conversations of the great minds i'm joined by trevor aaronson drovers a senior fellow at the schuster institute for investigative journalism at brandeis university and the co-director of the florida center for investigative reporting a journalist in the truest sense of the word he was the recipient of the john jay college frank guggenheim excellence in criminal justice reporting award as well as the molly prize in the international data journalism award his new book the terror factory inside the f.b.i. has manufactured war and terrorism reveals the truth behind the f.b.i.'s counterterrorism informant program is a must read for anyone interested in learning about the dark side of the war on terror to earn some walking thanks for having thanks for joining us and extraordinary book. what. what how did you get started with this first of all what led you to looking into the f.b.i. as you called it a manufactured war and terrorism. in fact let me start with that why manufactured

terrorism well you know as i discussed in the book there there have been actual terrorists who have tried to strike the united states such as. who delivered a bomb to times square that fortunate didn't go off and the f.b.i. didn't know anything about him before he delivered that bomb and he had training overseas this was a real terrorist that we should be afraid of at the same time while we have a handful of real terrorists we've had since nine eleven more than one hundred fifty men who've been convicted in caught in f.b.i. terrorism sting operations where they wanted to commit some sort of act of terrorism they had no means of committing that crime oftentimes they were poor in some cases they were mentally ill and the f.b.i. provided them with the idea for the plot and also provided them with everything that they needed the transportation the bomb and then they use their involvement in that conspiracy to then trumpet that to the public and say look we've caught a terrorist and then convict him to the fullest extent of the law haven't we been doing you know a whole wide range of areas. for

a long long time i mean this is the you know when nixon's drug war got kicked off there was an awful lot of. you know through informants going in and setting people up basically. and that's just one example of this this is not new you're right and i'm glad you brought up the drug war because it's what i compare these two in the book because i think it's the most interesting comparison and that is to say you know sting operations within federal law enforcement been going on for decades they're controversial but they're part of law enforcement that we accept they're put there such a part of law enforcement we make movies and celebrate them in pop culture and what we know from the drug war has than has been that they've used f.b.i. informants to a large extent so you know if you watch and you say miami vice or any kind of movie you know that scene where there's a high rise in miami beach and there's a scruffy haired guy sitting at table and he's got a briefcase and two guys walk in and they're there to buy the drugs they they think there's cocaine in that briefcase they sit down and over the cash the undercover

f.b.i. agent who's a scruffy haired guy hands over the briefcase they open it up it's empty you know cocaine f.b.i. agents rush in and arrest them it's called a no dope bust and what we see in terrorism stings is an evolution of that tactic the difference though is that no one can deny that drugs are available in the united states right like if you want to buy or sell drugs you could buy and sell drugs in the states so the f.b.i. isn't facilitating a crime that otherwise could not be committed but what's true about terrorism cases is that there has yet to be a case where you have someone who is interested in committing a crime is an act of terrorism who hates the united states for whatever reason but doesn't have that capacity and then meet someone say an al qaeda operative who provides the means that's never happened and so what we're what we're seeing in the sting operations is the f.b.i. facilitating crimes that can't be committed outside of the f.b.i. as introduction you know there's never been that case for the f.b.i. where they caught someone who actually had a bomb and was about to deliver it these things. target men on the fringes of

society who can't commit acts of terrorism on their own and the f.b.i. provides everything that they need and the difference with drugs is that you they may provide everything they need in a drug sting but they could get that somewhere else in a terrorism thing that the evidence from these cases shows that that isn't the case that this is not a crime that these men could have committed were it not for the f.b.i.'s involvement. were were there not back in the forty's and fifty's and probably the sixty's and seventy's but. i'm thinking of the. it was the husband and wife who were convicted of giving money or giving information to the soviets you know the. sort to remember their name but they were executed. the. isn't there and then and the argument has been made that they were basically swept up in a sting operation and the they thought they were at the roast so they thought they were giving money because it's giving information so it's the. this is an extension

