The Weakest Link: The Dire Consequences of a Weak Link in the Informant Handling and Covert Operations Chain-of-Command
Michael Levine, Police Training and Trial Consultant
“Trust but verify.” –Russian proverb and motto of the KGB
Law enforcement agencies call them CIs (Cooperating Individuals, Confidential Informants, and/or Criminal Informants). Cops who use them call them stoolpigeons, stools, rats, chotas, etc. Intelligence agencies (Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA], etc.) call them “assets” or the more confusing “agents.” Whatever they are called, 99.9999% of them have one thing in common: they are traitorous information whores who betray friendships, relatives, business and/or criminal associates, nations, and even terrorist organizations. They are criminals and conmen who use their insider positions of trust to steal and barter information that can and often does destroy those who most trust them.
A good police instructor with real first-hand experience will always tell you “Never trust an informant.” A prosecutor who wants to win his case at all costs will always tell a jury “Trust this informant.” If you’re assigned to a narcotics and/or an anti-terror unit, both of which overlap mightily these days, and you believe the prosecutor, do yourself a favor and grab a transfer to the Traffic Division. You’re a danger to yourself and to your community.
I’m not going to talk about the alleged 1% of informants who risk their lives in this very dirty and dangerous game and who training manuals refer to as “good citizens” or people motivated to inform on other people as a result of “ideological motivation” mainly because in my now 44 years of training and experience encompassing the close association with more than 10,000 CIs,2 I’ve yet to meet one I would trust enough to give my home phone, except when I was stationed overseas and had no choice.
Yet, every one of the thousands of covert operations in which I have been directly or indirectly involved during my long career has depended upon the manipulation and use of CIs. Thus, as a police instructor and/or Department of Justice supervisory reviewer—as opposed to most, if not all, training that I am aware of— it made no sense to me to separate the use and/or misuse of a CI from the training of law enforcement personnel in undercover tactics. It was for this reason that, when I was asked to devise a course for the New York State Department of Justice Services, the course was entitled Undercover Operations and Informant Handling.3
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