9 ms·

The FBI Lost Our Son

147 points by alphabettsy 7y ago

Invictus0 7y ago
I skimmed a bit, but is this article trying to imply that the FBI killed Billy in Ukraine because they thought he was trying to defect?
- itronitron 7y ago
  I didn't get that impression. I think the parents felt that the FBI should have done more for them and for Billy considering his use to the FBI over several years prior to his trip to Russia.
  - colmvp 7y ago
    Plus the journalist from WSJ did more for them in helping them find Billy than the FBI did. And recovering the body was also a huge ordeal that the parents basically did on their own.
    - treden 7y ago
      Yes, that sucks. But. Assuming the FBI asked him not to go, why and how should they FBI put resources into finding out what he did and what happened to him? Whether the FBI sent him there or not, he decided on his own to stay beyond his plan, and then enter a war zone. Everyone who does some contracting for the FBI deserves world-wide babysitting service?
- pmorici 7y ago
  The gist I got was that the family suspected that the FBI asked him to go in the first place and then when he disappeared the FBI denied responsibility and tried to tell them their son had gone rogue to minimize their own responsibility. The take away is that they more or less manipulated this young man into doing things he had no business getting involved in.
  - treden 7y ago
    It is a sad story, but from reading it, I dont think they manipulated him into going overseas. If you just look factually at the statements of the FBI, not the implications, it sounds like they asked him not to go, but he went anyway. Seems like the responsibility is not the FBI's, he's 28, old enough to take responsibility for his own decisions. There's even some implication that they intervened and shut down his other trip (to meet a woman he wanted to marry in ISIS territory! Bad Idea!). So FBI knew about the Russia trip but didn't shut it down maybe because he wasn't an employee they control? It's a free country, you dont need an exit visa. And asking him for contact info doesn't necessarily imply that they asked him to go. The article danced around that question, implying that FBI asked him to go (because they knew he went), but it's hard to imagine the FBI thinking the guy was a competent field agent (after shutting down the jihadi-bride trip). What would anyone have to gain from him bumbling around Donetsk/Russia? He was adept at penetrating jihadi chat groups, why would they risk that asset? It seems that (from what little we have to go on) the agent handling him was far more concentrated on the middle east, but asked him to do a one-off on Donetsk, and he got interested in that region on his own. Also it says that FSB invited him over. That was the big red flag for me: "Hey Mom! guess what?! FSB invited me to Russia!! w00t!" What happened to that paper? What did it say exactly?? Why would you tell your mom that FSB invited you to Russia? Something's not quite right in this narrative, so many holes. WSJ is doing FBI FUD pieces now?
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I was with you until the last sentence. Whatever happened, this is pretty clearly a story.
      - treden 7y ago
        A hit piece is a story. Presented in a biased way. The title says clearly that the FBI is responsible for losing him. But it sounds like he actually wandered off into the wilderness on his own. -- edit -- Oops, I wrote 'hit piece' originally and changed it to FUD. But still, the implication is that the FBI is a menace and that they're lying about their involvement.
- catalogia 7y ago
  The implication I got is the men Billy found himself among men who didn't respect him (saw him as a walking wallet) and murdered him after he was no longer useful to them (they plausibly considered him a liability in combat since he didn't fit the mold of a soldier.) However I don't know if there was combat reported in the vicinity of Dibrivka during that particular time period. It's possible he was killed in combat. > "Billy was nearly the opposite—5-foot-7, 160 pounds, his features rounded by a diet of snacks and fast food. His scruffy brown beard offset a receding hairline; rectangular metal-frame glasses gave him a bookish look." > "Mr. Polynkov sized up his new recruit as a traveler, not a fighter. In his experience, soldiers of fortune didn’t travel with wheeled oversize suitcases. He tried to dissuade Billy from going to Rostov [...]" > "Men at the camp forced Billy to pay their liquor tabs. “He was naive,” Mr. Victorov said. Billy’s credit cards registered more than $2,700 in fraudulent purchases and cash advances in Russia before he disappeared."
  - rhexs 7y ago
    Judging from the picture, the guy looked like a bumbling American nerd, not some sort of freedom fighter or partisan. I'm sure they pegged him as a potential spy from the start. Got in over his head, lead to a tragic end. Lesson here is don't play war. Would he still be alive had the FBI not recruited him? Maybe, maybe not, but we'll never know.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    I don't think he ever stood a chance with soldier of fortune types. The kind of guys who go to fight for Russia backed separatists probably eat guys like him for breakfast. From the description of his death it sounds like he might have been murdered by one of them. Maybe he ran out of money or he ticked off the wrong guy.
catalogia 7y ago
