The Secret Agent

Posted By: EffYou @ 07/03/2008 8:24:11 PM

Comment: sounds like a big ol waste of tax dollars. i hope that $300k payment was pending conviction, like crime stoppers.

I'm sure you think this is a lot of money, what about the fact that he risked his own life while under cover? What about the fact that his life could still be endangered? What if he needs to relocate on a witness protection program? This includes his wife and children giving up their extended families. This means no more Christmas with Grandpa and Grandma for the chidren. What price do you put on that? The press reports that he recieved $300,000.00, but does not include the fact that only $52,000.00 per year was for salary. The remainder was for expenses such as, tickets to the Middle East for him and the suspects. Here




is a bit of information that you may not though of: To date more than 1.7 million, that's right million has been spent on public defense for these three. Over twenty attorneys were hired to defend these guys, as well as an additional 103k + for expert witnesses for the defense.

Posted By: Ef

To Abu Foolan and those that agree with him, a couple of questions. First why are you angry at the FBI but not so angry at the people in your congregation that brought the FBI to your community? It sounds as if your congregation knew of people who were for jihad among yourselves. I expect you prayed for a solution. If you prayed for a solution and God answered your prayers through Mr. Griffin then why are you complaining at all? You got what you asked for. If you don't like what God sent to you to answer your prayers then complain to him, not the FBI. Another question is 'where did the FBI get the original 20 names?' Perhaps that information came from within your congregation, members who knew enough to act instead of waiting for God to do something without man's help. God helps those who help themselves. If that is the case then the FBI was invited into your community by its own memebers, and your complaint is not justified. Another question, if law enforcement can't conduct undercover/informant type of activities how are they supposed to work at all against criminal organizations? You complain about the way the FBI solved a serious problem in your community. What is YOUR solution to the problem? If you agree that terrorist activity must be stopped, and you have no better solution then again you are wrong to complain.

You have expressed very real and problematic feelings for any group where crime is a problem. One way to hadle the feelings is to offer a solution that is better than the ones which law enforcement has available. I am sure your elected officials and law enforcement would be glad to listen to your solution. Undercover work is long, slow, expensive and very dangerous. If you cannot offer a better solution then look at your feelings and accept that what happened is the best that can be done.

One last question for now: if you have a problem that needs to be solved, and you don't like the solution, but have no better solution yourself, are you justified in complaining about the soluton at all?

To Abu Foolan: you may characterize what happened as an invasion of privacy, but there is no basis in law or fact for that characterization. There is no evidence that the FBI is doing anything more than going where the bad guys go. The fact of life is that the majority of terroist activites in the US from outside the US are currently from young Middle Eastern Muslim ( I personally don't consider terrorists true Muslim) males. There is NO other significant group of immigrants actively supporting terrorism. Is the FBI supposed to infiltrate the Swedish Bikini Team to make you feel better? I question the government in a case like this also, but you have personally verified that nothing out of the ordinary happened. If you study the history of the FBI and law enforcement in general, available on public cable channnels in large volume, you will see that ANY group of people who start producing larger than normal amounts of criminal activity gets investigated. If any group gets the same treatment as your group then there is no 'targeting.' The Mafia was almost exclusively Sicilian Catholics, the KKK was deep south rural white Protestants. 70s drug gangs were black inner city poor. It looks like to me that you choose to not believe the government mostly because you do not understand the government, our laws and our general society. The FBI, and other law enforcement, does step over the line on occasion. Your own statements verify beyond any doubt that in this case there was NOTHING done outside of the ordinary. NO ONE had his/her rights violated and you have verified that in the facts you presented. You are free to feel what you are feeling, and express those feelings publicly. It helps the public and peaceful, law abiding Muslims get some insight. I am free to point out that you feelings are not based in fact or law. It does not make your feelings right or wrong, but letting people know that your kind of feelings are not based in fact helps understand why they are there and what to do about it. This is one of the most important objectives of our First Amendment right, to free speech and free religion. As you pointed out, Mr. Griffin went out of his way to avoid any disruption of your religion and only went after crimes that are crimes for everybody, irregardless of religion.

