02/01/17 – Trevor Aaronson on The Intercept’s cache of secret FBI documents showing their vast powers and operating rules – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, Trevor Aaronson.
I love this guy, man.
He wrote the book The Terror Factory, which I was going to write, but I didn't.
But it's okay, because he did.
It's all about the FBI entrapping idiots and losers and nobodies into saying they love Osama and then putting them in prison.
Tons of that.
And then he's done a lot of other great journalism for Mother Jones and for The Intercept.
And man, they got a huge scoop at The Intercept.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Trevor?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
Tell me, somebody leaked to you something.
What?
So we at The Intercept received a cache of classified FBI documents that, taken together, pretty much amount to the FBI's investigative playbook, you know, the rules that they're allowed to use when they conduct investigations.
And the two most significant were the classified confidential human source policy guide, which is basically, you know, the Bible by which the FBI must follow in recruiting and handling its more than 15,000 informants.
And then the other was the DIOG, or the Domestic Investigations Operations Guide, which is the rules that they have to play by in investigating Americans or investigating any case here.
And what's significant is that, you know, what these documents clearly show is, you know, just how much the FBI, you know, since 9-11 has transformed from an agency that investigates crime to one that is very much an intelligence agency.
And you know, this is a narrative that we've known about the FBI.
But what's significant is that it's so detailed, and we can go into, you know, various specifics about how the FBI recruits informants and how they investigate Americans in the United States as well as abroad.
All right, well, so let's start with the informants, because that's your expertise in the first place here.
Well, I don't know what other expertises you have.
I don't mean to discount them.
But I certainly know you're good on the informant thing.
And as I said, really wrote the book on the entrapment policy.
So I wonder, I guess, specifically, first of all, what did you learn about the entrapments and specifically anything different than you know it to be in the pre-9-11 era?
So there are a couple of significant things that come out of this document as to how the FBI handles and recruits informants.
I mean, you know, a few of the things that we knew already, but now have been confirmed and are in detail are things like, you know, how much money an informant can make.
You know, they can, you know, make hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the level of approval, for example.
But most significantly, I think the document goes into great detail about what are called type five assessments.
And this is a kind of post-9-11 creation that is the FBI's ability to recruit informants.
And what they're able to do is launch for 72 hours an investigation on any American or really anybody in the United States, whether they're American or not.
And for 72 hours, you know, physically surveil them, go through databases that are public or confidential, and try to find as much information about the person that could be used to recruit them as an informant.
And so the entire purpose of a type five investigation is just to bring up information that might help an FBI agent recruit someone to be an informant.
And why that's significant is that these are people that the FBI not only doesn't think is involved in criminal activity, but has no basis for suspicion that they're involved in any sort of criminal activity.
So for 72 hours, if an FBI agent believes that you might be a good informant, they have the legal ability to conduct a very intrusive investigation into you.
And what's also significant is that the material that they are able to find, you know, whatever it might be, whether it's derogatory material or just material about your life that they get from other informants or databases, or through physical surveillance, is kept in the FBI's file and is subject to the general accounting or document retention rules that the FBI has.
So that means that they may choose to investigate you, to recruit you as an informant, bring up all sorts of information, and then decide that they don't want to recruit you as an informant, or perhaps you turn them down.
But that means that you have a file in the FBI that could be accessed later by other agents.
And that's an extraordinary investigative and intelligence gathering power that we never knew that the FBI had until now.
And then the other significant one, on this one, I think you quote a FBI agent that you talked to for background here who said that, well, actually, we always kind of did this, but never officially.
I guess what it really amounts to, sort of, is extortion material, right?
I mean, you say, well, you know, if you turn them down, do you have a choice to turn them down?
Because after all, everybody commits three felonies a day, like in the cliche, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, everyone has something to hide, right?
I mean, I think that's why privacy is so important.
I mean, I don't mean to suggest that you or I or your listeners are involved in criminal activity, but, you know, we all have certain embarrassments in our life.
And so that's really what the FBI is looking for.
And you know, while the FBI does maintain, and these documents do say that voluntary participation is preferred over, you know, coercing someone to become an informant, you know, it's clear that these 72 hour investigations are intended to find derogatory material that could be used by the FBI to coerce someone into becoming an informant.
You know, that could be, you know, you're having tax troubles.
