International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 12

International Journal on Criminology
one student at a time and instructors were often former UCs who understood the
professional and personnel issues that would arise when you live a full-time life of
someone other than yourself. The pressure on the UCs, their handlers, and managers
was intense as the stakes were high—to the UC and the investigation they were
involved in.
The UCs were a cadre of officers that blended naturally with the persons,
clusters, and organizations that were being investigated. In the Almonte and Alessa
case, as in others, this was essential. While Almonte and Alessa trained to join al-
Shabaab, a remarkable 23-year-old undercover of Egyptian background was invited
to join them after he spent months engaging them on the margins of their own more
open life. When the case became public, even his parents and his girlfriend [soon
to be his wife] had no idea he had lived a separate life as an NYPD Intelligence
Division UC for the previous four years.
Confidential Informants
A backbone of Intelligence Division operations involved using confidential
informants [CIs] to get close to those persons, clusters, or organizations under
investigation. In those investigations, the Intelligence Division from its post-9/11
restart understood and stayed firmly committed to the policy of avoiding any action
that might be interpreted as an act of entrapment. Division management at all levels
knew this would be a first line of defense in prosecution of a terrorist case. As
expected, it was the lead defense argument in the case against Jose Pimentel who
was self-radicalized, an Internet disciple of AQAP’s Anwar al-Awlaki and a bomb
maker who wanted to kill U.S. military personnel returning from Afghanistan.
-----Over the course of this investigation the Intelligence Division
used two confidential informants and an undercover officer before arresting
him in 2011 as he was constructing 3 bombs in an apartment in Washington
Heights.
Having confidential informants that can gain access is essential; having
detectives that can manage, control, and direct them is no less essential. The NYPD
Intelligence units that worked with confidential informants were well trained on
this. Regarding the issue of access, the Division scored very high in who it chose as
confidential informants—sometimes it was too good:
-----This occurred in the case of Najibullah Zazi, who, with two other
al-Qaeda-trained associates from Queens, planned multiple suicide attacks
in the New York subway system in 2009. Asked by the FBI if it knew or
could learn anything of Zazi who also grew up in Queens, New York, the
Intelligence Division approached one of its informants who happened to
know Zazi’s family so well that he called Zazi’s father, alerting him that law
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