Paying sources to infiltrate hate groups is a proven tactic that federal law enforcement has employed for years.
Southern Poverty Law Center charged with fraud and money laundering
The Department of Justice announced that it has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud and funding extremist groups.
On Tuesday afternoon, the country’s top law enforcement officials, FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanchet, announced numerous criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that has worked for decades to investigate, report on, and counter white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and other racist hate groups.
The charges center on the SPLC’s use of paid informants, who prosecutors say were given large sums of money to infiltrate some of the country’s most notorious and dangerous extremist groups. Blanche said at a press conference that the tactic “does not dismantle these groups, but rather builds up the extremism they purport to oppose by funding sources who incite racial hatred.”
“Unbeknownst to the donors, some of the donations were used to fund leaders and organizers of racist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Union,” the federal indictment against the SPLC states.
But the tactic at the center of the SPLC prosecution, paying informants to infiltrate hate groups, has also been used by federal law enforcement agencies “for decades, if not longer,” said Javed Ali, an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a former senior counterterrorism official at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
Ali said the FBI has for years paid, and is likely still paying, confidential intelligence sources across the country to gather information on extremist groups, including racist organizations like those named in Tuesday’s indictment.
“If you think about it, operations like that happen every day,” Ali said.
“They were doing well.”
The federal indictment against the SPLC alleges that the SPLC “explicitly solicited donations under the auspices that the donations would be used to assist in the ‘dismantling’ of violent extremist groups,” and that “donors were not informed that the SPLC would use a portion of their donations to pay senior officials of violent extremist groups.”
“They lied to their donor network, thousands of Americans, and used fraudulently raised funds to actually make payments to the leaders of purported violent extremist groups,” Patel said at a news conference.
The indictment describes how the SPLC has touted its success over the years, including disseminating information and documents provided by paid confidential sources in articles and newsletters.
Confidential sources paid by the FBI in the past have included “high-level leaders.”
One such source, David Gretty, spent years infiltrating anti-government militias, neo-Nazis, and biker gangs for the FBI. He told USA TODAY that he received “a lot of money” from the agency for his work, which he called dangerous and exhilarating. However, Gretty admitted that he had run into trouble while working at the agency.
“In the beginning, I was getting paid $1,000 a week, and after I did some crazy things, it went up to $2,000 a week. But I also had bonuses,” Gretty said. “But I was arrested once in a sting operation and had to pay the price.”
A 2022 USA TODAY investigation details how the FBI paid informant Joshua Caleb Sutter more than $140,000. While working for the FBI, Mr. Sutter published and sold books glorifying torture, child abuse, rape, terrorism, and mass murder, all in the name of his racist and satanic beliefs.
Sutter’s self-published book became the go-to text for the most extreme and violent white supremacists around the world, and required reading in a sinister Satanic cult that spread to several countries and influenced several known terrorists and would-be mass murderers.
In the 1990s and 2000s, he said, paid operatives like Gretty had the option of working in law enforcement or being hired by organizations like the SPLC. Operatives working for private organizations can actively “seek” information by infiltrating groups before legitimate grounds exist for an investigation, a convenient loophole for law enforcement who are ultimately forced to hand over information collected by private groups.
“I tried to work with the SPLC, but they were afraid of me,” Gretty said. “Sometimes they would hand over everything they needed to the FBI on a silver platter. They would do all the work themselves. You have to go to some pretty dark places and be with some pretty dark people.”
“They were doing well,” Gretty added of the SPLC. “This looks bad for them, but they were performing well.”
The federal indictment reveals the SPLC’s long-standing program of paying informants, alleging that they raised funds through numerous “secret” business entities established for the sole purpose of rewarding sources.
Why are paid sources used to investigate hate groups?
Pat Cotter, a former prosecutor who helped investigate and prosecute Mafia crime families in the 1990s, said paying people to take serious risks and working with private organizations that pay informants are proven ways to gain access to the inner workings of criminal and extremist organizations.
“If you want to know what’s going on in the sewers, you have to walk a lot of places,” Cotter said. “If you want to know what the Nazis are doing, you have to talk to the Nazis.”
Cotter called the SPLC’s charges “ridiculous and ridiculous.”
He said the alleged use of a fictitious entity to pay the informant makes perfect sense as it ensures that the source did not receive any money directly from the SPLC, which could be traced. To claim that the creation of such an organization constitutes fraud is a “unique, if not perverse and original theory of fraud,” Cotter said.
“The idea that people who donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center would object to some of their money going to people who have infiltrated extremist far-right groups like the Ku Klux Klan is absurd on its face,” Cotter said. “That’s stupid. It doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
The Justice Department and FBI did not respond to requests for comment.
“We are outraged by the false allegations against SPLC,” SPLC CEO Brian Fair said in a statement. “For 55 years, SPLC has fought against white supremacy and all forms of injustice, and as a beacon of hope, building a multiracial democracy where everyone can live and thrive.” “Combatting violent hate and extremist groups is one of the most dangerous jobs we do, and we believe it is also one of the most important jobs we do. Let me be clear: this program has saved lives.”
