J.M. Berger, investigative journalist and terrorism consultant, discusses his article “Patriot Games: How the FBI spent a decade hunting white supremacists and missed Timothy McVeigh;” how years of bad reporting have muddied the waters of the Oklahoma City bombing story; the FBI’s PATCON operation of infiltrating (and possibly inciting) the radical right in the 1990s; sorting out the real members and government provocateurs within the Aryan movement; and how the government’s current infiltration of Muslim groups resembles the PATCON operation.
MP3 here. (24:41)
J.M. Berger is the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War In the Name of Islam. He has been a journalist for 25 years, working in every form of media from newspapers to New Media, radio and television. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, the CTC Sentinel, the New York Daily News and the Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio, Public Radio International and the National Geographic Channel.
In addition to working internationally as an investigative reporter studying terrorism, he is an award-winning business writer and has covered science, technology and religion. He is currently working on a book about the FBI’s infiltration of white supremacist and militia groups in the United States. Berger consults on homegrown terrorism and online extremism. He has presented research for counterterrorism professionals such as the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Division, New Jersey state law enforcement, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University and more.