It's (almost) always the feds

Here’s a tip: If you have some radical political views and an acquaintance reaches out, encourages you to act on your convictions, and maybe offers to introduce you to a guy who can sell you some bomb parts, don’t take him up on it. That guy’s almost definitely working for the feds.

For the past two decades, the FBI and federal prosecutors have brought case after case against would-be radicals who were ratted out by informants. They have been enormously successful in obtaining convictions in these cases, despite persistent criticisms that the FBI uses unscrupulous informants, conjures up the very plots it disrupts, and entraps defendants who have little to no ability to actually carry out a terror attack. …

Michael German, a former FBI special agent and currently a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice who worked undercover in the 1990s infiltrating white nationalist organizations and eventually resigned after filing whistleblower complaints, argues the change has been detrimental to the bureau’s mission. “The targeting is based on what people say and think and who they associate with rather than evidence of criminality,” he says. “It alters the focus of the investigation away from the individuals who are involved in criminal activity.”