This is a very sad story, made no less sad by the fact that Billy is far from the only foreigner to die in that region. Hopefully this story will help discourage other naive young men from involving themselves in foreign wars.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
  Yeah, better to let the foreigners invade and fight the war here and involve naive women and children.
linuxftw 7y ago
This article reads like complete an utter BS. The FBI found him because his IP was found on a hard drive in an al Qaeda hideout? Then later says he used VPNs, etc to conceal his location. This is someone's poor attempt at a Hollywood screenplay.
droithomme 7y ago
The usual advice of opening in Private Mode doesn't work anymore as a workaround. I found though one can search for the link in google, then click on it and it will let you in.
- itronitron 7y ago
  yeah, that is interesting... searching in DuckDuckGo also works
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  There’s a link on this page under the title of the article via the word Web that does that for you.
- JudasGoat 7y ago
  https://github.com/iamadamdev https://github.com/iamadamdev works good in Chrome. I haven't tried Firefox.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    Works on Firefox Mobile on Android with uBlock Origin and several other privacy add-ons also installed.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    Confirmed on Chrome. Thanks for this!
  - antgly 7y ago
    Sorta unrelated, but has anyone gotten this to work with Quartz News articles? I’ve had little success with trying it to bypass their paywalls.
- dexen 7y ago
  I want to boycott websites that paywall themselves off like that. Hopefully with some more similarly minded people we can get the ball rolling - get Google to honestly enforce their no cloaking policy. Maybe even get HN to de-rank submissions from their domains.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/YWTLl http://archive.is/YWTLl
- wffurr 7y ago
  Broken link. WSJ doesn't work in outline.com anymore. This article is impossible to read.
  - robertbalent 7y ago
    This link works for me (on iPhone in Safari). Not sure why it’s broken for you.
  - zulln 7y ago
    Are you using 1.1.1.1 as DNS? That could explain it.
    - indigodaddy 7y ago
      Why doesn't Cloudflare work for archive.is?
      - dnet 7y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
        indigodaddy 7y ago
        ah thanks! Hah, archive.is is something else. I went to http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl and got the default nginx page so needs host headers... Then I do curl --header "Host: archive.is" http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl and it hangs... eh?? well guess what archive.is blocked my IP after that first connection to the default nginx website...! can't even telnet 88.208.54.247 80 after that lol... what a piece of work archive.is is....
colmvp 7y ago
A podcast episode with the journalist of this story: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-journal/gmh37n https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-journal/gmh37n
fortran77 7y ago
I believe the FBI on this one. He seemed more like a naive terrorist sympathizer than a source the FBI could rely on, especially after pursing a woman romantically who wanted to go to Syria (and after the FBI told him to leave her alone.) It's likely true they never told him to go to Russia, content on having him simply report what he sees in online chatrooms from the comfort of his parents homes. He was moderately useful but not someone they could really trust for anything more than basic "internet chatroom" work.
- netsharc 7y ago
  The FBI isn't that holy, they goaded idiots into becoming "terrorists" so they can say "Good job us! We need more budget!", just look up "FBI entrapment". And what about the phone they found? Presumably the journalist verified that it and the messages on it exist?
  - fortran77 7y ago
    I'm not saying they're holy. They took advantage of a misfit kid, to have him do some entry-level intelligence monitoring chatrooms. I don't think they held him in high esteem either, likely knowing his allegiances to anyone in particular weren't very strong, other than some misguided sense to help the "underdog." But there's no reason to think the FBI had anything to do with his Russia adventures. And I'm not sure how much responsibility the US has with bailing out Americans who want to pursue women who want to fight in Syria, etc. The "FBI" didn't lose their son. Their son got lost on his own. > Moments later, Agent Waters phoned. He asked what happened. “You murdered our son,” Mrs. Reilly yelled. “Don’t ever talk to us again.” It is unfortunately very easy to get yourself in serious trouble, if not murdered in Russia. Their anger is _very_ misplaced, though I'm certainly sorry for their loss. I only go with a skilled guide and personal driver, and I'm only going for boring business reasons! I've had a business associate who was kidnapped just for taking the wrong cab. (Basically, they get driven somewhere while the cab driver negotiated a fee for their return with their company.)
    - Assadi 7y ago
IAmGraydon 7y ago
Play stupid games, get stupid prizes. I feel for his parents. This guy lived about 10 different secret lives, lied to everyone who cared about him, was an extremist sympathizer, and repeatedly inserted himself into extremely dangerous situations. I don’t think there was any other possible fate for him.
