FBI Rewards Silence In Iowa A.L.F. Investigation

From Voice of the Voiceless

FBI attempts to bribe a man in the Iowa A.L.F. investigation with a $50 gift card.

FBI agents have visited one man in Iowa "a handful of times" (to quote him) in recent years, attempting to question him about the 2004 Animal Liberation Front raid of the University of Iowa. Realizing he was not going to talk, this week they returned with a new incentive: handing him a $50 gift card for a neighboring coffee shop.

The two agents first visited two weeks ago. They approached him at the business he owned in Des Moines, asking where they could get a copy of the A.L.F. film Bold Native. By their suspicious behavior, he immediately suspected them of being FBI.

The next week they returned. He describes the exchange from there:

They asked if I would sit down and have a cup of coffee with them. When I said no and that I wished for them to leave to continue running my business. I said, "who did you say you were with again?" to which they replied "we didn't" with a smile.

After his fourth request for them to leave, they did.

They returned 10 minutes later, for yet another attempt at questioning. To grease the wheels, they handed him a $50 coffee shop gift card.

It didn't work.

The lesson: It never pays to talk to the FBI. But it does pay to not talk, sometimes literally. And one man in Iowa has $50 in free drinks as a reward for his silence, courtesy of the FBI.

- Peter Young

Note: To be fair (despite the FBI never having been fair with me), the two men mentioned here did not identify themselves as FBI. The agency they were representing, whether government or private, is left to speculation.