the largest resellers of the foreclosed properties in the united states. a 60% of the seals are going to individual investors and dealers typically small. the balance of the first-time buyers, the investors are paying cash and the first-time buyers, the 40% are generally fha financing with less than 5% >> "washington journal"

continues. host: every wednesday we're going to be taking a look at recent magazines, spotlight on magazines and book it recent cover stories. today is the "mother jones" on the use of fbi informants to

prevent lone wolf attacks. trevor aaronson, let me begin with this part of your story. "counter-terrorism is the fbi's top priority." why so many informants? how are they being used, and why? guest: the fbi does not believe a coordinated attack is possible. they fear someone who is in a community somewhere in the united states and is inspired to commit some kind of actor terrorism on their own. the fbi believes this is the primary way of identifying them. informants can go into the community centers and talk to people and figure out who these

people would ba and then alle fr them the opportunity to move forward -- figure out who these people would be. host: who are these informants? what do they look like? guest: they could be your neighbors, a store clerk. they run the gamut from the community. in some cases they are criminals. they were caught doing some kind of crime and they are working off the crime by serving as an informant for the fbi. in some cases, they could be immigrants and the fbi used that as a leverage to get them to cooperate. host: you say a network of about

15,000 informants. how does the fbi to determine where to put these informants across the country? guest: the use a program called domaine management -- they use a program called domain management. it allows the fbi to create demographic maps of the country and divide the country to the use of commercially available data. they are able to say that we believe these communities pose the greatest risk. the use domain management -- they use demesne management to find the people who seem the most willing to commit some act of terrorism.

host: give us some examples. guest: in the case of a man in illinois, a man the fbi identified. the fbi began to realize he was interested in committing some act of terrorism. the fbi sent another informant to him that offered him a place to live. he goes analyst with the informant. over some weeks, they talked about committing some act of terror, that he wanted to assassinate a judge. but he was broke and did not have a car. the informant introduced him to an arms dealer who could provide him with the means to commit this act of terrorism. the arms dealer exchange in trade some speakers to provide

him with the grenades. there were able to prosecute him. an obvious question in a case like that is whether he could have committed that crime were not for the fbi provided him with the means and opportunity. host: that is a question you posed at the beginning of your piece. why do ask if they are leading them? guest: we looked at more than 500 defendants in terrorism prosecution says 9/11. half of them in vault informants. -- half of them involved informants. in the case of 49 defendants,

the informant acted in a much larger role. he provided the means and the opportunity for the target of the investigation to move forward in a terrorist plot that he otherwise would not have the means to do. in some cases the informant provided the actual target and the plan and the dummy bombs that they would use. these are people that evans did not suggest they would have any capacity to commit these crimes. host: what was the outcome of those court cases? guest: and from that has been used in a number of trials and has been unsuccessful -- entrapment has been used in a number of trials. men were economically depressed.

an informant offered them $250,000. the offer to buy the main defendants, james cromitie, a barber shop, seemingly inducing these people to commit this crime. they received 35 years in prison. the defense attorney at talk to explain that meeting the bar of entrapment is difficult in federal court. this is different from what the federal court see as entrapment. entrapment has not been an effective defense. host: 240 of the cases were charged with terrorism. what does that say about our

national security laws? guest: the 500 cases we identified we did so in terms of how terrorism was to find. the first type is someone trying to hijack an airplane or someone trying to use a weapon of mass destruction. that is type one. type two is when someone commits charged with a crime such as money-laundering. but the defendant has some kind of links to international terrorism. in some cases, the department of justice is not able to prove the terrorism case and so they settled for lesser case, like money laundering. the number of cases that pose significant threat to property

or people's lives were very few. the public came to mind were 90 -- najibullah zazi and faisal shahzad. but those types of cases are by far the minority of cases that the government prosecutes. these were not five order cases that in our view were threats to your life or national security. host: you have a map in your story showing cases have been filed in 36 states and in washington, d.c. viewers can get an idea about where these cases are being filed. the majority are along the east coast. the use of informants by the fbi is nothing new. how did the fbi responded to

what you found? guest: the explosion of informants that we of seen since 9/11. there were 5000 informants. today there are 15,000 -- there were 1500 informants. today there are 15,000. the fbi says that the use of informants is necessary to find people who are planning or willing to do some sort of a violent act within the united states. informants are highly effective. the average fbi agent cannot go into a community and build relationships and gather information the same way someone from that community can.

