![]() ![]() He joins me today to talk about Windecker, the FBI’s infiltration, and his podcast, Alphabet Boys. Trevor now has a new 10-episode podcast called Alphabet Boys from Western Sound and iHeart podcasts. I previously had him on Deconstructed to talk about his incredible podcast American ISIS, which followed an American radical who traveled to Syria to fight with the terror group. His story and the way he was able to infiltrate the movement as an FBI informant, and how he was then able to push it in a more aggressive direction, is absolutely wild.Īaronson is an investigative journalist who covers federal law enforcement, and he has been looking into the inner workings of the FBI’s response to the 2020 racial justice movement. Windecker - or Mickey, as they called him - was an FBI informant, feeding information to the Bureau. He was able to make his way into the activists’ inner circle and eventually began helping organize protests, and he attempted to involve some of the activists in criminal activity, like a plot to assassinate the state attorney general. Windecker looked like a biker, a 40-something-year-old white guy who smoked cigars and drove a silver hearse. In Denver, during the height of the protests, a man named Michael Adam Windecker II grew close to racial justice activists. Now, thanks to new reporting by my colleague, Trevor Aaronson, we now have an answer in at least one city - and the answer is yes. But there was always this nagging question behind each provocation: Was that organic? Or were provocateurs involved? Was that guy really a Fed? RG: The protests sometimes turned violent with the escalation sometimes driven by protesters, and other times driven by law enforcement. Now, back in 2020, protests erupted in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. That evolved in the 1960s into the infamous COINTELPRO, which infiltrated and worked to undermine civil rights organizations. Edgar Hoover considered to be remotely sympathetic to communism - which essentially meant anybody to the left of the John Birch Society. So most of you know by now that one of the primary functions of the early FBI was to surveil and infiltrate any organization that J. Ryan Grim : I’m Ryan Grim and welcome to Deconstructed. Aaronson is the host of the new podcast “Alphabet Boys,” which chronicles the story of Windecker’s infiltration of the movement. Aaronson and Grim discuss the FBI’s approach to the racial justice uprising in 2020, the FBI’s infiltration of Black activist groups, and how the FBI’s use of informants may create crime rather than prevent it. This week on Deconstructed, investigative reporter and Intercept contributor Trevor Aaronson joins host Ryan Grim to discuss Windecker’s story. But Windecker was not an activist he was a fed. He also attempted to involve some of the activists in criminal activity, like a plot to assassinate the state attorney general. He was able to make his way into the Denver racial justice activists’ inner circle and eventually began helping organize protests. The man, who looks like a biker, is named Michael Adam Windecker II. © 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc.As the racial justice movement was heating up in 2020, a new “activist” arrived on the scene in Denver, Colorado. “We started getting responses back” from FBI headquarters, added D’Antuono, which helped identify which field offices had planted confidential informants in the crowd. The Washington field office had to ask FBI headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w any CHSs involved,” he said, so they could get a handle on the scale of the FBI’s spying operations at the Capitol that day. 6, 2021, that it lost track of the number and had to perform a later audit to determine exactly how many “Confidential Human Sources” run by different FBI field offices were present that day, a former assistant director of the bureau has told lawmakers.Īt least one informant was communicating with his FBI handler as he entered the Capitol, according to Steven D’Antuono, formerly in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office.ĭ’Antuono has testified behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee that his office was aware before the riot that some of their informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump, but he only learned after the fact that informants run by other field offices also were present, along with others who had participated of their own accord. The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. Supreme Court declines to hear bid to disqualify Trump from 2024 election over alleged Jan. Rudy Giuliani denies being an alcoholic as prosecutors probe whether ex-mayor was hitting bottle while advising Trump Trump seeks to delay classified docs trial until after 2024 election, cites failure to share evidence ![]()
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