Seduction Is The New Waterboarding
A story about the time the FBI paid a woman to seduce me
I am America’s “#1 domestic terrorist threat.”
All I did was release a few thousand mink from fur farms. For this crime of “Animal Enterprise Terrorism,” I received two years of prison and a lifetime of FBI attention as a convicted “eco-terrorist.”
I have had my curbside trash stolen by police, my ex-girlfriends questioned, my luggage ransacked by the TSA, my travels communicated by the FBI to fur industry executives, and my houses raided – twice.
And then there was the time the FBI sent a blonde woman named Taylor to seduce me.
It started at an animal rights conference
At first impression, she was exactly what you’d expect an FBI agent to be. Like spending an hour making exaggerated nodding motions every time I opened my mouth while on a panel for a contentious debate: “The Animal Liberation Front: Terrorists or Heroes?” It was the conclusion of an animal rights conference in Salt Lake City, and there was nothing notable about a woman approaching me at the podium post-talk with a smile and a question.
Her name was Taylor. She wanted advice on starting a dog adoption program or something. I was better qualified to instruct her on picking locks to get inside labs that researched on dogs, but I did my best with her question. Undeterred by my failure to offer even basic guidance, she asked what I was doing after the conference, and could she join my friends and I for dinner? I didn’t object.
Clue #1 the girl flirting with you is an FBI agent: Everyone who knows her thinks she’s FBI
We agreed to meet later. When she stepped away from the podium, I was immediately mobbed by local activists who gave me a warning: Beware. That bouncy blonde, they admonished, had been lurking around the local animal rights scene, and was seriously suspected of working for the FBI.
It wasn’t the part about the FBI infiltrating animal rights groups that seemed implausible. When there is a flank of your movement that burns down slaughterhouses and breaks into labs, a little federal infiltration is obligatory.
It was the flimsy basis for their suspicion that I wasn’t sold on, which amounted to three pieces of “evidence”: One, Taylor wasn’t vegan. Two, she dressed a little too conservatively. And three, she sat quietly and took notes during local animal rights group meetings.
I just rolled my eyes. Many people get involved before giving up dairy and eggs, considered an ethical baseline for animal rights activists. Two, if being a conservative dresser was grounds for suspicion, well, I did most of my shopping at Banana Republic so they’d have to blacklist me too. And three, this was the 21st century, where covert digital recorders meant FBI agents didn’t have to take handwritten notes. It wasn’t just weak evidence, it was no evidence at all.
I did some follow-up inquiries with locals, and the most substantive “evidence” that came back to me was from one friend who said:
“Always be suspicious of anyone so easy on the eyes.”
I should have listened.
FBI informant clue #2: She employs desperate, amateur courtship moves
We reconvened after the conference at a vegan restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City. Seated at opposite ends of the group, she texted me under the table, flirting in a way anyone post-high school would classify as either amateurish, aggressive, or desperate. When the conversation turned to how badly she didn’t want to spend the night at her place due to a roommate conflict, I could see where this was going.
We shared a bed in a spare bedroom of the conference organizer, the warnings of local activists hanging in the air. At 1 a.m. we stared at the ceiling while she peppered me with questions: How did I meet my friends in Salt Lake City? Did I still break into farms? Why did everyone think she was an FBI agent?
There is something disarming about someone so bad, they couldn’t possibly be doing what it seems like they’re doing.
And it got worse. Only an FBI agent would turn to someone in bed, and in the most hollow, emotionally vacant way possible, say:
“There’s something about you I find really… attractive.”
Was she being paid to seduce me? If I had one flaw the FBI could always count on to exploit, it was that I’d do anything for a story.
FBI Informant Clue #3: She asks permission to photograph activists at protests
I left town, and soon after Taylor was in touch to request a favor: As an ostensible “journalism major at the University of Utah,” she wanted me to call on my contacts in the local animal rights group and secure her permission to photograph their protests for the student paper. I made some calls and cleared it with local activists.
Later that week she attended a circus protest in Salt Lake City and photographed everyone. The photos never ran in the paper.
FBI Informant Clue #4: She contacts you days after a major act of “eco-terrorism”
Three months later I was back in Salt Lake City visiting a friend, but I didn’t contact Taylor. We’d spent two days together after the conference, but she was fun in an “empty calories” way, and the undue interest in the details of my activist life left an aftertaste that didn’t exactly incentivize future contact.
A week after my return, the Animal Liberation Front cut fences and released 7,000 mink from a fur farm just north of Salt Lake City. The FBI seemed to make me a suspect every time a cow got loose from a dairy farm, and I told the friend I was staying with:
“Prepare for an FBI visit.”
The FBI never came, but an email did: 48 hours after the ALF raid, I received an email from Taylor. How have you been? When are you coming back to Utah? The timing, occurring after the largest fur farm raid in five years, should have been immediately obvious. Should have been, but wasn’t.
