives.  No one else believed that this was the case.

As it turns out, after three days of reporting, this was, as expected, a case of Islamic terrorism by a foreign national terrorist who took four Jewish hostages who were targeted because they were Jewish in order to release an Islamic terrorist.  The remaining three hostages were not freed by the FBI, they escaped on their own.

Maybe the story will change further but the FBI performance, and how they reported it, sure seems to reinforce why there is such a low level of trust which Americans have in government (A Great Deal/Quite a lot - 12%, Very Little or None - 51%) and in mainstream media (A Great Deal/Quite a lot - 16%, Very Little or None - 53%).  They are not trusted because they prove themselves again and again to be untrustworthy.