The Washington Post reports on the difficulties Western intelligence agencies face in infiltrating al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The piece notes that fresh recruits are often “highly disposable,” employed mainly as suicide bombers and general cannon fodder, making it difficult for informants to penetrate the networks. It also notes that those informants who do work their way up risk being exposed by the civilian justice system:
This is why terrorists can’t necessarily be allowed to see all the evidence against them. But it is problematic. What if 14 foreign nationals were arrested on American soil under similar circumstances? Would the federal government jeopardize a highly placed informant inside al Qaeda–one who had demonstrated his worth by averting at least one attack–for the sake of meeting the same standards applied in prosecuting mobsters?
