Remember Craig Monteilh, the conman-turned-FBI mole Nick Schou and I have written about because he posed as a Muslim to infiltrate Orange County mosques, in an attempt to stir up jihad so would-be terrorists would be exposed?
Monteilh gets some coverage in a new book by an investigative journalist who speaks at the Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim Friday night.
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Anaheim is also where you'll find the offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of the Greater Los Angeles Area (CAIR-LA), which is bringing Trevor Aaronson to 1220 N. State College Blvd., Anaheim, from 8-9 p.m. Friday, and then Saturday to the Islamic Community Center of Redlands from 3-4:45 p.m. and the Islamic Center of Hawthorne from 8-9:30 p.m.
Aaronson's new book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism analyzes the bureau's use of informants in the American Muslim community as part of the Department of Justice's “counterterrorism” program. The book was born out of Aaronson's award-winning cover story in Mother Jones magazine, which exposed the FBI network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose was to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate fake terrorist plots.
OC Weekly's Craig Monteilh archives
No one fits the mole bill better than Monteilh, who later sued the federal government for failing to make good on promises and payments for the intel he provided from various mosques in Orange County and elsewhere in Southern California. He also accused the feds of failing to keep him out of prison for unrelated, criminal cons.
Citing the Monteilh case, CAIR-LA, the American Civil Liberties Union and Hadsell, Stormer, Richardson and Renik, LLP in February 2011 filed a civil rights lawsuit against the FBI operation in Southern California. The complaint alleged that during 2006 and 2007, the FBI collected extensive records about the religious practices of hundreds of Southern Californians who attended various mosques and, in many cases, were American citizens.
A major part of the suit was dismissed last August with the invocation of the state secrets privilege.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.