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Title: Bounty Hunters & Child Predators Author: CrimethInc. Date: 2012 Language: en Topics: FBI, repression, Occupy Wall Street Source: Retrieved on 9th September 2020 from https://archive.org/details/BountyHuntersChildPredators
Perhaps, gentle reader, you’ve never been part of a social body targeted
by the US government. Imagine undercover agents infiltrating your
community with the intention of setting people up to be framed for
illegal activity. Most of your friends and family would have the sense
to keep themselves out of trouble, of course—but can you be absolutely
sure everyone would?
What if someone fell in love with the agent and was desperate to impress
him or her, and the agent took advantage of this? Every community has
people in it that may sometimes be gullible or vulnerable, who may not
display the best judgment at all times. And what if the agent
provocateur is a person everyone trusts and looks up to? Government
agents aren’t always outsiders—the FBI often recruit or blackmail
long-time participants, or even well-known leaders.
Perhaps you’re still saying to yourself “It would never happen—all of us
are law-abiding citizens.” Sure you are, every last one of you. The US
has 2.3 million people in prison, and over 5 million more on probation
and parole—if there isn’t a single person in your whole community who
has ever broken a law, you’re exceptional, and probably exceptionally
privileged. Anyway, it doesn’t matter—your unfortunate friend or
neighbor doesn’t even have to do anything illegal to get framed by the
government. He just has to end up in a situation in which it’s possible
to make it appear that he could have considered doing something illegal.
Often the evidence is so tenuous that it takes the government multiple
attempts to obtain a conviction. In an entrapment case resulting from
the protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention, defendant
David McKay received a hung jury at trial, only to be coerced into
pleading guilty afterward behind closed doors. In another entrapment
case, it took two hung juries before a third jury finally convicted some
of the defendants—prompting a law professor quoted by the New York Times
to say, “It goes to show that if you try it enough times, you’ll
eventually find a jury that will convict on very little evidence.”
Agents provocateurs pick on the most vulnerable people they can find:
the lonely, the trusting, the mentally or emotionally unstable, people
who lack close friendships or life experience. This is easier than
messing with shrewd, well-connected organizers. The point is not to
catch those who are actually involved in ongoing resistance, so much as
to discredit resistance movements by framing somebody, anybody, as a
dangerous terrorist. If this means destroying the life of a person who
never would have actually harmed anyone, so be it—honest, compassionate
people don’t become infiltrators in the first place.
This is not to blame the victims of entrapment. We all have moments of
weakness. The guilt lies on those who prey on others’ weakness for their
own gain.
Not so long ago, it seemed that the FBI focused on pursuing accomplished
anarchists: Marie Mason and Daniel McGowan were both arrested after
lengthy careers involving everything from supporting survivors of
domestic violence to ecologically-minded arson. It isn’t surprising that
the security apparatus of the state targeted them: they were threatening
the inequalities and injustices the state is founded upon. However,
starting with the entrapment case of Eric McDavid—framed for a single
conspiracy charge by an infiltrator who used his attraction to her to
manipulate him into discussing illegal actions [1] —the FBI appeared to
switch strategies, focusing on younger targets who hadn’t actually
carried out any actions.
They stepped up this new strategy during the 2008 Republican National
Convention, at which FBI informants Brandon Darby and Andrew Darst set
up David McKay, Bradley Crowder, and Matthew DePalma on charges of
possessing Molotov cocktails in two separate incidents [2] . It’s
important to note that the only Molotov cocktails that figured in the
RNC protests at any point were the ones used to entrap these young men:
the FBI were not responding to a threat, but inventing one.
At the end of April 2012, the FBI shifted into high gear with this
approach. Immediately before May Day, five young men were set up on
terrorism charges in Cleve- land after an FBI infiltrator apparently
guided them into planning to bomb a bridge, in what would have been the
only such bombing carried out by anarchists in living memory. During the
protests against the NATO summit in Chicago, three young men were
arrested and charged with terrorist conspiracy once again involving the
only Molotov cocktails within hundreds of miles, set up by at least two
FBI informants. None of the targets of these entrapment cases seem to be
longtime anarchist organizers. None of the crimes they’re being charged
with are representative of the tactics that anarchists have actually
used over the past decade. All of the cases rest on the efforts of FBI
informants to manufacture conspiracies. All of the arrests have taken
place immediately before mass mobilizations, enabling the authorities to
frame a narrative justifying their crackdowns on protest as thwarting
terrorism. And in all of these cases, the defendants have been described
as anarchists in the legal paperwork filed against them, setting
precedents for criminalizing anarchism.
