Kurt Nimmo
In more than two hours of testimony, Turner described how he was recruited in 2003 by the FBI's Newark-based Joint Terrorism Task Force. He said he was paid "in excess of $100,000" by the FBI during his almost five years as an informant, according to The Record.
Turner’s first trial ended in deadlock back in December. A mistrial was declared after the jury deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of acquitting Turner who was originally indicted in Illinois.
During the first trial, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Amy Pickett, the third highest ranking FBI Official in New York City, admitted that Turner was involved in “National Security Intelligence.”
On February 16, The Record reported federal prosecutors sought to bar Turner from revealing his longtime role as a FBI informant to a jury during the current trial. “Prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Donald Walter to preclude Turner's lawyers from referring to his background as a confidential source for the FBI,” the newspaper reported.
According to research conducted by Alexandra Natapoff of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, the FBI maintains an army of at least 15,000 "confidential informants,” while the DEA admits to having 4,000 snitches. “But the number of informants working directly for the Feds is probably only a tiny fraction of the entire stukachi [a Russian epithet used to describe a secret police informant] population, given the uncounted masses of snitches working for state and local police agencies.”
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