Supreme Court Considers Case Involving Fbi Operative Ready To Burn Everyone

Craig Monteilh has gone rogue — again.

The first time the undercover operative had a change of heart, years after the FBI deployed him to penetrate southern California’s Muslim community, his U-turn became a splitting headache for law enforcement and officials at the highest levels of the Justice Department.

Monteilh’s latest about-face may even be flummoxing the Supreme Court.

This past Friday, the justices were set — for the fifth time — to discuss the latest twist in an epic legal fight Monteilh set in motion 15 years ago with his sensational claims that he was dispatched by the FBI to pose as Muslim and uncover possible terrorist connections at an Orange County, California mosque, the Islamic Center of Irvine.

During that assignment, Monteilh had a falling out with the FBI and provided inside details that supported an ACLU lawsuit alleging that “Operation Flex” violated the religious freedom and privacy rights of mosque-goers through audio and video surveillance.

But now Monteilh has also said that much of the information he gave to the ACLU was “made up.”

Posing as “Farouk al-Aziz” and given the FBI code name “Oracle,” Monteilh says he pretended to convert to Islam at the Irvine mosque while surreptitiously recording audio and video there for about a year and a half.

The operation began in 2006, just two months after the top FBI official in California, Stephen Tidwell, spoke at the same mosque to reassure Muslims that the agency wouldn’t deploy undercover tactics in their houses of worship.

“If we're going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you," Tidwell said, according to a video of his June 2006 speechreviewed by The Washington Post. "The FBI will tell you we're coming for the very reason that we don't want you to think you're being monitored. We would come only to learn."

Monteilh’s exposure of the sensitive undercover operation touched off a 15-year legal battle that’s still burning. Part of the case alreadyreached the Supreme Court, in 2021. The fight is back before the high court again as the Trump administration asks the justices to toss out most of the case in order to protect state secrets.

Monteilh, now 63, is eagerly awaiting the justices’ next move, which could be announced as soon as Monday morning. He’s hoping they return the case to a lower court for a hearing where he can publicly air his grievances against both sides.

“The ACLU, they don't want me to say anything else that makes them look like we're in cahoots. The government, on the other hand, they’re asserting state secrets. So, they don't want to use me, but they have to to finish it, don't they?” Monteilh told POLITICO in a recent interview, clearly relishing the predicament facing both sides. “Who's the guy in the middle right now with the puppet strings?”

‘The FBI has earned my vengeance.’

Weeks before the Trump administration took the case back to the Supreme Court last summer, Monteilh dropped a bomb. Inan email to lawyers on both sides, later filed in court, the former FBI asset said a declaration he signed under penalty of perjury in 2010, which fueled the decade-and-a-half of legal wrangling, was “not accurate” and contained “50-60% lies.”

“Most of the information the ACLU … and I made up,” Monteilh added in the email. “I do not stand by that information.”

In a series of additional emails,Monteilh alleged that two ACLU attorneys, Peter Bibring and Ahilan Arulanantham, “willfully overlooked” information Monteilh wanted to include. “Both ACLU attorneys overruled me, stating it wouldn’t look good for the lawsuit,” Monteilh wrote.

Ina court filing, Bibring and Arulanantham “emphatically” denied that they “knowingly assisted in the submission of false declarations … or engaged in a quid pro quo arrangement for [Monteilh’s] testimony.”

“Counsel have represented the interests of Plaintiffs with the utmost integrity during the entire life of this litigation, and have not engaged in any misconduct,” the attorneys wrote.

Arulanantham said in a statement to POLITICO that when Monteilh’s formal statements for the case were being drafted a decade and a half ago he “never told me or anyone else at the ACLU that his declarations contained false or misleading information in any form, including ‘half-truths.’”

“If he had, we would not have filed them,” Arulanantham said. As is common in whistleblower cases, the attorney said, another person was also brought in to observe when the declarations were signed and could testify that Monteilh affirmed they were accurate at the time.

An ACLU representative said no one was available to comment. Bibring did not respond to a request for comment.

In the filing, Bibring and Arulanantham argued that even setting aside Monteilh’s testimony, there’s ample audio and video evidence and accounts from other witnesses to support the lawsuit. The attorneys also provided a judge with statements from Monteilh repeatedly accusing “the FBI/Government attorneys” of “blackmail” for threatening to imprison him if he violated a non-disclosure agreement he signed while working for the FBI in 2007.

“Plaintiffs’ counsel note that they did not choose the whistleblower in this case; Defendants did,” wrote Bibring and Arulanantham, who both left the ACLU for other jobs in 2021. Arulanantham is still working on the case.