of that kind of psychology and practice and back then when they set people up they were doing it because they knew that there were soviet spies spies from other countries for that matter who were in this country who were who were running around looking for people to give them information and so you know they were trying to pull out the people who would be willing to. that rationalisation makes a certain amount of logical sense whether it's practical or not whether it's constitutional or not whether it's even moral or not is a whole other set of discussions well that's the f.b.i.'s defense of these programs i mean what they are afraid of is and i should back up in a moment and explain you know the f.b.i. today isn't scared or concerned about what we saw on nine eleven which was a group of well trained financed terrorists who had connections overseas what they fear now is people living in the west who watch jihadi videos get on extremist websites and become inspired to commit some. sort of an act of islam version of too

much as i write what they call the lone wolf terrorist and that that is the great fear because you know now that it has been severely diminished since nine eleven the terrorist organization no longer has the capacity to bring to the united states a group terrace like we saw on nine eleven instead they've moved to what the f.b.i. terms of franchise model they're looking for people who may not have specific connections to al qaeda but who will commit violence in their name and then they can raise the flag and say look this was a terrorist act that we were a part of you know what we're seeing though is that there are examples of that person for example who went overseas trained learned how to make a bomb and then tried to deliver one to times square you know that's an example of the. rights and so what we're seeing is that despite all of these informants and all of these sting operations they're not actually catching the guy who has the bomb they're not catching. deliver his bomb in times square and the f.b.i. didn't know anything about him until that day whereas in the sting operations

they're finding people on the fringes of society you know are often economically desperate you know in the case of a seattle sting operation there was a man they caught who had schizoaffective disorder which meant he had trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy and the f.b.i. provided everything in that plot you know the idea for the transportation and the weapons that they would use then arrest them and say look we've caught a terrorist. he's serving seventeen years in prison you know what we're finding is that you know entrapment is a real question in these cases you know if the f.b.i. provided all of the means for this crime then and an f.b.i. informant undercover agent overpowered his will in committing this crime i think the logical question is isn't that entrapment and what we've seen is that in cases that have gone to trial eleven defendants formally argued entrapment and juries just haven't been willing to see that you know i think the question now is you know can a muslim charge with terrorism in the united states you know use entrapment as a defense and what we're seeing in these cases is probably not in part because the f.b.i. . the department of justice have such

a low bar to argue against entrapment you know the the argument against entrapment is that he was predisposed to commit a crime that before the f.b.i. got involved he wanted to commit some sort of because it was religion or is this it right it's something as simple as even watching a jihadi video you know they put on the stand so-called experts who say you know because you watch this video radicalized and therefore he wanted to commit some sort of act of terrorism you know which is ridiculous i've watched you how to videos you probably have that doesn't make a sound when you saw but the but does watching one necessarily make you interested in committing an act of terrorism and that's been what the f.b.i. has been used to argue against entrapment by saying he was predisposed to commit a crime so so in essence what they're arguing is that these jihadi videos are such incredibly good recruitment true so they could turn ordinary americans in the terrorists and therefore we've got to turn ordinary americans into thinking that they're terrorists so that we can arrest them and put them in jail i don't follow

the logic chain here the logic is they want to catch the terrorists of tomorrow today so they want to turn them into the terrorists before this guy who served in seventeen years in jail and who has schizophrenia. how does that make america safer . with the f.b.i. i would argue and the main f.b.i. criticism of my book is that you know even mentally ill people are dangerous people can be dangerous and of course that's true right i mean if a mentally ill person gets a gun and you do terrible things i shot reagan right but that doesn't mean that they're going to be empowered by any sort of terrorist that there's going to be al qaeda operative who is around the corner who says hey here's a bomb in most of these cases i think if there really was an al qaeda operative searching for recruits they would have nothing to do with these you know mentally ill man on the fringes of society that the f.b.i. finds you know and if you look at this you know if these men were truly that dangerous without f.b.i. assistance i think we would see an awful lot of terrorism strikes that actually happen but in the decade since nine eleven more people have been killed by a lone gunman that have been killed by. you know. it's sympathies and so that