the fbi relies on them to gather information. this is critical to the efforts to use these informants to gather this kind of information. host: how much are these informant being paid? guest: in some cases substantial amounts. shahed hussain was paid $100,000 for one case. in other cases, the informants are motivated by things other than money. sometimes immigration violations are a big reason why people cooperate. shahed hussain was motivated by money and an immigration violation. the fbi has dual leverage over him. host: did you talk to these

informants? guest: in some cases the informants do not want to talk. shahed hussain did not cooperate. another informant in orange county blew the whistle when he alleges he had to spy on the community as well as gather information on other would-be informants. he says the fbi knew there were abusing first amendment rights. sending informants into mosques without a clear reason that these were up to some kind of criminal activity. host: our first phone call from tacoma, washington. caller: i want to discuss the

current technological landscape in a slightly different light. i want to argue that the benefits outweigh the cost in this current landscape. there is the convenience factor alone. you want to an up-to-date market report, keep tabs on stocks, sign up for paypal. not just convenience alone. i think this is disruptive. digital facebook was developed in a dorm by to make checks -- in a dorm room by two naked chicks? caller: it appears to me that your guest is proposing is

that those who wish to protect us in this country should be denied the very access to those people who are trying to do us harm. these people who are angry or frustrated in life, these are the ones who are being sought out by those who wish to do us harm. i think it's a good thing to be able to identify these weak spots. guest: that is true that people caught in these are disgruntled and have their own problems. that was a theme in the sting operations. these people tend to be poor and desperate and in many cases there were recent converts to islam.

to move them along, to see that something is in the careekoran. i'm not proposing that the fbi investigate terrorism and not the best to get muslim communities when a police they are harboring a terrorists -- when they believe they are harboring a terrorist. the people involved would have had the capacity to commit the crimes were not for the fbi providing the means to do so. somebody can be angry to say they bought a building but few people have the means to do so. the fbi found people who said they were angry but lacked those means of the fbi provided those made to commit the crime. host: who else worked on the peace? -- piece?

guest: "mother jones" and the university at berkeley. caller: we get the legal aspects and get this people on the page to try to stay legal and everything like that. we got enough democrats and republicans. the surprise to courts -- they're all corrupt. we got to give back to the basics and make people start abiding by the law. host: let me ask you about the court system and what you found when these sting operations took place. how much time are some of these folks servant who were lured

into action by an fbi informant? guest: the average tends to be about 35 years in a sting operation. in some cases the fbi spends a year or more with the target and moves them along through the plot. we also found that oftentimes missing.ople go some things are not recorded and so no one knows what was said. that is a critical period for defense attorneys to try to prove entrapment. no one knows what was said during the early investigations. these informants are not the most credible of people. host: what did you find out?

guest: in some cases the fbi says they cannot record because it is not safe to. when an informant is going through a committee looking for targets, it doesn't make a lot of sense to record every single conversation. at some point it becomes clear that this person is a target and still recordings are not made. that raises a significant question of why the fbi chooses not to record these conversations. in many cases this is a matter of convenience for the fbi. it makes the job easier not to record the conversations. there was one case in baltimore where a man was involved in a sting operation where he was plotting with an fbi informant to bomb a military recruiting station.

there was another sting operation going on in portland, oregon. that made national news for some reason. it was a well-publicized case. the man in baltimore hears about this case and things he is in a sting operation, too, and begins to back out of the plot. the informant ranges a meeting to bring him back into the plot . in that case, the meeting was not recorded due to a recording malfunction. as a result, antonio martinez did move forward with a plot and has been indicted with using a weapon of mass destruction. caller: greta -- host: john, are you there?

kim is a democrat in new york. caller: i think this program is nothing more than a replacement for the cointelpro programs that were in place in the 1970's. you'll find there are thousands of law-abiding americans that are being surveiled by the fbi. people who love committed no crimes -- who have committed no crimes, committing no crimes at all. host: trevor aaronson. guest: that is true. there have been abuses that have been documented. a year ago, the inspector

general's office cannot with a reported showed the fbi was targeting political activists on the left that it did not reason to believe were involved in criminal activity. host: the caller mentioned a term of entrapment. she broad up cointelpro -- she brought up cointelpro. host: how has it changed since then? guest: the significant difference between cointelpro an will we see today is this is less of a counter intelligence program. cointelpro was involved in disruption of organizations. at the time of the communist

party in the united states, 80% of its membership. the fbi was supporting the communist party as a way of getting into the communist party and disrupting it from inside. a host of organizations on both sides of the political spectrum. what the fbi says they are trying to prevent the next terrorist attack. they are less interested in disrupting organizations and more interested in disrupting significant threats to our safety. someone willing to use it weapon of mass destruction of some sort. this is basically the rules the fbi uses for its undercover operations. it is currently going through a

