WEBVTT - 3. Black Identity Extremism 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:11.360 All right, okay. It is August August twenty eight, twenty 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.960 twenty apart from only four o two pm. A special 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:21.160 agent Scott Dolphroom with a special agent Byron Mitchell chs 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:27.240 for meat with Zebidias Hall. Thank you. You can hear 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:29.160 the show I put in my front pocket, right, yeah, okay, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.200 I got it. It's late afternoon on a warm day 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:37.600 in Denver, Colorado. It's drizzling outside, and Michael Adam Windeck 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.480 or the Second or Mickey as he prefers, is sitting 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.160 in the backseat of an FBI car. Two federal agents 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.600 are with him, and one of them, FBI Special Agent 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.240 Scott Dolshroom, has just handed Mickey a small hidden camera. 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.240 Mickey turns the camera to his face, shooting from an 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.440 unflattering angle below his chin. You can see Mickey's thin 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.240 red mustach and scraggly goatee that's turning gray. He's propped 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:05.920 his large sunglasses on his forehead and he's looking straight 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:10.199 down into the tiny camera lens. Mickey is not ready 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:14.400 for us close up video. Look good, yea, yeah, look canceled. 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.640 Not as handsome as that kid. Mickey points to someone 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:22.120 outside walking past the car, and then he opens the 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.959 car door to leave. All right, so you guys. The 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.800 FBI agents tell him to remember his instructions, which were 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.280 given to him before the camera started recording. Yep, I 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:40.160 got it, Thanks Mom, Thanks Dad. Mickey then walks to 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.800 his car, the Silver Hearse, and places the FBI's camera 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:55.880 on the pass in your seat, Mickey looks down toward 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.000 the camera and addresses the FBI agents who are watching 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:04.280 the live feed remotely. I got a song for you, guys. 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.040 Mickey has good reason to feel patriotic in this moment. 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:25.919 The FBI has signed him up as an informant or 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.720 in the FBI's term of art, a confidential human source, 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:34.239 and Mickey's getting paid thousands of dollars every few weeks 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:39.079 cash and Mickey He's got a very specific assignment from 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.160 his employers at the FBI, go after his new friend, 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.720 the young black activist zeb Hall, and find a way 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:49.320 to bring federal charges against him. As the song ends, 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:59.239 Mickey again looks down toward the FBI camera. America. I'm 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.280 Trevor Aaronson from Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. This is 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:35.320 Alphabet Voice, Episode three, Black Identity Extremism, So to Come 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.600 right out and say it. Mickey Windecker wasn't a badass 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.960 ANTIFA warrior after all, as activists like Zeb Hall had thought. 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.200 He was an informant, a snitch working for the FBI, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.840 which seems to go against everything Mickey claims to be right. 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.400 Remember his little life rule. I have an old biker 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.320 saying which is called fuck the three piece, the politicians, 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:01.840 the press, and the lease. It's just the way it is. 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:08.080 Fuck the three peas. Yeah, turns out that's bullshit, Fuck 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:12.000 the two peas. Maybe because this Mickey guy, he's in 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.800 bed with the police, and the cops are not only 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:21.040 helping him, they're paying him. Today, the FBI has more 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.839 than fifteen thousand registered informants, and in the summer of 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.920 twenty twenty, Mickey is one of them. That conversation you 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.360 heard in the last episode when Mickey and Zeb we're 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:36.440 talking about training at Zeb's apartment, Mickey, on his own initiative, 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.479 had secretly recorded the whole thing and delivered it to 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.120 the FBI, apparently in the hopes of getting hired on 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:45.600 as an informant. I need your help in doing this, 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.720 but obsously you're riding alone on fire. Well, here's the 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.760 day you have and that's work from a route to 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.920 is you have to decide where what you're going to do. 