Indeed: what they routinely do in those cases is take some otherwise-ignorant agent, give them a little advice like "hey, you really should check out some stuff

Indeed: what they routinely do in those cases is take some otherwise-ignorant agent, give them a little advice like "hey, you really should check out some stuff in this area" (nudge-nudge/wink-wink) and have him "rediscover" this information. Then they tell the court that it was Obtained Through That Agent's Normal Ordinary Investigations. "Parallell construction" aka "intelligence laundering". https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...