revision, which has been criticized by a group from the left. it allows for the fbi to go through your trash to look for information on you. they could find some embarrassing information on you and use that against you, to the to cooperate as an informant. that is not to say that that hasn't happened in the past. it gives a set of rules for how the fbi can behave and how we can handle informants and the ways in which it can't recruit informants. we have never seen the full version. it has been redacted. host: bill from fort lauderdale. caller: i wanted to ask you if you are familiar with are familiar"shock doctrine," and

how that relates with what she is mentioned in her books in the bigger picture. guest: i have not read that book. if you could explain her theory to me. host: are you still there? caller: she is creating brushstrokes about interrogation and going back to milton friedman's economic picture that we kind of protected around the world. i'm in the early parts of the book, relating to 9/11. 973 was the coup in chile and how the cia was involved in that -- 1973. i just was wondering -- she has

written quite a bit about -- host: what are some of the ethical situations that the fbi informants, and come into? trevor? guest: as far as the legal use of informants, there isn't a problem with illegal use. whether theoning tactics that the fbi is using it are properly or ethical. the recruitment of informants within the muslim community is difficult for the fbi. there are many people who choose to spy on their communities. the fbi is using tactics that are legal but questionable. the idea of using immigration against someone is very new as a means of recruiting informants.

other means they use are finding someone who has some sort of extramarital affair. the fbi can go to them and say we know you're going through an extramarital affair. corporate with us and will not tell your wife -- quapaw right with us and we will not tell your wife. host: do you think it'll be higher? guest: absolutely. informants are a critical part on how the fbi operates. we looked at these 500 cases. the number of sting operations -- we've seen an increase since obama took office. the has been an increase in

informant-led sting operations. i think it is fair to say the use of informants will continue and increase. the fbi has made a number of measures to accommodate this. they have a program that assigns agents to help maintain the credibility of informants. the have invested millions of dollars in a computer system that tracks informants. they may need an informant that speaks is certain language. these are all investors that the fbi has made. ost: you say that agents' annual performance are based in part on their recruiting

efforts. guest: that is right. agents for effective at recruiting are assigned to that task full time or will go into communities and recruit informants. the get them registered and it will then bill the not too informants working drug cases or counter terrorism case or white- collar cases. host: mary is a republican in california. caller: good morning. i have a question for trevor. it seems to me that when informants are looking in the community for people that have a propensity for committing a crime, if an informant with a passed on that individual -- to see if he can develop the tendency -- what he assumed

that later on, a year, five years, the gentleman or the woman would improve and he would -- i find it somewhat childish that just because he is calling it entrapment that people whether a propensity for this -- [inaudible] someone who would want to protect this country would be trying to do to seek out people who would do us harm. little suspect.suspec i don't know much about "mother

jones." motivation for bringing this article. is "mother jones" doing harm to this country with informants that are helping us. strongarm -- 15,000 -- host: i think we got your point . guest: the fbi says when someone says i would like to blow up a building or lay grenades in a shopping mall, will we do have us do -- what would you have us do? i think that is something we can empathize with. if you come across someone who

says he wants to commit this crime, you do not want to say this guy does not have the capacity and will mature so let's ignore him and you find six months later he did commit this crime. nobody wants to be that fbi agent. we're asking that in these cases, even though someone says they want to commit a crime, you need the capacity and the means to commit that crime. the fbi is providing the means. they can provide the means for the person to commit the crime and then prosecute them with the theory that in a couple of years, maybe someone would have provided them with a bomb. whenever found an example of that, were some was willing to commit this type of crime and the fbi passed on him and then somehow summoned connected to al qaeda or international terror

provided him with the means to do that. i don't think it is easy for people to get access to these types of weapons. as far as whether we're doing any sort of danger, one of the purposes of journalism is to look at how the government behaves and questioned that. we're using interviews with fbi agents and available court records. every informant with identified in this investigation was named in a court record or named in an affidavit. we're not releasing any confidential material. whether we're doing any harm, i don't think so. host: did you receive any requests from the fbi for clarification? guest: no.

we tried to articulate their view. i interviewed dozens of fbi agents as part of this investigation. some are quoted throughout the paiece. what the policies are behind the sting operations and that was incredibly important to us. host: brine from chicago -- brian from chicago. caller: you said the contract that defense has not been successful in most of these cases. i wonder if you could say something about the liberty city 7, one of the first of these cases several years ago, where a young man living in a housing project in miami was set up in

a sting operation in an individual posing as a representative of al qaeda who administered in al qaeda oath of allegiance to him. these were young men who had a steady group. they had a security patrol in the project. my understanding is that all but one of those seven were exonerated. host: trevor aaronson? guest: these are people who lived in a poor section of miami and a fault a religion blended elements of christianity and judaism. they have a committee control the was like the guardian angels. there were seven people indicted.

