Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau's more ethically murky practices
Paul Harris in Irvine, California
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2012
Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI
handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his
undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away
from recording their pillow talk.
"They said, if it would enhance
the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did," Monteilh told the
Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent
on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.
It
is an astonishing admission that goes to the heart of the intelligence
surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11.
While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend
America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted
they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group
as suspicious...
Read Full Article
About Me
- Hussam Ayloush
- Hussam has been a lifelong human rights activist who is passionate about promoting democratic societies, in the US and worldwide, in which all people, including immigrants, workers, minorities, and the poor enjoy freedom, justice, economic justice, respect, and equality. Mr. Ayloush frequently lectures on Islam, media relations, civil rights, hate crimes and international affairs. He has consistently appeared in local, national, and international media. Full biography at: http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2006/08/biography-of-hussam-ayloush.html
Showing posts with label monteilh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monteilh. Show all posts
Monday, April 09, 2012
FBI Infiltrator Who Spied on Muslims Reveals Techniques
RT, 4/6/2012 -- While the FBI insists they are acting to defend the US from potential terrorist attacks, a former informant says it treats an entire religious group as suspicious. He told RT about some of the bureau's ethically murky practices.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Meet the FBI's new arsenal in recruiting informants: Operation Flex for Sex
The recent embarrassing fiasco by the FBI in Irvine reveals more than just a violation of the sanctity of peaceful mosques or an attempt to entrap law-abiding young Muslims into extremist and violent acts. The exposed "Operation Flex" indicates that the local FBI official overseeing the agent provocateur authorized the use of sexual encounters with Muslim women to shame them into becoming informants, as charged by the former agent provocateur Monteilh.
This is a serious charge by Monteilh and, sadly, the Obama administration decided to deny the American public access to the truth about what happened.
The real name for this operation should have been: "Operation Flex for Sex"
----
Want to Sue the FBI for Spying on Your Mosque? Sorry, That's Secret.
Obama, once a critic of the state secrets doctrine, has invoked it repeatedly. But critics say his latest use of Bush's favorite get-out-of-court-free card is different.
—By Hamed Aleaziz
Mon Aug. 8, 2011
The state secrets privilege—perhaps the most powerful weapon in the government's legal arsenal—has a complicated history. For years, Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, accused the Bush administration of overusing of the privilege, which allows the government to quash cases that involve national security before a court even hears evidence. Then, after Obama took office, his Justice Department used this get-out-of-court-free card repeatedly.
Last week, the DOJ invoked the state secrets privilege yet again. But this case, civil liberties groups say, is different.
Most of the post-9/11 cases that the government has killed with the state secrets privilege have either involved foreign-born terrorist suspects or the government's actions abroad. The case the Obama administration tried to quash last week doesn't explicitly involve either. The case in question, which was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), focuses squarely on domestic intelligence-gathering targeting Americans—namely the FBI's allegedly widespread use of informants and surveillance against Muslim Americans.
The FBI's involvement in the case—and the fact that it involves Americans—makes it stand out among the other state secrets cases, says Ameena Qazi, CAIR's deputy executive director. "We're surprised at the government's shocking move in invoking the state secrets doctrine in this case of all cases," Qazi says. Since this case "involves domestic intelligence-gathering on US soil against Americans," she explains, "it's an unprecedented move to our knowledge."
Advertise on MotherJones.com
The case, Fazaga v. FBI, stems from the purported actions of Craig Monteilh, a 49-year-old convicted criminal who claims that he spent 15 months in 2006 and 2007 infiltrating mosques in Orange County, California, as part of an undercover FBI investigation known as "Operation Flex." The Fazaga case, which the ACLU and CAIR filed in February 2011, claims that the FBI utilized Monteilh to "collect personal information on hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocent Muslim Americans in Southern California." The ACLU says that the FBI investigation "violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee of government neutrality toward all religions." For evidence, the two groups point to a somewhat problematic source: Monteilh.
According to Monteilh, Operation Flex did indeed involve the indiscriminate monitoring of the Southern California Muslim community with the goal of apprehending terrorists. Monteilh claims to have gone by the name Farouq al-Aziz and posed as a French Syrian man pushing a radical Islamist view on mosque-goers in Irvine, California. And after months of Monteilh's spying, Southern California Muslims did in fact call the FBI to alert them of a possible terrorist: Monteilh. The whole episode was a bit of an embarrassment for the FBI, and received national press attention after 2007, when Monteilh was imprisoned for grand theft and started talking to the press.
To CAIR's Qazi, the fact that Operation Flex allegedly took place in the United States and targeted Americans makes Fazaga v. FBI different from previous state secrets cases. "If the government were to prevail on their invocation of the state secrets doctrine it would essentially make such FBI actions non-reviewable by the courts and render any redress by our clients or by any other Americans for such activities ineffective," she says. "That's really the concerning part of what their use of the state secrets doctrine implies."
Robert Chesney, a law professor and national security law expert at University of Texas-Austin, disagrees with Qazi's assessment. "At the end of the day, the FBI is part of the intelligence community as well—it's not necessarily thought of as any different than the NSA," Chesney said. "Is the effort to prevent a bombing only national-security-related if the perpetrators have an international connection? I wouldn't hold my breath on a court accepting that logic."
Just because an international connection hasn't emerged so far in this case doesn't mean one isn't there, Chesney explains. "It certainly could be the case that the very secret at issue here has to do with a possible foreign nexus," he says.
Monteilh, for his part, claims he knows what the government might be trying to hide. Monteilh—who, for what it's worth, is a convicted felon—now says that the FBI broached the subject of his traveling abroad to act on the intelligence he gathered during Operation Flex. In one instance, Monteilh says, the FBI asked him whether he'd be interested in traveling to Pakistan to assassinate a terrorist target. Monteilh also claims that a CIA representative reviewed his progress in Arabic and Islamic training every month.
Monteilh's claims aren't the kind of thing that anyone would believe without further proof of the kind that could be obtained in a courtroom. But if the Justice Department gets its way, that kind of proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. "In asserting the state secrets privilege they have sealed the gaps of the entire Department of Justice on Operation Flex," Monteilh says. "There's one gap they can't touch—which is me."
For the alleged victims of Operation Flex, that probably seems like cold comfort.
Hamed Aleaziz is an editorial intern at Mother Jones.
This is a serious charge by Monteilh and, sadly, the Obama administration decided to deny the American public access to the truth about what happened.
The real name for this operation should have been: "Operation Flex for Sex"
----
Want to Sue the FBI for Spying on Your Mosque? Sorry, That's Secret.
Obama, once a critic of the state secrets doctrine, has invoked it repeatedly. But critics say his latest use of Bush's favorite get-out-of-court-free card is different.
—By Hamed Aleaziz
Mon Aug. 8, 2011
The state secrets privilege—perhaps the most powerful weapon in the government's legal arsenal—has a complicated history. For years, Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, accused the Bush administration of overusing of the privilege, which allows the government to quash cases that involve national security before a court even hears evidence. Then, after Obama took office, his Justice Department used this get-out-of-court-free card repeatedly.
Last week, the DOJ invoked the state secrets privilege yet again. But this case, civil liberties groups say, is different.
Most of the post-9/11 cases that the government has killed with the state secrets privilege have either involved foreign-born terrorist suspects or the government's actions abroad. The case the Obama administration tried to quash last week doesn't explicitly involve either. The case in question, which was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), focuses squarely on domestic intelligence-gathering targeting Americans—namely the FBI's allegedly widespread use of informants and surveillance against Muslim Americans.
The FBI's involvement in the case—and the fact that it involves Americans—makes it stand out among the other state secrets cases, says Ameena Qazi, CAIR's deputy executive director. "We're surprised at the government's shocking move in invoking the state secrets doctrine in this case of all cases," Qazi says. Since this case "involves domestic intelligence-gathering on US soil against Americans," she explains, "it's an unprecedented move to our knowledge."
Advertise on MotherJones.com
The case, Fazaga v. FBI, stems from the purported actions of Craig Monteilh, a 49-year-old convicted criminal who claims that he spent 15 months in 2006 and 2007 infiltrating mosques in Orange County, California, as part of an undercover FBI investigation known as "Operation Flex." The Fazaga case, which the ACLU and CAIR filed in February 2011, claims that the FBI utilized Monteilh to "collect personal information on hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocent Muslim Americans in Southern California." The ACLU says that the FBI investigation "violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee of government neutrality toward all religions." For evidence, the two groups point to a somewhat problematic source: Monteilh.
According to Monteilh, Operation Flex did indeed involve the indiscriminate monitoring of the Southern California Muslim community with the goal of apprehending terrorists. Monteilh claims to have gone by the name Farouq al-Aziz and posed as a French Syrian man pushing a radical Islamist view on mosque-goers in Irvine, California. And after months of Monteilh's spying, Southern California Muslims did in fact call the FBI to alert them of a possible terrorist: Monteilh. The whole episode was a bit of an embarrassment for the FBI, and received national press attention after 2007, when Monteilh was imprisoned for grand theft and started talking to the press.
To CAIR's Qazi, the fact that Operation Flex allegedly took place in the United States and targeted Americans makes Fazaga v. FBI different from previous state secrets cases. "If the government were to prevail on their invocation of the state secrets doctrine it would essentially make such FBI actions non-reviewable by the courts and render any redress by our clients or by any other Americans for such activities ineffective," she says. "That's really the concerning part of what their use of the state secrets doctrine implies."