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:58.720 You know, I can't see her and tell you, oh, yeah, 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.800 you should totally like blow up rich neighborhoods to shoot 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.520 the white people in the neighborhoods, you know, and burned 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.000 the Federal courthouse down, and she like that that's something 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.039 I can't tell you to do it. This recording ended 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:17.120 up being Mickey's audition tape for the FBI. The official 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.640 explanation for how Mickey Windecker became an informant can be 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:25.479 found in FBI reports internal investigation reports focused on racial 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:30.320 justice demonstrators in Denver. These reports aren't public, and the 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.240 FBI didn't intend to have them out there. Maybe not. Ever, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.760 they were provided to me, along with Mickey's undercover recordings, 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:42.760 by someone who was deeply concerned about the FBI surveillance 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:48.000 and infiltration of black activist groups. According to the FBI's reports, 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:50.880 Mickey had returned to Denver after being a volunteer fighter 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.840 with the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force in Iraq that 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.719 was fighting the Islamic State or ISIS. Mickey told the 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.240 FBI and I'm quoting here from the port that he 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.320 found a sense of purpose and honor there and made 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.160 an oath to always fight against threats, both foreign and domestic. 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:14.480 War with ISIS Kurdish troops in a frontline battle with 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.200 an enemy that took their land, Mickey was among dozens 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.560 of Americans who volunteered to fight for the Peshmerga. With them, 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.239 a half dozen Americans veterans of the war in Iraq 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:30.760 back his volunteers. Once back in Denver, Mickey started participating 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.840 in the protests following George Floyd's death, and he saw 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:41.000 what was, in his view, a new domestic threat. Mickey 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.800 said he witnessed protesters damaging property and threatening violence. So 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.440 Mickey started providing information to police in the Denver area. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.040 Local police there then introduced him to the FBI as 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.720 part of something known as the Joint Terrorism Task Force, 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.719 which is a partnership between local cops and the FBI. 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.719 Every major metropolitan region United States has a Joint Terrorism 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:07.200 Task Force or JTTF. Mickey's motivation for being an informant was, 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.880 and again I'm quoting from an internal FBI report, to 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:16.000 fight terrorists, and Mickey believed that quote people who participate 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:20.360 in violent civil unrest are terrorists. So Mickey the big 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.320 bad isis Hunter just back from Iraq now has a 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:29.760 new target, racial justice protesters, whom he considers terrorists. You 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:33.560 want to know something, It wasn't just Mickey, Almost the 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:38.679 entire FBI thought this way too. More after the break, 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.720 FBI reports about Mickey's work as an informant referred to 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.200 racial justice demonstrators as anti government extremists, which is one 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:01.800 of the ideologies the FBI classifies as domestic terrorism. During 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:05.280 the Trump administration, the FBI and the Justice Department came 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.840 up with a new catch all category to define a 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.400 type of domestic terrorism from black Americans. They called it 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:16.240 black identity extremism, a new and rising form in the 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.520 FBI's view of anti government extremism. It's a great question, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.760 what is a black identity extremist? I think we're all 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.120 trying to figure that out. Nobody knows, in part because 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:31.480 it doesn't exist. This is racial justice activist Malkia Devitch Surrill, 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.160 speaking on the radio and television program Democracy Now during 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.040 the first year of the Trump administration. It's a term 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.800 fabricated by the FBI, constructed, and it has a history, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.000 I mean for a very long time, for many decades 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:50.800 in this country, probably centuries, the FBI has criminalized black descent. 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:55.280 In twenty seventeen, the FBI's counter Terrorism Division released a 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.520 twelve page intelligence report that claimed black identity extremists we're 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.679 motivated by police brutality to target law enforcement officers with 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.920 violence and even murder. The FBI's theory was that racial 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.959 justice activists had become radicalized following a police officer's fatal 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.040 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in twenty fourteen, 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.680 which sparked weeks of violent clashes between protesters and police 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.440 and brought international attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.600 Using the same tactical get up and the same weapon, 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.280 where we've come to expect an urban warfare in Iraq 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.160 and Afghanistan, police and Ferguson, Missouri once again had to 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.880 put down and head off violence in the street. The 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.240 twenty seventeen FBI report, inspired by the events in Ferguson, 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:44.200 says quote black identity extremist perceptions of police brutality against 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:49.360 African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated retaliatory lethal violence 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:53.439 