Snitch! The podcast Alphabet Boys spells out the story of an FBI informant during the George Floyd protests in Denver.
, from 2003 to 2006, begins the podcast by placing the listener in the hectic environment of the Mile High City after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020.
Windecker did actually travel to the Middle East to fight with Kurdish militants in 2014 or 2015, according to FBI files. But fellow foreign fighters that Aaronson interviewed said that he significantly embellished his battle chops. And Aaronson is the type of journalist who can spot a militant-group poser: For years, he's covered Americans who attempt to join terrorist groups and are entrapped by the FBI.
“This recording ended up being Mickey’s audition tape for the FBI,” Aaronson says of the conversation in Hall's apartment. Windecker was soon meeting with local FBI Denver agents in unmarked vehicles. The local FBI bureau began paying him thousands of dollars to go after Hall and other activists, securing evidence so that they could be charged federally.
He connected with Shelby, who was born and raised in Aurora, after seeing him at protests in his hometown carrying an AR-15 type of rifle. “I feel that he escalated violence or created violence. There were a lot of kids out there for those protests,” Hall tells, referring to some of the younger protesters as kids while acknowledging that they were likely in their early twenties.Between protests, Windecker talked with the activists he was targeting at local chain restaurants. At one point, he met Hall and Shelby at a Famous Dave’s. During that meeting, he suggested blowing up a courthouse or shooting the Colorado attorney general.
Not long after that meeting, Windecker and Shelby met at a TGI Fridays with a"friend" of Windecker’s, who was actually an undercover FBI agent. Shelby again displayed that he didn't know much about Attorney General Phil Weiser, whom he kept referring to as"the district attorney." But he agreed to take a ride by Weiser’s house with the undercover FBI agent, and outside the home he talked about how he could kill the AG if he got the chance.
"Law enforcement determined that the individual posed a threat, and they sought an Extreme Risk Protection Order. The AG thought that was an appropriate response," explains Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesperson for the Colorado Attorney General's Office. “I just got terrified and intimidated into getting this dude this gun,” Hall says now, adding that he felt like Windecker might hurt him if he refused.
As the summer of 2020 moved into fall, other activists began to catch on to Windecker. The snitch's ties to protesters frayed until they broke entirely. His payday with the FBI may have ended.After he received all the tapes and papers Following a series of congressional hearings in the 1970s, the FBI ostensibly appeared to rein in some of the agency's worst practices. And in recent years, FBI leadership has stated that the law enforcement agency doesn't target people for First Amendment-protected activities. But that may not be true, as evidenced by the federal agency’s work with Windecker.
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