This is Popular Front, a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan. In this episode we're speaking to journalist Mataza

Hussein he's going to be talking to us about a story he covered where the FBI

essentially honeypotted a young man into becoming a quote-unquote

jihadist. Now the saddest thing about this is that this young lad who was just

16 years old had brain development issues and the FBI

basically groomed him into becoming a quote-unquote terrorist so that they

could arrest him.

Believe it or not this is actually not that rare of an occurrence in America.

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So we're gonna be speaking about Mateo Ventura. He's now 18. He was 16 at the start of this incident with the FBI.

Tell us about this guy, who is this kid? this incident with the FBI.

Tell us about this guy, who is this kid?

So, material Ventura is a kid who lives in Massachusetts

and effectively he was online when he was 16 and he was involved in some online

communities and he started to talk to people who he thought were members of

ISIS at the time.

So it's a very important context to know

that the FBI has very extensive informant operations

all over the United States.

By the last accounting about a decade ago,

they were disclosed formally the figures,

...