You know, that could be maybe you're having an affair and they find out and they'll say, hey, we'll tell your wife unless you work with us.
Or kind of more commonly among Muslims, it tends to be things like immigration violations or immigration issues that they can then leverage, you know, someone to become an informant.
And that's, you know, I think, you know, that's what's partially significant is that, you know, we all knew that the FBI used coercive measures to recruit informants.
What we didn't know fully is the level of intrusive investigation that they have, and the fact that, you know, they're building files on people for, you know, 72 hour periods of investigation that don't just go away and are purged when, you know, the investigation is over after that three day period, instead they are retained by the FBI indefinitely for years, even decades.
Right.
And then I'm sorry for interrupting you because you were going on to your second important thing there.
Yeah.
The second thing that I think is really significant is that, you know, it's also clear from this document that the FBI is not just a domestic intelligence agency.
You know, the FBI has stationed at U.S. embassies around the world, what are called legal attachés.
And these are FBI agents whose official responsibility is to be a liaison between the FBI and police agencies in the countries in which they're stationed.
And, you know, there had been some reporting that these legal attachés were involved in passing questions from the FBI to, you know, local police to question people who had been detained by those local police.
But significantly in this document, what it shows is that the legal attachés or legats in the FBI parlance are also operating informants overseas.
And so we have, you know, not only the use of informants in the United States by FBI agents, but, you know, an entire intelligence network through these legats who are operating informants in other countries and coordinating back with the United States.
And the description we use in the story is that, you know, they're effectively acting as, you know, the CIA equivalent of station chiefs, you know, basically intelligence operators who are under nominal State Department cover.
And it's interesting to note that, you know, one of the kind of controversies that came out during the presidential election was that there was a conversation between the FBI and the State Department regarding the release of some of Clinton's emails.
And in that same conversation, you know, the FBI had discussed with the State Department a push toward to expand the legat program, you know, which is, you know, kind of an example of, you know, internally within the FBI, there is a desire to kind of expand its intelligence apparatus even further to other countries in the world.
Yeah.
All right.
So now getting back to the informants for a minute here.
Did you find anything in there, Trevor, that I mean, I guess this is maybe asking too much, but was there any kind of aha moment where you see the discrepancy between the entrapment policy and the, hey, guys, keep it clean policy?
Because it seems like, you know, as you said, or no, sorry, it was our previous guest was saying, hey, some of these entrapped guys, actually, they weren't so entrapped.
They really were bad guys.
You say this in your book and in your writings, too.
Some of these guys actually, you know, it's not it's not so blatant that they were really innocent men.
You know, like the poor kid in Lodi, California is just purely innocent and set up.
But some of these guys, you know, maybe are really dangerous guys.
This kind of thing.
But so I wonder, you know, how does it work at the FBI where, you know, are we just going out fishing for an idiot that we can fool into saying something incriminating?
Or are we really looking for bad guys?
And are there different guidelines that for the different kinds of investigations or I don't know?
Yeah.
So I think the I didn't hear your previous caller, but I mean, the general gist of what you communicate is correct, of course, right.
That the the people who are arrested in the sting operations really vary from, you know, from from people who could be dangerous to people who, you know, it's clear, you know, you know, couldn't tie their shoes were it not for the assistance of the FBI.
But I think, you know, what what the guidelines show, particularly through the use of immigration to coerce people to become informants and, you know, in kind of the context of a lot of these entrapment cases, it's important to realize that, you know, the reason the FBI uses so many informants is that there are painfully few Muslim FBI agents or people who could pass for Muslim FBI agents who could then work some of these stings.
And so the FBI makes up for that by recruiting informants who are Muslim or who could easily pass as as Muslims involved with international terrorist groups.
And they're the ones who use these, these who operate these sting operations.
The primary leverage that they often use is immigration where they say, OK, hey, you know, we know you're trying to get your wife back from overseas or, hey, we noticed that your visa is a problem.
But if you work with us, you know, we can we can make this go away.
And you know, that's the kind of pressure point that.
Creates a situation where an informant knows that if he's going to stay in the country or if he's going to keep his family in the country, he's got to produce information.
Right.
He can't just be like, OK, hey, I'll work with you as an informant and and spend six or seven years and never provide much valuable information.
I think that'll be OK.
Obviously, that's not going to be OK.