I have looked as websites recommended by people with a strong viewpoint such as yourself. I ALWAYS find such sites very one sided, missing 'the rest of the story.' By the time I do more complete research I univerally find most of the allegations are not supported by the COMPLETE set of facts. I do not believe the government alone based on its own say so, but the political websites are far more unbelievable. The government has a legal and moral obligation to the whole truth, the political websites do not. In this case your own observations, and your viewpoint, make the government 100% believable.

to Karenn1: what rights were given up? None, according to the Constitution. No one's privacy was violated since there is no privacy right in the Constitution, and Mr. Griffin never interfered with any law abiding citizen's freedom of religion. A church, synagogue, mosque or temple is public enough so that no reasonable expectation of privacy exists when a group is present. As Abu Foolan stated, Mr. Griffin went out of his way to avoid getting involved with anyone not actively pursuing an illegal activity. There may be separation of church and state in this country, but the church still cannot act as a refuge from law enforcement. If you want to complain about rights, how about complaining about the people who were actively involved in violating someone's right to life? These are the ones who were targeted by the FBI, and no one else.

This guy didn't do it for the money. He did it for the love of his country. I say keep up the good work. What rights were violated? Don't the citizens of the USA and our troops overseas have the right to live free of fear? I think so. I'm proud of the F.B.I. and secret agent Griffin.

Give up your rights because an informants who getts paid $300,000.Watch out this could lead wearing marks on your clothing.Policy of RED light,YELLOW light , give me your rights.I don't believe the Gov't anymore.Like the man said everybody has to pay their mortgage so lies will not be challenge.

Abu Foolan, your last comment said it best. The FBI had a list of 20 names and the 3 convicted wre not on that list. That means the FBI had a good reason to send in an undercover agent, and cleared 20 people, but found 3 guilty parties. Nobody stated that the lsit was complete. You stated yourself that the majority of the congregation was actively ignored by Mr. Griffin, not targeted. Perhaps the 3 guilty parties tried to mislead the FBI by naming the 20 others themselves. Someone gave the FBI enough information to warrant a major investigation. I live in an area that has the largest immigrant population in the country. A close friend of mine for years was a former Iranian soldier and many of my coworkers on 9/11 were Middle Eastern Muslims. Two of the area's businessmen were seen cheering the WTC fires in public before anyone knew it was a terrorist attack. They were probably the bakery owners mentioned in news reports. I never felt nor saw any kind of fear in my local community despite being saturated with immigrants who closely matched the terrorists.

I would be afraid if the FBI did NOT conduct undercover operations when it found a credible threat to national security. The fact that 3 people were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt shows that the FBI was fully justified in conducting the operation. You mention the unanswered questions about MLK's assasination. There are at least as many unanswered questions about JFK, RFK, Abraham Lincoln, David Koresh and Jim Jones, all of whom were white.

Why should the blacks or Muslims, or any other group of any kind expect to be immune to unanswered questions? Why should any group be immune from criminal investigation by the FBI or any other law enforcement agency? Why are you angry at the FBI, but not angry at the people who used your mosque as a cover for terrorist activities? Everything you state as fact shows that the FBI is doing nothing more, and nothing less, in your community and mosque than they do anywhere else.

Your community had 3 terrorists. My community had Mafia Godfathers walking the streets under the eye of the local police. Othere communities have Jeff Dahmer or David Berkowitz, or John Wayne Gacy, or the Green River killer, Ted Bundy, Al Capone, John Dillinger all of whom were male, white Christians. Your community is nothing more or less than any other community, mostly good, law abiding citizens with a few bad apples. Your community was treated no differently than any other community where the FBI gets enough information to indicate that an undercover investigation is warranted. Nothing you have stated as fact indicates otherwise.

Thank you Abu Foolan for your intimate viewpoint. As you pointed out most of your congregation are against terrorism, especially in the name of Islam. As you pointed out, there were members of the congregation who were pro-terrorism, and these alone were the ones targeted. The FBI and the informant specifically targeted only those who were actively involved in terrorism. Your congregation happened to be the one the terrorists chose to associate with. Your calling the FBI on him was exactly what you needed to do, and he needed to get involved with the terrorists in order to do his job. Perhaps what your congregation needs to realize is that Mr. Griffin was knowingly risking his life so that your congregation CAN go on unhindered, so that you can practice your religion freely.

The FBI was NOT on any fishing expedition, they already knew that activites against the law and your religion were present in your congregation. Your congregation needs to accept that it was the terrorists that brought the FBI to your mosque in the first place. It was the terrorists, and not the FBI, that desecrated your religion. It was the FBI that allowed your religion to be practiced freely once again. Mr. Griffin did what your own congregation did not. He acted on what you only preached. Mr. Griffin did not need your lectures on the true picture of Islam. He already knew that, or he would not have come in the first place. He needed to make himself known to the terrorists as someone who was pro-terorist or he could not have been accepted into the group. Everything you saw was a well planned deliberate ACTING JOB executed by a highly trained professional. His viewpoint was exactly the opposite or he wouldn't even consider doing this highly dangerous work.

