For two years, the FBI has followed and harassed Refaie as part of an apparent effort to recruit him to become an informant or cooperate in some way with counterterrorism investigations. The FBI has more than 15,000 informants today, many working because they have been coerced or threatened by criminal prosecution or immigration enforcement. Classified FBI policy documents published by The Intercept in January revealed the often heavy-handed methods used by the government to recruit informants, including so-called threat assessments as “a means to induce him/her into becoming a recruited [informant] mainly through identifying that person’s motivations and vulnerabilities.” What’s unique about Refaie’s interactions with the FBI is that he recorded and documented the conversations and events that led to his indictment. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment or a list of questions about Refaie’s case.

“I don’t believe they are representatives of the government; they’re misusing the government with their badges,” Refaie said of the federal agents he’s come to know. “They’re breaking oaths that they swore to uphold.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/10/recordings-capture-brutal-fbi-tactics-to-recruit-potential-informant/

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga led a brutal drug gang that ferried tons of cocaine
north. Then he approached the Drug Enforcement Administration for a deal.

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS — The number of murders the Honduran drug lord admitted to orchestrating over 10 years was stunning.

The dead included people he described as killers, rapists and gang members. Then there were the innocents: a lawyer, two journalists, a Honduran refugee in Canada, an official who was serving as Honduras’s antidrug czar and a politician who became his adviser; there were even two children caught in a shootout.

In all, the drug lord, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, said that, working in concert with drug traffickers and others, he had “caused” the deaths of 78 people — a number that posed a dilemma for United States officials when Mr. Rivera came to them offering to expose high-level corruption in this Central American nation of some nine million people.

Knowing that he was already in the sights of United States investigators, Mr. Rivera sought to help the Drug Enforcement Administration root out corrupt Honduran politicians and other elites who had made Honduras a gateway for massive amounts of cocaine headed for the United States through Mexico.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/world/americas/after-78-killings-a-honduran-drug-lord-rivera-partners-with-us.html?

Is American Made CIA Propaganda? from Tom Secker on Vimeo.

O’Callaghan operated as a spy for the Irish government within the Provisional IRA from 1979 until 1988. During that time, he continued to participate in Provisional IRA operations, including an attempt (which he claimed to have foiled) to murder the Prince of Wales and his then wife, Princess Diana. He also remained a member of Sinn Féin, a republican political party that was widely viewed as the political wing of the Provisional IRA. In 1985, he was elected county councilor representing Sinn Féin. Three years later, fearing for his life, O’Callaghan turned himself in to British authorities. He was prosecuted, convicted, and served a prison sentence, during which he wrote his best-selling memoir, published under the title The Informer: The True Life Story of One Man’s War on Terrorism. In it, he details his ideological change from a socialist republican to a pro-unionist, who occasionally advised the Ulster Unionist Party, a pro-British conservative political party in Northern Ireland.

After he revealed his pro-unionist sympathies, O’Callaghan was disowned by most of his family and did not even attend his father’s funeral in 1997. He lived openly in England, refusing police protection and rejecting pleas from his supporters to change his name and hide his whereabouts. He died last week from a suspected heart attack while visiting his daughter in Jamaica. He was 63.

https://intelnews.org/2017/08/29/01-2165/

An alleged British secret agent in the IRA who is accused of being linked to at least 20 murders while working for military intelligence could be charged with perjury for denying in court he was a spy, a senior UK police officer has told the Guardian.

Stakeknife, whose real name is believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, was the IRA’s chief spy catcher and received £80,000 each year as one of Britain’s most important agents within the terror group. It is alleged that his army and police handlers turned a blind eye to murders in order to promote their agent inside the IRA’s ranks.

Police are now investigating the person known as Stakeknife as part of Operation Kenova, a £35m investigation into his alleged role as an agent working for military intelligence within the IRA’s internal security department also known in Irish republican circles as “the nutting squad”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/21/stakeknife-could-face-perjury-charges-says-senior-police-officer

For over a decade, agents with a New Orleans-based DEA task force sold drugs, intimidated informants and stole cash on the job with total impunity.

According to the Advocate, Chad Scott, the former leader of the task force has been fired in the midst of the investigation. It was reported that Scott and some of the officers working under him had a massive operation selling painkillers and that they would sometimes sell other drugs that they managed to steal from dealers during raids.

“There were a series of complaints that went back years. This is a guy who probably shouldn’t have been allowed to run his own task force,” an anonymous law enforcement official said.

The good news, in this case, is that a large and growing number of federal criminal drug cases are being reversed and nonviolent offenders are being set free due to the fact that this corruption has been exposed.

The FBI is now involved in the investigation and is reviewing the allegations against the officers. Many of the crimes that were committed by these officers happened so long ago that they can’t even be charged with them anymore, but their crime spree continued long into recent times so there is still a large amount of evidence against them.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/dea-ignored-agents-selling-drugs-for-over-a-decade/

A CONFIDENTIAL INFORMANT who helped ensnare three Florida men as ISIS supporters in an FBI sting was simultaneously running wire fraud scams on the side.

Gregory Hubbard, Dayne Antani Christian, and Darren Arness Jackson all lived in or near West Palm Beach, Florida. It’s unclear how they first met the FBI’s informant, Mohammed Agbareia, but according to FBI documents, Hubbard and Agbareia were friendly enough by April 2015 that Hubbard felt comfortable emailing him a 100-page e-book published by ISIS.

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/06/paid-fbi-informant-leading-counterterror-case-ran-wire-fraud-scams-on-the-side/

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice Wednesday after a months-long quest to obtain records regarding the FBI’s alleged use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to search customer computers without warrants.

The lawsuit comes after a February FOIA request by EFF was denied by the FBI under grounds that the FBI will neither confirm nor deny the existence of records pertaining to an ongoing investigations. EFF also received no comment on a following administrative appeal.

EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene told CyberScoop that the FBI had not yet commented on the lawsuit, which seeks to examine whether Geek Squad employees have acted on behalf of federal agents when searching customer computers, in which case a warrant is necessary, according to constitutional law.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/eff-sues-doj-information-alleged-fbi-geek-squad-program/

Daniel Franey’s case is part of a larger trend of law enforcement agencies using confidential informants to manufacture crimes which otherwise may not have taken place. The FBI is typically at the forefront of such cases, even using confidential informants to lure underage and mentally ill Muslims into initiating terrorist plots. According to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, of the 104 Islamic State-related arrests in the past four years, at least 58 are the result of “the use of confidential informants or undercover stings.”

But the use of confidential informants by the FBI goes far beyond manufacturing criminal plots. In recent years, the FBI has sought to infiltrate mosques and Muslim student associations to look for young Yemenis to serve as informants. During the Keystone XL protests, it breached Department of Justice (DOJ) rules requiring prior approval before the agency can cultivate informants. At least one former informant has said that FBI agents asked him to have sex with Muslim women in order to gather “pillow-talk intelligence.” According to official records, the agency also authorized its informants to break the law 22,800 times over a four year period.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/apr/27/confidential-informants/

Martin Ingram, co-author of "Stakeknife: Britain's secret agents in Ireland" and Kevin Fulton, author of "Unsung Hero" join Alex Jones to talk about British state involvement in IRA/loyalist atrocities for decades during the troubles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6LK43SO_vQ