- fortran77 7y ago
  I, too, feel for his parents but not for him.
no_opinions 7y ago
Imagine if any sort of change is possible in terms of regulation transparency, etc. You are tasked with writing a tailored / scoping a way to manage human sources: Could you describe in words how to make a friend, or courtship that applies to every situation, or every person, and every situation? Try to quantify how disruptive it is (or isn't) to send in a source, verse tap lines, etc. How does it effect their life? Does it involve a foreign target or a US one? Should they be dealt with differently? Can you write a regulation something flexible enough a wide array of circumstances / need to acquire information can be satisfied, but minimize intrusion upon people? If someone had a better idea, what's wrong with that? But most people, including informant handlers themselves - which are human beings also - can't even figure out own personal relationships. I could only imagine how traumatic their family, love and social life has been for them to get in that position.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Decent journalism of a sad story. What the FBI is doing exploiting these citizens having limited employment opportunities without giving them any sort of actual long-term career path to look forward to, while simultaneously exposing them to real risks and a taste of legitimacy, strikes me as unethical, immoral, and unpatriotic. They're arguably setting up conditions for this kind of outcome, whether they intend to or not. I personally suspect it's an unintended consequence of their exclusive focus on the mission. I want to feel bad for the parents but they're substantially responsible for raising such a naive fool of a son.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  I would think part of the FBI's involvement here could also be to keep an eye on him. He came across as a very naive & influenceable person to me (converting to a religion, putting himself at risk by trying to meet a woman from a different country - which could've very well been a trap - woman who later tried to go into a conflict zone, going to Ukraine for <reasons>, etc)... I wouldn't be surprised if he one day ended up becoming one of the terrorists he was supposedly tracking (was he truly tracking them, or was he - maybe subconsciously - "into it" and the whole FBI thing happened to be a convenient way for him to get closer to the terrorist groups?).
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    Agreed. I'd expect them to formally hire these people and have them working as teams with proper opsec and infrastructure provided for them entirely separate from their personal lives. Instead they're left to work in isolation from home, more vulnerable to recruitment, if anything just to be treated as part of something more. There's so much wrong with the situation the FBI is cultivating here. They basically treated this kid as a criminal turned informant as terms of his freedom. That's the level of concern for his and his family's safety they seemed to exercise from my read of the article. VPNs were his only cyber protection? For all we know he was phished in a targeted attack that uncovered his true identity and affiliations.
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
roywiggins 7y ago
> Billy, an American of European heritage, who had knowledge of Arabic and could approach potential terror targets online, had great potential value to the FBI. I get that the FBI was to struggling to recruit and train Arabic speakers for its programs post-9/11, but recruiting random Americans with self-taught Arabic to cosplay as cyber FBI agents does not speak well of them. This is of a piece with stuff the FBI and DEA has done routinely in the "war on drugs," so I don't doubt it at all, but it's still a nasty way to work. It's not like they were turning an Al Queda recruit into a mole, this guy was running a whole constellation of fake accounts etc, basically doing stuff the FBI could and should be doing itself and not outsourcing to "informants".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  You wouldn’t be surprised at all if Russian intelligence sent an asset to their deaths or killed them themselves. Why would you expect anything better from the CIA or the organization that was responsible for burning 76 US civilians to death at Waco, or killing a mother holding her child at Ruby Ridge? There are no good people working in intelligence, only bad people on your side and bad peoples working on the other side.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    Who said I was surprised? The CIA by my reading actually often does better by its collaborators than the FBI and has a certain sense of honor-among-spies that the FBI doesn't when it comes to this sort of stuff. FBI and CIA have both done awful things but they are different organizations with different MOs.
droithomme 7y ago
Fascinating story. I'm really impressed with the dedication of the parents who retraced all his steps, contacted people he had met, found long forgotten photos, and eventually were able to find him in an unmarked grave in a foreign country of which there were no official records whatsoever he ever entered, and bring his remains home. The parents were incredible investigators. As to the rest, it will always be speculation. From the article it does seem he himself made decisions to go places.