The FBI works against groups that have proven themselves dangerous beyond a reasonable doubt. They don't 'deem' some group dangerous without an established record by the group that it is, in fact, dangerous. They don't target any one religious or ethnic group, either. They go after the 'bad guys' regardless of race or religion. At the moment, unfortunately for Islam, terrorists are using your religion as their current source of recruitment.

Gairzo asks a good question, what terror are we facing now? Since 9/11 we have the DC snipers killing a few and I think one gunman by CIA headquarters. In the meantime we have 430,000 deaths a year from smokling, 18,000 a year from drunk drivers, etc. You're more likely to get struck by lightning, or winning the lottery, than geting killed by terrorists. Prohibition and the 30s gangsters were more dangerous than today's Muslim terrorist. We survived the KKK and Mafia in the 50-60s, drug wars and race riots in the 60-70s, then Jim Jones and David Koresh. Compared to most of these groups today's Muslim terrorists are a bunch of bungling amateurs. The worst the terrorists did was to take a building with over 70,000 people captive, unarmed, and unaware, and managed to kill UNDER 5% of them with TWO huge flying bombs. And this was a plot organized over years and executed by dozens. I think the WTC terrorists would have had a hard time doing LESS damage if they had tried, short of missing Manhattan entirely. The trial transcripts indicate a very unsophisticated security system by the group for missing audio and video taping often. The facts overall indicate that terrorism is a problem, but hardly something to fear. Much of that safety is due to the work of the FBI and people willing to be informants. Anyone who fears terrorists to any extent in this country is unjustified unless they are part of the group itself or part of the FBI investigatons. You are much, much safer driving through a Muslim neighborhood than you are driving past the local bar.

For the sake of argument,let's "concede" that Lee's points are all accurate.

He still misses the underlying point of the article--the real terror we face as a nation.

Is our government--our fear mongering, war mongering, law breaking government--that has trampled the Constitution and our rights, allowed to spy on groups, associations, organizations that it THINKS might bring harm to the "homeland"?

If you answer yes, you aren't afraid of terror, you welcome it.

The true terror we face is an administration drunk with power. Congress people so frozen in the "I might be branded soft on terror" headlights they didn't even read the most terrifying bill ever legislated--the Patriot Act..

Think about this when you blindly okay Bush's Fascism:

Right now after getting wind of this "anti-American" posting--even only on my neighbor's accusation-- Bush's SS can listen to my phone calls, track my internet communication., search my home without a warrant. I can be arrested and detained indefinitely.

That terrifies me.

After capture, I will spit in their face and call them Fascists, Whereupon Cheney can have me "renditioned" to a country to have me tortured.

That terrifies me.

It isn't that it will happen--it's that Congress has given the Fascists the power. It could happen to anyone the Fascists deem an "anti-Patriot."

That terrifies me.

As sophisticated as the 9/11 attack was, the public record shows--at least to those who read more than Bush--the incompetence, the laziness, of our government was as decisive a factor in the success of the attack as any "brilliant" planning from terrorists.

They were from Saudi Arabia. We attacked Iraq. Iran is next. We're losing Afghanistan. When the Protect America Act is passed Bush will be legally able to monitor any phone call or e-mails you send to any foreign country.

That terror is a lot more frightening than Abdul and Osama taking another 10 years to plot the destruction of America.

I like this article. It shows that the FBI is on the trail of those who would bring terror to our shores again. It also shows that infiltrating terrorist groups is a long, expensive and dangerous job for highly specialized people. It is not something that is done lightly or without good reason to start. Any Muslim group or mosque where there is no threat doesn't have to worry about FBI informants. Any Muslim group or mosque that is allowing terrorist threats to develop does have to worry about being watched, as it should be. I notice that the FBI was only looking at a very limited number of people, and even fewer were arrested.

The number of people involved show that the vast majority of Muslim people are NOT a security threat. I live in an area where white supremacists probably have as many dangerous people seriously invovled in terrorist activities. I can bet that the FBI has informants working on those groups as well, and that these people attend local churches. The area also has a large population of Muslim immigrants, including many co-workers and a couple of people with 9/11 ties. This article is nothing more than what any police department is doing to keep whatever organized crime group in their jurisdiction under watch. My favorite pancake house in the 50s was a major meeting place for the real 'Godfathers' from New York city, and I wasn't aware of its. The city police were bringing new (or maybe old) meaning to the phrase 'police protection.' Only a Pulitzer Prize winning series by the local newspaper brought an end to it.

