"Arrest could be Leverage NYPD needs to persuade someone to become an Informant" [Archive]

gunDriller

24th August 2011, 06:46 AM

"An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant."

That's from a LONG article about the NYPD setting up their own private CIA (with outposts in, for example, New Jersey) after 9-11.

http://news.yahoo.com/cia-help-nypd-moves-covertly-muslim-areas-090019915.html;_ylt=AvA4Mjg1eh1fpmqDiVvltxus0NUE;_ ylu=X3oDMTM1aXY3Y2dhBHBrZwMwMGRmN2NlYS0zMjg1LTNkYz MtOWEyNi0zOWUyZGJkNGE0NjQEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9y eQR2ZXIDNmJlYmI3YjAtY2UzYS0xMWUwLWJiZjMtY2JlYjdiNG UxNjQz;_ylg=X3oDMTFvdnRqYzJoBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi 11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRl c3QD;_ylv=3

Name of the guy who runs it ? Cohen.

"NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims."

"Just as at the CIA, Cohen and Sanchez knew that informants would have to become the backbone of their operation. But with threats coming in from around the globe, they couldn't wait months for the perfect plan.

They came up with a makeshift solution. They dispatched more officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and, according to one former police official directly involved in the effort, instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant."

"Using census data, the department matched undercover officers to ethnic communities and instructed them to blend in, the officials said. Pakistani-American officers infiltrated Pakistani neighborhoods, Palestinians focused on Palestinian neighborhoods. They hung out in hookah bars and cafes, quietly observing the community around them."

"A hot spot might be a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or it might be a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation. Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot."

"Ethnic bookstores, too, were on the list. If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny. If a restaurant patron applauds a news report about the death of U.S. troops, the patron or the restaurant could be labeled a hot spot.

The goal was to "map the city's human terrain," one law enforcement official said. The program was modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank, a former police official said."

Israel in the US.

"To identify possible informants, the department created what became known as the "debriefing program." When someone is arrested who might be useful to the intelligence unit — whether because he said something suspicious or because he is simply a young Middle Eastern man — he is singled out for extra questioning. Intelligence officials don't care about the underlying charges; they want to know more about his community and, ideally, they want to put him to work."

So - why don't they send the officers to Beverly Hills if they want to catch the Real Terrorists ?

iOWNme

24th August 2011, 07:29 AM

Check out this recent article in Mother Jones. I saw my fiances father reading this at his house....INCREDIBLE.

The Informants

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/fbi/fbi-sub-top-519x63.png

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants

The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_12/fbi-alt_425x320.jpg

James Cromitie (http://motherjones.com/node/127157) was a man of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi," he once said (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230124-cromite-uc-transcripts-1.html#document/p21/a30101).
A 45-year-old Walmart stocker who'd adopted the name Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam during a prison stint for selling cocaine, Cromitie had lots of worries—convincing his wife he wasn't sleeping around, keeping up with the rent, finding a decent job despite his felony record. But he dreamed of making his mark. He confided as much in a middle-aged Pakistani he knew as Maqsood.
"I'm gonna run into something real big (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230124-cromite-uc-transcripts-1.html#document/p97/a30100)," he'd say. "I just feel it, I'm telling you. I feel it."
Maqsood and Cromitie had met at a mosque in Newburgh, a struggling former Air Force town about an hour north of New York City. They struck up a friendship, talking for hours about the world's problems and how the Jews were to blame.
It was all talk until November 2008, when Maqsood pressed his new friend.
"Do you think you are a better recruiter or a better action man?" Maqsood asked (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230124-cromite-uc-transcripts-1.html#document/p121/a30102).
"I'm both," Cromitie bragged.
"My people would be very happy to know that, brother. Honestly."
"Who's your people?" Cromitie asked.
"Jaish-e-Mohammad."

