New America Foundation: Surveillance and Infiltration

I will be appearing at this event to discuss PATCON and to mark the release of a new and much more detailed report on the undercover operation and its implications for U.S. law enforcement policy. Please come! I will post a link to the extended report once it become available.

The New York City Police Department's surveillance of Muslim communities in New York has been widely debated since being publicly revealed in a Pulitzer Prize winning series of Associated Press reports. Defenders argue such techniques are crucial tools in an era of homegrown terrorism. Critics allege that the NYPD's techniques amount to blanket surveillance and alienate the very communities that government needs to work with against extremists. Please join us for a discussion about these techniques with two of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters that broke the NYPD surveillance story and the author of a New America Foundation report revealing the FBI's efforts to infiltrate anti-government extremist networks in the early 1990s.

Sign up for the event On an unrelated note, if you haven't taken the "One Year After Bin Laden" survey sponsored by Selected Wisdom, please take a few minutes to do so. It's an important snapshot of our current view of Al Qaeda. Clint Watts also has an interesting post today on the fact that Al Qaeda, like most Western stakeholders in the war on terrorism, may not really know what it means to be in Al Qaeda. Check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: FBI, Infiltration, Informants, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, PATCON, Patriot-Movement, Surveillance, Timothy-McVeigh, Undercover

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

OKC Anniversary: A New Investigative Report by J.M. Berger

An FBI undercover program known as PATCON spent more than two years collecting intelligence on the Patriot movement, without producing a single conviction. Timothy McVeigh was in contact with members of the targeted groups at the time of the investigation, but those links escaped notice, even after the Oklahoma City bombing.

The program and its connections to the bombing are the subject of a major new investigative report by J.M. Berger for Foreign Policy.

Read the full story

PATCON will be examined in more detail in a forthcoming report by J.M. Berger for the New America Foundation, which looks at the double-edged sword of infiltration techniques and raises questions about how undercover agents and informants should be used in light of current controversies.

Documents related to the case will be published on INTELWIRE in the weeks to come.

For more investigating reporting on terrorism, check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: American-Pistol-and-Rifle-Association, Andreas-Strassmeir, Civilian-Materiel-Assistance, Louis-Beam, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, PATCON, Roger-Moore, Texas-Light-Infantry, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink