And why they let anyone be an informant.

• Author: Burkholder, Steven
• Position: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Steven Burkholder is a Connecticut writer This article was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

You're young and energetic, You like to write. But your politics put you in deep right field. What do you do? Get your ideas disseminated through the FBI's clip service.

Lost in the media backwash over the FBI's stakeout of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) were several incidents showing bureau officials ready and willing to photocopy and pass along unsolicited rightwing manuscripts. That willingness to lend the FBI's imprimatur to unverified allegations probably didn't prompt any agent to go overboard. But when the FBI winks at even a little entrepreneurial spying, there may be cause for worry.

Take Michael Boos, former program director of an outfit called Young America's Foundation. He's young, smart, and apparently likes life in the covert lane. Boos slipped into a meeting of the Washington, D.C. chapter of CISPES in June 1984 looking for proof of terroristic criminal activity. He thought he found some. Boos wrote up his findings in a three-page article intended for The American Sentinel, a journal that once did business under the name The Pink Sheet on the American Left. He also sent a copy of his draft to Edward J. O'Malley, then the FBI's assistant director of intelligence.

Headlined "Group in Nation's Capital to Aid Left-Wing Terrorists," but printed without a byline for Boos, the piece made some strong charges. Boos wrote that documents he'd obtained revealed that CISPES would be raising funds "to provide direct military assistance to the Soviet.supported Marxist terrorists seeking to overthrow the recently elected government of El Salvador" In particular, he claimed that a shoe factory in El Salvador, slated for CISPES support, would be making combat boots for guerrillas. That was "only one possible conclusion" he drew from the meeting. William Sessions, in testimony this fan, disagreed, admitting that the bureau's suspicions about CISPES proved unfounded.

But that was later. At the time, officials at FBI headquarters believed Boos's allegations merited being stamped "secret" and circulated to 33 field offices, according to a bureau memo that was released to CISPES and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights under the Freedom of Information Act.

Oliver B. Revell, one of Sessions's top deputies, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last February that the...