It's difficult not to experience a faint pang of sympathy for Hal Turner, albeit an ephemeral one deeply buried beneath multiple layers of well-earned disgust.


For at least five years, and probably more, Turner was a paid informant and provocateur in the employ of the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, the Federal Government. His assignment was to bait easily influenced people with incendiary rhetoric about race and other resentments, and reel in anyone who bit a little too lustily on the bait. The Bureau credits Turner with personally bringing more than 100 "extremists" to their attention, many of whom (the Bureau won't specify how many) were arrested.