Planting spies to get inside information is a tactic that’s been used by all the secret intelligence services in the world. They do it to hunt down drug lords, to infiltrate foreign governments and of course, to identify potential threats by extremist groups. And this is exactly what happened back in 2006.
Here’s the story.
Just 5 years after the September 11 attacks, the FBI was in full alert trying to gather intelligence against potential terrorist attacks. Because there were concerns about the Southern California muslim community, they decided to plant a spy in a mosque. His name was Craig Monteilh. (the article continues after the ad)
Monteilh was disguised as a radical muslim named Farouk al-Aziz who supposedly was of French Syrian origin. For 15 months, he prayed five times a day while wearing a robe with a camera hidden in one of its buttons. He also carried a set of car keys that had a secret listening device.
However, it backfired as Muslims community leaders they took out a restraining order against him and ended up reporting him to the FBI for being a potentially dangerous extremist!
Before he was reported to the FBI though, he managed to record a conversation in which he was talking with a man named Ahmadullah Niazi trying to convince him blow up a building. Niazi, agreed but as it turns out, it only did so to humor someone he regarded as a dangerous extremist. In fact, it was Niazi himself who reported the spy to the community leaders who talked to the FBI.
When the mission was abandoned, the FBI attempted to cut their ties to Monteilh.
If you like what you read, then you will definitely love this one: British Spies Were Using Semen As Invisible Ink During WWI
Main Article Photo: OC Weekly, CBC
Photoshop: I’m A Useless Info Junkie
Sources: FBI plant banned by mosque – because he was too extreme | The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: ‘There is no real hunt. It’s fixed’
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