Robert Chesney, a law professor and national security law expert at University of Texas-Austin, disagrees with Qazi's assessment. "At the end of the day, the FBI is part of the intelligence community as well—it's not necessarily thought of as any different than the NSA," Chesney said. "Is the effort to prevent a bombing only national-security-related if the perpetrators have an international connection? I wouldn't hold my breath on a court accepting that logic."
Just because an international connection hasn't emerged so far in this case doesn't mean one isn't there, Chesney explains. "It certainly could be the case that the very secret at issue here has to do with a possible foreign nexus," he says.
Monteilh, for his part, claims he knows what the government might be trying to hide. Monteilh—who, for what it's worth, is a convicted felon—now says that the FBI broached the subject of his traveling abroad to act on the intelligence he gathered during Operation Flex. In one instance, Monteilh says, the FBI asked him whether he'd be interested in traveling to Pakistan to assassinate a terrorist target. Monteilh also claims that a CIA representative reviewed his progress in Arabic and Islamic training every month.
Monteilh also claims that during his time as an informant, the FBI also involved him in an elaborate plan to present himself as a single, Muslim man seeking introductions to potential wives in Orange County and record his meetings with the women. Monteilh claims that before the relationships turned sexual, he approached the FBI agents on the case: "I said look guys, as you hear the recordings, if it goes to a level where there's a potential sexual encounter what do you want me to do?" According to Monteilh, the agents said to go ahead with the sexual interactions in cases where good information existed. After learning more about the women's potential "terrorist" connections abroad through Monteilh, the FBI would confront the women with recordings of their sexual encounters with Monteilh, intending to frighten them into giving the bureau actionable intelligence. "They told me that we're going to use the [Islamic] culture against the Muslim community," Monteilh says.
Monteilh's claims aren't the kind of thing that anyone would believe without further proof of the kind that could be obtained in a courtroom. But if the Justice Department gets its way, that kind of proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. "In asserting the state secrets privilege they have sealed the gaps of the entire Department of Justice on Operation Flex," Monteilh says. "There's one gap they can't touch—which is me."
For the alleged victims of Operation Flex, that probably seems like cold comfort.
Hamed Aleaziz is an editorial intern at Mother Jones.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Wajahat Ali: Time for FBI to stop spying on American Muslims (The Guardian)
Time for FBI to stop spying on American Muslims
Wajahat Ali
Wajahat Ali
The Guardian, 12/7/2010
The recent arrest of the potential Christmas tree bomber is reflective of the FBI's myopic strategy of using glitzy, expensive sting operations and dubious confidential informants to further erode Muslim American relations instead of concentrating on effective partnerships to combat radicalisation. The FBI is promoting the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old Somali-born teenager accused of attempting to detonate a car bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, as a triumph of effective law enforcement. Instead, the operation reeks of gratuitous self-adulation, requiring 6 months of time and precious expenditures to "uncover" a dummy terrorist plot wholly scripted and concocted by the FBI in the first place.
Although many argue that this was simply entrapment, evidence does indicate that Mohamud became increasingly radicalised and voluntarily continued with the FBI's fake terror plot. Regardless, CAIR attorney Zahra Billo told me, "The FBI seek out troubled people – nobody is arguing that some of these individuals aren't deeply troubled – and then enable and facilitate their aspirations. It is the FBI's job to stop operational terrorists. It is not the FBI's job to enable aspirational terrorists."
Attorney General Eric Holder recently suggested the use of such sting operations were "part of a forward-leaning way" in which law enforcement could proactively find those individuals committed to harming Americans, and a study revealed that 62% of terror prosecutions relied on confidential informants. But recent episodes suggest these tactics are neither "forward-looking", nor effective. Instead, they contribute towards a deepening, polarising wedge between law enforcement officials and some of their most important assets in the war against extremism: Muslim American communities.
Recently, a former FBI confidential informant, Craig Monteilh, humorously codenamed "Oracle", revealed he was paid $177,000 tax-free by the FBI to infiltrate and entrap a southern California Muslim community. The convicted forger, who went by "Farouk al-Aziz", was served with a restraining order by the mosque after he repeatedly pestered attendees with absurd conversations about engaging in violent jihad. Not to be deterred, the FBI heavily relied upon Oracle's superlative evidence, consisting of taped conversations, to indict an Afghan-American language instructor for allegedly making false statements regarding his ties to terrorists. Moreover, prosecutors alleged he was the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's security coordinator.
Surely, this bombshell discovery paved the way for a successful prosecution and conviction? Nearly a year and a half later, the judge agreed with the prosecutors to dismiss the case citing lack of an overseas witness and "evidentiary issues". The result is a widening distrust of the FBI, since "the community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic shura council of southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.
In the deeply flawed 2005 Lodi terror case, the FBI boasted of capturing two, alleged high-level terrorists, Hamid and Umer Hyatt – Pakistani father and son immigrants, who drove ice cream trucks for a living – based on the evidence of an unreliable Pakistani-American informant, codenamed "Wildkat". Indeed, his fact-finding lived up to his name, since he told the FBI he saw al-Qaida's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, at his Lodi, California mosque. Although the FBI [thankfully] conceded his reporting as false, they nonetheless proceeded to pay him nearly $300,000 to infiltrate the sleepy Muslim community and scour for terrorists. His taped conversations with Umer Hyatt reveal him badgering and allegedly conning Umer to make incriminating statements. Furthermore, videotapes of the Hyatts' absurd alleged "confessions", which former veteran FBI agent James Wedick Jr reviewed and concluded were a result of illegal questioning and coaxing, nonetheless convinced a jury to convict Hamid of providing material support to terrorists and making false statements to the FBI.
Aside from a miscarriage of justice, perhaps the most poisonous result of such belligerent law enforcement procedures, is a "chilling effect" on the Muslim American community, in which citizens legitimately feel fear and alienation from, and a deepening mistrust of, their government, as a result of such harassment. "Time and again, Muslims prove themselves to be good and smart when it comes to reporting potential crimes. The problem with this method of law enforcement is that strains the very relationships that are critical to effective community policing," says Billoo.
In a country where 60% of its citizens claim to not know a Muslim and 45% regard Islam as a religion that promotes violence, these self-aggrandising displays of "successful" prosecutions also contribute to the volatile climate of anti-Muslim bigotry and reactionary rhetoric. Recently, Glenn Beck delved into his hyperactive, paranoid imagination to produce the utterly baseless statistic that nearly 10% of Muslims are terrorists. Although many of Beck's audience will not question the veracity of his "facts", a comprehensive study undertaken by Duke University reveals that the number of radicalised Muslim-Americans remains very small. The study reports that "Muslim American communities have been active in preventing radicalisation… This is one reason that Muslim American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."
Thus, a Senegalese Muslim immigrant was the first to witness and report failed jihadist Faisal Shahzad's burning car in Times Square. A Muslim American community in Virginia went to local law enforcements and the FBI after discovering troubling videotapes left by five youths who allegedly went to Pakistan to commit jihad. A convert to Islam tipped off the FBI about the Christian militant group, the Hutarees, who were planning a terrorist attack on American soil. Even the Nigerian underwear bomber's own father warned British authorities that his son was radicalised and could potentially harm himself and others.
Undoubtedly, radicalisation and terrorism are real threats, which afflict all US citizens, regardless of race or religion. Perhaps the FBI should now cease treating most Muslim American citizens as potential suspects, whose privacy rights and civil liberties are now curtailed in clumsy ways – such as faulty GPS tracking devices sloppily attached on their cars. Perhaps the FBI needs to spend its considerable (taxpayer-paid-for) resources to re-engage them as partners and allies – instead of contributing to the heightened climate of fear and paranoia by employing shady informants with cheesy, comic-book codenames.
--
Wajahat Ali is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. He is a writer and attorney, whose work, The Domestic Crusaders is the first major play about Muslims living in a post 9/11 America. He is the Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com. His blog is here
Monday, December 06, 2010
The FBI's "ACORN" Moment
Adam Serwer
12/6/2010
In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.So this guy thinks he's in a car with a terrorist -- and he does the rational thing, which is pretend he's on the same page, because after all, the guy is a terrorist and might kill him -- and the FBI's response is to use this as evidence that he's willing to kill innocent people. Mentioning O'Keefe isn't a diss -- the parallels are striking -- ACORN workers filed police complaints after supposedly "playing along" on some of the videos. Niazi did what, ideally, the FBI would have wanted him to do -- and they tried to nail him anyway. Given that the government acknowledges a toxic relationship between the American Muslim community and law enforcement would be a disaster for terrorism investigations, one wonders why the FBI was busy trying to make a case against the kind of person who will drop a dime on someone they believed was a terrorist. Prosecutors ultimately dismissed the case, but it's extraordinary that it even got as far as a courtroom.
A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.
"They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,'' Ayloush recalled. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist."
Ayloush reported the FBI's own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.
This strikes me as a pretty clear indication of a systemic problem. According to Montieilh, "He was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation's largest." If that sounds like racial profiling, it is -- but the FBI's operations guide basically allows investigations into "concentrated ethnic communities" if "these locations will reasonably aid the analysis of potential threats and vulnerabilities, and, overall, assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis." That's basically a license to start snooping around on people for almost any reason. This case occurred years before the Obama administration took office, but Attorney General Eric Holder kept the expanded guidelines put in place by the last administration -- it's probably time to revisit them.
Tension grows between Muslims & FBI after informant infiltrates mosque
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:47 AM
IRVINE, CALIF. - Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.
"This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle," he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. "It's November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we're hot."
