Virtually all governments use undercover agents and informants in their police and intelligence agencies. As a society, we recognize that this often is necessary in order to combat organized crime, foreign espionage, drug cartels, subversion, and terrorism. However, the political powers that be often abuse their powers and misuse these intelligence assets not to protect society, but to endanger it; and in so doing provide a pretext for increasing their own power. History is replete with examples of governments using agents provocateurs to justify eliminating the opposition and assuming dictatorial powers.

Bill Ayers now calls Barack Obama a "neighbor and family friend." He also says the Weather Underground never killed or hurt anyone. This is a lie. The evidence shows that the Weather Underground did kill and maim.

For generations it was one of the most revered and popular of American institutions. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's straight-shooting and straitlaced "G-Men" (short for government men, a moniker coined by the notorious George "Machine Gun" Kelly) were the heroes of film and television lore. They were the relentless and incorruptible nemeses of criminals, spies, and all enemies foreign and domestic. Jimmy Stewart, in The FBI Story (1959), and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., star of the long-running television series, The FBI, personified to many Americans our premier federal law enforcement agency, renowned for its professionalism, efficiency, and integrity.

The Massachusetts State Police "wanted" poster describes James J. "Whitey" Bulger as a "major organized crime figure in the Boston area" who "has served time at Alcatraz for bank robbery and is alleged to be involved in several murders." The President's Commission on Organized Crime identifies the 69-year-old fugitive as a bank robber and suspected killer and drug trafficker. Apparently, he was also — throughout most of his notorious career — a protected federal informant.

On November 6, a Florida jury convicted former FBI Agent John J. Connally, Jr. of  initiating the 1982 slaying of a business executive by a hit man for Boston's infamous "Irish Mafia." Connolly is one of several FBI agents at the heart of a decades-old scandal in which the FBI was found to be protecting some of the worst Mafia killers from apprehension and prosecution by other federal, state, and local authorities.

Everywhere throughout Rome these days the signs of construction and restoration are unmistakable: ancient monuments, temples, churches, and basilicas are shrouded in scaffolding and streets are blocked off to traffic as workmen paint, chip, clean, and pave. The furious renovation campaign is in preparation for the new millennium, which has been designated Europa 2000 by the European Union and the Year of Jubilee by Pope John Paul II.

Several months after his brother's death, Jesse Trentadue received an anonymous telephone call. The caller claimed to work in the federal prison facility in Oklahoma City where Trentadue's brother, Kenny Trentadue, had died under very troubling circumstances. "The FBI killed your brother," said the voice on the other end of the line. "It was a case of mistaken identity. They thought he was one of the Midwest Bank Robbers."

For more than 13 years, The New American has been a leading force in advancing the thesis that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the convicted conspirators in the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City did not act alone, and that the Clinton administration had engaged in a massive coverup of overwhelming evidence pointing to additional co-conspirators, both foreign and domestic, in the deadly bombing.

On the grounds of Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers International Airport stands an imposing high-security prison facility known as the Federal Transfer Center (FTC). On the morning of August 21, 1995, Kenneth Michael Trentadue died there in cell A-709. The alleged cause of death was suicide by hanging.

On October 2, U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani sentenced Mohamad Fouad Abdallah, 40, of Dearborn, Michigan, to eight months in prison for e-mailing death threats to Debbie Schlussel, a Detroit-area conservative columnist, blogger, attorney, and TV-radio commentator.  Abdallah, an avid Hezbollah supporter who had threatened the outspoken Schlussel with rape and murder, claimed in court to be remorseful for the threats, but the judge was unimpressed. "I find it abhorrent," Judge Battani said of Abdallah's sexually obscene threats against Schlussel.