Maqsood said he was an agent for the Pakistani terror group, tasked with assembling a team to wage jihad in the United States. He asked Cromitie what he would attack if he had the means. A bridge, Cromitie said.
"But bridges are too hard to be hit," Maqsood pleaded, "because they're made of steel."
"Of course they're made of steel," Cromitie replied. "But the same way they can be put up, they can be brought down."
Maqsood coaxed Cromitie toward a more realistic plan. The Mumbai attacks were all over the news, and he pointed out how those gunmen targeted hotels, cafés, and a Jewish community center.
"With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone," Cromitie told his friend. "But not me, because I'm intelligent." The pair settled on a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, and then fire Stinger missiles at airplanes taking off from Stewart International Airport in the southern Hudson Valley. Maqsood would provide all the explosives and weapons, even the vehicles. "We have two missiles, okay?" he offered (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230139-cromite-uc-transcripts-2.html#document/p109/a12). "Two Stingers, rocket missiles."
Maqsood was an undercover operative; that much was true. But not for Jaish-e-Mohammad. His real name was Shahed Hussain (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/shahed-hussain-fbi-informant), and he was a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI's No. 1 priority, consuming the lion's share of its budget—$3.3 billion, compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime—and much of the attention of field agents and a massive, nationwide network of informants. After years of emphasizing informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies—many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. In addition, for every informant officially listed in the bureau's records, there are as many as three unofficial ones, according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as "hip pockets."

The informants could be doctors, clerks, imams. Some might not even consider themselves informants. But the FBI regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO (http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro), the program the bureau ran from the '50s to the '70s to discredit and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.
Throughout the FBI’s history, informant numbers have been closely guarded secrets. Periodically, however, the bureau has released those figures. A Senate oversight committee in 1975 found the FBI had 1,500 informant (http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/0509/chapter2.htm)s (http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/0509/chapter2.htm). In 1980, officials disclosed there were 2,800 (http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-15/news/mn-11287_1_fbi-informant). Six years later, following the FBI’s push into drugs and organized crime, the number of bureau informants ballooned to 6,000, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-15/news/mn-11287_1_fbi-informant) in 1986. And according to the FBI, the number grew significantly after 9/11. In its fiscal year 2008 budget authorization request (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238034-33-fbi-se-2.html), the FBI disclosed that it it had been been working under a November 2004 presidential directive demanding an increase (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238034-33-fbi-se-2.html#document/p38/a30817) in "human source development and management," and that it needed $12.7 million (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238034-33-fbi-se-2.html#document/p36/a30818) for a program to keep tabs on its spy network and create software to track and manage informants.
The bureau's strategy has changed significantly from the days when officials feared another coordinated, internationally financed attack from an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Today, counterterrorism experts believe groups like Al Qaeda, battered by the war in Afghanistan and the efforts of the global intelligence community, have shifted to a franchise model, using the internet to encourage sympathizers to carry out attacks in their name. The main domestic threat, as the FBI sees it, is a lone wolf.
The bureau's answer has been a strategy known variously as "preemption," "prevention," and "disruption"—identifying and neutralizing potential lone wolves before they move toward action. To that end, FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.
Here's how it works: Informants report to their handlers on people who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names are then cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records. FBI agents may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical. Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, there's an arrest—and a press conference (http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6824533) announcing another foiled plot.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/27/national/main6996775.shtml) bombing plot? The New York subway (http://articles.cnn.com/2004-08-28/us/ny.bombplot_1_subway-station-shahawar-matin-siraj-herald-square-station?_s=PM:US) plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041603607.html)? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/1129/FBI-alleged-Christmas-tree-bomber-thought-9-11-was-awesome) lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.
Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley have examined prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as defined by the Department of Justice. Our investigation found:

Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations. (For more on the details of those 508 cases, see our charts page (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/terror-trials-numbers) and searchable database (http://motherjones.com/fbi-terrorist).)
Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur—an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/April/10-ag-473.html) the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91485&page=1), an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport; and failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad (http://motherjones.com/fbi-terrorist/faisal-shahzad-times-square-car-bomb).)
In many sting cases, key encounters between the informant and the target were not recorded—making it hard for defendants claiming entrapment to prove their case.
Terrorism-related charges are so difficult to beat in court, even when the evidence is thin, that defendants often don't risk a trial.

"The problem with the cases we're talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents," says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York's Herald Square (http://articles.cnn.com/2004-08-28/us/ny.bombplot_1_subway-station-shahawar-matin-siraj-herald-square-station?_s=PM:US) subway station. "They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror." In the FBI's defense, supporters argue that the bureau will only pursue a case when the target clearly is willing to participate in violent action. "If you're doing a sting right, you're offering the target multiple chances to back out," says Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and oversaw the investigation of the Lackawanna Six (http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/living-age-fire), an alleged terror cell near Buffalo, New York. "Real people don't say, 'Yeah, let's go bomb that place.' Real people call the cops."More at link.....6 pages worth of propaganda! All aimed at the 'people'.