By Coleen Rowley
Special to Consortium News

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the right wing Proud Boys militant group, was a confidential source for law enforcement under Attorney General guidelines that were relaxed after the 9/11 attacks.

Reuters reported that Tarrio began “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.” He helped authorities get convictions in human smuggling, drugs and gambling cases.

At least five Proud Boys members have been arrested and charged for involvement in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, though Tarrio had been nabbed two days earlier and expelled from Washington by D.C. Superior Court.

Attorney General (AG) Guidelines on using confidential human sources — both confidential informants (CIs) and cooperating witnesses (CWs) — resulted from FBI abuses uncovered in 1975 by the Church Committee and were quite strictly followed by the FBI until the Sept. 11 attacks.

The guidelines generally prohibited the FBI from operating people like Tarrio who sought or obtained leadership positions in any domestic group whose violent activities the source was being directed to report on.

This post-Church Committee prohibition made sense not only in light of the committee’s exposure of then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s abusive Cointelpro program of targeting various civil rights groups, but today as well, given how leaders of any group are inherently those with the most influence or power to manipulate a group’s members.

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https://consortiumnews.com/2021/02/04/curiouser-and-curiouser-the-proud-boys-leader-as-a-prolific-law-enforcement-confidential-source/