How the FBI Uses 15,000 Spies to Infiltrate Muslim Communities
By Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter
Published: Tuesday August 23, 2011
The liberal news magazine Mother Jones has published a major investigation of the FBI’s use of terrorism informants for investigations, such as sting operations. The investigation is the product of a year’s worth of work by Trevor Aaronson who looked into every terrorism case prosecuted by the government since 9/11.
The project is a superb example of investigative journalism. Five hundred domestic terror prosecutions were reviewed. A list of all successful terrorism prosecutions from the 9/11 attacks to 2009 (which Aaronson “unwittingly” obtained through Eric Holder’s testimony to Congress in March 2010) was used. Aaronson brought the list of cases up to date by looking at the Justice Department’s criteria for a “terrorism case” and applying it to the latest federal cases. Additonally, he went on to interview as many of the FBI agents involved in the sting operations as possible (and received some assistance from Lowell Bergman, head of the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, whom Al Pacino played in the film The Insider).
