Comments on Current Events In Criminal Law from the Federal Criminal Courts in Texas

August 27, 2007

THE INFORMANT IN THE NEW YORK TERROR PLOT

Earlier this month (June ’07) the federal government indicted four men – one from Trinidad, another from Tobago, and the other two from Guyana – in a “terror plot” that targeted New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Labeled “homegrown terrorists,” the four men were introduced to the American public with sensational media fanfare and boogaboo warnings from federal law enforcement officials.

After the media hysteria subsided and federal investigators had embarrassingly answered hundreds of questions, it was realized that these “terrorists” did not have a bomb, no material means to make a bomb, and lacked any organizational ability to carry out the “terror plot.” It must be conceded that the four men had the desire to inflict incomprehensible terror on the United States but had absolutely no means to put that desire into action.

The question that immediately arose was how the FBI became aware of the plot. The Bureau responded that it had an “informant” on the inside that “made” the case for the agency. In virtually all of the “homegrown terror plots” uncovered by the FBI since September 11, 2001, an “informant” was secreted into the conspiracy.

But the question that the maintain media has neglected to ask is where that first kernel of information about the New York terror plot – or any other plot – came from?
The media has recently reported that the “informant” was a convicted felon willing to cooperate with the FBI to secure a sentence reduction on a narcotics and racketeering conviction. He was released from federal custody, provided substantial financial assistance from the FBI, given a false life, and instructed to start attending a Brooklyn mosque.

The scenario reveals several significant points. First, the informant was known by the FBI. Perhaps the agency had prior dealings with him. Second, he had some Islamic religious exposure. The FBI is not going to infiltrate a Muslim mosque with an African-American evangelical worshipper.

This signals that the FBI is actively recruiting “informants” from the ranks of Muslim inmates incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and probably larger state penal facilities. These inmates are known in the prison community for their “anti-system” sentiment and political views. Most have earned their “prison credits” fighting the American judicial and political system.
But at the core of their being many are criminals before they are Muslims. They understand the “street culture” more than they do Islam – and the street culture is not known for maintaining criminal allegiances. Gangsta’ rap can promote all the “kill the snitch” campaigns it wants but the bottom line is that when the FBI walks into a prison with a “get out of jail free” pass with lucrative financial rewards attached to it, the “need” to be a snitch will always prevail over any “stand up, stay strong” notions of criminal loyalty.

The New York “terror plot” informant snatched up the “get out of jail free” pass and, with his Islamic prison training, began attending the Brooklyn mosque where he met Russell Defreitas, the alleged leader and mastermind of the terror plot. Talking the “anti-system” rhetoric he had so masterfully picked up in prison, the informant quickly had Defreitas believing that the informant had been sent by Allah to fulfill his desire to inflict more damage on American than was done by the 9/11 attacks.

But why the Brooklyn mosque?

Does the FBI have a secret program of recruiting prison informants, wiring them for sound, and sending them into Muslim mosques to see what kind of information they can either uncover about “terror plots” or entice unwitting participants into a fabricated plot?

Or, did the FBI have specific information about Defreitas?

Has the FBI with the unlimited and secret powers of the Patriot Act compiled as list of persons suspected of being potential terrorists or who may have ties to terrorists groups?

It is clear that the FBI had enough information about Defreitas and his cronies that the agency wanted to know more. So the agency placed the informant in Defreitas midst to gather information.
Many civil libertarians and criminal justice professionals have an innate distaste for the use of “informants” – whom they refer to as “jailhouse snitches.” Indeed, there have been significant instances where jailhouse snitches have fabricated cases against criminal defendants, some of whom were later declared innocent.

But in the majority of cases the opportunistic jailhouse snitch simply takes advantage of the “loose lips” of criminal defendants, especially in capital cases. These defendants get arrested for a high-profile murder and some can’t wait to boast about their criminal exploits. That’s what inmates do on a jail tier – they read newspapers, cheap action thrillers, and brag about “whores and scores.” The jailhouse snitch is always in the middle of this social waterhole, trying to elicit and weigh the value of information being dispensed for community consumption.

Regardless if it is the Mob or terrorists conspirators, the FBI understands that these underground people are going to talk. They have to. It takes three people to make a conspiracy – two to make a “witness.” John Gotti had to talk just as Russell Defreitas had to talk. It not only measured and reinforced their own personal sense of importance but it was the only way they could achieve their criminal objectives. All the FBI had to do was recruit informants to bring both of these men down.

Of course, it is difficult sometimes to infiltrate well-organized international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Intelligence agencies really do not have the time, or means, to recruit and place informants in these groups. They simply target and capture as many members as they can, relying upon “torture” to extract valuable information about activities of the group.

But which is the worse evil: surveillance or torture?

The FBI utilizes all sorts of secret surveillance activities to gather information about potential terrorists. In the process, the agency had admitted that it has trampled upon individual privacy rights of law-abiding citizens to secure this information. Covert governmental surveillance inevitably destroys individual privacy. Some people are initially willing to give up their privacy interests to “protect the group” but a right relinquished is a right lost.

While the CIA and other intelligence agencies prefer covert surveillance to gather information, these agencies have become increasingly attracted to torture as the preferred information-gathering method. More often than not, these agencies “out-source” these torture tasks to private contractors or rogue governments to protect their “non-involvement” defense.
The aftermath of 9/11 has certainly created the “brave new world” – prison informant recruiting, spying eyes in the private lives of the law-abiding, suspension of habeas corpus, indefinite confinement of “unlawful enemy combatants,” the sacrifice of protections of due process of law, and the systematic infliction of cruel and unusual punishment in secret prisons.
It will one day be said that the first casualty in the “war on terror” was democracy