against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.840 for such violence. The FBI's evidence for this theory of 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.640 rising black political violence it was pretty thin, resting on 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:03.880 a series of a half dozen crimes committed by black 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.600 Americans over a three year period that had no apparent 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:12.040 connection with one another and no unifying political ideology. It 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:17.280 talks about black activism against police violence and police racism, 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:22.959 even though it says purported violence as if they somehow 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.280 it isn't clear that that's a real thing, was a 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:31.320 sign of somebody being a black identity extremist. This is 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:35.760 Michael German, a former FBI undercover agent. German regularly testifies 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:40.320 before Congress. But FBI policies and practices, and what you 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:44.680 saw in that report was six incidents of crimes that 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.840 were unrelated to one another over a three year period. 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.800 These six people didn't know each other, the crimes weren't related. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:56.000 There was nothing similar about them but their black identity. 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.280 And that's why they called it a black identity movement. 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:04.160 That it was assuming that any black activist who was 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.400 protesting police violence and police racism was part of a 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:13.520 violent movement to overthrow the government or to kill police again. 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:15.760 This report was released just a few years before the 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.160 George Floyd protests in twenty twenty. The revelation that the 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:22.240 FBI had come up with a black identity extremism category 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.720 for domestic terrorism was met with widespread criticism and the 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.560 news media and on Capitol Hill, particularly given that Americans 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.160 at the time were seeing increasing violence from white supremacists 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.320 and other far right groups. Many have also noted the 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.880 FBI memo was dated August third, only a few days 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.160 before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:48.000 white supremacist Ku Klux Klan members and neo Nazis killed 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.600 an anti racist protester, Heather Higher and injured dozens more. 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.240 In response to the controversy that they had created, the 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:59.320 FBI came up with the term racially motivated violent extremism, 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.880 bundling to into a single category violence from both white 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:07.960 supremacists and so called black identity extremists. This new category 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:13.200 combines incidents involving white supremacists with a new category that 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:19.439 we've discussed before, called black identity extremists, and so that's 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.319 really problematic to me. In twenty nineteen, Senator Corey Booker 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:27.040 of New Jersey question the FBI Director Christopher Ray about this, 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.920 When did the FBI eliminate the white supremacist category in 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.680 favor of that racially motivated violent extremism category. One of 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.400 the points that we've tried to emphasize to our folks 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:42.920 across all of these vectors is that we only investigate violence. 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:47.240 We don't investigate extremism. We don't investigate ideology, we don't 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.960 investigate rhetoric. It doesn't matter how repugnant, how abhorrent, or 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.679 whatever it is. And so what we have tried to 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.839 do by our recategorization is make clear that it's about 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:02.840 the violence, not about the igloogy. Director Ray then disclosed 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:05.960 for the first time that the FBI had abandoned the 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:09.680 term black identity extremism. Forgive me, this is news to me. 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.360 So you do you no longer use the black identity extremism. 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.880 That's no more. That's great, that's great news. So nobody 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.720 is being surveiled or investigated on the black at any extremism. 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:25.240 We don't use We don't use that terminology anymore. We 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:29.400 don't use that terminology anymore, Ray said, But he didn't 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.200 answer the other part of Senator Booker's question, were people 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:37.680 still being surveiled and investigated is suspected of being black 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.080 identity extremists? And the answer to that question was and 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:48.160 is yes. The work of Mickey Windecker is perhaps the 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.559 clearest example of this type of investigation by the FBI. 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.800 Back in Denver, the FBI had no reason to suspect 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.600 that racial justice activists were ready to step over the 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:05.520 line toward political violence and terrorism, but the FBI, using Mickey, 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.559 started infiltrating these groups anyway, answered up dropping not so 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.880 subtle hints to anyone willing to listen. Hey, do you 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.840 want to get involved in violence? Let me know. I'm 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:20.680 your guy, Like this from Mickey in Denver. I don't 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.800 want it to be worried. I'm pressure you, like, oh yeah, 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:28.960 you should totally. You know, blow up the fucking governor's house. 