Former FBI Agent Terry Albury is a Conscientious Whistleblower

https://www.rightsanddissent.org/news/terry-albury-whistleblower/

UPDATE 10/18/2018: Terry Albury was sentenced today to 4 years in
prison. “This sentence is deplorable,” said Sue Udry, executive director
of DRAD. “Terry Albury sought to expose the FBI’s deeply racist and
unethical use of paid informants. The FBI cynically exploits vulnerable
people, coercing them to become informants, and then targets communities
of color for surveillance and harassment. Albury’s leaks did nothing to
harm national security, but did embarrass the FBI. The use of the
Espionage Act to prosecute him is inexcusable, and this sentence is unjust.”

Albury was the only Black agent at the FBI field office in
Minneapolis. He saw inherent racism in the FBI’s targeting of local
communities of color and sought to blow the whistle on that racism and
the agency’s unethical use of paid informants. For that, he was fired,
arrested, and charged under the Espionage Act. He pled guilty earlier
this year and now faces 4 or more years in prison. He’ll be sentenced
next week.

Because his action was in the public interest, because it caused no harm
to national security, and because it’s time to end the unconscionable
use of the Espionage Act to persecute whistleblowers initiated under
President Obama, we believe Albury’s sentence should be a non-custodial
sentence of community service. His talents, skills and passion for
social justice could serve the communities harmed by the FBI and
further the cause of justice far better than a prison sentence.

Please donate to Albury’s Legal Defense Fund.

Albury is the 12th person to be charged under the Espionage Act for
leaking in the past 10 years, and the third in just 14 months by the
Trump Administration. An Amicus Brief filed by the Reporters Committee
for a Free Press urging a light sentence for Albury argues that this
over use of the Espionage Act is a dangerous trend for press Freedom.

The Reporters Committee has an interest in ensuring that federal
criminal laws governing espionage are not transformed into catch-all
tools to investigate and stifle newsgathering, particularly in the
national security and law enforcement fields, and fear that draconian
sentences in Espionage Act cases targeting individuals who disclose
information to the press will chill newsgathering and unduly restrict
the free flow of information to the public.

The RCFP brief, as well as one filed by a group of scholars demonstrates
that overclassification is rampant, and the judge should not
automatically assume that because a document is classified it should be,
or that the release of the document would cause any harm to national
security. In fact, the scholars brief points out, millions of people
have the authority to classify documents, and that “last year, these
individuals collectively made more than 49.5 million decisions to
classify information, a ten-percent increase from 2016.”

The scholars also argue that Albury’s whistleblowing was an act of civil
disobedience

Public-spirited disclosures to the domestic press, like this one,
should not be punished as espionage, even though the government may
prosecute them under the Espionage Act. Like punishments imposed on
citizens who have engaged in other forms of civil disobedience, the
sentence imposed by this Court should reflect the full “nature and
circumstances of the offense,” the “characteristics of the defendant,”
and “the seriousness of the offense,” including the benefits to the
public from public-interested leaks, the essential role of genuine
whistleblowers in democratic self-government, and the damage to the
First Amendment that would result if every disclosure of documents
marked “classified” could be met with severe criminal sanctions without
regard for the information’s actual sensitivity or public importance.

Who is Terry Albury?

But it is through Albury’s 72 page long sentencing memo that we come to
understand what drove Albury to disclose what he did. The memo paints a
picture of a man who had a strong moral compass from a young age, who
cared about social justice, and was determined to serve his country and
community. It’s striking to read this excerpt from his High School
yearbook, which stands in stark contrast to some other high school
yearbook blurbs recently in the news.

ury didn’t end up as a physical therapist, instead he went into the FBI
right out of college in 2001 and enjoyed a highly decorated career there
for 16 years.

Maybe enjoyed is the wrong word.

Albury pretty quickly became uncomfortable with the FBI’s
counterterrorism practices, and with the internal racism at the bureau.
The memo explains,

During his period in San Jose, Mr. Albury grew increasingly
troubled by the FBI’s approach to counter-terrorism enforcement. He was
under constant pressure to bolster the squad’s number of active
investigations and informants, irrespective of the threat level posed by
the individuals in question.

Cases were opened on thin or non-existent evidence, but when Mr.
Albury protested, he was told that the degree of predication was not his
concern. As the squad’s case numbers increased, so too did Mr. Albury’s
concerns that the factual bases of those cases were highly unethical,
i.e., based on information from informants who were known to be
unreliable or deceptive.

Despite his misgivings, Albury won many commendations from the FBI
during this period, and in 2009 he deployed to Iraq for several months.
There too, he witnessed racism toward Iraqis, and fears that some of the
prisoners he interrogated may have been tortured.

hen he returned to the US he worked for a while in the violent crimes
unit, but in 2012, Albury moved to the Minneapolis field office and was
assigned to counterterrorism work.

In Minneapolis, things only got worse.

Mr. Albury could not reconcile the cultural attitudes implicit —
and indeed explicit — in the FBI directives he was required to implement
towards Africans and African-Americans, in particular towards those of
Somali descent, with his duties at work and his role as equal protector
of all.

Mr. Albury often observed or experienced racism and discrimination
within the Bureau, but the most difficult aspect of his employment in
Minneapolis for Mr. Albury was his obligation to implement FBI
directives to survey individuals suspected of being terrorism threats,
and to recruit and supervise individuals known as confidential human
sources (CHS’s), who could inform on potential security threats and
intelligence gaps.

From the memo we learn the Albury continued to do his job
professionally and well (receiving more commendations and awards), but
he was torn apart by what he was seeing and experiencing. He wrote a
white paper that proposed alternatives to the pervasive use of
surveillance and informants, but in the end did not share it with his
superiors believing it would be ignored or worse.
Comey sees “the value of putting a head on a pike as a message”

And that’s not surprising. The FBI is an insular police agency, whose
Director at the time, James Comey admits he told Trump, “… I was eager
to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message…. I
said something about the value of putting a head on a pike as a message”

So Albury blew the whistle on FBI racism and the way the FBI uses
informants. In court documents, the news media linked the disclosures to
the Intercept. One document, known as the Confidential Human Source
Assessing Aid describes the unethical way the FBI investigates and
pressures people into becoming informants. To recruit an informant, the
FBI will conduct an “assessment,” which is in fact an invasive
investigation into the target, their family and employer, often to dig
up dirt that can be used to pressure them into becoming informants
against their community.

During assessment, the agent will collect detailed background the
target to include the target’s family situation, place of work and
position, employment and financial history, and former residences. The
Bureau will also attempt to evaluate the target to determine the
target’s motivations, mental stability and loyalties and will seek
information on the target’s habits, hobbies, interests, vices,
aspirations, emotional ties, and feelings concerning his country, his
career and his employer. importantly, during assessment, the Bureau
collects information not only concerning the target himself, but also
the targets company, employer and family.

The document is of enormous public interest. The use of paid informants
is rampant at the FBI. During the COINTELPRO years, the FBI had 1,500
paid informants, now that number is about 15,000. DRAD has long been
concerned about the use of paid informants, especially the way they are
deployed against political and religious groups. It’s essential to
understand how informants are recruited and used, to understand how this
impacts civil rights and liberties.

As the scholars argue in their brief, “Against a realistic view of the
harms from disclosure, the Court should weigh the public importance of
the information in question, its value to democratic deliberation on
matters of public concern and, more specifically, its role in bringing
to light troubling and seriously contestable practices at the FBI.”