![]() ![]() Handling informants requires a deft balance. His only motivation was to be able to vote again.” He had no wiles or guiles or anything like that. But he never received a pardon for his own, earlier drug conviction. He was willing to go the whole nine yards.”Įley helped the FBI obtain convictions against 13 people who were running the nation’s third-largest methamphetamine lab in Hog Wallow, Ky. “He bought the drugs, wore a wire several times. a really significant informant in a major drug case,” said Savage, now an agent in Portland, Ore., and president of the FBI Agents Assn. Informant Ted Eley, who helped the FBI bust a Kentucky drug operation nearly 20 years ago, had a different motivation.Īn ex-con, he hoped to be pardoned by the governor so he could regain the right to vote, recalled FBI agent Nancy Savage, who for years has taught colleagues how to develop criminal sources. Now, the man was demanding $2 million and threatening to quit if he didn’t get it. “We’d already paid him a lot of money over the years, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Smith said. “They turned the stuff on and it didn’t work,” Smith said, chuckling.Īfterward, the European businessman felt he was worth more than ever to the FBI. The foreign agents went to a government-sponsored trade show in Sofia, Bulgaria, to show off their newly acquired gear, and were embarrassed. “And we were able to alter the equipment and send them back things that didn’t work.” In one case, the foreign agents asked the businessman to help them buy sophisticated computer equipment from the U.S. Smith recalled a European businessman whom the FBI recruited in the early 1980s to help foil espionage efforts by Soviet and Eastern European agents. “Because ultimately in counterintelligence, when you get someone to be a mole, they are betraying their country. “You have to figure out why they’re talking to you,” Smith said. Rick Smith, a retired counterintelligence agent from San Francisco, said that anyone peddling information about a foreign government needs special scrutiny. Each wants something, and each works hard to build the other’s trust - and wear down the other’s defenses. They spend lots of time together, often in private. They share secrets, including the secret of their relationship. Yet the nature of the relationship between agents and their sources creates powerful temptations. The FBI has stringent rules for employing informants and is tightening those rules. ![]() ![]() And the problem is knowing how to let go of them.”įBI and congressional investigators are examining the recent scandals in Los Angeles and Boston, searching for insights into what causes some agent-informant relationships to go bad. “You hold on to a source the way you hold on to a snake,” said Steve Moore, an agent in Los Angeles. Those who trade in foreign intelligence are known as “assets.” By whatever name, they need to be handled with care, say FBI veterans. People who provide information on criminal activities are called sources or snitches. In an earlier but no less sensational case, Mark Putnam, an FBI agent in Kentucky, strangled an informant in 1989 after she threatened to expose their affair and her pregnancy. Connolly Jr., a former FBI agent in Boston, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for protecting the sort of gangsters he was supposed to put behind bars.Ĭonnolly became so close to his mob informants that he looked the other way while they committed extortion, ran bookmaking operations and allegedly killed rivals. The informant, Katrina Leung, allegedly passed classified information to the Chinese government. In April, authorities in Los Angeles arrested a Chinese American informant and alleged that she carried on affairs with two FBI counterintelligence agents who supervised her activities. ![]() And sometimes, they turn the tables, leaking state secrets to foreign governments. Sometimes, as in Varelli’s case, they mislead their handlers. Yet dealing with informants is a treacherous business. Whether investigating a terrorism conspiracy or trying to bust a burglary ring, authorities depend on insiders willing to share information. ![]()
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