Why is the FBI focusing on entrapping inexperienced young people rather
than seasoned anarchists? Isn’t that just plain bad sportsmanship? And
why are they intensifying this now?
For one thing, experienced activists are harder to catch. Unlike
anarchists, FBI agents work for money, not necessarily out of passion or
conviction. Their reports often read like second-rate homework
assignments even as they wreck people’s lives. Agents get funding and
promotions based on successful cases, so they have an incentive to set
people up; but why go after challenging targets? Why not pick the most
marginal, the most vulnerable, the most isolated? If the goal is simply
to frame some- body, it doesn’t really matter who the target is
Likewise, the tactics anarchists have actually been using are likely to
be more popular with the general public than the tactics infiltrators
push them towards. Smashing bank windows, for example, may be illegal,
but it is increasingly understood as a meaningful political statement;
it would be difficult to build a convincing terrorism case around broken
glass.
Well-known activists also have much broader support networks. The FBI
threatened Daniel McGowan with a mandatory life sentence plus 335 years
in prison; wide- spread support enabled him to obtain a good lawyer, and
the prosecution had to settle for a plea bargain for a seven-year
sentence or else admit to engaging in illegal wiretapping. Going after
disconnected young people dramatically decreases the re- sources that
will be mobilized to support them. If the point is to set precedents
that criminalize anarchism while producing the minimum blowback, then it
is easier to manufacture “terror” cases by means of agents provocateurs
than to investigate actual anarchist activity.
Above all, this kind of proactive threat-creation enables FBI agents to
prepare make-to-order media events. If a protest is coming up at which
the authorities anticipate using brutal force, it helps to be able to
spin the story in advance as a necessary, measured response to violent
criminals. This also sows the seeds of distrust among activists, and
intimidates newcomers and fence-sitters out of having anything to do
with anarchists. The long-range project, presumably choreographed by FBI
leader- ship rather than rank-and-file agents, is not just to frame a
few unfortunate arrestees, but thus to hamstring the entire
anti-capitalist movement.
“The individuals we charged are not peaceful protesters, they are
domestic terrorists. The charges we bring today are not indicative of a
protest movement that has been targeted.”
– Illinois state attorney Anita Alvarez, quoted in the New York Times
FBI repression often does not begin in earnest until a movement has
begun to fracture and subside, diminishing the targets’ support base.
The life cycle of movements passes ever faster in our hyper-mediatized
era; the Occupy phenomenon that peaked in November 2011 and had slowed
down by April 2012, emboldening the authorities to consolidate control
and take revenge.
As anarchist values and practices become increasingly central to protest
movements, the authorities are anxious to incapacitate and delegitimize
anarchists. Yet in this context, it’s still inconvenient to admit to
targeting people for anarchism alone— that could spread the wrong
narrative, rallying outrage against transparently political persecution.
Likewise, they dare not initiate repression without a narrative
portraying the targets as alien to the rest of the movement, even if
that repression is calculated to destroy the movement itself.
Fortunately for the FBI, a few advocates of “nonviolence” within the
Occupy movement were happy to provide this narrative, disavowing
everyone who didn’t affirm their narrow tactical framework. Journalists
like Chris Hedges, author of “The Cancer in Occupy,” took this further
by framing the “black bloc” as a kind of people rather than a tactic.
Hedges led the charge to consign those who actively defended themselves
against state repression to this fabricated political category—in
effect, designating them legitimate targets. It’s no coincidence that
entrapment cases followed soon after.
The authorities swiftly took up this narrative. In a subsequent Fox News
article advancing the FBI agenda, the authorities parroted Chris Hedges’
talking points— “they use the Occupy Movement as a front, but have their
own violent agenda”—in order to frame the black bloc as a “home-grown
terror group.” The article also described the Cleveland arrestees as
“Black Bloc anarchists,” without evidence that any of them had ever
participated in a black bloc.
