Word: fbi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that same year, the very same government put Omar on its payroll, and the immigration case quietly went away. Under the direction of the FBI, he infiltrated a group of friends in Cherry Hill, N.J., whom the government suspected of harboring terrorist intentions. For 16 months, Omar earned thousands of dollars recording hundreds of conversations. He drove one man to do surveillance of possible targets, according to court documents, and he offered to help buy illegal weapons for the group. Finally, in 2007, Omar handed over the men, thereafter known as the Fort...
...That afternoon the Duka brothers came back, picked up their DVD and left without incident. A week later the FBI showed up to get its copy. Morgenstern saw the Duka brothers only one more time. They came back shortly afterward with another tape to convert. But this one, Morgenstern says, was "everything I'm used to." It was a family video of kids and adults talking and laughing outside. And then Morgenstern heard nothing else for more than a year and a half...
...known as the "Zinfandel Capital of the World," a man told police he had seen al-Qaeda's No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the area in the late 1990s. That astonishing claim turned out to be false. But soon the very same tipster was working for the FBI and recording his conversations with a local ice cream-truck driver and his son to see if they were dangerous. The tipster was paid more than $225,000 for his trouble, and after an exhaustive interrogation, the son admitted to authorities that he had attended a terrorism training camp...
...Introducing the informant After 9/11, it was painfully clear that the FBI lacked human intelligence. As agents began to develop Muslim informants, or "assets," as they are called, things changed. The number of informants used in terrorism investigations has "increased exponentially," says Art Cummings, deputy assistant director of counterterrorism at the FBI. That is a big improvement. But informants are not what most people think they are. They are not undercover FBI agents; they are untrained civilians who need something - badly. Usually, they need money or a way to reduce their prison sentences or avoid deportation. Many have criminal records...
...says Dennis G. Fitzgerald, a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the author of a 2007 book, Informants and Undercover Investigations: A Practical Guide to Law, Policy and Practice. But out of necessity, informants are now foot soldiers in the government's fight against terrorism. The FBI has nowhere near enough agents who can pass as young Muslim extremists. "They need informants. Two FBI agents from Duluth are not going to make it," says Jenkins of Rand. So agents delegate the job to laypeople with strong and sometimes perverse incentives. "The only way to find out what...