FBI restricts impersonation of journalists

The FBI is imposing new restrictions making it more difficult for investigators to impersonate journalists, following scrutiny over a 2007 episode in which the bureau posed as a reporter to track a suspected criminal. The FBI did not violate its internal policy during that controversial incident, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General claimed in a 30-page report.

“In 2007, FBI policies did not prohibit the practice of agents impersonating journalists, nor was there any requirement that agents seek special approval to engage in such practice,” the watchdog concluded. Yet June 2016, it implemented an interim policy barring impersonation of a journalist without approval from the FBI’s deputy director, the watchdog revealed. That move “is a significant and important improvement to FBI policies,” the inspector general’s office claimed. The changes are the result of a 2007 incident when FBI investigators wrote a fake AP story and placed it on a website designed to mimic the Seattle Times in order to infect a suspect’s computer. A link to the story bearing the headline “Bomb threat at high school downplayed by local police department” was sent to the MySpace page of a student suspected of making multiple threats against the school and launching cyberattacks against its computer network. In followup emails to the student, Charles Jenkins, an FBI investigator portrayed himself as an “AP staff publisher” in order to get Jenkins to click on the link and links to other photographs. The operation became public in 2014 and was immediately attacked by news organizations claiming that it eroded the public’s trust in journalists.