147 points by alphabettsy 7y ago

I skimmed a bit, but is this article trying to imply that the FBI killed Billy in Ukraine because they thought he was trying to defect?

itronitron 7y ago
I didn't get that impression. I think the parents felt that the FBI should have done more for them and for Billy considering his use to the FBI over several years prior to his trip to Russia.
- colmvp 7y ago
  Plus the journalist from WSJ did more for them in helping them find Billy than the FBI did. And recovering the body was also a huge ordeal that the parents basically did on their own.
  - treden 7y ago
    Yes, that sucks. But. Assuming the FBI asked him not to go, why and how should they FBI put resources into finding out what he did and what happened to him? Whether the FBI sent him there or not, he decided on his own to stay beyond his plan, and then enter a war zone. Everyone who does some contracting for the FBI deserves world-wide babysitting service?
pmorici 7y ago
The gist I got was that the family suspected that the FBI asked him to go in the first place and then when he disappeared the FBI denied responsibility and tried to tell them their son had gone rogue to minimize their own responsibility. The take away is that they more or less manipulated this young man into doing things he had no business getting involved in.
- treden 7y ago
  It is a sad story, but from reading it, I dont think they manipulated him into going overseas. If you just look factually at the statements of the FBI, not the implications, it sounds like they asked him not to go, but he went anyway. Seems like the responsibility is not the FBI's, he's 28, old enough to take responsibility for his own decisions. There's even some implication that they intervened and shut down his other trip (to meet a woman he wanted to marry in ISIS territory! Bad Idea!). So FBI knew about the Russia trip but didn't shut it down maybe because he wasn't an employee they control? It's a free country, you dont need an exit visa. And asking him for contact info doesn't necessarily imply that they asked him to go. The article danced around that question, implying that FBI asked him to go (because they knew he went), but it's hard to imagine the FBI thinking the guy was a competent field agent (after shutting down the jihadi-bride trip). What would anyone have to gain from him bumbling around Donetsk/Russia? He was adept at penetrating jihadi chat groups, why would they risk that asset? It seems that (from what little we have to go on) the agent handling him was far more concentrated on the middle east, but asked him to do a one-off on Donetsk, and he got interested in that region on his own. Also it says that FSB invited him over. That was the big red flag for me: "Hey Mom! guess what?! FSB invited me to Russia!! w00t!" What happened to that paper? What did it say exactly?? Why would you tell your mom that FSB invited you to Russia? Something's not quite right in this narrative, so many holes. WSJ is doing FBI FUD pieces now?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I was with you until the last sentence. Whatever happened, this is pretty clearly a story.
    - treden 7y ago
      A hit piece is a story. Presented in a biased way. The title says clearly that the FBI is responsible for losing him. But it sounds like he actually wandered off into the wilderness on his own. -- edit -- Oops, I wrote 'hit piece' originally and changed it to FUD. But still, the implication is that the FBI is a menace and that they're lying about their involvement.
catalogia 7y ago
The implication I got is the men Billy found himself among men who didn't respect him (saw him as a walking wallet) and murdered him after he was no longer useful to them (they plausibly considered him a liability in combat since he didn't fit the mold of a soldier.) However I don't know if there was combat reported in the vicinity of Dibrivka during that particular time period. It's possible he was killed in combat. > "Billy was nearly the opposite—5-foot-7, 160 pounds, his features rounded by a diet of snacks and fast food. His scruffy brown beard offset a receding hairline; rectangular metal-frame glasses gave him a bookish look." > "Mr. Polynkov sized up his new recruit as a traveler, not a fighter. In his experience, soldiers of fortune didn’t travel with wheeled oversize suitcases. He tried to dissuade Billy from going to Rostov [...]" > "Men at the camp forced Billy to pay their liquor tabs. “He was naive,” Mr. Victorov said. Billy’s credit cards registered more than $2,700 in fraudulent purchases and cash advances in Russia before he disappeared."
- rhexs 7y ago
  Judging from the picture, the guy looked like a bumbling American nerd, not some sort of freedom fighter or partisan. I'm sure they pegged him as a potential spy from the start. Got in over his head, lead to a tragic end. Lesson here is don't play war. Would he still be alive had the FBI not recruited him? Maybe, maybe not, but we'll never know.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  I don't think he ever stood a chance with soldier of fortune types. The kind of guys who go to fight for Russia backed separatists probably eat guys like him for breakfast. From the description of his death it sounds like he might have been murdered by one of them. Maybe he ran out of money or he ticked off the wrong guy.

