PART TWO
A Snitch Uncovered

If you believe there's a snitch in your group
We've talked about how to recognize snitches and what you, as an individual, should do to protect yourself. Again, we have to stress that there are no magic bullets; you might be blindsided and severely damaged by a snitch despite your best instincts and best efforts at OpSec. The advice in this booklet can lessen the chance of that, but nobody can give you any guarantees.

Let's say, though, that you believe you've spotted a snitch and this snitch is not only in a position to harm you, but also a group you belong to — whether that be a bunch of dope-smoking friends, a group of hobbyists or gun owners, an activist political organization, or a religious group.

The first thing to do, as we have said before and will say again, is to get away from that person and his or her influence. However, now you've got other people to worry about.

Some members of your group may be absolute innocents. Some may be blabbermouths or edgy types who are walking stupidly into the snitch's trap. Some may be friends with the snitch and hostile to anybody who expresses doubts about the person. Some may even be associates in the snitch's plan to bust you (it's not unusual for government agencies to plant multiple agents into one operation and the bitter old joke that, if not for the snitches, some meetings would be empty, isn't that far wrong).

What do you do?

    Document your suspicions.

    If possible, conduct some careful, subtle investigation to see if your suspected snitch's background and life matches her claims. Does she really live where she says? Has she been seen with police? Do her statements about her education or her friends hold up? If not, you may not have a snitch, but you have an untrustworthy person, for sure.

    Share your specific reasons for suspicion with people in the group that you trust. Yes, we know that snitches destroy trust, so be very careful when choosing one or two others to confide in.

    If you can do so without violating your state's law, quietly begin video or audiotaping all interactions with the suspected person. If state wiretapping laws forbid recording without the consent of all parties, then at least consider openly recording meetings to counteract any lies the snitch may tell his handlers.

    Start a 'Facts, Acts, and Circumstantial file.' After each incident write details down. Facts are the time, date, occasion, incident, characteristics of the person(s). Acts are what they did. Circumstantial is the impressions and anything odd about the situation. Use the FAC file and keep notes from unsettling situations and see if a pattern emerges. (Note: This item also appears in Appendix 2, where you will find details on how to do this, along with many other commonsense OpSec tips.)

    Do not make open accusations unless you have proof positive of snitchery or copness (as when New York Libertarian Party activists (see below) spotted a former "suspicious" member in the New York Times, helping the FBI with an arrest).

    Discuss with your most trusted associates what to do.

Just as your first individual move is to keep away from the suspect individual, the best group action may be to simply shut the person out. Stop talking with them. Stop inviting them to meetings. Stop asking them to be involved in projects. Freeze them out of all activities and discussions.

In a serious case, you may end up having to shut down the entire group to foil a snitch or agent provocateur. If so, have a plausible excuse if you can.

Always, always make sure that you and the other "on the up and up" members of your group remain on record as NOT advocating illegal, and in particular violently illegal, activities. Got a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page? Make your opposition to certain activities clear and public.

Furthermore, make sure you stay on record as NOT advocating things that the snitch wants. Do not line up behind, or even pretend to agree with, that person's policy recommendations, strategies, or tactics. Remember, you may well be being recorded. You do not even want to appear to superficially agree with things an undercover operative is trying to talk you into.

Again, finally, you may have to recognize that you can neither help nor save those who do not wish to be helped or saved. It may be that your final act has to be turning your files over to some other trusted member of the group and leaving. You always have a chance of finding another group. You're not going to have a chance to find another you.

One interesting (though dangerous) way to ID snitches

In his youth, Steve was a member of a number of groups that attracted the attention of cops and snitches. There were so many iffy hangers-on that the tiny core of solid people weren't sure who was a cop or who just smelled like one, or who was a snitch and who might just be a misfit or an idiot.

Then three people hit on a plan. Steve explains:

"Three of us who fairly trusted each other wondered how bad we were compromised and decided to try a test. We were a lot of loosely organized groups with a variety of hangers on. Each of us met with some of these people and called a 'secret' meeting. It was a cop's wet dream — with guns, drugs and heavy people promised. One of us went to each of these meetings and it was only some of the people told about it and a massive police presence at all of them. (The smart people stayed home.) It became unpleasant when the Feds, cops and such realized it was a trick.

"It left me with the depressing feeling that it was next to impossible to put a heavyweight group of more than one person together without a snitch."

Here's one way to spot a snitch!

Online commenter BusyPoorDad writes: Years ago, when the New York Libertarian Party was starting up, a new member joined and became active. He said he was from a low-income neighborhood, worked a manual labor job, and did not know much about politics. He looked the part but things just did not add up.