And, you know, what what I what we quote a lawyer named Yela Shamas in our story is saying is that, you know, from a criminal law perspective, most police agencies in the United States recognize that that there is an intelligence problem with coercing people to become informant that, you know, that if someone is, of course, to become an informant, they're going to be incentivized to provide information that might not be particularly true or, you know, just to be able to kind of keep their status as an informant.
It incentivizes people just to provide information, just to stay on the books, no matter the level of quality of that information on the on the on the counterterrorism side, that kind of caution about coerced informants and the and the information they provide is thrown out the window.
And so what they're doing is coercing, you know, dozens and dozens of informants and sending them in the Muslim communities and saying, hey, find something.
And what the what the entrapment cases often show is that instead of finding someone who really is connected to an international terrorist group or, you know, God forbid, has a bomb that they're constructing in their garage and they're about to use it.
Instead of finding those guys, what they're what they're more often finding are people who are who are mentally troubled or financially desperate or just plain loudmouths, and they'll be the ones who'll say, hey, you know, wouldn't it be great if we got involved with the plot with the Islamic State or whatever it might be?
That's a that's a simplified description.
But you get the idea.
And then those informants through the FBI.
Provide the sting operation by providing the weapons, sometimes even helping to refine the idea of the terrorism plot.
And so I think, you know, the connection between these revelations about the recruitment of informants and how the FBI are allowed to coerce would be informants and how that translates into sting operations is that we now have this army of informants working for the FBI who are not only spying on communities around the country, but are incentivized desperately to build cases, knowing that if they don't help build cases, they'll potentially be deported or not have whatever benefit it is that they're getting from the FBI.
And so in the absence of finding the really dangerous terrorists, they're finding the people who can be manipulated in these types of sting operations.
And I think that's why time after time we're seeing cases where you have people who don't have connections to international terrorist groups, who don't have weapons of their own being prosecuted in these cases that, you know, just kind of, you know, push your push your ability to suspend disbelief and thinking that, you know, these these people could be dangerous on their own.
Well, I guess there's no chance that it says in the documents that, hey, before you proceed, always make sure to call the White House PR department and ask them how badly they need an orange alert this week.
Something like that.
Nothing like that.
Nothing like that.
I mean, I mean, certainly that's a huge part of all of this, right, is that all these bogus prosecutions amount to a huge PR exercise for the American people, because for years before we finally had Zazie and Shahzad and Hassan and a few of these lone wolf type attacks in the country, what we had was hundreds of these fake scares.
Either they tortured Abu Zubaydah into making up a story or they entrapped some idiot.
But then they turn it into the top headline on the nightly news to scare all the old people, top of the hour news to scare all the working people out driving around, listening to the radio that, oh, my God, oh, my God, another terrorist and another terrorist.
But this that's what this really amounts to as much as an injustice for the individuals entrapped is it's a huge operation that has successfully made the American people think that there's this huge threat where there never really was one.
Right, right.
I think, you know, an argument I made in my book and then often talk about is that I do think this is kind of a, you know, this becomes kind of a bureaucratic issue where, you know, the FBI gets three billion dollars to fund its counterterrorism division.
It's the largest part of its budget.
And, you know, while the threat of terrorism is real, it is a very limited one.
And, you know, it's not one that you can announce, you know, case after case after case, because, frankly, there just aren't that many threats in the United States at any given time.
But these sting operations provide a very convenient way for the FBI to say, hey, look, you know, we spent three billion dollars looking for terrorists, and these are all the terrorists that we've found.
They'll give the details.
And, you know, you know, direct former Director Robert Mueller of the FBI and the current director, James Comey, you know, both testified before Congress at various times on counterterrorism policies and their successes.
And, you know, what they'll often say is, you know, they'll talk about the specific circumstances of cases and say, you know, hey, we stopped the, you know, four men who were plotting to bomb synagogues in the Bronx or, you know, hey, we stopped this man who was going to deliver a car bomb in Chicago.
But what they don't say is that, you know, the people planning to bomb the synagogues in the Bronx didn't have their own weapons.
It was provided by the FBI.
And the car bomb in Chicago was provided by the FBI.
And there is certainly a kind of an element of security theater that happens in these cases where, you know, the FBI and the government, I think, you know, use this to kind of justify their budgets and justify the money that's being spent on terrorism.
I mean, to the FBI's credit, and I think it's worth mentioning, what they would say is that there is also an element of creating a hostile environment for real terrorists by announcing these cases and talking about these cases.