The goal here was clearly to associate a form of activity—acting
anonymously, defending oneself against police attacks—with a kind of
people: terrorists, evildoers, monsters. This is a high priority for the
authorities: they were able to crush the Occupy movement much more
quickly, at least relative to its numbers, in cities where people did
not act anonymously and defend themselves—hence Occupy Oakland’s
longevity compared to other Occupy groups. The aim of the FBI and
corporate media, with the collusion of Chris Hedges and others, is to
ensure that when people see a masked crowd that refuses to kowtow to
coercive authority, they don’t think, “Good for them for standing up for
themselves,” but rather, “Oh no—a bunch of terrorist bombers.”
To recapitulate the FBI strategy:
participants
justify ever-increasing police violence.
We can expect more and more of these unsportsmanlike entrapments in the
years to come. In the aforementioned Fox News article—“The Men in Black
with a Violent Agenda”—the authorities explicitly announced that there
are to be more “sting operations” at the 2012 Republican National
Convention in Tampa. For decades now, movements have defended themselves
against surveillance and infiltration by practicing security culture.
This has minimized the effectiveness of police operations against
experienced activists, but it can’t always protect those who are new to
anarchism or activism, who haven’t had time to internalize complex
habits and practices—and these are exactly the people that the FBI
entrapment strategy targets. In a time of widespread social ferment,
even the most collectively-oriented security culture is not sufficient
to thwart the FBI: we can’t hope to reach and protect every single
desperate, angry, and vulnerable person in our society. Infiltrators
need only find one impressionable young person, however peripheral, to
advance their strategy. These are inhuman bounty hunters: they don’t
balk at taking advantage of any weakness, any need, any mental health
issue. If we are to protect the next generation of young people from
these predators, our only hope is to mobilize a popular reaction against
entrapment tactics. Only a blow- back against the FBI themselves can
halt this strategy. Withdrawing, hiding, and behaving won’t stop them
from entrapping people. Retreating will only embolden them: we can only
protect ourselves by increasing our power to fight back.
Never undertake or discuss illegal activity with people you haven’t
known and trusted for a long time. Don’t trust people just because other
people trust them or because they are in influential positions. Don’t
let others talk you into tactics you’re not comfortable with or ready
for. Be aware that anything you say may come back to haunt you, even if
you don’t mean it. Always listen to your instincts; if someone seems
pushy or too eager to help you with something, take some time to think
about the situation. Reflect on the motivations of those around you—do
they make sense? Get to know your comrades’ families and friends.
These practices are sensible, but insufficient; we can’t only think of
security individualistically. Even if 99 out of 100 are able to avoid
getting framed, when agents provocateurs manage to entrap the 100 th one
we still end up all paying the price. We need a security culture that
can protect others as well, including vulnerable and marginal
participants in radical spaces who may be particularly appetizing
targets to federal bounty hunters. In addition to looking out for
yourself, keep an eye on others who may put themselves at risk.
For example, imagine that you attend a presentation, and one person in
the audience keeps asking crazy questions and demanding that people
escalate their tactics. It’s possible that this person is an agent
provocateur; it’s also possible that he’s not an agent, but a hothead
that might make a very attractive target for agents. Such individuals
are typically shunned, which only makes them more vulnerable to agents:
“Screw these squares—stick with me and we’ll really do something!”
Someone who has nothing to lose should approach this person in a
low-stress environment and emphasize the importance of proper security
culture, describing the risks that one ex- poses himself and others to
by speaking so carelessly and urging him to be cautious about trusting
anyone who solicits his participation in illegal activity. A ten-minute
conversation like this might save years of heartache and prisoner
support later on. To learn more about federal repression and how to stop
it: crimethinc.com
[1] Afterwards, Elle Magazine quoted regretful jurors as saying “the FBI
was an embarrassment” and “I hope he gets a new trial.” He is serving a
20-year sentence and has not been granted a new trial.
[2] DePalma was approached by Darst, a federal infiltrator posing as a
member of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group planning protests against
the Republican National Convention. Darst persuaded DePalma to assist
him in manufacturing explosives, recorded conversations with him in a
wired apartment, and drove him around to do research and purchase
supplies; Darst ultimately pleaded guilty to felony charges for
possession of “unregistered firearms.” The tragic story of Darby’s
entrapment of McKay and Crowder has been widely publicized, including in
the PBS documentary Better This World.