He knew how to set a table for a formal dinner, used the Robert's Rules very well, and fit in very well with the highly educated members. After about four months of working with us, he just stopped coming. This sort of thing happened a lot but there were no signs of discontent. He was always willing to do everything he was asked to help do (petition, run Nolan chart tables, etc.).

About a year later he was spotted in the NY Times holding on to someone arrested by the FBI for something. His background just did not fit with him. We never saw him reading books, he talked about watching TV and working at a warehouse, but he was able to be cultured, had a good vocabulary, and really wanted to be part of everything.

HISTORICAL ways of dealing with known snitches

Since, as one wag observed, the first snitch arose shortly after the first secret, history offers us lots and lots of examples of how groups have handled the betrayers in their midst.

We do not recommend any of these methods! On the contrary, we advise in the strongest terms possible against them. This is just to note how seriously people have historically taken those who betray them. But, again, to be blunt - DO NOT DO ANY OF THIS! These examples are for historical, educational purposes only.

    The IRA used to shoot betrayers in the kneecaps. It wouldn't kill them, but everyone who saw a former activist lurching down the street on destroyed knees knew what he was.

    The Mafia would famously send stool pigeons to "sleep with the fishes."

    Resistance groups, particularly during wartime, have been known to leave the bodies of betrayers in public squares with messages pinned to them — or even carved in them. While still saying it's a bad idea, it did have the effect of discouraging the general populace from working with the enemy. Today snitches and betrayers often see benefits and face nowhere near enough drawbacks for their dirty work.

    In the 1980s and 1990s, the African National Congress punished perceived collaborators with the monstrous method called "necklacing." They'd shove a gasoline-filled tire over a miscreant's neck and arms and kill the person by setting the tire alight.

    After World War II, many women who had slept with or otherwise collaborated with Nazis were humiliated by having their hair hacked off while mobs screamed, "Nazi whore!" This might not sound like much compared with beastly punishments like necklacing. But public humiliation, shunning, and the attack on their femininity was hugely degrading and psychologically damaging.

How do YOU treat an exposed snitch?

Since you are not a Mafioso, and since (so far) we are not in an outright shooting war with an enemy state, there is no justification for historical hardcore tactics. We'll say it again: your best bet is just to get away from the snitch and take protective measures as described above.

However, if you're very sure a person is a rat and you want to take further steps to render the snitch ineffective or miserable, here are some milder, but potentially effective, tactics. Again, we DO NOT NECESSARILY RECOMMEND any of these things. They may be good or bad ideas, depending on the people and the circumstances. They're just possibilities:

Spread the word. Use social networks both online and in the real world to notify others that the person is an informant. Be as factual and give as much evidence as possible. (There is even a website that contains a national database of known rats, but since it's a paid membership site, we're not recommending it here. Do a Startpage.com or DuckDuckGo.com search to find it if you're interested.) Post the snitch's photo, address, or other personal details online unless that violates a law in your area. This strategy is, however, a serious two edged sword - as those methods are ones that may be used by agents provocateurs in attempting to damage a group by further destroying trust. In fact, such tactics may well end up with YOU being labeled - no matter how unfairly or incorrectly - as the snitch! In fact, removing competent and trustworthy personnel from a group is high on a snitch's to-do list, and this can be a gift from on-high to a snitch.

Expel the person from the group. You can do this quietly — perhaps just by moving meetings and failing to inform the person of the new place. Or you can do it publicly, literally holding a purge or a type of trial where you present the evidence against the person.

Organize a shunning. Shunning has historically been a huge tactic in close communities. Shunning means shutting a person (and sometimes his family members) out of virtually all ordinary activity. A target of shunning isn't welcome into people's homes, can't get served at restaurants, doesn't have his greetings returned, can't get help from any of her former friends, and is generally unable to function within the community. Obviously in many ways this has become harder to do as we've become less reliant on our towns and neighborhoods. On the other hand, the Internet has made other, non-traditional forms of shunning possible.

Turn them in to the "legitimate" authorities. We mentioned this option before as a means of protecting yourself and your true friends. The same tactic may work to halt the snitch in its tracks or even put it in jail. Snitches are often serious criminals. They may well be up to nefarious deeds that their handlers in the police departments or government agencies don't know. Or a snitch who's working for the local PD may be unknown to the FBI, who might be interested to learn about other things he's up to. Again, we are very, very squeamish about the idea of turning any non-violent, non-thieving person into to any law-enforcement agency. But ... well, you'll need to judge for yourself what the snitch in your midst deserves. And of course, do this through a lawyer. Don't talk directly to government agents.

