Proud Boy informant or Agent Provocateur?
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant
Extremist leader repeatedly worked undercover for investigators after his arrest in 2012, former prosecutor and court files reveal
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.
In the Miami hearing, a federal prosecutor, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.
One of the interesting things for me when reading through the Police case against the supposed Urewera Terrorist case that was leaked online at the time was that it seemed that once Police had spent millions on illegal surveillance, they placed agent provocateurs inside the activist groups to try and constantly push for increasingly violent actions.
It’s an old tactic that Police intelligence units in NZ adopted from counter Intel programs run by American law enforcement agencies.
Send in an agent to constantly promote more violent activities, infiltrate protests and start violence all so escalation can justify a violent Police response.
Finding out that the Far Right Proud Boy movement was led by a Police informant raises a lot of questions including whether or not Enrique Tarrio was in fact an agent provocateur.
If American domestic intelligence interests have included embedding agent provocateurs into protest movements to direct them into civil unrest, we have far more to fear than Trump.
The problem with Qanon and Billy TK cultists is that they pollute the conspiracy theory space so much so that real conspiracies can occur out in full sight and no one notices.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
My father died many years ago but, as a hardcore union man, assured me that New Zealand had a long tradition of state survelliance of trade unions. This supported agent provocateurs who at union meetings would suggest sabotage, physical assaults and other unlawful actvities to see who would take the bait so they could be reported to police.
Fortunately the membership always had the good sense to tell these people to shut up and have a cold shower however they did successfully do a good deal of rumour mongering to influence the public against unionism.
The police conclude that a disgruntled member of the public was so far influenced by anti-union sentiment that he, or she, bombed the Trades Hall building in 1984 killing Ernie Abbott.
This ‘disgruntled member of the public’ had access to gelignite( which is not easy), had the expertise to construct a bomb with a mercury switch that would detonate the device when moved. Further this person knew how to construct a timer so the bomb could safely be carried to the target before it armed itself ready to explode.
How many pissed off people do you know who would have all the required skills and be angry enough to go to all that time, trouble and danger?
There cannot be many such individuals, particularly in a country as small as New Zealand, but despite this the Police have never managed to even arrest anyone, let alone get a conviction.
Does it make anyone else wonder?
Was in Wellington when the trades union bombing happened. Always seemed strange that it very quickly died down. Who benefitted?
It’s a trick used by the Israeli forces. An undercover Israeli agent pretends to be a Palestinian at a peaceful demo & throws a rock. That’s all it takes. The IDF then attacks, tear-gases. arrests the ‘terrorists.’