doesn't necessary so that doesn't show that there's a great threat of this it doesn't show that you know it shows that either the f.b.i. is perfect that its job that it gets off the street today the terrace of tomorrow one hundred percent of time because we've never seen a significant strike or it means that the f.b.i. is exaggerating this threat through these sting operations and by bringing in people who are you know easily susceptible to an f.b.i. the f.b.i. actually there are very few terrorists or potential terrorist so right there's a lot of counterterrorism money to go around them which is part of the problem you know the largest part of the f.b.i.'s budget is counterterrorism it's three billion dollars to fight terrorism when when when hoover was running with your leading up to the up to nine hundred sixty one he was denying that there was organized crime in the united states the mafia did not exist and you know we we now look back and we see that he was being blackmailed by trafficante and marcelo. who bought his relationship with clyde tolson oil company but what he was doing was he was you

know busting all kinds of people for stealing cars especially taking over state lines and the f.b.i. had these incredible crime statistics keeping america safe and at the same time the mafia was growing like crazy you know states. i think the kennedy administration took that on and really really kind of fix the f.b.i. in that regard there has been a general sense that you know since the end of the hoover error the f.b.i. has been more. behaving with more integrity and less blinders are you suggesting and something has as warped the direction of their perspective there are incentives throughout the system that make the f.b.i. want to pursue these terrorism sting operations and of the greatest incentive is that the u.s. congress sets the f.b.i.'s budget and they decide how much money goes to terrorism counterterrorism much money goes to organized crime so the f.b.i. every year gets three billion dollars for counterterrorism the largest part of its budget more than receipts organized crime and it can't go. and spend three billion

dollars and come back to congress and say hey we looked around and we didn't find any terrorists it creates pressure at the top that flows down to the bottom agent to say let's bring let's find some terrorism cases let's let's make some cases of this sort of like the cops in new york or saying we're doing stopping first because we're going to turn in a certain number of bad guys every day so we're boston all kinds of kids who got nothing going on it's not so much a quota system as it is you know if you're an f.b.i. agent and you want to have a successful career you've got to make some cases right and what we saw recently in a case in portland oregon where as a one thousand year old kid who was targeted by the f.b.i. to sting operation and in that sting operation working with undercover agents he plotted to bomb pioneer square during a christmas tree lighting ceremony and at his trial it came out that there were e-mails from within the f.b.i. that talked about how he was disaffected and like to smoke marijuana and that made him susceptible to their approach you know with the f.b.i. says in these cases is that they're getting people off the street who are dangerous

but that e-mail certainly suggested that the f.b.i. wants to make cases remarkable more conversations of the great minds with trevor and. i think. let me let me we're going to we're going to let me ask you a question. here. is what we're going to the thing we have. to do here is this was about staying there again we're in a situation where b. and i don't want to talk about the surveillance we.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you. are welcome to the big picture. the same story doesn't make it news. he says tough question. the worst year for those. white house superman. radio for a minute. because you've never seen anything like good old.

conversations in the great minds i'm speaking with trevor aaronson to get a journalist and author of the new book the terror factory inside the f.b.i.'s manufactured war on terrorism so to get back to this trevor the cointelpro programs in the fifty's and sixty's we get. sort of danced around that topic a little bit in the in the earlier segment of you know what the f.b.i. was doing back in that era. what was that and how is what's going on now either the same or different yes i think most people when they when they think of f.b.i. abuses abuses of power they think of clientele pro and this was a program under jagger hoover that was a counter into. program it sent in informants and undercover agents into

organizations that hoover deemed subversive and this included which of the market to keep looking as i was asian the communist party at one point i think the status was there were there were more members of the communist party in america in the united states who were f.b.i. informants than there were non f.b.i. informants in the party that's how pervasive the role of the f.b.i. in these groups were so actual statistics that came out in the. the cointelpro congressional investigation and what ended up happening in these organizations is that the f.b.i. tried to basically subvert them by putting in informants and report back to the f.b.i. what was going on but also in some cases you know incite them to do things you know for example it recently came out that richard okee who was a long time black panther party member was actually an f.b.i. informant ernest withers the celebrated civil rights photographer in memphis turned out he was not be an informant he was providing information on king's organization and what we saw is a use of informants that gave the f.b.i.