catalogia 7y ago

This is a very sad story, made no less sad by the fact that Billy is far from the only foreigner to die in that region. Hopefully this story will help discourage other naive young men from involving themselves in foreign wars.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
Yeah, better to let the foreigners invade and fight the war here and involve naive women and children.

linuxftw 7y ago

This article reads like complete an utter BS. The FBI found him because his IP was found on a hard drive in an al Qaeda hideout? Then later says he used VPNs, etc to conceal his location. This is someone's poor attempt at a Hollywood screenplay.

droithomme 7y ago

The usual advice of opening in Private Mode doesn't work anymore as a workaround. I found though one can search for the link in google, then click on it and it will let you in.

itronitron 7y ago
yeah, that is interesting... searching in DuckDuckGo also works
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
There’s a link on this page under the title of the article via the word Web that does that for you.
JudasGoat 7y ago
https://github.com/iamadamdev https://github.com/iamadamdev works good in Chrome. I haven't tried Firefox.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  Works on Firefox Mobile on Android with uBlock Origin and several other privacy add-ons also installed.
- icelancer 7y ago
  Confirmed on Chrome. Thanks for this!
- antgly 7y ago
  Sorta unrelated, but has anyone gotten this to work with Quartz News articles? I’ve had little success with trying it to bypass their paywalls.
dexen 7y ago
I want to boycott websites that paywall themselves off like that. Hopefully with some more similarly minded people we can get the ball rolling - get Google to honestly enforce their no cloaking policy. Maybe even get HN to de-rank submissions from their domains.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/YWTLl http://archive.is/YWTLl

wffurr 7y ago
Broken link. WSJ doesn't work in outline.com anymore. This article is impossible to read.
- robertbalent 7y ago
  This link works for me (on iPhone in Safari). Not sure why it’s broken for you.
- zulln 7y ago
  Are you using 1.1.1.1 as DNS? That could explain it.
  - indigodaddy 7y ago
    Why doesn't Cloudflare work for archive.is?
    - dnet 7y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
      - indigodaddy 7y ago
        ah thanks! Hah, archive.is is something else. I went to http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl and got the default nginx page so needs host headers... Then I do curl --header "Host: archive.is" http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl http://88.208.54.247/YWTLl and it hangs... eh?? well guess what archive.is blocked my IP after that first connection to the default nginx website...! can't even telnet 88.208.54.247 80 after that lol... what a piece of work archive.is is....

colmvp 7y ago

A podcast episode with the journalist of this story: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-journal/gmh37n https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-journal/gmh37n

fortran77 7y ago

I believe the FBI on this one. He seemed more like a naive terrorist sympathizer than a source the FBI could rely on, especially after pursing a woman romantically who wanted to go to Syria (and after the FBI told him to leave her alone.) It's likely true they never told him to go to Russia, content on having him simply report what he sees in online chatrooms from the comfort of his parents homes. He was moderately useful but not someone they could really trust for anything more than basic "internet chatroom" work.

netsharc 7y ago
The FBI isn't that holy, they goaded idiots into becoming "terrorists" so they can say "Good job us! We need more budget!", just look up "FBI entrapment". And what about the phone they found? Presumably the journalist verified that it and the messages on it exist?
- fortran77 7y ago
  I'm not saying they're holy. They took advantage of a misfit kid, to have him do some entry-level intelligence monitoring chatrooms. I don't think they held him in high esteem either, likely knowing his allegiances to anyone in particular weren't very strong, other than some misguided sense to help the "underdog." But there's no reason to think the FBI had anything to do with his Russia adventures. And I'm not sure how much responsibility the US has with bailing out Americans who want to pursue women who want to fight in Syria, etc. The "FBI" didn't lose their son. Their son got lost on his own. > Moments later, Agent Waters phoned. He asked what happened. “You murdered our son,” Mrs. Reilly yelled. “Don’t ever talk to us again.” It is unfortunately very easy to get yourself in serious trouble, if not murdered in Russia. Their anger is _very_ misplaced, though I'm certainly sorry for their loss. I only go with a skilled guide and personal driver, and I'm only going for boring business reasons! I've had a business associate who was kidnapped just for taking the wrong cab. (Basically, they get driven somewhere while the cab driver negotiated a fee for their return with their company.)
  - Assadi 7y ago