Fun and games. Again, this is a tactic we do not recommend. However, traditionally it's been used as a lovely bit of revenge and a way to keep snitches busy without letting them know you're already on to them. The idea is to keep the snitch running in circles with false leads. Set one snitch spying on another. Or give the snitch false evidence to focus on while you go about your real business unmolested. We consider this to be in the category of trying to "outsmart" the snitch — which is not wise. And you must be especially careful that you never put yourself in a position where you can be accused of "lying to law enforcement," since you can go to prison for that even when you're innocent in every other way. But such games can be fun while they last.

Rehabilitate and take the snitch back into your circle. There are people who believe that some snitches — especially young, inexperienced people who get in over their heads, get in legal trouble, and are intimidated into becoming snitches — should be forgiven, rehabilitated, and eventually brought back into the fold of trust. A very humane anarchist, Tom Knapp, took this position when young anti-drug-war activist Stacy Litz was arrested and pressured into becoming a drug informant. Not many people sympathized (and Litz made her own reputation worse with her online writings). But some very decent folks might want to open their arms to a "reformed" snitch. All we can say is, if you want to go that way, make damned sure the rat has actually reformed first — and can prove it through actions, not mere words.

A modern shunning

In the mid-1990s, Bob Black was a very well-known anarchist. Then, after a personal dispute with fellow writer Jim Hogshire and Hogshire's wife (a "he said-she said" encounter whose facts are known only to the three who were present), Black did the unthinkable.

And in this case the unthinkable was verifiable. On February 21, 1996, Black wrote a letter to the Narcotics Division of the Seattle Police Department, accusing Hogshire of a multitude of drug crimes, and implying that Hogshire was armed and dangerous.

Paramilitary police descended on the Hogshires' apartment. They confiscated perfectly legal items (including dried poppies and a mug warmer they mistook for a drug-weighing scale). Both Jim and Heidi Hogshire spent three days in jail. Even though a judge eventually dismissed the charges, Black's accusation made a hellacious mess of Hogshire's life, cost him tens of thousands of dollars, and contributed to the breakup of his marriage.

In the long run, however, it was Black who paid the bigger price. His publisher (who was also Hogshire's publisher) destroyed all remaining inventory of Black's books and published an article exposing Black's perfidy. Another publisher Black had worked with wrote an open letter in defense of Hogshire. Years later, archives all over the Internet still tell the story; you can easily find a copy of Black's snitch letter. Although as of this writing, Black has managed to keep his Wikipedia page scrubbed of the gory details, the evidence will be out there on other sites as long as he lives and few people will ever again give serious credence to an "anarchist" who reports people to the cops the moment he gets irritated with them.

Repairing the damage snitches do

Unfortunately, it's quite possible you'll never be able to repair the damage done by a snitch. You or someone you care about may end up in prison, broke, or otherwise badly hurt. A group or movement you belong to may collapse or members may split off in anger and distrust.

As one former government agent pointed out after reviewing a draft of this book, ruining activist groups is "at least one of the auxiliary functions of snitches."

But finding a snitch in your midst can also be a valuable learning experience.

It can teach you the importance of good security practices.

It can reveal who's trustworthy and who's not.

It can teach group members not only to be less gullible, but teach them what signs to look for when a snitch is targeting them.

Uncovering a snitch can help the remaining trustworthy members of a group to pull together.

If you're lucky and the activities of your snitch are particularly egregious, you might even get sympathy, donations, or renewed positive attention once good people realize what evil that person and her handlers tried to do to you.

In part, the long-term results of being targeted by a snitch depend on how you and your associates handle the problem. After the initial shock and recovery, look upon it as a chance to learn and teach others.

Beware of accusing someone who might not be a snitch

It can be very, very difficult to detect a snitch — until it's too late. We sometimes face the evil choice of making a false accusation against an innocent person or keeping quiet about our suspicions and ending up with somebody (maybe even us) getting busted.

The damage a false accusation of snitching can do is horrifying. First, an innocent person suffers a grave wrong. He loses his reputation unjustly. She may be attacked by others. Second, your group of associates may break down in chaos. Your real work may suffer.

Then — this also happens — a wrongly accused person who gets expelled, shunned, or attacked may actually become a snitch in revenge.

It's also important to remember that a person who makes a false accusation of snitching is acting like a snitch himself. And in fact, one tactic a snitch might use to divert suspicion from herself is to point the finger at someone else.

So if you suspect someone of snitching but you have no solid reason for your suspicions, it's usually just best to detach yourself from the person while remaining watchful. Do not do anything in that person's presence or within that person's knowledge that you wouldn't do in front of your mother. Quietly encourage others to be watchful (it's just good OpSec, after all), but do not make public accusations without real reason.

Is there a danger in such a wait-and-see approach? You betcha. Around snitches, and in a "snitch culture" like ours, there is always danger in many forms.