The undercover FBI informant - a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh - then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.
But the FBI's approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.
In the Irvine case, Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.
He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.
Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his "handlers" trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.
Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh's tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI - he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months - but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.
Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.
Citing Monteilh's actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.
"The community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.
"They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques," Syed said. "And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."
FBI and Justice Department officials say that the Monteilh case is not representative of their relations with the Muslim community and that they continue to work closely with Muslims in investigating violence and other hate crimes against them. Officials also credit U.S. Muslims with reporting critical information in a variety of counterterrorism cases.
The bureau "relies on the support, cooperation and trust of the communities it serves and protects," FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said, adding that agents conduct investigations "under well-defined investigative guidelines and the law, and in close coordination with the Department of Justice."
Officials said they have gone to great lengths to maintain good relationships with Muslims, including meetings hosted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Last week, FBI officials met to discuss law enforcement and other issues with predominantly Muslim Somali community members in San Diego and Minneapolis.
Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office, declined to comment on Monteilh, citing Monteilh's lawsuit. He said that in certain circumstances, if there is evidence of a crime, FBI agents may "conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque."
But he said the agency does not target people based on religion or ethnicity.
"I know there's a lot of suspicion that that's the focus, that we're looking at the mosques, monitoring who is coming and going. That's just not the case," he said.
The 'chameleon'
Monteilh's career as an informant began in 2003. Like many other informants, he was familiar with the inside of a prison cell. He had just finished a sentence for forging bank notes when local police officers he met at a gym asked him to infiltrate drug gangs and white supremacist groups for a federal-state task force.
"It was very exciting," Monteilh said in an interview with The Washington Post. "I had the ability to be a chameleon."
Monteilh, who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs 260 pounds, had worked as a prison chaplain before he was incarcerated. Married with three children, the Los Angeles native said that after he became an informant, an FBI agent on the task force sought him out. Law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about informants, said Monteilh was promoted from drug and bank robbery cases because his information was reliable and had led to convictions.
In early 2006, Monteilh said, he met with his FBI handler at a Starbucks.
"She asked if I wanted to infiltrate mosques," he said. At a follow-up session at a doughnut shop, he said, his new handler told him that "Islam is a threat to our national security."
Law enforcement sources said that the FBI trained Monteilh and that he aided an existing investigation. Monteilh, however, said he was ordered to randomly surveil and spy on Muslims to ferret out potential terrorists. Agents, he said, provided his cover: Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots. His code name was "Oracle."
Monteilh said he was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation's largest. He was told to target the Islamic Center of Irvine, he said, because it was near his home.
FBI tactics were already a sensitive issue at the Irvine mosque, a stucco, two-story building that draws as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers. With tensions rising between law enforcement and Muslims over allegations of FBI surveillance, J. Stephen Tidwell, then head of the FBI's Los Angeles office, spoke at the mosque in June 2006.
"If we're going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you," he said, according to a video of his speech. ". . . The FBI will tell you we're coming for the very reason that we don't want you to think you're being monitored. We would come only to learn."
Two months later, in August 2006, Monteilh arrived at the same mosque. He had called earlier and met with the imam. That Friday, he took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before hundreds of worshipers.
Worshipers said that in Monteilh's 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day and waiting in the parking lot before the 5 a.m. prayer. Monteilh said he was told by the FBI to take notes on who opened the mosque each day.
Worshipers said his Western clothes gave way to an Islamic robe, a white skullcap and sandals, an outfit Monteilh said was chosen by his handlers. As he grew closer to Muslims, he said, the FBI told him to date Muslim women if it gained him intelligence.
Worshipers noticed that Monteilh often left his keys around the mosque, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who speaks often at the mosque.
"It seemed strange to people," Ayloush said.
Inside the car remote on the bundle of keys was a microphone that recorded Muslims at the mosque, in their homes and at a local gym. Monteilh, who told people he was a fitness trainer, used the gym to seek out Muslim men.
"We started hearing that he was saying weird things," said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who knew Monteilh from the mosque and gym. "He would walk up to one of my friends and say, 'It's good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad."
Worshipers said Monteilh gravitated to Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan-born Arabic-language instructor who was a regular at Friday prayers.
In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.
A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.
"They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,'' Ayloush recalled. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist."
Ayloush reported the FBI's own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.
Still, Monteilh's mission was collapsing. Members of the mosque told its leaders that they were afraid of Monteilh and that he was "trying to entrap them into a mission," according to Asim Khan, the former mosque president. The mosque went to Orange County Superior Court in June 2007 and obtained a restraining order against Monteilh, court records show.
Soon afterward, Monteilh said FBI agents "told me they wanted to cut me loose." After he vowed to go public, he said, he met with three agents at the Anaheim Hilton, where an FBI supervisor threatened him with arrest.
"She said, 'If you reveal your informant status to the media, it will destroy the Muslim community's relationship with the FBI forever." Monteilh said.
The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh's allegation.
At a subsequent meeting, Monteilh said, he signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $25,000 in cash. An FBI letter to Monteilh's attorney, on file in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, says Monteilh signed the non-disclosure agreement in October 2007.
But Monteilh was arrested in December 2007 on a grand-theft charge and ended up back in jail for 16 months. In January, he sued the FBI, alleging that the bureau and Irvine police conspired to have him arrested, then allowed his informant status to become known in prison, where he was stabbed.
The FBI and police have denied the allegations, and the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. But the judge allowed Monteilh to file an amended complaint, with similar allegations, in September. The case is pending.
A case unravels
In the meantime, the case against Niazi unfolded. He was indicted in February 2009 by a federal grand jury on charges of lying about his ties to terrorists on immigration documents. In court, prosecutors said that jihadist materials were found on Niazi's computer and that he had wired money to an alleged al-Qaeda financier. Prosecutors said he is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's security coordinator. Much of the evidence was FBI testimony about Niazi's recorded conversations with an FBI informant, who sources say was Monteilh.
"Frankly, there is no amount of bail or equity in a home that can protect the citizens of this community" from Niazi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deirdre Eliot said in arguing for his detention.
Within days of Niazi's indictment, Monteilh revealed his informant status in a series of interviews with Los Angeles area media.
"I think the FBI treated me with the utmost treachery," he said in the interview with The Post.
In subsequent months, Monteilh sought out Niazi's attorneys and told them he was ordered to entrap their client.
A year and a half later, on Sept. 30, prosecutors summarily moved to dismiss the case against Niazi, and a judge agreed. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles cited the lack of an overseas witness and "evidentiary issues." Sources familiar with the decision said Monteilh's role - and his potential testimony for the defense - was also a factor.
Niazi declined to comment. His attorney Chase Scolnick said he is "very pleased with the outcome. It is a just result."
In recent weeks, Monteilh said, he has been approaching Muslims at a local gym and apologizing for "disrespecting their community and religion." Monteilh, who is now unemployed, says he regrets his role in the Niazi case and was glad when the charges were dropped.
On a recent Friday, more than 200 men sat on the carpet for prayers inside the Irvine mosque, most of them in khakis or jeans. During the sermon, the imam offered some advice.
"If an FBI agent comes in and says, 'You're under arrest,'â??" he told the crowd, they should pray to Allah - and then call a lawyer.
As worshipers milled around outside, they said they support the FBI's role in fighting terrorism but feel betrayed by the infiltration of their sacred place.
"The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,'' said Kurdi, the Loyola student. "They can't have it both ways."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:47 AM
IRVINE, CALIF. - Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.
"This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle," he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. "It's November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we're hot."
The undercover FBI informant - a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh - then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.
But the FBI's approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.
In the Irvine case, Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.
He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.
Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his "handlers" trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.
Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh's tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI - he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months - but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.
Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.
Citing Monteilh's actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.
"The community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.
"They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques," Syed said. "And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."
FBI and Justice Department officials say that the Monteilh case is not representative of their relations with the Muslim community and that they continue to work closely with Muslims in investigating violence and other hate crimes against them. Officials also credit U.S. Muslims with reporting critical information in a variety of counterterrorism cases.
The bureau "relies on the support, cooperation and trust of the communities it serves and protects," FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said, adding that agents conduct investigations "under well-defined investigative guidelines and the law, and in close coordination with the Department of Justice."
Officials said they have gone to great lengths to maintain good relationships with Muslims, including meetings hosted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Last week, FBI officials met to discuss law enforcement and other issues with predominantly Muslim Somali community members in San Diego and Minneapolis.
Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office, declined to comment on Monteilh, citing Monteilh's lawsuit. He said that in certain circumstances, if there is evidence of a crime, FBI agents may "conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque."
But he said the agency does not target people based on religion or ethnicity.
"I know there's a lot of suspicion that that's the focus, that we're looking at the mosques, monitoring who is coming and going. That's just not the case," he said.
The 'chameleon'
Monteilh's career as an informant began in 2003. Like many other informants, he was familiar with the inside of a prison cell. He had just finished a sentence for forging bank notes when local police officers he met at a gym asked him to infiltrate drug gangs and white supremacist groups for a federal-state task force.
"It was very exciting," Monteilh said in an interview with The Washington Post. "I had the ability to be a chameleon."
Monteilh, who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs 260 pounds, had worked as a prison chaplain before he was incarcerated. Married with three children, the Los Angeles native said that after he became an informant, an FBI agent on the task force sought him out. Law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about informants, said Monteilh was promoted from drug and bank robbery cases because his information was reliable and had led to convictions.
In early 2006, Monteilh said, he met with his FBI handler at a Starbucks.