they drop the charges against one person. they get three trials before they gained convictions on five of the six. five are currently in prison. that was an example of the use of the day informant with a checkered past. he had lied on a polygraph test, which should have excluded him. he was then assigned to enter into this group posing as an al qaeda operative. the primary evidence was he had a camera to case the office of the fbi as part of a plot to bomb that office. they had a recording of him administering to al qaeda at the members of this group, and that was enough to convict them.

these are men who trouble getting up in the morning let alone commit some act of terrorism. the fbi through this informant with the means to move forward with this plot that involved bombing the sears tower in chicago and the miami office of the fbi. they were able to get convictions on five of the seven. the seventh one was deported to haiti based on evidence from the case. host: our informants ever trained -- are informants ever trained? guest: they go through role- playing and they're standing policies and manuals and the law to make sure they're not

violent constitutional rights. in informs, there's not any kind of informants school where they send them to. they basically instruct them. e, gosay, here's your wir talk to them. they're supposed to have specific instructions as to what they are supposed to do in the undercover operation as lost record the meetings and record as many of the meetings as possible. but there's no training for this. that is why there is a lot of questions about whether these people are being entrapped or whether the actions of the informants are overly aggressive. host: "mother jones" encourages you to dig deeper. go to motherjones.com.

you can watch surveillance video. second-guess the feds. decide how much of a threat. c which cases were tried in your state -- see which cases were tried your state. host: motherjones.com for more. lou is next. good morning. what is your question or comments? caller: the judgment uses the term wmd quite loosely. we invaded by iraq and wmd refer

to as nukes. do you define wmd. guest: i agree the definition is very loose. this can be something like use of a car bomb. the fbi has provided the target with a van or a car that they have lead the target to believe has explosives in it. in one case, a man drove the van in the crotch of a downtown skyscraper and walked away, across the street, and dialed a soulful that he believed would activate the bomb and destroy the building. for purposes of federal prosecution, the definition is

not limited to what you might think like a chemical bomb or a chemical weapon or some kind of nuclear material. it can be something as simple as a car bomb. caller: good morning. i have three things i would like to comment on. this project is well needed. to defend the fbi, there was a caller earlier who said they were wrongfully arresting an accusing people. the ku klux klan and mlk and things like that. the fbi has grown along with the country. when i was in college, by will then go it

into the stages and going to the trials and tribulations. the fbi represents the problems we have today. back then it represented those problems. it wasn't always justice. there were racial issues. we have grown since then. i would like to know how these would-be terrorists are prosecuted when they are found to be a would-be terrorist. are they 20 years, 30 years? a life sentence? guest: they have statutory minimums for sentencing. in many of these cases, 35 years is the statutory minimum. if the person was found guilty,

the judge has to send them to at least 35 years. in most of these cases, the judges are sentencing to the minimum. in one case, the judge said she was skeptical of the case and believe the definition of terrorism has been extended to an enormous and extenextent. the target said he wanted to bomb a synagogue. the fbi informant made that possible. yearsfinding that 35 tends to be the sentence. host: 240 were charged with terrorism. 192 of those cases was providing

material support to terrorists. 36 were charged with funding terrorists. an independent caller from texas. caller: good morning. i am a jamaican student and the states. the, you made about the challenges and using entrapment as a defense in court piqued my interest. i remember one case. he was tried in the u.s. he carried the drugs and so forth. everyone thought this was entrapment. they lost the case. i can appreciate the lehmann's perception of law -- the perception.erceptioman's

guest: first of all, winning a case built on a contract requires the jury to agree that the person has been entrapped. that requires sympathy. the jury has to be sympathetic to the suspect. defense attorneys find that -- this does not instill that sympathy. in the terrorism cases. these people will say hateful things about americans wanted to do violence to the united states. things that when you hear, it makes you not want to like the person. that affects the ability of the jury to find entrapment.

was the person predisposed to committing the crime were not for the fbi providing the means to do so? that is what the real question is. people say they want to commit these crimes, but they lack the means to commit these crimes. if the person says he wants to do, then the department of justice is able to meet that predisposition bar. mitt romney cases -- entrapment exclusives is not a to terrorism. it is difficult to win an entrapment defense. you have to admit you committed the crime. so you're losing sympathy with

the jury. host: trevor aaronson is a contributing writer to "mother jones" magazine. you can find the store on our web site, c-span.org, as well as motherjones.org. trevor