They are sending a message to the would-be terrorists of the world that, hey, you better be careful because we're out there looking for you and, you know, the person you might be collaborating with could be an undercover agent or an FBI informant.
And while that's certainly a valid, you know, goal of the FBI, you know, it also is not kind of the only end product of these types of sting operations.
The other end product ends up being that people who, you know, on their own would have no capacity for terrorism and were manipulated by these very same informants who are afraid of being deported or who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars working for the FBI, you know, basically push the case forward and manipulate the targets or the defendants to, you know, get involved in actions that they otherwise wouldn't.
And, you know, I think many people who look, you know, closely at these cases would agree that there's elements of entrapment to all of these cases, but, you know, the court systems that we have today and the jury pools that we have today, you know, have so far been unwilling to see these cases as entrapment.
And there's been a near universal, you know, conviction rate for cases like this.
And so, you know, the FBI has just been further emboldened.
And I think, you know, the informant policy guide that we received and wrote about, you know, shows just how much the FBI kind of has transformed into like the cops and robbers agencies that we thought of the FBI as being as kids to now being, you know, decades later, this organization that is very much rooted in gathering intelligence on people, stopping crimes before they occur.
And, you know, as you point out, running sting operations that, you know, create crimes when there otherwise wouldn't be one.
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Yeah.
Well, now, and I wonder how much of this really is just kind of a wink nudge way of saying you guys can go fishing on anybody you want now in the name of investigating them to see if maybe they'll be a useful informant.
But now you can just go ahead and compile, you know, in other words, a loophole in their ability to now, without a predicate, without any kind of criminal reason that they could articulate, go ahead and do what amounts to preliminary criminal investigation of whoever they feel like.
Yeah.
I mean, that is the significant kind of scare to these new powers is that they have the authority without needing a warrant or any sort of approval from the judicial branch to investigate just about anyone they want to.
And that includes people who deal in kind of sensitive areas.
You know, people like journalists, people like doctors, people like lawyers, all of these people can be investigated under type five assessments for 72 hours.
The only safeguards in place for people who deal with privileged information like lawyers and doctors and journalists is that it requires approval from the US Department of Justice to launch those investigations, but still does not require judicial branch approval.
And so, you know, in many ways, and I think this is such an extraordinary thing, you know, the FBI has the ability to investigate absolutely, you know, or I should say, has the ability to investigate just about anyone in the United States for 72 hours without having any reason at all to believe that they are involved in or, excuse me, without any reason to believe that they have any reason to believe that they are involved in any sort of criminal activity that they can investigate just about anyone, as long as one FBI agent decides that this person might be a valuable informant.
And so you can see the possible area of abuse there, that there just aren't enough safeguards in place.
And at the same time, the FBI has such extraordinary powers to investigate people.
And by investigate, you know, we're talking incredibly intrusive means, you know, physical surveillance, looking through databases, asking informants to get to know you and talk to you, all of which would be reported back and put into a file that would then, you know, live in the FBI servers for years and decades.
And, you know, we've created kind of an intelligence agency in the United States that truly has no historical peer in the United States.
And I think it's particularly troubling that, you know, these were policies that were created and powers that were expanded under two previous administrations, the Bush administration and the Obama administration.
And, you know, some people raised alarms, but not a lot of people talked about it.
And now we have an FBI with such extraordinary powers.
And, you know, a new president who has suggested pretty clearly that he has some authoritarian leanings.
And now he has this extraordinary power.
And the question is, you know, how will he use it?
And, you know, what can be done to keep the FBI and its intelligence gathering, you know, in check at a time when, you know, we've allowed it to grow in its capacity and grow in its power?
Well, and, you know, this comes in.
I don't know how significant of a change this really is in practice.
But there was this executive order that Obama signed on the way out the door that said, oh, by the way, all the federal police agencies can now have open access to the entire NSA hall that they shouldn't have in the first place.
And this is something that we've already, you know, read about some reports, you know, where the DEA has access and then they go what they call parallel construction.
And they just basically make up a story about how they came up with their probable cause when really what happened was they got evidence that ought to be, you know, under the exclusionary rule when it comes to federal prosecution, because it was gained either wholly illegally or it was gained under an intelligence function without any kind of judicial check and and probable cause standard necessary for criminal prosecutions.
