By the flip of the 21 century, the FBI believed it had put the darkish legacy of J. Edgar Hoover behind it—a legacy that included the unlawful surveillance of anti-war teams, civil rights organizations, and the Black Panther Occasion. However undoubtedly, essentially the most grievous unlawful actions Hoover put in place was encouraging brokers, or recruited informants, to infiltrate black communities by means of their faculties and church buildings to flip folks in opposition to one another.
The Hoover FBI additionally created the COINTELPRO program to dismantle “left-wing” organizations and even stress Martin Luther King, Jr. to kill himself due to sordid “blackmail” proof the Bureau had compiled in opposition to the celebrity civil rights chief.
Edgar Hoover was a grimy, rotten little man all through his total legislation enforcement profession—and he in the end destroyed the false pristine picture of the FBI he had cultivated over many years.
On September 4, 2001, a profession federal prosecutor named Robert S. Mueller, III, whose resume included the profitable prosecution of the boys answerable for the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103, grew to become the brand new director of the FBI. Precisely one week later, the nation suffered its worst terrorist assault in what grew to become recognized merely as “9/11.”
The darkish shadow of J. Edgar Hoover reemerged within the FBI underneath Mueller’s management. With all of the 9/11 terrorists killed throughout their three assaults—Twin Towers, Pentagon, and Shanksville—the FBI wanted dwell terrorists to arrest and prosecute to justify ramping up the “warfare on terror.”
Harking back to Hoover’s corrupt surveillance packages, Mueller’s FBI recruited hundreds of informants. A lot of their informants had been violent criminals, registered intercourse offenders, deranged psychopaths, and legal opportunists. Their purpose was to infiltrate the nation’s Muslim communities by means of mosques and social organizations to find terrorist actions or, in some circumstances, to fabricate “terrorist plots” that might be prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Division (DOJ).
The Mueller mannequin of “preventing worldwide terrorism” was inherited by the Bureau’s successive administrators, James Comey and Christopher Wray. Each administrators accepted the Mueller mannequin as a technique to cope with the large public worry of worldwide terrorism whereas ignoring or refusing the extra important risk of “home terrorism.”
Underneath the Mueller mannequin, practically 1,000 “terrorism defendants” have been prosecuted by the DOJ for terrorism-related costs since 9/11 by means of November 2022—materials help for terrorism, legal conspiracy, immigration violations, or making false statements. Many of those offenses concerned both imprecise or manufactured terror plots in opposition to the federal government.
Federal prosecutors have obtained practically 650 responsible pleas in trade for decrease attainable jail sentences utilizing the specter of devastating, doubtlessly life-long incarceration. One other 200 had been discovered responsible by a jury or choose. Solely three defendants had been acquitted of the costs in opposition to them, and one other 4 others had the costs dismissed in opposition to them by the federal government after proof of the so-called plots fell by means of.
At the moment, 51 defendants are awaiting trial. 300 thirty-three are nonetheless in jail.
A type of 333 defendants is Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, who was arrested in June of 2011 in reference to an alleged plot to assault a navy set up in Seattle, Washington.
Abdul-Latif was ensnared in what amounted to a manufactured terror plot arrange by a paid FBI informant named Robert Childs. Childs was a registered baby intercourse offender who knowledgeable the Bureau that Adul-Latiff, an outdated pal and former enterprise companion, had made terrorist-like statements in opposition to the federal government.
The Bureau then paid Childs at the least $90,000 and promised to make a pending baby intercourse cost go away if he would domesticate a legal relationship with Abdul-Latif to attract him right into a terror plot that the feds may prosecute.
Childs was profitable in attractive Abdul-Latif into conversations that the FBI secretly recorded. The 2 mentioned the best way to assault a Seattle-based navy set up.
It was sufficient proof for the FBI to arrest Abdul-Latif, together with one other mentally disabled man, on June 21, 2011. Abdul-Latif was indicted for conspiring to kill navy personnel and different folks on the Army Entrance Processing Station. The set up processes navy enlistees from the Seattle space.
The prosecution of Abdul-Latif was undertaken by Seattle’s Assistant U.S. Legal professional Jenny A. Durkan, who praised the usage of Childs as an informant, saying: “It’s not the saints who can deliver us the sinners.”
Durkan used the intercourse offender/informant proof to stress Abdul-Latif in December 2012 into accepting a coerced plea discount to keep away from a life sentence.
On March 25, 2013, U.S. District Courtroom Choose James L. Robart sentenced Abdul-Latif to 18 years in federal jail.
