TOO MANY: How many paid FBI operatives are “villains?”

In 2011, a group of Muslim men who became known as the “Newburgh Four” were convicted of plotting to blow up some Synagogues in New York and shoot down National Guard planes. It was a shocking plan, but sadly not all that surprising in the post-9/11 world. Last month, however, a federal judge in New York ordered them to be granted a compassionate early release after reviewing the FBI’s case that led to the men’s arrests. She described the men as “hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals,” saying that the real “villain” in the case was the paid FBI informant who lured them into the plot. She also described the FBI and the United States government as “the real coconspirator” in the case.

Well, that’s a federal judge talking, not some conspiracy theorist. Plus: “Now another convicted Muslim terrorist named Yassin Aref is seeking the same form of relief. The former Imam has spent 14 years behind bars after being convicted in an FBI sting of an alleged plot involving a stinger missile. According to his attorney, he too was the victim of a paid FBI informant with a long record of shady activities himself. And considering how the FBI has been behaving over the past few years, we should probably give some consideration to these claims. . . . If this is how the FBI recruits paid informants, it’s difficult to argue that the Bureau should be given the benefit of the doubt by default. . . . There is clearly something very wrong at the FBI and these problems have been present since well before Christopher Wray took over and apparently turned the corruption dial up to eleven. For a judge to refer to FBI informants as ‘villains’ doesn’t sound like hyperbole given everything else we’ve learned. That tag could probably be applied to some of their agents and most of the top leadership at the Bureau these days.”