"She asked if I wanted to infiltrate mosques," he said. At a follow-up session at a doughnut shop, he said, his new handler told him that "Islam is a threat to our national security."
Law enforcement sources said that the FBI trained Monteilh and that he aided an existing investigation. Monteilh, however, said he was ordered to randomly surveil and spy on Muslims to ferret out potential terrorists. Agents, he said, provided his cover: Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots. His code name was "Oracle."
Monteilh said he was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation's largest. He was told to target the Islamic Center of Irvine, he said, because it was near his home.
FBI tactics were already a sensitive issue at the Irvine mosque, a stucco, two-story building that draws as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers. With tensions rising between law enforcement and Muslims over allegations of FBI surveillance, J. Stephen Tidwell, then head of the FBI's Los Angeles office, spoke at the mosque in June 2006.
"If we're going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you," he said, according to a video of his speech. ". . . The FBI will tell you we're coming for the very reason that we don't want you to think you're being monitored. We would come only to learn."
Two months later, in August 2006, Monteilh arrived at the same mosque. He had called earlier and met with the imam. That Friday, he took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before hundreds of worshipers.
Worshipers said that in Monteilh's 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day and waiting in the parking lot before the 5 a.m. prayer. Monteilh said he was told by the FBI to take notes on who opened the mosque each day.
Worshipers said his Western clothes gave way to an Islamic robe, a white skullcap and sandals, an outfit Monteilh said was chosen by his handlers. As he grew closer to Muslims, he said, the FBI told him to date Muslim women if it gained him intelligence.
Worshipers noticed that Monteilh often left his keys around the mosque, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who speaks often at the mosque.
"It seemed strange to people," Ayloush said.
Inside the car remote on the bundle of keys was a microphone that recorded Muslims at the mosque, in their homes and at a local gym. Monteilh, who told people he was a fitness trainer, used the gym to seek out Muslim men.
"We started hearing that he was saying weird things," said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who knew Monteilh from the mosque and gym. "He would walk up to one of my friends and say, 'It's good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad."
Worshipers said Monteilh gravitated to Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan-born Arabic-language instructor who was a regular at Friday prayers.
In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.
A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.
"They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,'' Ayloush recalled. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist."
Ayloush reported the FBI's own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.
Still, Monteilh's mission was collapsing. Members of the mosque told its leaders that they were afraid of Monteilh and that he was "trying to entrap them into a mission," according to Asim Khan, the former mosque president. The mosque went to Orange County Superior Court in June 2007 and obtained a restraining order against Monteilh, court records show.
Soon afterward, Monteilh said FBI agents "told me they wanted to cut me loose." After he vowed to go public, he said, he met with three agents at the Anaheim Hilton, where an FBI supervisor threatened him with arrest.
"She said, 'If you reveal your informant status to the media, it will destroy the Muslim community's relationship with the FBI forever." Monteilh said.
The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh's allegation.
At a subsequent meeting, Monteilh said, he signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $25,000 in cash. An FBI letter to Monteilh's attorney, on file in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, says Monteilh signed the non-disclosure agreement in October 2007.
But Monteilh was arrested in December 2007 on a grand-theft charge and ended up back in jail for 16 months. In January, he sued the FBI, alleging that the bureau and Irvine police conspired to have him arrested, then allowed his informant status to become known in prison, where he was stabbed.
The FBI and police have denied the allegations, and the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. But the judge allowed Monteilh to file an amended complaint, with similar allegations, in September. The case is pending.
A case unravels
In the meantime, the case against Niazi unfolded. He was indicted in February 2009 by a federal grand jury on charges of lying about his ties to terrorists on immigration documents. In court, prosecutors said that jihadist materials were found on Niazi's computer and that he had wired money to an alleged al-Qaeda financier. Prosecutors said he is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's security coordinator. Much of the evidence was FBI testimony about Niazi's recorded conversations with an FBI informant, who sources say was Monteilh.
"Frankly, there is no amount of bail or equity in a home that can protect the citizens of this community" from Niazi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deirdre Eliot said in arguing for his detention.
Within days of Niazi's indictment, Monteilh revealed his informant status in a series of interviews with Los Angeles area media.
"I think the FBI treated me with the utmost treachery," he said in the interview with The Post.
In subsequent months, Monteilh sought out Niazi's attorneys and told them he was ordered to entrap their client.
A year and a half later, on Sept. 30, prosecutors summarily moved to dismiss the case against Niazi, and a judge agreed. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles cited the lack of an overseas witness and "evidentiary issues." Sources familiar with the decision said Monteilh's role - and his potential testimony for the defense - was also a factor.
Niazi declined to comment. His attorney Chase Scolnick said he is "very pleased with the outcome. It is a just result."
In recent weeks, Monteilh said, he has been approaching Muslims at a local gym and apologizing for "disrespecting their community and religion." Monteilh, who is now unemployed, says he regrets his role in the Niazi case and was glad when the charges were dropped.
On a recent Friday, more than 200 men sat on the carpet for prayers inside the Irvine mosque, most of them in khakis or jeans. During the sermon, the imam offered some advice.
"If an FBI agent comes in and says, 'You're under arrest,'â??" he told the crowd, they should pray to Allah - and then call a lawyer.
As worshipers milled around outside, they said they support the FBI's role in fighting terrorism but feel betrayed by the infiltration of their sacred place.
"The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,'' said Kurdi, the Loyola student. "They can't have it both ways."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Release terms eased for man who refused to become an FBI informant
By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ
6/11/2010
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Inside a federal courtroom nearly 16 months ago, prosecutors asked a judge to hold Ahmadullah Sais Niazi in federal prison without bail, arguing that the Tustin man had links to extremist organizations, was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Though Niazi faces immigration, not terrorism-related charges, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dierdre Eliot argued in February 2009 that Niazi had ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the Taliban. Also, Niazi's brother-in-law is believed to be a security coordinator for Osama bin Laden, according to prosecutors.
But as the date nears for Niazi's trial this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office and Niazi's defense attorney jointly request a judge to loosen the terms of Niazi's release, asking the court to lift its order keeping Niazi under house arrest. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney granted the request, allowing Niazi to leave his home under GPS monitoring and a curfew of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The U.S. Attorney office's request stands in sharp contrast to its earlier petition, which stressed Niazi's alleged Islamic-extremist views and ties. Those views were recorded by a man working as an FBI informant, prosecutors have said. Niazi is charged with lying about those ties, including two counts of perjury, one count of lying in his citizen application, one count of lying in his passport application and one count of making a false statement.
Chase Scolnick, the deputy public defender representing Niazi, said his client has been following the terms of his release. He declined to comment on the details of the case.
Craig Monteilh, an Irvine resident, has said in previous interviews he was paid by the FBI to be an informant in the case as part of an operation by the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force called "Operation Flex." Court documents and probation records sustain the claim he worked as an informant for the FBI.
Monteilh, who was convicted in 2008 for grand theft, has filed a suit against the FBI. Monteilh claims the FBI violated his civil liberties while he was working as an informant. That case is pending in court.
Monteilh, his attorney Adam Krowlikowsky and Scolnick have confirmed they have met on multiple occasions to discuss Niazi's case, but would not provide details.
During Niazi's bail hearing in February 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato cited several concerns, but agreed set bail at $500,000. Nakazato required that at least two relatives be financially responsible for Niazi's bail and that he be under electronic surveillance and house arrest.
In an order signed on June 2, Niazi's home confinement was lifted. His trial is expected to begin Aug. 31.
The case has reverberated in the county's Muslim community, as details surfaced of FBI surveillance in the area and Monteilh's alleged involvement in domestic surveillance.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in an earlier interview that Niazi, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2006, had come to him because the FBI was attempting to recruit him as an informant. Ayloush suggested the case against Niazi may have been brought in retaliation for his refusal.
Federal prosecutor Denise Willett, who signed the request to change the terms of release for Niazi, did not return calls for comment.
Contact the writer: shernandez@ocregister.com or 949-454-7361
6/11/2010
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Inside a federal courtroom nearly 16 months ago, prosecutors asked a judge to hold Ahmadullah Sais Niazi in federal prison without bail, arguing that the Tustin man had links to extremist organizations, was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Though Niazi faces immigration, not terrorism-related charges, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dierdre Eliot argued in February 2009 that Niazi had ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the Taliban. Also, Niazi's brother-in-law is believed to be a security coordinator for Osama bin Laden, according to prosecutors.
But as the date nears for Niazi's trial this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office and Niazi's defense attorney jointly request a judge to loosen the terms of Niazi's release, asking the court to lift its order keeping Niazi under house arrest. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney granted the request, allowing Niazi to leave his home under GPS monitoring and a curfew of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The U.S. Attorney office's request stands in sharp contrast to its earlier petition, which stressed Niazi's alleged Islamic-extremist views and ties. Those views were recorded by a man working as an FBI informant, prosecutors have said. Niazi is charged with lying about those ties, including two counts of perjury, one count of lying in his citizen application, one count of lying in his passport application and one count of making a false statement.
Chase Scolnick, the deputy public defender representing Niazi, said his client has been following the terms of his release. He declined to comment on the details of the case.
Craig Monteilh, an Irvine resident, has said in previous interviews he was paid by the FBI to be an informant in the case as part of an operation by the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force called "Operation Flex." Court documents and probation records sustain the claim he worked as an informant for the FBI.
Monteilh, who was convicted in 2008 for grand theft, has filed a suit against the FBI. Monteilh claims the FBI violated his civil liberties while he was working as an informant. That case is pending in court.
