In at least 5,658 cases in a single year alone, the FBI authorized its informants to commit crimes varying from selling drugs to plotting robberies, according to a copy of an FBI report obtained by USA Today.
After much redacting by the authorities, the watered-down FBI's 2011 report obtained under
the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that agents had been
authorizing 15 crimes a day on average, in order to get the
necessary information from their informants.
The document does not indicate the severity of the crimes
authorized by the agency, nor does it include material about
violations that were committed without the government's
permission. It just sites a number of 5,658 Tier I and II
infractions committed by criminals to help the bureau battle
crime.
According to the Department of Justice Tier I is the most severe
and includes “any activity that would constitute a
misdemeanour or felony under federal, state, or local law if
engaged in by a person acting without authorization and that
involves the commission or the significant risk of the commission
of certain offenses, including acts of violence; corrupt conduct
by senior federal, state, or local public officials; or the
manufacture, importing, exporting, possession, or trafficking in
controlled substances of certain quantities.”
The Tier II includes the same range of crimes but committed by
informants acting without authorization from a federal
prosecutor but only from their senior field manager in FBI.
In the past, the newspaper revealed, the violations ranged from
drug dealing to bribery.
As an example of severe crime committed by an authorized
informant, the newspaper references the case of James Bulger, a
mobster in Boston who was allowed by the Federal government to
run a gang ring in exchange for insider information about the
Mafia. Since then, the US Justice Department ordered the FBI to
track and record the wrongdoings of the informants, results of
which are due annually.
The FBI remains secretive about its informants. It is known that
in 2007, the FBI estimated that around 15,000 confidential
sources were employed by the bureau.
The Justice Department has requirements in place which spell out
the rules of engagement with informants and “otherwise illegal
activity.” Authorization of violent crimes are not allowed by
field agents and serious offenses must first be approved by
federal prosecutors. But as the publication notes, the FBI’s
Inspector General concluded in 2005 that the agency routinely
failed to abide by those rules.
The FBI’s scheme to gather information using such methods is
believed to be only the tip of the iceberg as other local, state
and federal agencies also reportedly engage in similar practices.
The FBI’s share of criminal prosecutions in court only amount to
10 percent of all criminal cases.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to
comment the report saying only that the circumstances in which
the bureau allows its informants to break the law are
"situational, tightly controlled.”