Indeed, while Monteilh’s recent emails may be embarrassing for the ACLU, his white-hot anger is reserved for the FBI. He contends the bureau broke promises by allowing him to be jailed for eight months on a theft charge and shorted him $100,000 it owed him. A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monteilh filed against the FBI in 2010.

“The FBI has earned my vengeance,” Monteilh said in one of the emails to lawyers that was later filed in court.

Representatives for the FBI and Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaking to POLITICO, Monteilh made clear that he would do his best to make the long-delayed fact-finding in the lawsuit exceedingly uncomfortable.

“I'm not an informant, I'm not your snitch. I'm not the guy you got leverage on. I am a professional operative. I'm an independent contractor,” he said. “If you fuck me like that, I'm going to turn around and do the same thing to you. … In the end, whether it's a portion or the whole thing, that's my money. … If the FBI knows one thing, they'll never, ever forget my name.”

A stunning claim

Monteilh’s missives, if they’re believed, also offer an explosive explanation for the pervasive secrecy around his work for the FBI and the government’s determination to curb the mosque-surveillance lawsuit on state-secrets grounds.

Monteilh’s provocative claim: He helped set in motion the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

Given Monteilh’s conviction for theft, a prison term he served for forgery before connecting with the FBI and his self-described skills at deception, the assertion has to be taken with a grain of salt. But it aligns with public facts that give it at least a surface plausibility.

One of the people Monteilh surreptitiously recorded during “Operation Flex” — Ahmadullah Niazi — is the brother-in-law of Amin al-Haq, whom the U.S.declared a “specially designated global terrorist” for serving as bin Laden’s bodyguard and the head of Al Qaeda’s Black Guard. Niazi was indicted in 2009 on charges of immigration and naturalization fraud.

At a bail hearing for Niazi, an FBI agent testified that a person working for the bureau had recorded Niazi discussing terrorist ideology, jihad and blowing up abandoned buildings. Niazi was released on bail and the charges were later dropped for unclear reasons.

Monteilh says he was that FBI operative, and that information he obtained from Niazi helped the agency trace cell phone calls that indicated al-Haq’s location in Pakistan leading to his arrest there in 2008. In an email filed in court, Monteilh contends that al-Haq “gave up the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.”

Monteilh said FBI officials told him they confirmed al-Haq’s information with al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, leading to the 2011 operation that killed bin Laden. U.S. officials have said they found bin Laden by tracking a trusted courier identified in part through information from Guantanamo detainees.

Al-Haq was not tried or formally charged by Pakistan during that period. According to local media reports, he was released in 2011, a few months after the raid that killed bin Laden.

While the FBI has never addressed Monteilh’s claim about a link to the bin Laden operation, Justice Department attorneys effectively publicized that assertion last year by filing Monteilh’s email about it on a public court docket.

Wrangling over ‘state secrets’

In 2011, officials at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department insisted that the bulk of the ACLU lawsuit could not go forward because it would expose state secrets. Attorney General Eric Holdersigned a declaration claiming that disclosing the identities of people who were the focus of “Operation Flex,” and the sources and methods the operation used, would risk “significant harm to national security.”

The extreme secrecy around the mosque surveillance lawsuit has contributed to staggering delays. In 2015, the case languished at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for more than three years as the parties awaited a decision on whether a federal law on surveillance overrode the government’s state secrets claim. The appeals court ruled it did. After another 15 months, the Supreme Court reversed that decision — a victory for the government.

Now the justices are being asked to reinstate a lower court’s order dismissing the case — which was handed down more than 13 years ago. The judge who wrote it left the court in 2024.

Legal experts struggled to explain the delays, but said classified information the government submitted in connection with its bid to dismiss the lawsuit likely played a role: Law clerks working on the case require security clearances and some documents have to be kept in a secure facility or brought to chambers by couriers, in locked bags.

It’s unclear why the latest Supreme Court petition has been scheduled and rescheduled for discussion at five of the justices’ private conferences. Sometimes that means the justices decided not to take a case and a justice who wanted to take it is writing a dissent. In other instances, it means the justices simply deferred making a decision.

Monteilh’s media moment

When Monteilh’s story began to spill out in 2009, he became the subject of gauzy profiles by news outlets eager to highlight another alleged excess in President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 War on Terror.

“This American Life” devoteda whole program to Monteilh’s escapades for the FBI, memorably dubbing him the “gym rat,” after his fondness for developing information from people he met during workouts.

With the Supreme Court set to act on his case soon, Monteilh is itching for a chance to return to the spotlight and settle his score with the FBI.

“My plan is working,” he said. “The Supreme Court, when they're ready, is going to [send it] back to Santa Ana. And when they do, I'll be ready.”