During the course of researching FBI informants and terrorism sting operations, I received financial support from the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California Berkeley, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Carnegie Legal Reporting Fellowship at Syracuse University. Without the generous support of these institutions, I could not have written this book.
The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism is an outgrowth of my work as a fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California Berkeley, and for that reason, I owe thanks to Lowell Bergman, who runs the Investigative Reporting Program, for investing in my research, for his editorial guidance, and for helping me build sources within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m grateful as well to Mother Jones and editor Monika Bauerlein for devoting a magazine cover and substantial resources to publish “The Informants,” the magazine story that this book expands on, and help me build a database of terrorism prosecution since 9/11 that earned industry praise and won the prestigious Data Journalism Award. I also want to acknowledge Miami New Times editor, Chuck Strouse, who published a 2009 story I wrote about the FBI’s coercion of a South Florida imam—a story that forms the basis of Chapter 4 and ultimately inspired me to spend more than a year analyzing how the Bureau recruits informants through coercion and then uses those informants in terrorism sting operations.
I don’t suspect the transition from newspapers and magazines to books is ever comfortable and seamless one for journalists; it wasn’t for me. But having Robert Lasner of Ig Publishing on the other side of every draft gave me confidence where I otherwise would have had anxiety. He and Elizabeth Clementson of Ig Publishing have my gratitude for seeing the book that was to be written from my reporting and then helping me shape that reporting into the work you’ve read today.
The backbone of my research for this book was a close and careful analysis of the prosecutions of more than 500 terrorism defendants since September 11, 2001. This required spending months pouring through court records from federal courthouses across the country. I could not have done this laborious research were it not for Lauren Ellis, a researcher at the Investigative Reporting Program who shared my intense curiosity about the people our Justice Department describes as terrorists today. Lauren developed a familiarity with more than 500 terrorism defendants and an expertise of many of them, and I am grateful for the hundreds of hours she spent helping me gather documents and analyze Justice Department terrorism cases in a systematic way.
Other researchers helped me along the way as well. Hamed Aleaziz, a former editorial fellow at Mother Jones, was a tenacious fact-checker who skillfully challenged some of my reporting and conclusions. Alexandra Kish and Brandie Middlekauff contributed research memoranda about specific cases and helped me understand how those cases fit into the specific themes I explored in this book.
I wrote The Terror Factory while working full-time at the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, a Miami-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism about Florida and Latin America in partnership with traditional print and broadcast media. For that reason, I owe my colleagues at FCIR, including Sharon Rosenhause and Mc Nelly Torres, thanks for their support of my outside interests, including this book. Sharon deserves additional thanks for the valuable feedback she offered on drafts of The Terror Factory.
Finally, none of my research would have been possible without help and cooperation from dozens of current and former FBI agents around the country. Some talked to me on a regular basis to help me determine what was happening in the Bureau as the Justice Department brought more than 500 alleged terrorists into U.S. District Courts in the decade after 9/11. Others alerted me to specific cases or provided documents that I otherwise would have been unable to obtain. Most of these FBI officials cannot be named here. But you know who you are, and truly, you have my sincerest gratitude.