From: Welcome to the Machine – Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control, by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan/submitted by Martin Koe):
I had lunch with someone who spent time in prison for committing an act of sabotage against a major corporation. Her environmental group had been infiltrated by one FBI undercover agent and one informant. These federal “assets” had worked for a couple of years to gain the trust of those in the group. The informant even began fucking one of the environmentalists (all things considered, it would be inappropriate to say he started a relationship with her, or that he made love with her, or even that he had sex with her: in fact, you could make the argument that using the word fuck is generous, since sex under false pretenses is rape). Eventually the two feds suggested a target for sabotage, supplied the materials, and did everything but commit the sabotage themselves. Oh, or get arrested and sent to prison.
I knew all that before lunch. But I learned something new.
The woman I had lunch with said, “You know how the feds get most of their informants, right?”
I was pretty sure I did, but I wanted to hear her say it.
She continued, “They catch someone committing a crime, and then blackmail the person into cooperating. If the person doesn’t inform on others, it’s off to prison. If the person does inform, it’s off to the bank for payday.”
Sticks and carrots, I thought. Carrots and sticks.
She asked, “Do you know what crime they were using to blackmail this informant?”
“Drug abuse, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, he was an abuser, all right, but that isn’t what they got him for.”
“I never heard of anything else.”
“That’s because it was never allowed to be spoken of in court, nor was it ever allowed to be reported. But someone did mention it once, before the judge ordered it stricken from the official record.” She stopped, then continued, “Striking it from the official record is not the same thing as striking it from my memory. Do you know what he did?”
I shook my head.
“He’s a child molester.”
“They set a child molester free to try to catch environmentalists?”
“Not catch,” she said. “Set up. Those are their priorities, And I’ll tell you something else. Many of us in the group they infiltrated had young children. You do the math.”
That's the FBI for you.
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