Letters to the Editor
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How did the FBI "close in" on the informant?
The story presents a chain of discovery that began with a "heroin-addicted drifter pyromaniac" informant. How did the FBI identify this individual, and how did it identify the others across the country for the informant to visit with a wire? We seem to be asked to believe a contradiction here. The informant is a loser, but also a super undercover agent with excellent memory, extensive knowledge of a secretive undercover network, and the knowledge of real names behind aliases.
Perhaps the federal government correctly identified the participants in the arson, but has not been altogether complete in how it obtained all of its evidence, nor shared all of its methods or evidence with the defense. The feds admit that they see this case as terrorism, and we know that evidence-gathering for terroristic activities follows different, and fewer, rules. If it were possible to pass off a legal wiretap as the source of evidence, why reveal that the original source was from spying and the wiretap confirmed the evidence?
I'd also suggest the reverse: if the government did acquire evidence under domestic spying powers, it would have even more incentive to inflate the charges to include terrorism as a way of covering its collective ass in a changing climate if its methods were ever revealed.
Many crimes terrify people, and are meant to cause terror. But not all of these crimes fall under terrorism statutes, which give the government broad authority. Why is the government so eager to get terrorism convictions in this case when arson alone carries heavy penalties? Perhaps because it's scared of something more than ELF.