WASHINGTON — The FBI had a job offer for Nick Young, a veteran Washington transit officer: become an undercover informer for the bureau and gather information at local mosques on fellow Muslims who might pose a terrorism threat.
The clandestine work would be “a lot sexier” than his current job, Young remembered an agent named Ryan telling him. And it could pay him a lot of money if the intelligence was good.
Young turned him down. But it would not be the last time he would see the FBI agent.
In August, five years later, Young was summoned to the headquarters of the transit agency, Metro, where Ryan and other agents were waiting for him.
This time, the agent handcuffed Young on a charge of supporting the Islamic State — a case built by an informer who posed as a would-be terrorist fighter.
The prosecution of Young, the only law enforcement officer among more than 100 Americans who have been accused of helping the Islamic State, offers a revealing look at the FBI’s shadowy cat-and-mouse efforts to identify possible Islamic extremists — an effort President Trump has vowed to intensify.
The FBI is expanding its use of undercover operations to identify Islamic State sympathizers inside the United States who might travel overseas to help the terrorist group or commit attacks at home.
Young’s lawyer says that the FBI entrapped him, with undercover operatives popping in and out of his life for at least six years. But law enforcement officials say Young represents one of their worst fears: that a longtime officer, with access to sensitive facilities, could be “radicalized” to support Islamic extremism.
He is charged with providing “material support” to the Islamic State, in the form of $245 worth of Google Play gift cards. Authorities say he gave the gift cards to a Muslim friend named Mo — in reality, an undercover informer — to support recruitment for the terrorist group.
In interviews from jail, Young, a convert to Islam, portrayed himself and many other US Muslims under investigation as victims of religious persecution. He accused an “overzealous” FBI of “manufacturing” the case.
“I know for sure I wouldn’t have been targeted if I was an evangelic Christian or a Sikh or a Hindu or something,” said Young, 37.
“I’m not a terrorist,” he added. “Seeing these horrible allegations and the way they’re trying to paint me, it’s just a nightmare.”
Officials at the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the case. In general, the FBI said, the investigative techniques used in such national security cases “are subject to vigorous oversight and require us to use the least intrusive means possible.”
Trump has declared that the country must do more to confront what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism,” including the possibility of expanding surveillance and intelligence operations, creating a “registry” of US Muslims, and reviving torture as an interrogation technique.
Those proposals have worried some civil liberties advocates, who say they are eager to see whether the Justice Department and the FBI seek to expand their investigative powers further in domestic terrorism cases.
Young sees himself as a pawn in that broader fight.
Young acknowledges holding passionate views about the Middle East and the “slaughter” of Syrians by the government of President Bashar Assad. On breaks from the transit agency, Young traveled to Libya twice in 2011 with body armor to join rebels fighting the Gadhafi regime.
“I didn’t kill anyone while I was there,” he said, laughing, but “I got shot at a lot.”
He insisted that he had never supported terrorists. He plans to take the witness stand at his trial, an unusual tactic for a terrorism suspect. “Nick doesn’t have anything to hide,” said Nicholas D. Smith, one of his lawyers.
As he waits for his trial date, he sits in a rural jail in Warsaw, Va. “My brain’s turning to mush,” he said.
He said he was under investigation for so long, it was almost inevitable that authorities would find a way to charge him. “At the end of the day, the crime I’m being accused of — a crime of sending gift cards — it would be laughable if it wasn’t really happening,” Young said.