Monteilh, his attorney Adam Krowlikowsky and Scolnick have confirmed they have met on multiple occasions to discuss Niazi's case, but would not provide details.
During Niazi's bail hearing in February 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato cited several concerns, but agreed set bail at $500,000. Nakazato required that at least two relatives be financially responsible for Niazi's bail and that he be under electronic surveillance and house arrest.
In an order signed on June 2, Niazi's home confinement was lifted. His trial is expected to begin Aug. 31.
The case has reverberated in the county's Muslim community, as details surfaced of FBI surveillance in the area and Monteilh's alleged involvement in domestic surveillance.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in an earlier interview that Niazi, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2006, had come to him because the FBI was attempting to recruit him as an informant. Ayloush suggested the case against Niazi may have been brought in retaliation for his refusal.
Federal prosecutor Denise Willett, who signed the request to change the terms of release for Niazi, did not return calls for comment.
Contact the writer: shernandez@ocregister.com or 949-454-7361
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Informant files $10 million suit against FBI
By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ
Orange County Register
Orange County Register
1/22/2010
A man who once worked with the FBI, allegedly feeding the agency information on local mosques and Muslim communities throughout the county, has today filed a $10 million civil liberties lawsuit against the federal agency.
The suit goes into detail on work that Craig Monteilh, a convicted felon, alleges he did for the FBI while working with the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task force – much of which has been widely reported by the media since Monteilh went public with his claims in 2009. The lawsuit says Monteilh was encouraged to lie to investigators with the Irvine Police Department regarding a criminal investigation alleged to be part of an FBI drug sting operation.
After he was convicted in 2008 on charges of grand theft related to the distribution of steroids, the lawsuit says that the FBI turned its back on Monteilh – after he was identified as a snitch inside Central Men's Jail and Wasco State Prison.
"Mr. Monteilh communicated his grave concerns over the threats on his life to the FBI and asked for the FBI to arrange for protective custody, but instead he was left in general population, thereby exposed to constant danger of being killed," the suit reads.
According to the suit, on April 27, 2008 Monteilh was attacked and stabbed by a member of a white supremacist gang inside Wasco State Prison, after several criminal gangs had placed "hits" on him.
"Mr. Monteilh continues to live in fear for his life and with the mental and physical scars," according to the suit.
Officials at the FBI declined to speak about the lawsuit, citing department policy, but addressed some of the details in Monteilh's claims, saying in a written statement that, "the accusations appear to be an attempt by Mr. Monteilh to discredit law enforcement for personal gain, at the expense of the Muslim-American community."
The 2007 grand theft arrest, which Monteilh claims was done under the direction of FBI agents, was not part of any investigation conducted by the FBI, said Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the department.
GOING PUBLIC
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court, names not only the agency but singles out the head of Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Santa Ana office Barbara Walls, as well as Ron Carr, an investigator with the Irvine Police Department.
The suit alleges that Monteilh had provided agents with information about bomb-making materials being stored in a mosque, but that Walls did not act on the information for three weeks.
"Walls was embarrassed and instead of accepting responsibility for her error in judgment, called Mr. Monteilh a liar," reads the lawsuit.
According to the suit, "Walls determined she would remove Mr. Monteilh from the FBI Counterterrorism program and thereafter began to conspire with Detective Ron Carr (...) to set Mr. Monteilh up for felony prosecution and conviction."
A law enforcement official familiar with the case but asked not to be identified because they are not allowed to speak publicly about the case said that although Monteilh had provided information regarding "suspicious barrels" in a local mosque, the information was thoroughly investigated and, "no evidence was found indicating a threat from explosives."
In 2009, Monteilh filed a claim for the same amount against the FBI. In December, the claim was denied by the agency.
'OPERATION FLEX'
The FBI has neither confirmed nor denied his assertions publicly, but according to court records unsealed in December, prosecutors in Los Angeles asked to terminate his probation early at the request of the FBI because Monteilh had provided "very valuable information" in a federal prosecution.
His claims were also partially substantiated in February 2009, when an FBI agent in court said an informant had recorded a Tustin man making jihadist remarks. That man, Ahmoudullah Niazi, is facing several immigration fraud charges. Monteilh claims he was the informant who recorded Niazi.
The lawsuit goes into detail about the operation Monteilh said he participated in, details which have not been reported before.
Named "Operation Flex," Monteilh was told to take on the name Farouk-al-Aziz, but was given a code name, "Oracle," according to the suit.
"Assistant United States Attorney Dierdra Eliot gave Mr. Monteilh special permission, by and through a signed Federal document, to engage in jihadist rhetoric, including but not limited to conducting terrorist operations, possessing weapons and initiating conversations to further terrorist acts against the United States," the lawsuit states.
Eliot did not immediately return calls for comment, but Eimiller said the agency does not encourage informants, verbally or in writing, to engage in terrorist rhetoric or operations.
COMMUNITY REACTION
But such claims echo those that have been made by Muslim organizations across the country, whose leaders have said that informants planted within their communities have not weeded out violent extremists, but instead have been the very ones to push violent agendas and conversations in their communities.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Los Angeles Chapter, said it's not the use of informants that worries him, but allegations and consistent reports that informants incite violent rhetoric inside the Muslim community, and reports that agents use immigration, financial, and legal tactics to strong-arm people into becoming informants.
"We should all be informants," Ayloush said, stating that everyone in the country should report suspicious activities to law enforcement. "But they are acting like agent provocateurs."
Ayloush said it was concerning how many resources the FBI was spending on "fishing" instead of focusing efforts on legitimate leads.
Although the FBI has not commented directly on Monteilh's alleged role as an informant, or the work he says he did at the direction of FBI agents, the bureau has repeatedly issued statements denying that it racially profiles, and that agents conduct investigations only where leads take them.
Ayloush said he is not convinced, and that a vital tie between the Muslim community and the FBI remains strained.
© Copyright 2010 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.
A man who once worked with the FBI, allegedly feeding the agency information on local mosques and Muslim communities throughout the county, has today filed a $10 million civil liberties lawsuit against the federal agency.
The suit goes into detail on work that Craig Monteilh, a convicted felon, alleges he did for the FBI while working with the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task force – much of which has been widely reported by the media since Monteilh went public with his claims in 2009. The lawsuit says Monteilh was encouraged to lie to investigators with the Irvine Police Department regarding a criminal investigation alleged to be part of an FBI drug sting operation.
After he was convicted in 2008 on charges of grand theft related to the distribution of steroids, the lawsuit says that the FBI turned its back on Monteilh – after he was identified as a snitch inside Central Men's Jail and Wasco State Prison.
"Mr. Monteilh communicated his grave concerns over the threats on his life to the FBI and asked for the FBI to arrange for protective custody, but instead he was left in general population, thereby exposed to constant danger of being killed," the suit reads.
According to the suit, on April 27, 2008 Monteilh was attacked and stabbed by a member of a white supremacist gang inside Wasco State Prison, after several criminal gangs had placed "hits" on him.
"Mr. Monteilh continues to live in fear for his life and with the mental and physical scars," according to the suit.
Officials at the FBI declined to speak about the lawsuit, citing department policy, but addressed some of the details in Monteilh's claims, saying in a written statement that, "the accusations appear to be an attempt by Mr. Monteilh to discredit law enforcement for personal gain, at the expense of the Muslim-American community."
The 2007 grand theft arrest, which Monteilh claims was done under the direction of FBI agents, was not part of any investigation conducted by the FBI, said Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the department.
GOING PUBLIC
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court, names not only the agency but singles out the head of Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Santa Ana office Barbara Walls, as well as Ron Carr, an investigator with the Irvine Police Department.
The suit alleges that Monteilh had provided agents with information about bomb-making materials being stored in a mosque, but that Walls did not act on the information for three weeks.
"Walls was embarrassed and instead of accepting responsibility for her error in judgment, called Mr. Monteilh a liar," reads the lawsuit.
According to the suit, "Walls determined she would remove Mr. Monteilh from the FBI Counterterrorism program and thereafter began to conspire with Detective Ron Carr (...) to set Mr. Monteilh up for felony prosecution and conviction."
A law enforcement official familiar with the case but asked not to be identified because they are not allowed to speak publicly about the case said that although Monteilh had provided information regarding "suspicious barrels" in a local mosque, the information was thoroughly investigated and, "no evidence was found indicating a threat from explosives."
In 2009, Monteilh filed a claim for the same amount against the FBI. In December, the claim was denied by the agency.
'OPERATION FLEX'
The FBI has neither confirmed nor denied his assertions publicly, but according to court records unsealed in December, prosecutors in Los Angeles asked to terminate his probation early at the request of the FBI because Monteilh had provided "very valuable information" in a federal prosecution.
His claims were also partially substantiated in February 2009, when an FBI agent in court said an informant had recorded a Tustin man making jihadist remarks. That man, Ahmoudullah Niazi, is facing several immigration fraud charges. Monteilh claims he was the informant who recorded Niazi.
The lawsuit goes into detail about the operation Monteilh said he participated in, details which have not been reported before.
Named "Operation Flex," Monteilh was told to take on the name Farouk-al-Aziz, but was given a code name, "Oracle," according to the suit.
"Assistant United States Attorney Dierdra Eliot gave Mr. Monteilh special permission, by and through a signed Federal document, to engage in jihadist rhetoric, including but not limited to conducting terrorist operations, possessing weapons and initiating conversations to further terrorist acts against the United States," the lawsuit states.