She asked another question: Would I like to accompany her on an all-expenses-paid trip to Moab?
She had a two-day-a-week hostess job at a high-end resort, she said, and I was invited for the three-day trip. We firmed up the details on the phone: Stay at the resort, live like the rock starts who often stayed there (the Beastie Boys had just left), and make Moab our playground. She’d pick me up Friday morning.
FBI Informant Clue #5: She asks you to implicate yourself in a major felony
When I got into her car on Friday, she didn’t launch into interrogation mode right away. She let me put my seatbelt on first.
“Do you know who freed those mink in Kaysville last week?”
This is another point where an FBI informant gets so obvious, its actually counterintuitive, and you think: No actual FBI informant would be this bad.
As an interrogative move, this whole thing was pretty shrewd. Bait a suspect into a free trip from Salt Lake City to Moab, and enjoy a captive interrogation subject in the passenger’s seat for five solid hours.
I stonewalled her questions. She was undeterred.
How did I know so-and-so? Who did I live with when I was on the run from the FBI? Am I sure I didn’t know who released those mink last week?
At my breaking point, I laid down the law: These questions are intrusive and egregiously inappropriate, I told her. I know you’re a new activist, so this is your warning.
She didn’t relent.
We drove most of the five hours in silence.
FBI Informant Clue #6: Her godmother is a district attorney
“Don’t break any laws here.” She said, entering Moab. “My godmother is the county prosecutor, and she’s mean.”
FBI Informant Clue #7: All her friends are cops
After her waitressing shift, she picked me up downtown and announced two things. One, her Moab friends had invited her to hang out. Two, I wasn’t allowed to meet them.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “But most of my friends are cops. And I know how you feel about cops.”
I’m not an anarchist. I’m not even a “radical.” I just care about animals and dislike cops. In my world, cops were foot soldiers of the animal abusers.
But there was also zero chance I would pass on a story like this: The convicted eco-terrorist partying with police. I pressed her to reconsider, and she conceded to strict terms: I can attend the cop gathering, she said, if I promised not to talk to them.
The gathering, I learned, was to convene at midnight inside a closed movie theater managed by her high school friend. After hours, and unbeknown to the owner, he invited friends to enter through the alley for secret, illegal screenings of unreleased films. As we pulled in, I counted five police cars in the theater’s back lot. This was going to be good.
She whisked me in the back door and through the lobby like Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers shielding their client up the courthouse steps. I caught a quick glance of several cops ransacking the concessions counter, double-fisting Jujubes and Milk Duds, in a building they weren’t allowed to be in. I’m no lawyer, but two minutes in and I was pretty sure I had implicated half of the Moab PD in felonies ranging from abuse of power to burglary.
She hid us out in the back row, and I spent the next 100 minutes moving my eyes between the screen and the backlit silhouettes of at least 10 Moab police.
If you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, you’re way off: The movie was the Big-Brother-is-watching-themed Spielberg film Eagle Eye.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation can now hear everything you’re saying.” – Eagle Eye
The next day, the cumulative evidence for her FBI-status had stacked so high, she had almost brought me full-circle: She was so obvious, she wasn’t obvious. Overt inquires into criminal activity. Photographing activists. Family in the DA’s office. All friends are cops. A brilliant cover, in the way that the best way to shoplift a lawnmower from Target is probably just to push it out the front door.
The next day I orchestrated my own rescue, placing an SOS call to a friend in Salt Lake City who drove down immediately. Before my escape from Moab, I met Taylor to retrieve my un-password-protected computer, which had been in her possession for a full eight hours. It was the last time I ever saw her.
FBI Informant Clue #8: The FBI admits she is FBI
Five months later two Utah animal rights activists were arrested as suspects in the mink farm raid. Defense lawyers provided me with court documents revealing the un-shocking truth: “Taylor” was an FBI informant.
Endnote: Seduction is the new waterboarding
One attorney told me she’s reviewed documents stating the FBI’s new favored intelligence operatives are “females, aged 19 to 24, recruited from college campuses.” One FBI asset exploited feelings of amour to ensnare activist Eric McDavid in an unactualized bomb plot that got him over 20 years in prison. In my personal sphere I have seen the FBI exploit fractured relationships to turn former partners into informants, even increasing compliance by planting false rumors to stir up ill feelings. One friend learned his girlfriend was a paid spy working for private intelligence. This spy was employed by the same firm that recently posted fake online commentary about me (hide those IP addresses, Big Brother).
For anyone marked as a “domestic terrorist,” separating friend from fed is delicate game. So if we meet at a conference, it doesn’t mean we can’t have coffee. I’ll just need three forms of ID and time for the background check to clear.
-Peter Young
