By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
The FBI office deserves kudos for doing the right thing.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the FBI directed agents in Minneapolis and five other U.S. cities in 2009 to use community outreach with Somali groups as cover to gather intelligence on terrorist recruiting efforts and on individuals who would likely be vulnerable to being radicalized.
But the paper reports that the Minneapolis field office refused from the start to follow the spying directive, which had been approved by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.
“We never followed it because at the time we believed our brand of community outreach would engender the trust we’d built up here,” said Kyle Loven, the FBI’s spokesman in Minneapolis, according to the paper. “We took great care to make sure our outreach specialists were not involved in any investigations.”
In December 2010, the Obama administration halted the spy operation against Somalis be stopped immediately, the paper reported.
