OFF THE WIRE
WASHINGTON — The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least
5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show
just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help
it battle crime.
The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin
tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency
admitted that its agents had allowed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger to
operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI
submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year, but has never
before made it public.
Agents authorized 15 crimes a day, on average,
including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government
officials and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said in the past that
permitting their informants — who are often criminals themselves — to break the
law is an indispensable, if sometimes distasteful, part of investigating
criminal organizations.
"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in
context," said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI
until he retired last year. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done
randomly. It's not taken lightly."
USA TODAY obtained a copy of the
FBI's 2011 report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report does not
spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were.
It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau's sources were
known to have committed without the government's permission.
Crimes
authorized by the FBI almost certainly make up a tiny fraction of the total
number of offenses committed by informants for local, state and federal agencies
each year. The FBI was responsible for only about 10% of the criminal cases
prosecuted in federal court in 2011, and federal prosecutions are, in turn,
vastly outnumbered by criminal cases filed by state and local authorities, who
often rely on their own networks of sources.
"The million-dollar question
is: How much crime is the government tolerating from its informants?" said
Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied
such issues. "I'm sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be
shocked."
A spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to answer
questions about the report, saying only that the circumstances in which its
informants are allowed to break the law are "situational, tightly controlled,"
and subject to Justice Department policy. The FBI almost always keeps its
informants' work secret. The agency said in a 2007 budget request that it has a
network of about 15,000 confidential sources.
Justice Department rules
put tight limits on when and how those informants can engage in what the agency
calls "otherwise illegal activity." Agents are not allowed to authorize violent
crimes under any circumstances; the most serious crimes must first be approved
by federal prosecutors. Still, the department's Inspector General concluded in
2005 that the FBI routinely failed to follow many of those rules.
The
rules require the FBI — but not other law enforcement agencies — to report the
total number of crimes authorized by its agents each year. USA TODAY asked the
FBI for all of the reports it had prepared since 2006, but FBI officials said
they could locate only one, which they released after redacting nearly all of
the details.
Other federal law enforcement agencies, including the ATF
and the DEA, said last year that they cannot determine how often their
informants are allowed to break the law.
"This is all being operated
clandestinely. Congress doesn't even have the information," said Rep. Stephen
Lynch, D-Mass., who sponsored a bill that would require federal agencies to
notify lawmakers about the most serious crimes their informants commit. "I think
there's a problem here, and we should have full disclosure to Congress."
Bulger, long a notorious Mob figure, is facing murder and racketeering
charges in federal court in Boston. Prosecutors allege that he used his status
as an FBI informant to steer police away from his own crime ring. Bulger has not
disputed some of the charges against him, but his lawyers insist that he was not
an informant; the former crime boss on Friday called the case "a sham."
Follow reporter @bradheath on Twitter.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-informant-crimes-report/2613305/
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