eyes and ears into these organizations and at some times in some ways tried to undermine them and i think you know it's interesting to know kind of the historical context of informants under hoover you know when hoover was the f.b.i. director of the f.b.i. had fifteen hundred informants which are registered informants on the books these are people who have been vetted and are working with the f.b.i. in some capacity when the f.b.i. took on drug crimes in the eighty's that used to be that was exclusively the domain of the d.a. in the eighty's they brought under reagan f.b.i. was allowed to take on drug crimes and that caused the f.b.i. ranks to swell to six thousand and what we have today though as a result of a form six thousand and four meant we have today though as a result of a presidential directive under george w. bush in response to nine eleven it's fifteen thousand and four and so we have ten times as many informants as we had under hoover and these informants are focused on a number of areas but they're focused most exclusively on muslim communities.

through the f.b.i.'s counterterrorism program and what their job is is to go into communities and find people who are espousing violence or espousing radical ideas and then provide them with an opportunity to move forward in some sort of terrorist attack if they're willing to do that and that's how the f.b.i. is ultimately identifying people who they believe will become a terrorist tomorrow so to speak now there are i mean you look at the history of law enforcement and there are informants and there are informants i mean there is on the one hand there's. you know ronald reagan when he was president the screen actors guild was providing information to the f.b.i. about communists screen actors guild but what that meant i mean you know you could argue that on the books ronald reagan was an informant but what it really meant was maybe once every two or three months you have a fifteen minute conversation with somebody and say well here's a list of guys that i think are all right you know i mean it was just it and then on the other hand you've got people who you know i remember you know back in the late sixty's early seventy's the s.t.'s there was one i was asked yes and he's

lansing michigan went after after the whole you know after the era was over and the lawsuits started and we got the files we found that this one guy who was always you know i mean he was there every single day and he was the guy who was always yelling burn down the buildings and kill the pigs and he was the police the police informant the f.b.i. but he was the perp but he was a he was full time staff you know there so when you talk about all these thousands of f.b.i. informants are we talking about you know the occasional ronald reagan type of person or are we talking about the. because you're right there are two breeds there is the informant that you think of that just provides information that i think most people think of when i think of an informant and then there's the informant who could you know fairly be described as an agent provocateur who goes in and tries to start something you know even an informant you know just you know i don't understand you know i don't i don't see a problem with the f.b.i. having people who are looking around and and. reporting back and saying ok let's

keep an eye on the sky i mean we might have been able to in fact i think the evidence is fairly clear we could have stopped nine eleven or slowed it down had we done a better job of communicating that information because most of the information was there i agree with you and i don't different thing yeah i don't make the case in the book that the f.b.i. shouldn't use informants that are informants are inherently bad things there is a there's a role for informants in law enforcement you know there's a role for informants in counterterrorism but what we see in these cases is the f.b.i. in searching for terrorists really crossing a line where they're manufacturing crimes using agent provocateurs let me give an example so the one of the f.b.i.'s most prolific informants is this man and she had to say and hussein was a murderer from pakistan who got hung up on some fraud charges here in the united states and became an f.b.i. informant he worked off that charge and now he's making one hundred thousand dollars or more per case the f.b.i. which is a lot of money with many cases here to see and what we know is that he's worked on at least six cases obviously that's those the ones that become public many other

cases never get announced that we don't know exactly how many of them paid more than million but attention span morning million dollars he's been working for the f.b.i. for almost ten years now and he's been doing well if you can get a good work you can get it but the problem is that for the f.b.i. that it's hard to find that guy the guy who can blend in kind of pose as a terrorist and also the guy who you know a federal judge a quote the book describes informants as sociopaths they have to be able to lie and then build relationships and then have no qualms about betraying those relationships for their own personal and financial gain. are their stories for example people who have actually had relationships you know they're. living with you know long term romantic relationships living with somebody being part of a community. somebody even in these cases has there is one foreman named who went public and it has alleged that the f.b.i. tast him. i'm with having sexual relationships and romantic relationships with

women in the southern california muslim community that's a minority if that's true that hasn't been confirmed that's his allegation but what we do know is that there are specific cases where the f.b.i. informant has you know brought a man in as a roommate you know for example there was this case in illinois about a man named derrick sharif derrick was broke he was he had been ostracized by his family as a result of his conversion to islam and was working in a video game store an f.b.i. informant came to him and says you know i know your car is broken down they don't have a place to live you know i've got a place you can live why don't you come live with me being religious and it being the day before ramadan thinks well this this must be the act of god and goes and lives with this man over four months they are really intense relationship all the while the informant is stoking derek's you know anger and eric says well i i really want to kill a judge and when pressed on it there can even name a judge and so the informant says well why don't we come up with a manageable plan why don't we attack a shopping mall in rockford illinois and really admired this man who thought it was