And if I understand it right, I mean, what they just said was, you know, FBI and DEA and IRS and everybody else have at it, whatever you can dig out of the NSA's trash and use against the American people go to it.
So I don't know how much more access this really amounts to for the FBI counterintelligence people, because they already have quite a capability themselves.
But it sure sounds ominous.
Do you know?
No.
And so we don't fully know the extent to which the FBI has access to NSA data.
I mean, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they do have access to, you know, some portions of what are called backdoor 702 data, which basically is, you know, in the when the NSA is collecting information on the communications of specific terrorists, they will suck up all information.
So, you know, if they're trying to get information on one person, they end up getting information on hundreds of millions of people.
And a lot of that data is retained.
And, you know, the FBI through backdoor 702 can get access to that data that was, you know, in James Clapper's word, kind of unwittingly captured by the FBI or by the NSA.
But the extent to which they are able to use it and how is still unclear.
I mean, you know, one of the concerns, I think, about type five assessments and the ability to investigate anyone without suspicion of crime is a question of whether they have access to those types of databases in doing so, right?
Like if they choose to investigate someone who doesn't, for whom they don't have a suspicion, has committed a crime, do they have access to backdoor 702 data that would include, you know, written and kind of phone conversations over the course of previous months?
And might they be able to identify that person as having been involved in criminal activity and then do what you describe, which is create a parallel construction case where they get their, they base their predicate on something that they kind of manufactured.
Right.
And so, you know, kind of the old school understanding of criminal or parallel construction would be like a local police officer who's got a prostitute who's like an off the books informant.
And she tells the guy like the police, hey, you know, this guy over there has been dealing heroin and I know this because, you know, I was over there.
And so the police aren't going to use that information from the prostitute.
They're going to create some sort of other reason to have to go to the house.
You know, they'll claim, look, oh, we got a noise complaint.
And that's why we went over there and knocked on the door.
And when he opened the door, we saw all of this kind of criminal activity.
And that's where our case started.
And so, like, you know, to a certain extent, police for a long, long time have been using parallel construction to build cases.
It's just the stakes have been raised considerably now, given the access of it to information that the FBI has potentially through NSA data.
And, you know, I think this is one of the kind of the interesting stories yet to be told is, you know, obviously, when government recollects data, you know, it's kind of and then obviously these are the warnings that Edward Snowden and others have made that, you know, you're naive to think that no one in the government will go back and look at it and wonder if there's a way for them to use it.
And as you pointed out, this is something that we know already that the DEA has been doing.
And with some of the FISA warrant notifications that have been filed in FBI terrorism cases, there's certainly reason to believe that they're doing it in some cases for the FBI.
But, you know, it's unclear to the extent to which they're doing it.
And I think that's something that should concern a lot of Americans.
You know, like when I describe Type 5 assessments and how they can investigate just about anyone, you know, it's possible that they're able to also get into, you know, databases like the NSA's.
And, you know, so when when average Americans say, like, well, why should I be concerned about NSA spying?
You know, it doesn't affect me.
It's quite possible that it could.
And I think that's that's kind of the chilling thing that Americans should understand.
All right.
Now, and tell me real quick about the thing where, hey, when you're done with these informants, you can go ahead and kick them right back out of the country again after using them up.
Yeah.
So this is the kind of revelatory thing about how the FBI uses immigration.
I mean, we've known for a very long time that the FBI uses immigration as a leverage point to say, like, hey, if you hey, you're facing deportation or, you know, your green card is just about up.
If you work with us, we can we can help you, you know, get the clearances from ICE and stay in the country.
And the FBI has often portrayed themselves to would-be informants and and the lawyers of would-be informants as kind of the good guys who will help them, you know, deal with the bad guys over at ICE.
And what this document shows is that the relationship is far more more complicated than that.
And there's actually a requirement that the FBI in recruiting an informant who has immigration issues is required to tell ICE where that informant physically is once he no longer becomes useful to the FBI.
So basically, it incentivizes informants further to keep providing information for fear that they'll be deported, but also shows that the FBI has often been disingenuous in talking to would-be informants about how they can keep ICE off their back.
I mean, you know, basically it blurs the line between the FBI's authority and immigration enforcement by making it clear that if ICE is going to help keep an informant in the country once he's no longer useful, it's the FBI's requirement to provide that information back to ICE.
And that's something we've never known before.
