I respect your question ekg and there is certainly a time and place for isolated sting ops. However it's admitted information that the underwear bomber was put on the plane by fbi witnessed by Kurt Haskel, lawyer and whistle blower who is now running for congress because of the incident.
Just one example of absolute power corrupting absolutely ie toiling away at scenarios for setting up stings and unfortunately much worse.
Michael Chertof is of course the owner of the company who had already began manufacturing full body scanners before the underwear bomber which have been found to be very inefficient(
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/scanners-part3/0).