Eliot did not immediately return calls for comment, but Eimiller said the agency does not encourage informants, verbally or in writing, to engage in terrorist rhetoric or operations.
COMMUNITY REACTION
But such claims echo those that have been made by Muslim organizations across the country, whose leaders have said that informants planted within their communities have not weeded out violent extremists, but instead have been the very ones to push violent agendas and conversations in their communities.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Los Angeles Chapter, said it's not the use of informants that worries him, but allegations and consistent reports that informants incite violent rhetoric inside the Muslim community, and reports that agents use immigration, financial, and legal tactics to strong-arm people into becoming informants.
"We should all be informants," Ayloush said, stating that everyone in the country should report suspicious activities to law enforcement. "But they are acting like agent provocateurs."
Ayloush said it was concerning how many resources the FBI was spending on "fishing" instead of focusing efforts on legitimate leads.
Although the FBI has not commented directly on Monteilh's alleged role as an informant, or the work he says he did at the direction of FBI agents, the bureau has repeatedly issued statements denying that it racially profiles, and that agents conduct investigations only where leads take them.
Ayloush said he is not convinced, and that a vital tie between the Muslim community and the FBI remains strained.
© Copyright 2010 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Breach of Trust: FBI Wants it Both Ways
New University
University of California, Irvine
by Editorial Board
Mar 09 2009
Imagine a man walks into your school, work, place of worship, community—a place you consider a home away from home. He gives you his name, origins and occupation, and assures you he is of your kind but declares he’s new. So you take him under your wing, befriend him and introduce him to your world.
But this man doesn’t appear to be the most reputable of the bunch—you brush off his criticisms of the U.S. as zeal, but soon his words take an increasingly violent turn, and you become more than a little worried. You report the not-so-favorable-man-after-all to the authorities. A few months later, you find yourself behind bars.
Turns out the guy you had earlier befriended and confided in was actually an undercover federal informant, and you were his latest victim. Good times, eh?
The times were anything but pleasant for Ahmadullah Niazi, a 34-year-old Tustin man who suffered a similar experience at the hands of Craig Monteilh. According to Monteilh, the FBI paid him sums ranging from $2,500 a month to as high as $11,200 from July 2006 to October 2007 to infiltrate several different mosques in Orange County, including the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI), which Niazi attended. Monteilh, a self-proclaimed light-skinned African-American, presented himself to members of the Irvine mosque as an immigrant of French and Syrian descent who was interested in converting to Islam, as per the agreement with the FBI, and proceeded down a trail of fabricating spirituality and forging friendships with community members. Among them was Niazi.
When Monteilh, a convicted con artist, began shifting religious discussions to those of “operations” against U.S. military targets, suggesting that he had access to weapons and, according to court documents, trying to recruit people to “join him in a terrorist plot,” community members felt threatened and the mosque obtained a restraining order against Monteilh. Niazi was the one who first approached the FBI regarding a man at ICOI who had been speaking about blowing up buildings.
Niazi reported that FBI officials later contacted him to ask him to be a paid informant. When he refused, he said they threatened to make his life “a living hell.” Niazi was arrested Feb. 20 on charges related to lying on his immigration documents, regarding a possible relative – his sister’s husband – who may have been linked to a terrorist organization.
This incident is alarming to the American Muslim community in Orange County, who had been working hard to establish and maintain good relations with the FBI, according to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and sets the already tender relationship back to square one. So was sending in an undercover informant (and possibly more) to spy on community members and instigate violent rhetoric in mosques while supposedly working diligently to develop a “partnership” with that same community on the surface really the best approach? We beg to differ.
The FBI’s choice for an informant has all the reliability of a toad. Monteilh is openly an ex-convict who was convicted of fraud and grand theft and recently served a prison sentence for swindling two women out of more than $157,000. According to Monteilh, the FBI promised to clear his record of a 2008 grand-theft conviction, so one can bet the man was more than willing to jump on the case. And by offering him a large monthly salary, they surely made themselves prone to some amount of dishonest information from a man with this track record.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “Kenneth Piernick, a former FBI counter-terrorism official who is a consultant in Virginia, said parsing out what’s true and what’s not, even from someone deemed to be a reliable informant, can be challenging. He said informants can be egotistical, manipulative and dishonest. Those who are getting paid, he said, have been known to ‘exaggerate information, or even invent it’ to keep the money flowing.”
Furthermore, Monteilh breached the trust of the FBI by coming out to confess his part as an agent provocateur, which according to him, was because the FBI neglected to remove the restraining order placed on him by the mosque, place him in a witness protection program, give him a final payment of $100,000 and grant other benefits in an exit package, all of which Monteilh says had been promised to him. These apparent violations prove just how reliable Monteilh and the information he provided most likely were.
Moreover, Monteilh’s method of obtaining information from community members was a violation and erroneous. According to the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Federal Bureau of Investigation Undercover Operations Section II.3.b, an undercover employee is prohibited from initiating or instigating any plan to commit criminal acts, unless “There is reasonable indication that the subject is engaging, has engaged, or is likely to engage in the illegal activity proposed or in similar illegal conduct; or the opportunity for illegal activity has been structured so that there is reason to believe that any persons drawn to the opportunity, or brought to it, are predisposed to engage in the contemplated illegal conduct.” Entrapment, when a government agency “implants in the mind of a person who is not otherwise disposed to commit the offense the disposition to commit the offense and then induces the commission of that offense in order to prosecute,” is to be completely avoided.
If these rules hold true, unfortunate as they are in their breaching of civil liberties in the offset, then Monteilh was quite possibly playing very much out of the rulebook in inviting people left and right to “join him in a terrorist plot.” Unless every single person who entered the mosque was a pinpointed suspect of the FBI for possible terrorist connections or a determined threat, and unless it was strongly believed that any of them would, had or was likely to engage in the illegal activity Monteilh was proposing – in this case, as a former Islamic Center president Asim Khan stated, “a 9/11-type operation” – then Monteilh was out of his limits when confronting several community members with possible terrorist schemes.
Furthermore, his behavior inherently violates the right to freedom of speech, since it assumes a passing comment or a less-than-serious response can quite possibly be taken as a declaration of guilt, especially in the hands of an unreliable informant as Monteilh.
For the most part, people appeared quite threatened by what Monteilh was declaring, and thus the restraining order was enforced and Niazi and other community members complained to the FBI that Monteilh was a possible threat. Whether or not you believe Niazi and numerous other people who claimed the FBI had threatened them to enlist as informants (or suffer the consequences), what sort of message does it send when men who have been falsely accused of having terrorist ties fulfill their patriotic duty of alerting the FBI to a possible terrorist threat, only to find that not only does the FBI ignore the report, but that they arrest these very men soon thereafter? Members of the Muslim community know too well the experience of facing suspicion from outsiders about where thier true loyalty lies, thus catapulting them outside of the realm of “Americanness.”
And was this entire operation even successful? We may never know if the FBI reaped any real benefits from this venture, but to our knowledge the man they arrested was charged largely on immigration terms; though it clouded most of the case, he wasn’t even charged with terrorism.
Thus, it appears the FBI achieved little from this months-long project; meanwhile, their breach of the unspoken contract between the Bureau and the Muslim community has led to suspicions and possibly some mistrust among its members, fearful of letting their tongues too loose among newcomers in the fear that their words may be misinterpreted as incriminating. Muslims have experienced a climate of fear due to previous FBI monitoring and their wariness has only increased, according to a board member of the Islamic Center of Norco, and other Muslim leaders testify to a decrease in mosque attendance and donations, in the fear that their money may be linked to what the FBI might deem a terrorist organization.
But more importantly, this incident has yielded to doubts about future relations with the FBI, who ironically just the Monday before Niazi’s arrest had sent a member to the MPAC, where an official stated: “Too often, we run up against a wall between law enforcement and the community — a wall based on myth and misperception of the work we do … Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts. The simple truth is that we cannot do our jobs without the trust of the American people.”
The FBI should redouble efforts to maintain honest communication with the affected Muslim community. As this incident shows, the American Muslim community, just like all other Americans, has shown it is willing to take part in its patriotic duty and inform the FBI of any suspicious or threatening activity taking place in its mosques or gatherings. Furthermore, reports from the CAIR state that the growing relationship between the FBI and Muslim community had fostered dialogue, partnerships and understanding between the two groups while decreasing any mutual suspicion; community members were more likely to report any criminal activities to the FBI and law enforcement then before. And CAIR had worked with the FBI in the past to call on certain persons of interest to turn themselves in.
Ultimately, the FBI should work to reverse the idea that they continue to view the American Muslim community in Orange County as suspect and fix the dent in their positive relationship with them, sans the undercover agents, because as MPAC’s senior advisor, Maher Hathout, put it, “People cannot be suspects and partners at the same time.”
Send comments to newuopinion@newuniversity.org. Please include your name, year and major.
University of California, Irvine
by Editorial Board
Mar 09 2009
Imagine a man walks into your school, work, place of worship, community—a place you consider a home away from home. He gives you his name, origins and occupation, and assures you he is of your kind but declares he’s new. So you take him under your wing, befriend him and introduce him to your world.
But this man doesn’t appear to be the most reputable of the bunch—you brush off his criticisms of the U.S. as zeal, but soon his words take an increasingly violent turn, and you become more than a little worried. You report the not-so-favorable-man-after-all to the authorities. A few months later, you find yourself behind bars.
Turns out the guy you had earlier befriended and confided in was actually an undercover federal informant, and you were his latest victim. Good times, eh?
