Fears of renewed FBI abuse of power after informant infiltrated BLM protests | FBI | The Guardian
By: edpilkington (the Guardian)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
'Outraged' senator Ron Wyden urges agency to explain tactics from 2020 protests reminiscent of rogue behaviour from decades past
A crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters runs from pepper ball shots from riot police in Denver in May 2020. Photograph: Paul Winner/Rex/Shutterstock A crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters runs from pepper ball shots from riot police in Denver in May 2020. Photograph: Paul Winner/Rex/Shutterstock
The FBI's use of an informant to infiltrate Black Lives Matter in Denver during the wave of protests over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd has prompted concern in Congress that the federal agency is once again abusing its powers to harass and intimidate minority groups.
Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, is calling for the FBI to explain how it came to recruit a violent felon as an informant who then went on to gain prominence among Denver racial justice activists. The informant is alleged to have encouraged protesters to engage in increasingly violent demonstrations while trying to entrap them in criminal misdeeds.
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"If the allegations are true, the FBI's use of an informant to spy on first amendment-protected activity and stoke violence at peaceful protests is an outrageous abuse of law-enforcement resources and authority," Wyden told the Guardian.
Wyden sits on the Senate intelligence committee which has oversight over federal intelligence-gathering agencies, including the FBI. He also fought for public disclosure of Donald Trump's deployment in 2020 of more than 750 officers to his home town of Portland, Oregon, based on what he called "politicised and false intelligence reports".
The FBI's infiltration of Black Lives Matter in Denver "appears to show another instance of the Trump administration trampling on the rights of Americans in order to divide our country and gain a political advantage", Wyden said. "The FBI owes the public a full accounting of its actions, including how anyone responsible for attempting to entrap and discredit racial justice activists will be held accountable."
The Guardian contacted the FBI for a response but did not immediately hear back.
The new revelations of alleged FBI abuses towards Black activists comes at a paradoxical moment, given the efforts of the incoming Republican House leadership. On Thursday Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump loyalist from Ohio, chaired the opening hearing of his subcommittee on the "weaponization of the federal government" which seeks to show that the main victim of federal overreach is not minority and progressive groups but Donald Trump and his far-right supporters.
The actions of the FBI informant, Michael Windecker, or Mickey, as he was known, are revealed in a new 10-episode podcast by the investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson. Drawing on hours of undercover FBI recordings, along with internal FBI reports and interviews Aaronson conducted with genuine racial justice protest leaders, Alphabet Boys pieces together how Windecker inveigled himself into Black Lives Matter from May 2020.
Windecker, who the FBI paid $20,000 to spy on the activists, stood out from the crowd. He was white, while most protesters in Denver were African American, and dressed in military fatigues. He drove an ostentatious silver hearse with a boot filled with AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles and other firearms.
Despite his glaring profile, Windecker managed to convince activists that he was committed to the struggle for racial justice and could help them cope with volatility on the streets. He bragged about having served with the French Foreign Legion and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
As 2020's long hot summer of protests deepened, Windecker became more prominent in the Denver scene. He also became more proactive in his advice, encouraging activists to consider taking the protests to the next level.
He told one Black Lives Matter leader: "I can teach you how to shoot a gun, to hand-to-hand combat, all the way up to like blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla warfare tactics and sabotage."
Audio clippings from the undercover recordings obtained by Aaronson reveal what Windecker then went on to ask the activist: "How extreme do you want it to go? Do you want to learn to shoot a gun and throw someone around, or do you want to go all the way uptown? If that's what you want to do, I can make it happen."
The podcast reports that Windecker went on to give an activist $1,500 to buy a gun for him, which led to the individual being arrested on weapons charges. Aaronson also alleges that the informant helped to organize a series of demonstrations in August 2020 that led to violent assaults on police stations.
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Trump using government agencies for political purposes? Say it aint so !
Is this satire?
This is tricky.
Infiltration of potential risks appears to be a reasonable peace-keeping activity. The problem is that law enforcement kills over a thousand people every year, with little or no consequence. In particular, Black leaders...
For those of us who consider that all human life is precious... the trade-off is unacceptable.