The Terror Factory: The ISIS Edition

“Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A real eye-opener that questions how well the country’s security is being protected.”–Kirkus Reviews

“This is investigative reporting at its best. For the first time, a documented investigation into the domestic terrorism program is available to the general public. And the story this dogged reporter tells has been garnering growing attention. Is it possible that we have in fact created the very threat we fear? Are we in danger of destroying the fabric of our freedom in our panic to preserve it? Read Aaronson’s ground breaking report and make up your own mind.”–Lowell Bergman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of Investigative Reporting

“A disturbing window into America’s war on terror. In story after story, Aaronson reveals in detail how the FBI and its informants are creating crime rather than solving it. This is an important piece of journalism.”—Alexandra Natapoff, author, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice

“The Terror Factoryis a damning exposé of how the government’s front line against terrorism has become a network of snitches at the end of their ropes, and FBI agents desperate to thwart a terrorist plot even if it means creating one.”–Will Potter, author, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

“Aaronson explains just how misguided and often deceptive FBI terrorism sting operations have become. In case after case, he demonstrates how the money being spent is more about producing theater than about federal agents arresting suspected terrorists.”–James J. Wedick, former FBI Supervisory Agent

A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: The Isis Edition exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror. This updated edition of The Terror Factory examines the FBI’s use of stings to catch ISIS sympathizers in the United States, as well as how the bureau, already transformed into an intelligence agency whose tactics are similar to those of the CIA and NSA, has and will change under the presidency of Donald Trump.

Trevor Aaronson is a contributing writer at The Intercept and executive director of the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a reporter with Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit and a fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley. He has also been an editor and reporter at newspapers in Florida and Tennessee. A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards, Aaronson has won the Molly National Journalism Prize, the international Data Journalism Award, and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.