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.560 It's it's it's if it's what you want to do, 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.600 then you know, I have to make sure that's what 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.280 you want to do. It sounds absurd, right, one of 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.600 these racial justice protesters is going to blow up the 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:49.280 governor's mansion. But to the FBI, this wasn't absurd. It 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:55.320 seemed possible. It seemed real. That's because inside the FBI, 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.400 agents all the way to the top saw the racial 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:04.280 justice protests as an other nine eleven waiting to happen. Yeah, 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.440 another nine eleven. In the summer of twenty twenty, as 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.560 racial justice demonstrations broke out around the country, top officials 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.520 at the FBI in Washington, DC saw the seeds of terrorism. 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:20.640 David Bowditch, the FBI's deputy director, the second in command, 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.960 sent an internal memo to his top aids that compared 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:28.160 these demonstrations to the nine eleven terrorist attacks. When nine 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:30.840 eleven occurred, our folks did not quibble, but whether there 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.520 was danger or ahead for them, Bautis wrote, they ran 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.120 head on into peril. In the memo, Bowditch described the 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:41.080 racial justice demonstrations throughout the country as a national crisis 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:47.720 whose violent protesters were highly organized. That the FBI would 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.560 see the world and these protests through a prism of 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:56.320 terrorism is perhaps understandable. In context. The nine eleven attacks 0:15:56.360 --> 0:16:00.720 transformed the FBI, and counter terrorism became the agency's top priority. 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.320 There's a concept of cognitive bias known as the law 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:09.000 of the instrument or Maslow's hammer, after the famous American 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:13.680 psychologist Abraham Maslow. He wrote in nineteen sixty six, I 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.160 suppose it is tempting if the only tool you have 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.000 is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.400 a nail. So you have this agency full of hammers, 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.560 and you have the guy at the very top, President Trump, 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.680 almost every day in speeches and on Fox News, saying 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:33.400 that there are nails all over the country just waiting 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:39.320 to be hammered. The violence and vandalism is being led 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:45.280 by Antifa and other radical left wing groups. And it 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:50.480 was also frustrating for me to see, how ably, usually 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:52.680 that's not a term that you use when you're referencing 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.840 former President Trump. This is former FBI agent Michael German again. 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:01.400 But how ably he was able to make this boogeyman 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.840 out of Antifa, you know, this concept, and how clever 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:10.080 it was that he wasn't using the full term anti fascists. Right, 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.360 If you're saying that your enemy is anti fascism, that 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:18.440 says a lot about you, right. But by using this 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.639 handle Antifa when really what he was focused on was 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:26.200 the Black Lives Matter rallies, right that it was like, okay, 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.919 I can't say black lives matter as a problem but 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.240 I think it was very clever the way they were 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:35.960 able to use that term to justify a much more 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:42.119 violent law enforcement response amid this Antifa scare. Even what 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:44.280 we knew publicly at the time about the federal government's 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.359 response to the Black Lives Matter movement was shocking. The 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.040 Justice Department charged hundreds of people with felonies and misdemeanors 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.720 for their roles in First Amendment protected demonstrations. CBS News 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.520 has confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr is encouraging US attorney's 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.320 nationwide to seek federal charges against violent protesters, even when 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.560 state charges could apply. The Department of Homeland Security deployed 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.679 agents dressed in military style uniforms and even abducted some 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.879 demonstrators off the streets. Since their arrival, Federal agents wearing 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.200 military style gear and sometimes driving unmarked bands of unleashed 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.679 tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters, and 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.080 even shot one man in the head with a non 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.919 lethal round, causing serious injury. There is no information tonight 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:32.920 on how National Guard plans were used to monitor Black 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.880 Lives Matter protests, and military spy planes were deployed above 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:41.240 cities nationwide to monitor protesters, including one over a suburb 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.480 just outside of Sacramento. But throughout this period it was 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.280 unclear how exactly the FBI, the nation's most powerful and 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:52.720 influential law enforcement agency, was responding to the racial justice demonstrations. 