FBI Recruits Journalists and Attorneys as Informants

 

By Ken Klippenstein

FBI director Kash Patel is setting in motion his own orgy of firings at the Bureau, a purge focused on people involved in the January 6 and Russiagate investigations. But when it comes to actual changes in policy that could weaken the grip of what he calls the “Deep State,” America’s top gumshoe has been silent.

Nowhere is that more evident than in how the FBI uses its informants, or confidential human sources, in fed parlance. The Bureau continues to rely upon its vast informant network, including attorneys who squeal on their own clients and members of the news media who collude with the FBI. Now, sources say, such practices will continue, bolstering the very “fake news” that Trump decries along with threats to attorney-client privilege, which the president has also lamented.

It is not publicly known how many members of the news media and lawyers are FBI informants, with one source telling me it totals in the few hundreds each year. Whereas details about traditional informants like drug dealers occasionally end up in court records, media and attorney sources don’t testify, as another source, a former FBI informant handler, explained to me.

Here’s how the Justice Department defines a confidential human source (CHS):

“Any individual believed to be providing useful and credible information to the FBI for any authorized information collection activity, and from whom the FBI expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information in the future, and whose identity, information or relationship with the FBI warrants confidential handling.”

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Source: kenklippenstein.com