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Maybe FBI Has Lost Track of Who the Informants Are?

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Here are all the informants and undercover employees listed in the criminal complaint against Erick Hendricks, who was arrested for conspiring to materially support ISIL in relation to the Garland, TX attack:

  • CHS-1: a paid informant for the last year and a half with a criminal record of fraud and forgery who has not (yet?) received sentencing benefits for his cooperation; he met with Hendricks in Baltimore.
  • CHS2: a paid informant for the last 4 years with no known criminal history; he posed as someone wanting to join ISIL.
  • CHS-3: a paid informant for the last 4 and a half years with no known criminal history; Hendricks instructed CHS-3 to assess UCE-1 for recruitment.
  • CHS-4: a paid informant for the last 4 years with no known criminal history; Hendricks provided him with jihadist propaganda on social media. He also met with Hendricks in Baltimore, at a later date.
  • UCE-1: an undercover officer had conversations directly with Hendricks that mirrored those Hendricks had with a cooperating witness. UCE-1 also incited and then was present for the Garland attack.

Not mentioned at all in this narrative is the role played by Joshua Goldberg, a Jewish guy who adopted many avatars online to incite all kinds of violence, including, under the name of Australi Witness, Garland. In December Goldberg was deemed incompetent to stand trial, though in June it was decided with more treatment he might become competent enough to stand trial, so they’re going to check again in four months.

So, the cell that committed the Garland attack consisted of the two now-dead perpetrators, four informants, an undercover FBI officer, a mentally ill troll, and Hendricks.

Only now, Hendricks claims he was an informant too!

Hendricks claims to have been a paid informant of the FBI since 2009 who helped the agency identify potential terrorists. Code name: “Ahkie,” a variation of the Muslim term for “brother.”

He also claims to have been an outspoken and longtime opponent of radical Islam.

“I have publicly, privately and consistently denounced Al-Qaeda, ISIS and all extremist groups,” Hendricks said in a statement that Lisa Woods says her son dictated during a Wednesday phone call from the jail.

“I am baffled as to why the FBI (is) accusing me of terrorist ties.”

[snip]

In his statement, Hendricks says the FBI first made contact with him in 2009, when as Mustafa Abu Maryam, Hendricks was the youth coordinator of the Islamic Circle of North America Center in Alexandria, Va.

[snip]

In his jail statement, Hendricks says he was recruited in 2009 by an FBI agent named David to help identify potential terrorists. In 2010, after Hendricks had moved to Columbia, he says he worked with another FBI agent named Steve. Altogether, Hendricks claims to have developed “at least a half-dozen” cases against extremists.

Has the FBI simply lost track of who are real and who are the people it is paying to play a role? Or is it possible someone from another agency, claiming to be FBI, recruited Hendricks (don’t laugh! That’s one potential explanation for Anwar al-Awlaki’s curious ties to US law enforcement, a story that wends its way through a related mosque in VA)?

Sure, maybe Hendricks is making all this up (at the very least, it may necessitate the BoP to protect him in prison since he has now publicly claimed to be a narc). But FBI’s network of informants sure is getting confusing.

 

Tear Up Texas, Tear Up Another Encryption Claim

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Both the Intercept and the Daily Beast have reported on this eye-popping exchange from the criminal complaint charging Erick Hendricks with conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism, showing an undercover FBI employee advising one of the future Garland gunmen to “tear up Texas” in the days before the attack.

[Allegedly] Elton Simpson: Did u see that link I posted? About texas? Prob not.

UCE: [states he doesn’t have Simpson’s Twitter handle]

Simpson: [posts link to Draw Prophet Mohammed Contest

UCE: Tear up Texas.

Simpson: Bro, u don’t have to say that… U know what happened in Paris… I think … Yes or no …?

UCE: Right

Simpson: So that goes without saying … No need to be direct.

[snip]

UCE-1 subsequently traveled to Garland, Texas and was present on or about May 3, 2015, at the event.

[snip]

UCE-1 claimed to have been the “eyes” of Hendricks, to have seen Simpson and Soofi be killed, and stated that “Cops almost shot me.”

In other words, FBI had an officer onsite, scoping out the event, who was in communication with both Elton Simpson and Hendricks, the latter of whom may have been inciting a disruption (the evidence doesn’t clearly support he ordered the attack, though it is certainly possible; the complaint accuses hid of conspiring with someone DB IDed as Amir Said Abdul Rahman al-Ghazi, a cooperating witness, not the Garland shooters). Indeed, the undercover officer encouraged the attack with his “Tear up Texas.”

This raises big questions about the attack itself. But it also raises questions about a claim Jim Comey made in December 2015, when arguing about the dangers of encryption.

That morning, before one of those terrorists left and tried to commit mass murder, he exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist. We have no idea what he said, because those messages were encrypted.

That’s interesting because the affidavit provides extensive details, based in part on Amir Said Abdul Rahman Al-Ghazi’s admissions to law enforcement, and based in part on one of Simpson’s phones obtained by the FBI, how Hendricks would coach people to move back and forth from Twitter to three other “secret” (presumably encrypted) messaging apps, as well as either Tor or a VPN. Certainly, the FBI has Simpson’s side of “secret” conversations. There’s no mention of the other Garland shooter, Nadir Soofi, but the affidavit at least appears to suggest Hendricks was playing a key broker role. So any communications with him would presumably be partly mirrored in what the Garland shooters said. Certainly, the FBI has a great deal of metadata that has been useful in filling in the network its 4 informants and 1 undercover officer haven’t already filled in.

That doesn’t mean the FBI was then or has since been able to crack these 109 encrypted messages.

But the claim sounds a lot less alarming when you say, “We weren’t able to decrypt 109 social media messages though we were watching other messages in real time and had an FBI officer present at the attack.”