As a fellow at the University of California-Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting Associate Director Trevor Aaronson spent a year researching how the FBI uses informants in terrorism investigations. Aaronson’s findings, which were published in the September/October issue of Mother Jones, include:
- The FBI has 15,000 registered informants, many of them keeping watch on Muslim communities. Today, the FBI has nearly three times as many informants as it had 25 years ago.
- Of more than 500 federal terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, nearly half involved the use of an informant — many of them motivated by money or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations.
- Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an “agent provocateur” — an aggressive FBI operative who provoked the targets into committing their alleged terrorist acts.
- The FBI often uses the threat of deportation, as well as other forms of leverage, to win cooperation from informants.
Aaronson’s report also includes a searchable database of the more than 500 terrorism prosecutions reviewed during the yearlong investigation.
No comments:
Post a Comment