AP, Seattle Times upset over FBI impersonation

Associated Press

SEATTLE

The Associated Press and The Seattle Times are objecting after learning that the FBI created a fake news story and website using their names to catch a bomb- threat suspect in 2007.

Police in suburban Lacey, near Olympia, sought the FBI’s help as repeated bomb threats prompted a week of evacuations and closures at Timberline High School in June 2007.

After police interviews of potential suspects came up empty, the agency obtained a warrant from a federal magistrate judge to send a “communication” to a social- media account associated with the bomb threats, with the idea of tricking the suspect into revealing his location, according to documents obtained by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The “communication,” which contained a software tool known as a “computer and Internet Protocol address verifier,” turned out to be a link to a phony AP story about the bomb threats posted on a fake Seattle Times Web page. The 15-year-old suspect clicked on the link, revealing his computer’s location and Internet address, and helping agents to confirm his identity.

The boy was arrested.

“Every effort we made in this investigation had the goal of preventing a tragic event like what happened at Marysville and Seattle Pacific University,” said Frank Montoya Jr., the FBI’s special agent in charge in Seattle, referring to two local school shootings this year. “We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting. Use of that type of technique happens in very rare circumstances and only when there is sufficient reason to believe it could be successful in resolving a threat.”

AP spokesman Paul Colford said Tuesday the FBI’s “ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility.”

Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best said the newspaper was outraged.