a roommate and he then says well i the informant i know an arms dealer who can provide you with weapons and we can get grenades or we can attack the shopping mall and derek side of the agrees but the problem was that there was broke he had no money at all and that was a problem the f.b.i. because they needed to buy these grenades and so the f.b.i. informants in the agent discuss it and the f.b.i. informant tells the agent well there are these old stereo speakers and they come up with this plot where they go to their the f.b.i. for it goes there and says you know i know you've got these old stereo speakers i think if you took it to my guys the arms dealer i think he'd take them from you and and say ok fair trade and give you the grenades in exchange you know i mean i don't know many arms dealers i don't know if you do but i don't think any are going to take old stereo speakers for never going to see but a common sense indicates it's not the case right derek didn't have that common sense derek shows up at the parking lot gives the ratty old serious speakers the undercover f.b.i. agent who's posing as an arms dealer get the f.b.i. agent hands over the grenades and police russian. and he's now serving twenty five

years in prison for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction so here's a guy who had no capacity on his own he didn't have a place to live and the f.b.i. informant befriends him brings them into his home and then brings them along in this plot that ultimately he's paid for what is the impact of this as these stories come out i mean and these prosecutions happen just the facts on their face if you're a member of the muslim community the united states this is has to have people looking over their shoulders and wondering about the people literally who were roommates a common joke i hear from members of muslim communities nationwide is you know when i pray on friday i just assume the guy next to me is an informant and i think that's obviously an exaggeration but it goes to show the mentality of how under siege they feel by federal law enforcement that they feel that even you know in exercising their first amendment rights of freedom of religion they are being watched by the f.b.i. would it would it be reasonable to say that i mean i'm thinking of tim mcveigh and and that was on the second anniversary of david koresh and waco and i grew up in

michigan and you know i've known some guys who were in the machine michigan militia i don't know anybody who's ever committed a crime but these guys were serious about having a lot of guns and twenty years ago they're still around what. it what's the ratio of white christians to dark skinned muslims who have committed crimes against the united states and does the f.b.i. as attention to the potential to mcveigh's in the world match that ratio in their intent attention to the potential. fall of the times square bomber right so there's far more attention paid to islamic terrorism than there is to domestic terrorism and it is the result of that is kind of an exaggerated effect that there are so many more court cases involving islamic terrorism than there are involving say white supremacist groups or right wing groups but the results but the reason for that is that the f.b.i. is using informants in german. ways to troll muslim communities offering them the

opportunity to commit acts of terrorism not doing there are doing that in other communities you know i think if you went into rural communities in the south and went into groups that were anti abortion and offered them the opportunity to bomb an abortion clinic most would say no but you'd find the guy who says yes just as in muslim communities most are saying no and in some cases informants been reported to police as being a possible terrorist but then they're finding that people on the on the fringes of communities that will say yes but the f.b.i. is not exercising that are using these aggressive tactics in other communities you know such as you know groups and actually there's been a reticence by the f.b.i. to really go after right wing groups that took this shooting so there's a there's a movement known as sovereign citizens which are people who believe that they can opt out of u.s. contracts you know the u.s. laws are just a contract and you can opt out of it you can you know you don't have to pay your taxes you don't have to you know get a license plate and these people tend to stockpile weapons they are dangerous in many cases and it took

a shoot it took two sovereign citizens to shoot police officers in west memphis arkansas for finally the f.b.i. to say in two thousand and nine yes the sovereign citizen movement is a concern and that's been happening as the f.b.i. has been focused almost so singularly on muslim terrorism and islamic terrorism that they really haven't paid much attention to what is a growing right wing threat even in fact the southern poverty law center came out a report talking about since obama's election the growth in right wing groups and white supremacist groups have exploded have exploded just. thanks so much for being thanks for having me and for writing this brilliant book the factory inside. so i should want to. take you to see this in other conversations of the great minds go to our website conversations of great minds. and that's the way it is friday march twenty ninth twenty third don't forget democracy begins in. your.

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