More suspense thriller than eat-your-broccoli documentary, The Newburgh Sting follows an FBI informant鈥檚 recruitment of four African-American men in an elaborate sting that made headlines in 2009 as a terrorist plot.
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After trolling a Newburgh, New York, mosque for months, the FBI informant met James Cromitie, a man quick to engage in hateful rhetoric. The informant encouraged Cromitie to turn his talk into action, even offering him $250,000, but Cromitie showed hesitation for months. It was only after he lost his job at Walmart that Cromitie came back to the informant, who designed the plot and directed Cromitie to recruit three other men. As a Second Circuit judge put it: 鈥淭he government came up with a crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles.鈥� Cromitie and the other men are serving 25 years in prison.
As the 老澳门开奖结果 has reported, and a new shows, the case isn鈥檛 isolated. The FBI has repeatedly used such aggressive tactics, providing gullible or vulnerable subjects financial support and other incentives for fake plots they may never have initiated on their own.
I sat down with David Heilbroner, director of the film, to get his perspective.
Q: What drew you to this case?
I was drawn to how egregiously wrong stings have gone in this area of anti-terror operations. The FBI was able to entice four destitute African Americans with no particular prospects in life, with $250,000, to do some bad deeds. The FBI is trying to sell this as a terrorist case, when really all you鈥檝e got is proof that you can wave money at people who are desperate and poor and get them to 鈥渃ommit crimes.鈥�
Q: What was the reaction of the African-American community in Newburgh, New York?
The immediate reaction, when we tried to talk to people, was fear. Nobody wanted to get involved. When you break through the fear barrier, what you find is extreme cynicism and disillusionment. It confirms that the government, instead of coming in with a jobs program and better schooling and better opportunities, sends in an informant to pick off low hanging fruit.
Q: In putting the film together, you read through hundreds of government documents. What did you make of them?
I think almost everybody working in the FBI and prosecutor鈥檚 office is motivated by very good ideals and goals. But it鈥檚 hard for me to look at this case and not think there isn鈥檛 some darker, cynical mentality at play. I interviewed [former FBI Assistant Director] Tom Fuentes for the film. He essentially said that we can鈥檛 go to Congress and say we鈥檙e winning the war on terror because they鈥檒l cut our budget in half. And he said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 the opposite of Jesse Jackson鈥檚 鈥榢eep hope alive鈥� -- it鈥檚 鈥榢eep fear alive.鈥欌��
They are creating these 鈥渢errorist鈥� situations and then saying, 鈥淟ook at all these busts we鈥檙e making.鈥� So the implication is that there must be terrorists out there more than ever. It makes people scared. And it makes John Q. Public think that Muslims and terrorism go hand in hand because he sees these two concepts linked repeatedly in the press.
Q: How do you think the government will react to your film?
I think the FBI鈥檚 going to continue doing what they鈥檙e doing until Congress steps in and takes a hard look. The way the FBI has been criticized up until now is basically on civil rights complaints, entrapment, blatant Islamophobia. All of which are true. But what dawned on me as I made this film is a more elemental crime that the FBI is committing: fraud. The FBI took tax dollars, created a fake case, as a PR move for themselves. The sole purpose of it was to allow the FBI to inflate its sense of importance to both Congress and the American people.
The Newburgh Sting premieres tonight at 9pm Eastern on HBO.
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