Informants are central to and embedded in numerous larger law enforcement programs. The New York Times Magazine published this profile of FBI agent Terry Albury who, among other things, pushed back against the FBI’s coercive development of informants in pursuit of baseless counterterrorism investigations, as well as racial and religious profiling. Albury was convicted in 2018 of leaking classified documents to journalists; he was sentenced to four years in prison. From the article, “I Helped Destroy People“:
“Assessments were the opening salvo to the informant-recruitment process. It was a delicate art of manipulation, persuading a person to work for the federal government against his or her own community, but with access to the person’s criminal history, or immigration status, it was much easier. There were different techniques agents were allowed to use. They could assist a person who lacked legal status to be given it, a tactic known as the “immigration-relief dangle.” Conversely, agents could also work with immigration officials to deport those people if and when they’d exhausted their usefulness as confidential sources. Fear was a prominent driver. . . . Another approach was to threaten uncooperative sources with spreading disinformation unless they agreed to cooperate. “The script was, ‘Everyone in your community already thinks you’re a source, so you might as well work with us.'” “