by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project:
(Ken Klippenstein) FBI director Kash Patel is setting in motion his own orgy of firings at the Bureau, a purge focused on people involved in the January 6 and Russiagate investigations. But when it comes to actual changes in policy that could weaken the grip of what he calls the “Deep State,” America’s top gumshoe has been silent.
Nowhere is that more evident than in how the FBI uses its informants, or confidential human sources, in fed parlance. The Bureau continues to rely upon its vast informant network, including attorneys who squeal on their own clients and members of the news media who collude with the FBI. Now, sources say, such practices will continue, bolstering the very “fake news” that Trump decries along with threats to attorney-client privilege, which the president has also lamented.
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It is not publicly known how many members of the news media and lawyers are FBI informants, with one source telling me it totals in the few hundreds each year. Whereas details about traditional informants like drug dealers occasionally end up in court records, media and attorney sources don’t testify, as another source, a former FBI informant handler, explained to me.
Here’s how the Justice Department defines a confidential human source (CHS):
“Any individual believed to be providing useful and credible information to the FBI for any authorized information collection activity, and from whom the FBI expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information in the future, and whose identity, information or relationship with the FBI warrants confidential handling.”
The recruitment of CHS’s requires approval, but members of the news media and attorneys require special approval, sometimes as high as the Attorney General. The definition of a “Privileged or Media Source,” according to the Attorney General Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources, is a CHS “who is under the obligation of a legal privilege of confidentiality or affiliated with the media.” The FBI itself makes precious few mentions of the practice publicly. A heavily redacted copy of its CHS policy manual says only that special legal consultation is required for “the operation of a Privileged CHS…”
Attorney General CHS guidelines
FBI CHS policy manual
A leaked copy of the same FBI manual, in one section classified “SECRET,” mentions “Using as a CHS an attorney, a clergyman, a physician, or a member of the news media licensed in the United States in his or her professional capacity” as one of several “sensitive circumstances.” In the case of doctors, lawyers and even clergy, the confidentiality that they often enjoy under the law (e.g. attorney-client privilege) has a loophole for situations in which the informant’s information would be “contributing” to the solution of a “serious crime” — whatever that means.
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