REVEALED: THE FBI’S SECRET WEB OF INFORMANTS INSIDE AMERICA’S MUSLIM COMMUNITIES A COLLABORATION BETWEEN MOTHER JONES AND THE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY

A year-long Mother Jones investigation, produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, reveals how the FBI has built an extensive informant network in US Muslim communities designed to ferret out would-be terrorists before they strike, resulting in dozens of sting operations since 9/11 in which targets were led into action by informants.

This multimedia investigation includes an 8,000-word Mother Jones cover story and the first and only publicly searchable, online, interactive database of more than 500 federal terrorism prosecutions since 9/11. Among the investigation’s key findings:

· The FBI has 15,000 registered informants, many of them keeping watch on Muslim communities.

· Of more than 500 federal terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, nearly half involved the use of an informant—many of them incentivized by money or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations.

· Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an “agent provocateur” —an aggressive FBI operative who provoked the targets into committing their alleged terrorist acts.

· The FBI often uses the threat of deportation, as well as other forms of leverage, to win cooperation from informants.

· With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade involved FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport in 2002; and the failed 2010 Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad.)

· 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 rarely risk a trial. Sixty-five percent of defendants in completed cases have pleaded guilty.

“Trevor’s story is an inside look at how the FBI is infiltrating Muslim communities and provoking people who, in many cases were guilty of nothing more than shooting their mouths off,” said Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein, co-editors of Mother Jones. “Unwittingly they are participating in terrorist ‘plots’ that are actually conceived and financed by the FBI itself. It’s also an example of how in-depth public-interest, collaborative journalism can and must be done even in these times of shrinking newsrooms and resources.”

Trevor Aaronson’s story, “The Informants,” is in the September/October 2011 issue of Mother Jones, on newsstands August 30. The story is now available online.

KJ