The tactics used by the FBI here are as old and well known as police work all over the world. The target is whatever the current threat to law abiding citizens happens to be. It may be the middle eastern people now, but has been Germans in WWII, then the Italians with the Mafia, then the African Americans and Latinos with drugs. Each time the threat was real and the group was centered in one or two ethnic areas. The police are doing nothing more than looking where the biggest threat appears to be, nothing more than police have been doing since the start of civilization. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the FBI has NOT forgotten Oklahoma City, or Waco, or Jonestown along with 9/11. Christianity has its share of hate groups.The FBI surely remembers that these groups used the Christian church just like the terrorists here use Muslim mosques. The FBI is an equal opportunity investigator, and know that terrorist groups have found religion a breeding ground for recruits since terrorism started.

The article only published what is part of the public record when it comes to names and investigation techniques. You can get more detail on any TV police series than you got out of this article.

It was the agressive tactics of the FBI back in the 60's that destroyed the Black Panther's the Weather Underground et al who preached anarchy and the violent overthrow of the American government. The threat is no less real today with Muslims and their violent religion that preaches death to the infidels. Their mosques are a breeding ground for subversive activity that if left unchecked will allow our enemies to carry out their diabolicial machinations to the detriment of our national security. Its a thin blue line that keeps this country safe from those who would do us harm. BRAVO ZULU FBI.

This article is pure fear mongring. It is way far from the minimum objectivity supposed to be in articles published at a magazine like Newsweek. It gives the impression as if there are all Muslim Americans are non patriotic, bad, and conspiratory. For the sake of neutrality, it should at least mentioned all the facts, so that the reader ends up with an objective story. It failed to state that there are tens of thousands of Muslim Americans serving in our military, risking their lives to defend the stars and stripes. It failed to mention the millions of law abiding Muslim Americans conributing with excellence to America's properity and well being. It failed to state the standpoint of Muslim American organizations, of all spectrum, not only categorically rejecting terrorism, but working hard to erradicate all sorts of terrorism. It failed to mention the many many things (conferences, programs, workshops, bodies, you name it) that the Muslim Americans did to work hand in hand with their fellow American citizens to defend our country and its value. It failed to state the many other terrorists who are of all kinds of faiths, races, and origins. Terrorism does not have a faith. Open up history books and you'll read about terrorists of all faiths, races, colors and origins. it does nothing to do with their faith or race or whatever. I am an American, I am a Muslim, I am for our troops, I pledge full alegiance for the stars and the stripes, and so are the millions of other American Muslims. When I read these kind of fear mongring, profiling articles, it reminds of of the same discrimination that we (the west) did against so many other faiths/races: Jews, Blacks, native Americans, Japanese, and the list goes on. It is time to learn from the mistakes of history and be one nation again. It is only if we are united that we can defy the challenges that our country is facing. Let open up our constitution and read again: "WE THE PEOPLE!"

The FBI would be negligent if it didn't monitor Muslim groups in light of the fact that our enemies justify their attacks on Islamic fundamentals.

More horsenbull from Newsweek. First you name names and now the whole world knows what went on.

Secondly you disclose tactics and therefore put people on alert as to what may or may not be used agaisnt them.

thirdly yopu allow you loose lips to sink other ships.

After all if these men were violent and wanted to harm people here or abroad no religion would condone their being arrested and put in jail for long terms.

Sorry for the double post.

This doesn't sound any different than having informants infiltrate the Mafia, the KKK, or any number of drug cartels. And despite some of their failings, the FBI has a reputation for rock-solid behavior when it comes to obtaining evidence, and convictions, using these tactics. We applaud when the FBI arrests and convicts KKK lynchers, mob bosses, and drug lords - why is this any different?

I'm all for preserving civil liberties, but it's tough to argue that these aren't the bad guys, and it's even tougher to argue that their civil rights were violated.

RE: Posted By: PDAY9227@BELLSOUTH.NET @ 07/03/2008 10:07:15 PM: "...all terriost are Musliem Now aren't they."
Actually, no. It just depends which side you're on as to how you see it. Case in point: the treatment of the native inhabitants of what is now the USA by those who came from abroad to settle here. Their land was invaded, many were killed or whole tribes moved off to some other area (the Delaware nation ended up in Canada, for instance, thanks to the US military), etc. etc. Anther case in point: the Palestinians who have lived on and farmed the land that is now called the state of Israel for generations have been and continue to be terrorized by that Zionist-formed state, the majority of whose citizens and their ancestors going back generations had never set foot on that soil. Was there or is there retaliation in both cases? Yes. Just as we are retaliating against those who came to our shores to take away our freedoms on 9/11. It's all in what side you're on as to how you perceive the events.