IAmGraydon 7y ago

Play stupid games, get stupid prizes. I feel for his parents. This guy lived about 10 different secret lives, lied to everyone who cared about him, was an extremist sympathizer, and repeatedly inserted himself into extremely dangerous situations. I don’t think there was any other possible fate for him.

fortran77 7y ago
I, too, feel for his parents but not for him.

no_opinions 7y ago

Imagine if any sort of change is possible in terms of regulation transparency, etc. You are tasked with writing a tailored / scoping a way to manage human sources: Could you describe in words how to make a friend, or courtship that applies to every situation, or every person, and every situation? Try to quantify how disruptive it is (or isn't) to send in a source, verse tap lines, etc. How does it effect their life? Does it involve a foreign target or a US one? Should they be dealt with differently? Can you write a regulation something flexible enough a wide array of circumstances / need to acquire information can be satisfied, but minimize intrusion upon people? If someone had a better idea, what's wrong with that? But most people, including informant handlers themselves - which are human beings also - can't even figure out own personal relationships. I could only imagine how traumatic their family, love and social life has been for them to get in that position.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Decent journalism of a sad story. What the FBI is doing exploiting these citizens having limited employment opportunities without giving them any sort of actual long-term career path to look forward to, while simultaneously exposing them to real risks and a taste of legitimacy, strikes me as unethical, immoral, and unpatriotic. They're arguably setting up conditions for this kind of outcome, whether they intend to or not. I personally suspect it's an unintended consequence of their exclusive focus on the mission. I want to feel bad for the parents but they're substantially responsible for raising such a naive fool of a son.

Nextgrid 7y ago
I would think part of the FBI's involvement here could also be to keep an eye on him. He came across as a very naive & influenceable person to me (converting to a religion, putting himself at risk by trying to meet a woman from a different country - which could've very well been a trap - woman who later tried to go into a conflict zone, going to Ukraine for <reasons>, etc)... I wouldn't be surprised if he one day ended up becoming one of the terrorists he was supposedly tracking (was he truly tracking them, or was he - maybe subconsciously - "into it" and the whole FBI thing happened to be a convenient way for him to get closer to the terrorist groups?).
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Agreed. I'd expect them to formally hire these people and have them working as teams with proper opsec and infrastructure provided for them entirely separate from their personal lives. Instead they're left to work in isolation from home, more vulnerable to recruitment, if anything just to be treated as part of something more. There's so much wrong with the situation the FBI is cultivating here. They basically treated this kid as a criminal turned informant as terms of his freedom. That's the level of concern for his and his family's safety they seemed to exercise from my read of the article. VPNs were his only cyber protection? For all we know he was phished in a targeted attack that uncovered his true identity and affiliations.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

roywiggins 7y ago

> Billy, an American of European heritage, who had knowledge of Arabic and could approach potential terror targets online, had great potential value to the FBI. I get that the FBI was to struggling to recruit and train Arabic speakers for its programs post-9/11, but recruiting random Americans with self-taught Arabic to cosplay as cyber FBI agents does not speak well of them. This is of a piece with stuff the FBI and DEA has done routinely in the "war on drugs," so I don't doubt it at all, but it's still a nasty way to work. It's not like they were turning an Al Queda recruit into a mole, this guy was running a whole constellation of fake accounts etc, basically doing stuff the FBI could and should be doing itself and not outsourcing to "informants".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
barry-cotter 7y ago
You wouldn’t be surprised at all if Russian intelligence sent an asset to their deaths or killed them themselves. Why would you expect anything better from the CIA or the organization that was responsible for burning 76 US civilians to death at Waco, or killing a mother holding her child at Ruby Ridge? There are no good people working in intelligence, only bad people on your side and bad peoples working on the other side.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Who said I was surprised? The CIA by my reading actually often does better by its collaborators than the FBI and has a certain sense of honor-among-spies that the FBI doesn't when it comes to this sort of stuff. FBI and CIA have both done awful things but they are different organizations with different MOs.

droithomme 7y ago

Fascinating story. I'm really impressed with the dedication of the parents who retraced all his steps, contacted people he had met, found long forgotten photos, and eventually were able to find him in an unmarked grave in a foreign country of which there were no official records whatsoever he ever entered, and bring his remains home. The parents were incredible investigators. As to the rest, it will always be speculation. From the article it does seem he himself made decisions to go places.