The times were anything but pleasant for Ahmadullah Niazi, a 34-year-old Tustin man who suffered a similar experience at the hands of Craig Monteilh. According to Monteilh, the FBI paid him sums ranging from $2,500 a month to as high as $11,200 from July 2006 to October 2007 to infiltrate several different mosques in Orange County, including the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI), which Niazi attended. Monteilh, a self-proclaimed light-skinned African-American, presented himself to members of the Irvine mosque as an immigrant of French and Syrian descent who was interested in converting to Islam, as per the agreement with the FBI, and proceeded down a trail of fabricating spirituality and forging friendships with community members. Among them was Niazi.
When Monteilh, a convicted con artist, began shifting religious discussions to those of “operations” against U.S. military targets, suggesting that he had access to weapons and, according to court documents, trying to recruit people to “join him in a terrorist plot,” community members felt threatened and the mosque obtained a restraining order against Monteilh. Niazi was the one who first approached the FBI regarding a man at ICOI who had been speaking about blowing up buildings.
Niazi reported that FBI officials later contacted him to ask him to be a paid informant. When he refused, he said they threatened to make his life “a living hell.” Niazi was arrested Feb. 20 on charges related to lying on his immigration documents, regarding a possible relative – his sister’s husband – who may have been linked to a terrorist organization.
This incident is alarming to the American Muslim community in Orange County, who had been working hard to establish and maintain good relations with the FBI, according to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and sets the already tender relationship back to square one. So was sending in an undercover informant (and possibly more) to spy on community members and instigate violent rhetoric in mosques while supposedly working diligently to develop a “partnership” with that same community on the surface really the best approach? We beg to differ.
The FBI’s choice for an informant has all the reliability of a toad. Monteilh is openly an ex-convict who was convicted of fraud and grand theft and recently served a prison sentence for swindling two women out of more than $157,000. According to Monteilh, the FBI promised to clear his record of a 2008 grand-theft conviction, so one can bet the man was more than willing to jump on the case. And by offering him a large monthly salary, they surely made themselves prone to some amount of dishonest information from a man with this track record.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “Kenneth Piernick, a former FBI counter-terrorism official who is a consultant in Virginia, said parsing out what’s true and what’s not, even from someone deemed to be a reliable informant, can be challenging. He said informants can be egotistical, manipulative and dishonest. Those who are getting paid, he said, have been known to ‘exaggerate information, or even invent it’ to keep the money flowing.”
Furthermore, Monteilh breached the trust of the FBI by coming out to confess his part as an agent provocateur, which according to him, was because the FBI neglected to remove the restraining order placed on him by the mosque, place him in a witness protection program, give him a final payment of $100,000 and grant other benefits in an exit package, all of which Monteilh says had been promised to him. These apparent violations prove just how reliable Monteilh and the information he provided most likely were.
Moreover, Monteilh’s method of obtaining information from community members was a violation and erroneous. According to the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Federal Bureau of Investigation Undercover Operations Section II.3.b, an undercover employee is prohibited from initiating or instigating any plan to commit criminal acts, unless “There is reasonable indication that the subject is engaging, has engaged, or is likely to engage in the illegal activity proposed or in similar illegal conduct; or the opportunity for illegal activity has been structured so that there is reason to believe that any persons drawn to the opportunity, or brought to it, are predisposed to engage in the contemplated illegal conduct.” Entrapment, when a government agency “implants in the mind of a person who is not otherwise disposed to commit the offense the disposition to commit the offense and then induces the commission of that offense in order to prosecute,” is to be completely avoided.
If these rules hold true, unfortunate as they are in their breaching of civil liberties in the offset, then Monteilh was quite possibly playing very much out of the rulebook in inviting people left and right to “join him in a terrorist plot.” Unless every single person who entered the mosque was a pinpointed suspect of the FBI for possible terrorist connections or a determined threat, and unless it was strongly believed that any of them would, had or was likely to engage in the illegal activity Monteilh was proposing – in this case, as a former Islamic Center president Asim Khan stated, “a 9/11-type operation” – then Monteilh was out of his limits when confronting several community members with possible terrorist schemes.
Furthermore, his behavior inherently violates the right to freedom of speech, since it assumes a passing comment or a less-than-serious response can quite possibly be taken as a declaration of guilt, especially in the hands of an unreliable informant as Monteilh.
For the most part, people appeared quite threatened by what Monteilh was declaring, and thus the restraining order was enforced and Niazi and other community members complained to the FBI that Monteilh was a possible threat. Whether or not you believe Niazi and numerous other people who claimed the FBI had threatened them to enlist as informants (or suffer the consequences), what sort of message does it send when men who have been falsely accused of having terrorist ties fulfill their patriotic duty of alerting the FBI to a possible terrorist threat, only to find that not only does the FBI ignore the report, but that they arrest these very men soon thereafter? Members of the Muslim community know too well the experience of facing suspicion from outsiders about where thier true loyalty lies, thus catapulting them outside of the realm of “Americanness.”
And was this entire operation even successful? We may never know if the FBI reaped any real benefits from this venture, but to our knowledge the man they arrested was charged largely on immigration terms; though it clouded most of the case, he wasn’t even charged with terrorism.
Thus, it appears the FBI achieved little from this months-long project; meanwhile, their breach of the unspoken contract between the Bureau and the Muslim community has led to suspicions and possibly some mistrust among its members, fearful of letting their tongues too loose among newcomers in the fear that their words may be misinterpreted as incriminating. Muslims have experienced a climate of fear due to previous FBI monitoring and their wariness has only increased, according to a board member of the Islamic Center of Norco, and other Muslim leaders testify to a decrease in mosque attendance and donations, in the fear that their money may be linked to what the FBI might deem a terrorist organization.
But more importantly, this incident has yielded to doubts about future relations with the FBI, who ironically just the Monday before Niazi’s arrest had sent a member to the MPAC, where an official stated: “Too often, we run up against a wall between law enforcement and the community — a wall based on myth and misperception of the work we do … Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts. The simple truth is that we cannot do our jobs without the trust of the American people.”
The FBI should redouble efforts to maintain honest communication with the affected Muslim community. As this incident shows, the American Muslim community, just like all other Americans, has shown it is willing to take part in its patriotic duty and inform the FBI of any suspicious or threatening activity taking place in its mosques or gatherings. Furthermore, reports from the CAIR state that the growing relationship between the FBI and Muslim community had fostered dialogue, partnerships and understanding between the two groups while decreasing any mutual suspicion; community members were more likely to report any criminal activities to the FBI and law enforcement then before. And CAIR had worked with the FBI in the past to call on certain persons of interest to turn themselves in.
Ultimately, the FBI should work to reverse the idea that they continue to view the American Muslim community in Orange County as suspect and fix the dent in their positive relationship with them, sans the undercover agents, because as MPAC’s senior advisor, Maher Hathout, put it, “People cannot be suspects and partners at the same time.”
Send comments to newuopinion@newuniversity.org. Please include your name, year and major.
Monday, March 02, 2009
L.A. area Muslims say FBI surveillance has a chilling effect
From the Los Angeles TimesBy Teresa Watanabe and Paloma Esquivel
March 1, 2009
The Islamic Center of Irvine is a beige stucco building that blends into the rows of office buildings surrounding it. But last week, it became the most publicized mosque in California with disclosures that the FBI sent an informant there to spy and collect evidence of jihadist rhetoric and other allegedly extremist acts by a Tustin man who attended prayers there.
The revelations dismayed mosque members like Omar Turbi, 50, and his 27-year-old son who shares his name. After Friday prayer service last week, while hundreds of others scurried back to work, the pair stood with their backs to a wall and mulled over the news.
"It gives you a little bit of apprehension about who you trust," the elder Turbi said. "Makes you think twice about what you say; what if people misunderstand you?"
Turbi's fears were echoed by other Muslims throughout Southern California last week. Some say a climate of suspicion toward them, fueled by 9/11 and underscored by the latest disclosures of FBI surveillance, is inhibiting their freedoms of speech and faith.
According to Muslim leaders, some people are avoiding mosques, preferring to pray at home. Others are reducing donations to avoid attracting government attention or paying in cash to avoid leaving records. And some mosques have asked speakers to refrain from political messages in their sermons, such as criticism of U.S. foreign policy, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim.
"Some average Muslims interested only in praying are avoiding mosques for fear of somehow being monitored or profiled," Ayloush said. "Everybody is afraid, and it is leading to an infringement of the free practice of our religion."
The latest anxiety wave was triggered by an FBI agent's testimony last week that an informant was sent into several Orange County mosques and helped collect evidence against Ahmadullah Sais Niazi. The Afghanistan-born Niazi, 34, is scheduled for arraignment this month on charges of perjury, naturalization fraud and other acts related to lying about ties to Al Qaeda.
A man claiming to be that informant, Irvine resident Craig Monteilh, said last week in interviews and court documents that he served the FBI as a paid informant from July 2006 to October 2007 and used concealed audio and video equipment to record thousands of hours of conversations with Muslims in homes, restaurants and mosques in Irvine, Tustin, Mission Viejo and elsewhere.
But Ayloush and other Muslim leaders said that FBI scrutiny of the Muslim community -- and efforts to recruit informants -- began years ago. The FBI declined to comment.
Both Ayloush and Shakeel Syed of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella organization of 68 area mosques, said numerous Muslims have reported to them attempts by the FBI to recruit them as informers. In virtually all cases, they said, the Muslims in question had immigration and other legal problems or were applying for green cards. "We will make your problems vanish if you cooperate," Syed said the FBI told Muslims.