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.880 By the time the racial justice demonstrations broke out nationwide 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.760 in twenty twenty, the FBI, thanks to the War on Terror, 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.720 had recruited an army of informants and a warrantless mass 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:08.880 surveillance apparatus that could monitor phone calls and digital communications 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:12.760 and footprints. The FBI also created a new type of 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:17.160 investigation called an assessment, that did not require what's known 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.960 as a criminal predicate, which basically just means a reasonable 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:25.080 suspicion that a crime is occurring. With an assessment, an 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.400 FBI agent can open an investigation on just about anyone 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.719 for just about any reason. As long as the agent 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:37.040 asserts their own impression that what they're doing is designed 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.880 to protect the national security or solve crime, they're good 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:45.119 to go again. Michael German, the former FBI agent, And 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.800 with these investigations, a lot of very intrusive tools are authorized, 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:56.800 including physical surveillance and use of grand jury subpoenas to 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:01.800 get subscribe or information, but most alarm to me recruiting 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.760 and tasking informants. And so here's the FBI in the 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:11.280 summer of twenty twenty, seeing racial justice demonstrations nationwide inside 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.520 FBI headquarters in Washington. Higher ups believe some of these 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.600 demonstrators could be linked to a domestic extremist ideology they've 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:23.520 termed black identity extremism, or as federal agents now prefer 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:28.840 to say, publicly racially motivated violent extremism. All these things 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.320 seem to create a situation where the FBI could see 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:35.440 the protests not as First Amendment protected activity, but as 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:40.320 threats to national security. And that's when I heard about 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:45.720 Mickey Windecker, his silver hearse, his mountain of guns, and 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:56.879 its hidden camera more after the break. So the FBI 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.600 reports concerning Mickey Windecker's work as an informant raise a 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:05.080 lot of questions and concerns. It's clear from these reports 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:07.800 that FBI agents did not have a predicate or a 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:12.160 reasonable suspicion that any crime was occurring, nothing to justify 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:17.240 opening an investigation of any particular person in the Denver area. Instead, 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.320 all the FBI had from Mickey's information was that there 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:22.880 were protests in Denver and some of these had become 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:27.760 violent and destructive. This wasn't exactly proprietary information, of course. 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:31.080 The local news in Denver was reporting on this nearly 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.480 every day during the summer of twenty twenty. But each 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.439 of the last four days has turned into this. Tear gas, 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:42.600 pepper rounce, rocks and bottles in the air, smashed glass fires. 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.760 But that information that there were protests and some were 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.640 violent seemed to be enough for the FBI to justify 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.320 signing up Mickey as an informant and secretly placing him 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:59.399 inside Denver's racial justice movement. The FBI didn't have any 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.719 evidence to suggest someone specific was committing violence or even 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.960 was about to. Really, the only thing they had was ideology. 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.800 The FBI was concerned that racial justice protesters were using 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:17.240 heated rhetoric. Some of this talk suggesting violence, sure, but 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.199 nonetheless protected by the First Amendment. Among the speakers at 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:25.720 the Denver protests was Zebedias Hall or zeb, who Mickey 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.480 told agents had made statements such as we need to 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:32.400 burn this motherfucker down and we need to get explosives. 