Former FBI asset Craig Monteilh says the agency encouraged him to have sex with a target

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As is often the case when trying to pry information out of the FBI, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations were forced to sue the agency for information about its spying program against Muslims. That's not how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is supposed to work.

The ACLU finally received documents on Tuesday showing that the FBI was not only involved in spying based on religion and ethnicity, but was also using its "community outreach" program in Muslim communities to gather intelligence related to people's political views and religious expression.

One of the FBI's former assets in California was the man in the video above, Craig Monteilh. His story is completely bizarre, and first became public after Ahmad Niazi, a worshipper at a mosque in Irvine, California, reported to the FBI that someone at the mosque was making overtly jihadist statements.

That someone turned out to be Craig Monteilh, a.k.a Farouk al-Aziz, who later claimed to have spied for the FBI at several mosques around Southern California. The mosque got a restraining order against him. Then the FBI asked Niazi to become an informant, and he refused – whereupon an FBI agent allegedly said he would make his life a “living hell.” Niazi was subsequently charged with perjury, fraud and making false statements.

As for Monteilh, he is now suing both the Irvine police and the FBI – the later for failing to pay him the $100,000 he says he was promised.

In an interview with the Guardian last month, Monteilh alleged that the FBI encouraged him to have sex with a Muslim woman he was spying on, and to record their pillow talk for them.

"They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did," he said.