• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

The Washington Post on Sunday reported a detailed account of an FBI spying operation gone wrong in Irvine, California. For 10 months beginning in 2006 an FBI informant went undercover as an increasingly devout Muslim, spying on congregants and recording conversations. The informant, Craig Monteilh, was dismissed from the Irvine case after the mosque obtained a restraining order against him because members feared he was a terrorist. Monteilh went public with the details of his surveillance operation after being fired, and claims he was instructed to randomly spy on individuals and trained in entrapment. The FBI denies this. However a disturbing aspect to this case is that a mosque member, Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, who pushed to report Monteilh’s violent plans to the FBI, was then labeled a terrorist by federal prosecutors. Evidence against Niazi relied heavily on the taped conversations between the informant and him, conversations that Niazi reported to mosque officials. Although the case against Niazi has been dropped, the revelation of spying has angered Muslims and Mosque officials who have worked cooperatively with the FBI since 2001 with the understanding that their communities would not be the target of covert operations. In late November the FBI touted its high-profile arrest of a young Somali-American man in Oregon as the product of a successful covert operation. The 19-year-old participated in planning a bombing operation with undercover agents. However some are skeptical that the young man would have ever taken violent action if not prompted by the FBI.

GUEST: Shahid Buttar, Executive Director Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Constitutional Lawyer, sued the FBI two years ago to for greater transparency

Find out more at www.bordc.org.

Special thanks to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee for the generous donation of their publication, “War on Terror and Constitution” booklets for use during our Winter Mini Fund Drive!