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:37.240 According to the FBI's internal reports. But this wasn't secret 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:41.080 squirrel information either. Zeb was known to say such things 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:43.600 in front of large crowds, and many of his acid 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.720 tongue speeches were publicly live streamed for anyone to watch, 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.040 like this one, which you can go watch on YouTube 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:58.560 right now if you want. I don't give a fuck 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.600 about the cops, zep says, standing on the steps of 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:08.240 the Colorado State Capital, because fuck them. That's why. By 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:10.439 signing up Mickey as an informant and opening up an 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.000 investigation of Denver's racial justice protests without a clear purpose, 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:18.600 the FBI creates a perverse incentive structure for Mickey. Here's 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:21.720 Michael German, the former FBI agent. My way of looking 0:23:21.800 --> 0:23:24.080 at it is I would rather have an FBI undercover 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:27.600 agent in there who at least knows what the law is, 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:31.120 and not that agents don't violate the law, but rather 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:36.000 than an informant whose reliability is much lower, whose incentives 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:39.000 are very different. Right, if Mickey wants to keep getting 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:42.240 paid by the FBI, he needs to build a criminal case, 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:46.359 no matter what it takes. They're trying to get paid, 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:49.639 and they get paid you by proving a case. And 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:52.320 if they don't prove if they come in and say, hey, 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:56.120 I was part of this protest movement and I didn't 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:59.480 see any crime, they don't stay on the payroll, all right, 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.879 So their incentive is to manufacture crime. This is a 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:07.320 systemic problem for the FBI. Informants who are working for 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:11.240 money or for leniency on criminal charges often create or 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:14.760 encourage criminal conduct. They have every incentive to do so. 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:18.359 I've asked a lot of FBI agents about this issue 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:20.800 in the past, and most have offered to me the 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:24.040 same defense. There's no other way to catch the bad guys. 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:28.560 The FBI needs these informants. In fact, there's an FBI 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:31.440 expression about informants. If you want to catch the devil, 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.960 you have to go to hell. In other words, informants 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:38.040 can't be choir boys. If you're going to infiltrate a 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:41.479 group of criminals, you need your own criminal, someone who 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:44.000 can play the part and fit seamlessly into the organization. 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:47.880 That's the business that the FBI is in, employing bad 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:51.760 guys to catch other bad guys. As a result, many, 0:24:52.040 --> 0:24:55.680 if not most, of the FBI's fifteen thousand informants are 0:24:55.680 --> 0:24:59.439 people with criminal records, sketchy pass and plenty of reasons 0:24:59.480 --> 0:25:03.000 not to be viewed is credible. The FBI knows this, 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:06.320 of course, and as a result, informants are often subjected 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:08.439 to lie detector tests to make sure they are not 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:13.040 deceiving federal agents. The FBI also has informants secretly record 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:17.479 conversations so that the government's criminal prosecution won't rest entirely 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:21.760 on the unreliable words of an unscrupulous informant. But while 0:25:21.800 --> 0:25:27.160 informants are assets for the FBI, they're also ongoing liabilities. Informants, 0:25:27.200 --> 0:25:30.239 incentivized by thousands of dollars in cash payments, have been 0:25:30.240 --> 0:25:33.120 known to spend months with targets before any recordings begin, 0:25:33.800 --> 0:25:37.280 essentially grooming them and resulting in questions of entrapment much 0:25:37.359 --> 0:25:41.080 later at trial. In addition, the FBI has to allow 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:44.480 these informants to commit crimes while in the FBI payroll. Remember, 0:25:44.800 --> 0:25:48.399 a criminal's got to do criminal things right. During a 0:25:48.480 --> 0:25:51.360 single four year period from twenty eleven to twenty fourteen, 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:54.920 the FBI permitted informants to violate the law more than 0:25:54.960 --> 0:25:58.359 twenty thousand times. And that's just the number of times 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:02.159 the FBI has explicitly permitted informants to commit crimes presumably 0:26:02.160 --> 0:26:05.080 in order to maintain their covers or further an investigation. 0:26:05.880 --> 0:26:08.760 What's not calculated and reported by the FBI is a 0:26:08.880 --> 0:26:10.880 number of times they turn a blind eye to informants 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:15.639 who break the law without permission. At this point, you 0:26:15.720 --> 0:26:19.760 might be asking, is there a limit? Are some informants 0:26:19.760 --> 0:26:23.320 crimes so awful they shouldn't be enlisted as FBI informants? 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:27.520 Or maybe you're asking, do some informants have such a 0:26:27.560 --> 0:26:30.360 long history of deception that they just can't be trusted 0:26:30.640 --> 0:26:34.600 not to lie to FBI agents. Judging by Mickey Windecker's 0:26:34.640 --> 0:26:39.880 FBI file, the answer is no, there are no limits. 0:26:42.080 --> 0:26:44.760 When they signed up Mickey as an informant, FBI agents 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:49.480 in Denver knew he had a rap sheet arrest in Colorado, Nevada, Texas, 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:53.639 and Florida. He'd been arrested for assault, sexual assault, failing 0:26:53.640 --> 0:26:57.240 to register as a sex offender, menacing, an unlawful possession 0:26:57.280 --> 0:27:01.040 of a weapon, among other charges. The FBI knew about 0:27:01.080 --> 0:27:04.040 these charges from doing a background check, a background check 0:27:04.080 --> 0:27:06.840 that FBI agents included in their files related to Mickey's 0:27:06.840 --> 0:27:09.720 work as an informant. I don't know if the FBI 0:27:09.840 --> 0:27:12.520 pulled and reviewed the actual police and court files to 0:27:12.520 --> 0:27:16.240 get the gory details about Mickey's arrest. But I did, 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:20.120 and I also found some recordings of Mickey talking about 0:27:20.160 --> 0:27:24.160 some of these incidents. In the sexual assault case, Mickey 0:27:24.240 --> 0:27:28.359 had a sexual relationship with a minor. Mickey actually talks 0:27:28.359 --> 0:27:31.320 about this in one of the videos I found. And 0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:34.720 while I was nineteen years old, I decided that there 0:27:34.800 --> 0:27:39.200 was a place called Roll of Rama. I think that's 0:27:39.200 --> 0:27:42.320 the name of the place. I met this girl. She 0:27:42.480 --> 0:27:46.240