Suspecting widespread surveillance of their community, several American Muslim organizations and their leaders filed a Freedom of Information Act request, followed in 2007 by a lawsuit against the federal government, demanding the release of all information collected on them.
Muslims have also complained of FBI interrogations about their charitable contributions, asking why were they donating and who was receiving their money. At one Los Angeles-area mosque, nearly every donor was quizzed by the FBI, and the mosque subsequently experienced a steep decline in donations, Ayloush said.
Leaders at other mosques also say their contributions are down, although most attribute much of the decline to the recession. The Islamic Center of Corona Norco, for instance, has experienced a decline in donations of 30% to 50% in the last three to four years, which board member Rafe Husain attributed both to the economy and what he called a climate of fear. "People feel tense and uncomfortable," Husain said. "I've talked to some people who try to avoid mosque activity."
Since 9/11, federal authorities have also shut down at least six of the Muslim community's major charitable organizations, accusing them of involvement in terrorist financing. The actions have impeded Muslims from fulfilling the duties of their faith, Syed said, because charitable giving is not a voluntary act in Islam but a religious obligation.
The latest tensions have further frayed relations between the FBI and Muslims.
Since 9/11, the two sides had worked to develop a partnership, forming a Multi-Cultural Advisory Committee to meet monthly.
But the FBI unilaterally broke off ties with the American-Islamic council a few weeks ago, issuing a cryptic statement that the agency would limit contact until "certain issues" were addressed by CAIR's national headquarters in Washington.
In protest, Syed's umbrella group of Southern California mosques suspended its contacts with the FBI.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles remains active with the committee, saying it believes in engagement, but has asked for a meeting with the FBI, said the council's senior advisor, Maher Hathout.
"People cannot be suspects and partners at the same time," he said. "Unless the FBI's style changes, the partnership with the Muslim community will not be fruitful."
At the Irvine mosque, some seemed eager to offer assurances that there was nothing to fear from Muslims.
"We are against any kind of terrorist acts by any person in the community," said Assad Manley, 52, who has attended the Irvine mosque for three years. "If any of us hears anything dangerous we will inform the authorities."
Younus Mohammad, 50, said many Muslims assumed they were under surveillance -- and that did not worry them.
"We know they are coming," Mohammad said. "They will come any time they want, to listen or anything. It's not something we need to hide."
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Ex-con, Provocateur Goes Public about Infiltrating Mosques as Paid FBI Informant
Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles TimesCraig Monteilh, dressed in his undercover Islamic clothing, says he worked for the FBI as a paid informant from July 2006 to October 2007.
Man says he was informant for FBI in Orange County
He identifies himself in a court filing as having infiltrated mosques in Orange County on behalf of the agency.
By Teresa Watanabe and Scott GloverThe Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2009
As federal authorities press their case against a Tustin man accused of lying about ties to Al-Qaeda, they disclosed this week that some evidence came from an informant who infiltrated Orange County mosques and allegedly recorded the defendant discussing jihad, weapons and plans to blow up abandoned buildings.
On Wednesday, a man who claims to be that informant stepped forward, filing court documents saying that he had served as a confidential informant for the FBI from July 2006 to October 2007 to identify and thwart terrorist operations in the Orange County Islamic community.
The claim by Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old Irvine resident, that he had been sent by the FBI to infiltrate several Orange County mosques could affect the government's case against Ahmadullah Sais Niazi. His allegations highlight recurring issues about the use of informants by law enforcement agencies and have fanned long-held fears by some Muslim leaders about religious profiling.
Monteilh said in interviews that he had alerted the FBI to Niazi after meeting him at the Islamic Center of Irvine in November 2006 and spending eight months with him. Monteilh said he called himself Farouk Al-Aziz and posed as a Syrian-French American in search of his Islamic roots. Monteilh told the FBI that Niazi befriended him and began to lecture him about jihad, gave him lessons in bomb-making and discussed plots to blow up Orange County landmarks.
"He took me under his wing and began to radicalize me," Monteilh said.
The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh's allegations, which could not be independently verified. Niazi's attorney, deputy federal public defender Chase Scolnick, also declined to comment.
But an FBI agent's testimony in the case Tuesday and interviews with Muslim leaders both appeared to bolster some of Monteilh's assertions about his role in the case.
Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified at a bail hearing for Niazi that the defendant had been secretly recorded by an informant while initiating jihadist rhetoric and threatening to blow up abandoned buildings. Ropel did not name Monteilh but testified that the agency's informant was the same man Muslims had reported to the FBI as an extremist. In June 2007, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported Monteilh to the FBI as a possible terrorist, said Hussam Ayloush, the council's executive director in Anaheim.
Ayloush said he was "100% sure" that Monteilh was the informant in question and expressed anger and disappointment that the FBI would infiltrate mosques. He accused officials of trying to entrap innocent Muslims, noting that Monteilh has been convicted of grand theft and forgery in the past. He said Muslims had worked hard to develop a partnership with the FBI -- and had been assured by J. Steven Tidwell, then assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, at an Irvine forum in 2006 that their mosques were not being monitored. Now, Ayloush said, he has doubts about future relations with the FBI.
"This is religious profiling at its worst," Ayloush said about the FBI operation.
The Afghanistan-born Niazi, 34, was arrested last week and is scheduled to be arraigned next month on suspicion of perjury, naturalization fraud, misuse of a passport obtained by fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency. Niazi, who has lived in the United States since 1998 and earned citizenship five years ago, is related by marriage to Amin al-Haq, an Afghan militant who fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s with a U.S.-backed Islamic resistance force that now is branded an Al Qaeda affiliate. Niazi is accused of failing to disclose those ties during his application for citizenship.
Niazi asserted after his arrest last week that he is an innocent man who is being retaliated against by the FBI for refusing to become an informant.
In Tuesday's bail hearing, Ropel asserted that Niazi was a danger to the community who should be held without bail. But prosecutors offered no testimony regarding the specific plots Monteilh says he told the FBI that he discussed with Niazi, allegedly involving attacks on Orange County shopping centers, military installations and court buildings. Nor was there any testimony about other mosque members allegedly having been involved in those or other terrorist activities, as Monteilh maintains was the case.
Ayloush said he had received numerous complaints from Muslims in 2007 that Monteilh was aggressively promoting terrorist plots and trying to recruit others to join him. Citing such behavior and saying that it made members of the mosque feel threatened, the Islamic Center of Irvine won a temporary restraining order in June 2007 that barred Monteilh from the mosque.
Monteilh filed a petition Wednesday to lift the restraining order, saying that he wanted to clear his name from any suspicion of terrorist activity. He had not contested the original order, he said, because he had been instructed by the FBI not to testify at the hearing. But he said he was speaking out now because the FBI had allegedly violated pledges to remove the restraining order, place him in a witness protection program, give him a final payment of $100,000 and grant other benefits in an exit package.
"Although the FBI has not fulfilled their promises, I am proud to have participated in the War on Terror," Monteilh said in the petition.
Monteilh, burly and bald, said he first began working for the FBI in late 2003 as an informant on white supremacist and narcotics cases after making connections with the Aryan Brotherhood during a prison stint for forgery. In 2006, he alleges, he agreed to infiltrate mosques.
During two weeks of training, Monteilh said in an interview with The Times, he was taught about Islam, Arabic, self-defense and weapons. He said he was outfitted with video and audio recording devices and given specific names of people to monitor. Monteilh said he also was instructed to progress slowly in his embrace of Islam to make his conversion seem natural -- wearing Western clothes initially and then eventually growing a beard and donning an Egyptian robe, shawl and head cap.
In August 2006, Monteilh said, he approached his first target: the Islamic Center of Irvine. There, he alleges, he made his declaration of the Islamic faith known as shahada and, as instructed by his FBI handlers, posed as a serious student of Islam.
Several Muslims began to embrace him, he told the FBI, and by December he was approached by Niazi. The pair dined at an Islamic Chinese restaurant in Anaheim and hit it off after Monteilh pledged that he would do everything he could to protect Muslims from harm by infidels. He described Niazi as highly intelligent, devout, resourceful and scholarly, with a temperate mien overlaying the passion of his cause.
In an interview, Monteilh alleged that he told the FBI that Niazi told him that he had been one of 200 people who greeted Osama Bin Laden in 1996 when he took refuge in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan. Niazi called Bin Laden an "angel," Monteilh said -- an assertion that FBI Agent Ropel repeated this week as information gleaned from the agency's informant. Ropel testified Tuesday that Niazi told the informant that it was his "duty to engage in violent jihad."
Over a year, Monteilh further related in an interview, the FBI paid him sums ranging from $2,500 a month to as high as $11,200.
Monteilh said he was cut loose as an informant in fall 2007 because members of the mosque he infiltrated began to suspect that he was working with the FBI.
Kenneth Piernick, a former FBI counter-terrorism official who is a consultant in Virginia, said parsing out what's true and what's not, even from someone deemed to be a reliable informant, can be challenging.
"You don't go talk to choirboys to get information on thugs," said Piernick, who retired from the bureau in 2003.
He said informants can be egotistical, manipulative and dishonest. Those who are getting paid, he said, have been known to "exaggerate information, or even invent it" to keep the money flowing.
Piernick said common reasons for discontinuing an informant include low-quality or unreliable information.
"In other words, he's not worth the effort," Piernick said.
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
scott.glover@latimes.com
Times staff writer Christine Hanley contributed to this report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)