U.S. Congress report:

FBI uses murderers for informants
one FBI agent enlisted informants for murder

FBI has 'institutional reluctance to accept oversight'

 

     At the time of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Luna's violent and strange death, several committees of the United States Congress were investigating the FBI and its long-time misuse of paid informants. Shortly after Juna's death, reports would be issued or made public by these committees.
     "Jonathan Luna's ongoing problems with FBI informant Warren Grace, and his FBI handlers, are indicative of problems the Justice Department has had for decades," William Keisling writes in The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna. "Luna swam in dark, shark infested waters."

Cover from the 2004 congressional report, "Everything secret Degenerates: The FBI's Use of Murderers as Informants."

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Click here to download the full congressional report.

     Keisling writes, "Jonathan Luna's murder fell in a period that produced amazing revelations about deep, systemic and enduring scandalous behavior within the FBI and the Justice Department. These revelations serve to detail unimaginably dreadful stories involving FBI agents and their informants. These episodes also dovetail with problems Luna was having with his own stable of FBI agents.
     Less than two weeks before Luna's murder, in late November 2003, the first in a series of revelations about FBI misconduct was released by the House Committee on Government Reform. The committee would title its report, with a nod to Lord Acton, "Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI's Use of Murderers as Informants." The report is must reading, not only for those interested in the Luna case, but for all who are concerned for the United States, and concerned with the state of free societies in the world today.
     In hearings held into the summer of 2003, the committee gathered evidence of almost unimaginable FBI misconduct in Boston, Massachusetts. The hearings were sparked by revelations that four men were tried and convicted for a murder the FBI knew the men did not commit.
     The committee ended up learning the FBI in Boston kept murderers on the payroll as informants for three decades, from the mid-1960s into the mid-1990s and beyond. More than twenty people were killed by the FBI informants from 1965 on, often with the help of FBI agents, the government now reports. The FBI clearly knew some of its informants were aspiring murderers. At least one ex-agent planned and carried out a murder with the help of his former informant and the Mafia, in a conspiracy to protect mob skimming activities. This agent was protected from prosecution for twenty years.

     Boston FBI agents, the committee's report says, helped their informants commit murder, and stood by silently while innocent men were convicted of the crimes. All this was done to protect the FBI's informant operations, with the approval of Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The FBI's decades-long policy had "disastrous consequences," the congressional report says, and "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement."

Moreover, the committee writes that the FBI has an "Instituional reluctance to accept oversight." All in all, it's a startling report that leaves the reader wondering who's really in charge -- the people, the FBI, or the criminals.

     On the downloads page for The Midnight Ride of Luna, we've posted links to the full 1,812-page Committee on Government Reform report, "Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI's Use of Murderers as Informants," in PDF format.
     Click here to go to our Luna downloads page.
     To read an excerpt from The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna detailing this report, click here, or go to the Luna excerpts page.