Counterinfiltration

Human Intelligence assets, otherwise known as spies and infiltrators, are a major component of state law enforcement and intelligence agencies like FBI and CIA. People's movements rely on sympathizers within regimes, and investigative journalists get scoops from inside sources.

Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is the name for the CIA's human intelligence spy network.

GNN: CIA announces_Establishment_of_the_National_Clandestine_Service

Countering Infiltration By Bad People

Infiltration is a threat, even for peaceful law-abiding citizens and groups. Counterinfiltration is important not only to safeguard against harm from potential infiltrators, but also to build trust amongst group members. Closing your eyes and hoping everyone is who they say they are does not inspire confidence or closeness amongst teammates. Sharing your background and your roots is a good way to bring a group closer together.

Background Checks

It is a good idea to check into the background of people who become newly involved in your groups. The more you can learn and confirm about their history, the more you can understand and trust them.

Infiltrating Bad People

Getting inside of an organization to gather information is often used by undercover law enforcement, political movements and investigative reporting journalists.

Infiltration Examples

OTPOR vs Milosevic

OTPOR activists convinced sympathizers within the Milosevic regime to support the resistance and inform them of the government's plans to attack OTPOR. Eventually, security forces simply refused to carry out orders to violently repress the popular movement against the crumbling regime.

Burger King vs Farmworkers Alliance

In March, a woman named Cara Schaffer contacted the Student/Farmworker Alliance, saying she was a student at Broward Community College. Her eagerness aroused suspicions, but she was allowed to join two of the group’s planning sessions. Internet searches by the alliance revealed that she was not a college student...

Crimethinc. Appendix 1: Letter to Infiltrators

"This was read at the opening ceremony of the convergence. We can only assume there was at least one federal infiltrator present this year, as there has been before. If you are an infiltrator or FBI agent, please make sure to spend some time dwelling on this."

“At last summer’s CrimethInc. convergence in Indiana, there was at least one federal infiltrator present disguised as a human being. She insinuated herself into a circle of friends and used their trust to frame them with conspiracy charges after buying them bomb-making supplies and renting them a wiretapped cabin. We can only assume that we are similarly infiltrated this summer. I would like to address the following to our infiltrator or infiltrators:

Some of the most beautiful, compassionate, socially conscious young people in North America has traveled across the country to gather here. They have come to meet like-minded friends, to exchange skills for caring for themselves and their communities, to build a struggle for justice and freedom, to fall in love and make a world conducive to falling in love. But not you. You have come, cynically, to hunt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing for young people you can entrap and ensnare. Where others see comrades, you see quarry. We are here to create; you, to destroy.

You may tell yourself that you are here to keep an eye on antisocial elements—but who is the deceitful one, lying to everyone, disguising malice as common cause? You may tell yourself that you are here to protect others from violence—but you are the only one here who has come expressly to do harm. Your employers, the FBI, have a history of murder and injustice stretching back long before the notorious COINTELPRO assault on the Black Panthers. They spied on Martin Luther King. When Earth First! activist Judi Bari was bombed, either by right wing terrorists or government agents, the FBI refused to investigate and instead tried—and failed—to frame her for bombing herself.

Anarchists, not the FBI, are the ones who oppose violence in this society. In the past twenty years of anarchist activity, the only injuries have been minor ones in cases of self-defense, in contrast to the slaughter and mayhem the US government perpetrates indiscriminately across the globe. If you really hope to protect others from violence, why aren’t you working at a rape crisis center? Do you really think anarchists pose a greater threat to people than rapists do? Or is it the threat to hierarchy, not people, that concerns you?

You may tell yourself you are nobly serving your country—but there are nobler causes to serve. Your masters want power for themselves at any expense, while we struggle for respect and coexistence among all living things. You may tell yourself that you are here to do good—but you are the one on salary; we do what we do for free, for our consciences, not for a paycheck. Essentially, you are a prostitute*; and should you have sex with your targets in order to entrap them, as other infiltrators have done, that will come as no surprise. Imagine the conscience of a person who sleeps with others not out of love or desire, not just in return for money, but in order to ruin their lives!

You must be ashamed of yourself. Think how many people in the world would be disgusted with you, if they knew what you are doing. Anyway, the gulf between us is too broad to be crossed now. The most we can ask is that you do your job badly, like a worker at McDonalds who must feed his family even though he knows his employers are destroying the rainforest, the health of their customers, and the future of all species. If one shred of humanity remains within you after a lifetime of brainwashing, please—do your job badly.

As for the rest of you, who are not infiltrators or informants—if you disapprove of paid agents coming here to endanger you and your friends, don’t do the same thing for free. Don’t speak of your involvement in illegal activities, don’t speculate as to others’ involvement—and above all, should you ever find yourself in an interrogation chamber with the ones who really hate our freedom attempting to terrorize you into helping them frame your friends, don’t cooperate, don’t sell out everything you believe for them.

Our freedom, our safety, are under our control, not theirs. Freedom is not a matter of how many fences are around us, but of abiding by our consciences in any situation. Safety is not the condition of being temporarily outside the grasp of our enemies, but of being able to trust ourselves never to deliver others into harm’s way, never to become something we despise.

The FBI, which exists to protect the interests of the most powerful, selfish, and destructive men in the world today, hopes to intimidate us out of our struggle for a better world. But we are here because we feel that the lives waiting for us in their society are unlivable, because we see that the injustices that create the foundation of their power are unacceptable, because we know that the pollution and destruction of their economy are unsustainable. There is no future for us except through change—so attacks on our freedom can only mobilize us to struggle more urgently.

Even if there are one hundred federal infiltrators here and only two human beings, those two human beings can be more powerful than the entire apparatus of the state. Find each other and do something beautiful. Thank you.”

* This was not intended to be taken as a slight by honest sex workers. The author extends the utmost respect to wage laborers in all fields, while cherishing dreams of a day when both wages and work itself are things of the past."