NYPD Terror Informant Goes Rogue

An informant recruited by the NYPD to collect information on suspected Islamic militants has gone rogue and denounced his police handlers, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the case, reports Reuters.

The informant, a 19-year-old American citizen of Bangladeshi descent, was recruited by the NYPD recently as part of an expansive intelligence-gathering program the department launched after the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. His assignment was to make contact with suspected Islamic extremists to try to determine if they had any inclinations to engage in violence, the source said.

On October 2, however, the informant, whom the source did not name, posted a message on his personal Facebook page exposing himself as an informant to people he had been in contact with. He declared that he had quit as a police informant.

"I was jus (sic) of pretending to be friends with ya cuz I honestly thought i was fighting terrorism, but let's be real, it's all a f...king scheme," the informant wrote, according to the source. "It was all about the money," he added.


NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said that candidates to join the force as sworn officers must be U.S. citizens. But he said 20 percent of the department's recruit classes were foreign-born.

"We have a deep bench of foreign speakers whose first languages include Urdu, Arabic, and scores of others," Browne said.