And also, you know, goes to show that, you know, the terms of the relationship that I think a lot of informants are working under are not true, that, you know, the FBI has this requirement to basically turn them in once they're no longer providing information.
And so, you know, they're able to stay in the country as long as they're providing information.
But once they're no longer useful, they are subject to the FBI helping them be deported.
Hmm.
All right.
Now, I guess this is not your story, but maybe you know something about it.
The FBI investigating Nazis joining the police.
I'm reminded of a I guess it's kind of an apocryphal story.
A caller to a radio show a long time ago said he was an old Williamson County sheriff deputy, and it was his job to train the new guys and go out with them the first few days.
And they would all say, well, I just want to help people.
That's why I became a cop is I just want to, you know, be the same old BS.
But then one of these new deputies was perfectly honest and said, well, the way it seems to me, things around here are getting more and more Gestapo, and I just want to make sure I'm wearing a brown shirt.
And it seems to me like the Gestapo is joining the sheriff's department, it says here.
Yeah.
So this is not my story, but obviously I read about it and know about the reporting.
Yeah.
I mean, I think one of the primary concerns is that the FBI in these documents expressed their own concern about information sharing with a number of local law enforcement agencies for because their internal investigations had discovered that there was, you know, for lack of a better word, infiltration of the police agencies by white supremacist groups.
And, you know, white supremacist groups are among the groups that the FBI has labeled as, you know, high domestic terrorism threats in the United States.
And, you know, it's pretty troubling to think that even the FBI acknowledges that members of these groups have become local sheriff's deputies and local cops.
And for that reason, the FBI has cautioned its own agents to be careful about the amount of information that is shared for fear that these white supremacist cops end up getting access to it and and foiling, you know, even FBI investigations.
You know, I guess it's not surprising in any way, because we hear anecdotes like the one you describe where, you know, there is a certain amount of maybe particularly in the South, but not necessarily, you know, kind of limited to it, a certain amount of cops who, you know, may have white supremacist feelings or maybe even have like direct associations with the white supremacist groups.
I guess what's shocking in its own way is that, you know, the level of participation in law enforcement by white supremacists is, you know, to such a degree that the FBI felt it necessary to kind of issue warnings to its own agents about dealing with these local cops, you know, and at a time now of kind of unprecedented, I shouldn't say unprecedented, but at a time now of high levels of xenophobia and Islamophobia, you know, it's really, really troubling to think, you know, there is this level of, you know, white supremacist participation in local law enforcement.
Yeah, I mean, you would think that kind of one of the rules is, well, you have to be able to run, you know, if you got really bad knees, you just can't be a cop, you know, this kind of thing.
Oh, and also you can't be a Nazi, you know, that's one of our rules.
Yeah, and you know, but we have the same problem with entrapments among the white supremacists.
You remember the Hutteri militia.
And in fact, if you read James Ridgeway in Mother Jones, all about the Oklahoma City bombing, quite a bit of evidence there that McVeigh and all his friends, maybe not McVeigh, but all of his friends were undercover FBI informants and or flip states witnesses.
And there's at least a pretty good likelihood that that was some form of sting operation that got out of control back then.
And the whole Pat Con operation and all of that that goes back to the 1990s.
So it's the same kind of thing where you take you and I and every reasonable person thinks, well, we want the FBI to infiltrate the Aryan Republican Army.
Hell yeah.
But we don't want them to make them worse.
We don't want them to say, OK, go ahead and rob some banks, but don't get too carried away.
And we don't want them to basically turn a blind eye while these guys blow up buildings full of people, you know, and that's what ends up happening.
Just the same as this where, oh, don't worry, we'll save the day at the last minute.
Well, sometimes it doesn't work out that well.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Now, there's a long history of the FBI's infiltration of of white supremacist group and groups and certainly questions about, you know, the roles that informants have played.
You know, I mean, as you put it, I mean, the same problems that exist in in Muslim kind of counterterrorism things also exist in, you know, the infiltration of white supremacist groups.
I mean, they're they're using informants who have kind of similar leverage points and, you know, similar similar questions about their own allegiance.
Right.
Are they really doing this because they want for God and country and they want to make America a better place free of white supremacist groups?
Or are they doing this because maybe they're white supremacist themselves, but, you know, they're getting paid and they're doing it.
So there's all kind of questions that arise from it.
