One minor flaw with this theory:
“Debka” is floating it.
I agree with you.... but it sure fits.
True, but the LEOs seemed to take extraordinary care to capture the second terrorist alive. Had he been some right wing American they would have killed him in short order once they had him surrounded in a plastic boat exchanging fire with them. Does anybody really think that the SWAT and long rifle teams present couldn't have hit him from their positions less than fifty feet away? The terrorist had no cover in the boat.
Also, we heard the aunt on TV saying she had spoken to the FBI, and the FBI monitored and communicated with her son. Also, the father's statements were very interesting - suggesting that his son tell everything, and that if he was killed "all hell would break loose." Maybe that threat was more about politics and information disclosure than a threat of violence by other Chechen terrorists.
And pretty clearly the FBI knew the identity of the terrorists before they released the video tapes to the public. I can't imagine that they didn't run the images past their own counter terrorism guys, one or more of whom had interviewed terrorist #1, and no doubt had his picture in their files.
Obviously all speculation, but there have been other cases where intelligence assets go bad. Like that guy who used to work for the CIA that we had to bury at sea.
One thing about theory, it’s logical. I just speculated about a similar scenario and posted it on another thread.