FBI admits it made fake AP news story to catch bomb-threat suspect
The FBI created a fake news story and website using the name of a well-known news agency without its consent to catch a bomb-threat suspect, it has emerged
The FBI created a fake news story and website using the name of a well-known news agency without its consent to catch a bomb-threat suspect, it has emerged.
The agency made up an Associated Press story in order to find the man responsible for repeated bomb threats that sparked a week of evacuations at Timberline High School in Lacey, near Olympia, in Washington state, in June 2007.
The revelation sparked outrage among journalists, who said AP's reputation had been undermined, and it raised a question about the limits of undercover operations in cyberspace.
The FBI stepped in after local police had exhausted all lines of inquiry, obtaining a court warrant to send a link to the phony AP story on the bomb threats and posting it on the suspect's MySpace profile. The link was infected with tracking software that tricked the suspect into revealing his location, according to documents obtained by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The suspect, Josh Glazebrook, later pleaded guilty to making bomb threats.
The documents suggested the 2007 bogus story was posted on a fake site, but Seattle FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich said that was wrong. Instead, she said an undercover agent sent the teenager a hyperlink that simply said "article", and nowhere was referenced.
AP spokesman Paul Colford said the FBI's "ploy violated AP's name and undermined AP's credibility".
"Every effort we made in this investigation had the goal of preventing a tragic event like what happened at Marysville and Seattle Pacific University," said Frank Montoya, the FBI's special agent in charge in Seattle, referring to two local school shootings this year.