I mean, I think we've seen since 9-11 kind of a de-emphasis by the FBI on right wing groups.
But then starting in 2010 under the Obama administration, we we began to see an increasing level of monitoring and an investigation.
You know, I think it'll be interesting to see what the FBI under President Trump and presumed Attorney General Jeff Sessions will do.
I mean, will they continue to investigate, you know, white supremacist groups to the level that they had in starting in 2010?
Or will we kind of go back to the, you know, post 9-11 Bush years where white supremacist groups weren't particularly well monitored in that time?
Well, and of course, they were pretty placated during those years and weren't nearly as active as they were during the Clinton years anyway.
But yeah, no, I think the other I mean, we it's we're at a combustible time now.
Right.
I mean, I think, you know, you know, one problem is you had back then in 2010, you mentioned 2010, there was leaked a Homeland Security Fusion Center type document that said, be on the lookout for anybody with a Ron Paul bumper sticker or an NRA bumper sticker or basically look, be on the lookout for anybody with right wing politics at all.
They might be a terrorist or politics that might seem like on the fringe of the Republican Party.
Ron Paul is a Republican congressman running for president.
See, it's not like he was even the libertarian candidate.
Right.
And so that's the thing is you have this kind of clumsy government overreach.
And then that led to a major pushback, which could have very well been detrimental for real investigations into real dangerous Nazis.
Right, right.
Yeah, no, there's always I mean, there's always a simplification that happens sometimes when they're monitoring groups.
I mean, you see the same types of things involving, you know, Muslims where they'll tell them, you know, to be on the lookout for people who are reading particular texts, which are like widely read religious texts that, you know, have nothing to do particularly with any sort of extremism.
But it ends up widening the, you know, widening the prism to such an extent that, you know, looking through it really doesn't do you any good because it captures all sorts of people in that.
And so I agree.
I mean, I think there are a lot of questions about the efficacy of how the FBI pursues, you know, certain groups.
I do wonder now, like how, you know, in addition to, you know, the previous problems, you know, how they'll deal with, you know, white supremacist groups at a time when I think a lot of those groups because of the election of Donald Trump and kind of the rise of this so-called alt right movement, what they'll be doing now that they feel maybe further emboldened and less marginalized than they have in the past.
You know, I'm not sure what that means for right wing groups or what that means for the FBI's ability to investigate them or willingness to investigate them.
Right.
Yeah.
Hey, they're the in-group now.
That's the rule, right?
Any politics that take place through the party system are basically OK.
Any politics outside the party system and look out, you're about to get COINTELPRO'd.
So I guess the race has figured it out.
Let's just join the GOP.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens and what the FBI's priorities are.
I mean, you know, I mean, certainly given kind of the executive orders that have been coming out, I mean, I think it's you know, we can assume that there will be kind of a kind of a further increase in the monitoring of Muslim communities in the United States.
But what that means for white supremacist groups and others, I think, is really, really questionable.
You know, and also I think it's also questionable given kind of the seeming attacks on climate science and other programs in the federal government, you know, what that might mean for FBI investigations of, you know, so-called, you know, kind of eco-terrorist groups, you know, which had been on the rise already.
And, you know, given what's happening, there might be kind of a further interest by the administration in looking at the activities of those groups.
And, you know, obviously at a time of unprecedented protests, you know, there's a certain question of a chilling effect that might occur if the FBI under Trump decides to pursue some of these groups.
Yep.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry I've kept you way too long here, but I sure appreciate your time on the show, Trevor.
Of course, Scott.
I always have to do it.
Yep.
You do great work, man.
Appreciate it very much.
Thanks, man.
Have a great day.
All right, you too.
Guys, it's The Intercept.
It's a huge scoop here.
You got to look at it.
There's 13-something stories.
If you go to antiwar.com today, we have links to all of them.
It's the picture story there.
And then below that, secrets of the FBI.
And there's 13, 14-something stories here.
And all the documents, a huge leak from the FBI, the FBI's secret rules.
And Trevor has, I think, five of these, something like that.
Starting with, the FBI gives itself lots of rope to pull in informants.
This is going to be Pulitzer Prize-winning work here coming up pretty soon, whenever they hold that.
And that's The Scott Horton Show for this episode.
Check me out at scotthorton.org slash interviews, I guess.
And at libertarianinstitute.org slash scotthortonshow.
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