Within the wake of Abdul-Latif’s responsible plea and sentencing, proof got here to mild that Seattle Police Detective Samuel DeJesus, who was working with the FBI on a terrorism joint job power, had deleted proof. DeJesus, who grew to become Childs’ quasi-FBI handler, had deleted over 400 textual content messages from the pedophile’s cellphone earlier than giving the cellphone to the federal government for processing.
That led Choose Robart to watch later that Durkan’s dealing with of the Abdul-Latif case was “at-best sloppy.”
These revelations however, AUSA Durkan used the Abdul-Latif case as a political springboard to being elected Seattle’s mayor in 2017.
The well-paid Childs moved on, in search of one other hapless sufferer to arrange for the FBI. The FBI reveled of their work which led to the conviction. In the meantime, Abdul-Latif went to federal jail.
Nevertheless, the informant grew to become disillusioned with the FBI. He believed the FBI had taken care of the pending baby rape cost involving a 12-year-old sufferer. This offense was unrelated to 2 baby molestation convictions he had picked up in Washington in 1994 and 2000 involving underage women, which landed him on each the Washington State and federal intercourse offender registry.
The Mueller mannequin of dealing with FBI terrorism informants—as many as 15,000 since 9/11—didn’t get rid of Baby’s baby intercourse offense however solely held it in abeyance for attainable future management and leverage.
Nonetheless, the FBI and federal prosecutors had so assured the pedophile informant that he was “protected” from prosecution that he felt snug shifting to Florida with out registering as a intercourse offender as required by each federal and state legislation. In any case, the FBI’s Particular Agent in Cost in Seattle, Laura Laughlin, had graciously referred to as the pedophile informant a reliable involved “citizen” who foiled the alleged terrorist plot in press releases.
Whereas in Florida, Childs started having second ideas about how he had arrange Abdul-Latif and wished to disclose the entire fact behind the plot. However he was involved concerning the backlash from the Bureau—rightly so. The Bureau bought wind of the pedophile’s discontent, and all of a sudden the Seattle Police Division determined in 2019 to check the 12-year-old sufferer’s “rape package,” some 13 years after the sexual assault.
On February 21, 2019, Florida’s Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Workplace arrested Baby for the rape of the 12-year-old. In January 2022, Childs was convicted of that intercourse offense and sentenced to life in jail.
Feeling betrayed and utilized by the FBI, Childs determined to open up completely to an intrepid journalist named Trevor Aaronson, who, on November 26, 2022, printed an entire account of his investigation of each Abdul-Latif and Childs. This report included the informant’s recantation within the Abdul-Latif case as nicely.
“Abdul-Latif could have had some hardline ideology and radical speech, however he was by no means in anyplace to be a terrorist,”…
“If I had not been inspired to ‘flip him in’ or threatened to maintain him on the right track, he wouldn’t be in jail now and no assault would have ever been perpetrated by him. He’s in jail as a result of I used to be too cowardly to inform the reality,” mentioned Baby’s in a letter to Aaronson.
“Within the letter, Childs additionally admitted that he’d wiped his … cellphone to not delete pornography, however as a result of it contained textual content messages between him and his handler wherein he mentioned his view that Abdul-Latif was no risk to anybody. Childs additionally defined that he was coming ahead now, as he launched into a life sentence, as a result of he now not feared the FBI. “I’ve tried to relay this info earlier than,” Childs wrote in his letter, “however was at all times reduce off and threatened with shedding my freedom as nicely.”
“Childs added: “The so-called plot to assault the [Military Entrance Processing Station] location was created by me, accredited by my handler, after which fed to Abdul-Latif to make it appear to be he got here up with it himself.”
Aaronson additionally reported that Federal District Choose Robart has grow to be so involved concerning the FBI’s dealing with of Childs in reference to the Abdul-Latif case that he appointed an legal professional earlier this 12 months to analyze the alleged wrongdoing and file an enchantment on behalf of Abdul-Latif.
The FBI’s use of a convicted pedophile and serial baby rapist as an informant to fabricate a terrorist plot involving members of the American Muslim group isn’t an anomaly. It’s rooted within the Mueller mannequin, a direct descendant of the J. Edgar Hoover citizen surveillance fashions. Get the “dangerous guys” by any means vital.
In the meantime, the FBI and different legislation enforcement businesses refused to behave on credible intelligence that home terrorists deliberate to storm the nation’s Capitol on January 6 and overthrow a reputable presidential election.
It’s ironic that Abdul-Latif has been compelled to observe from his jail cell as dozens of January 6 defendants, whose insurrectionist assaults on the federal government had been far worse than his alleged “terror” assault plot, plead responsible in trade for probated sentences, residence detention, or just a few months in jail.
Concern and legislation enforcement “Wars on (fill the clean),” have at all times led to unjust prosecutions and punishments.
