15 confidential sources fed FBI info from Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

The FBI had 15 confidential sources feeding them information from their contacts with occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a prosecutor confirmed in court Friday. Ammon Bundy's lawyer Marcus Mumford is urging the court to compel prosecutors to identify their informants before the defense rests its case in the federal conspiracy trial against his client and six co-defendants. "We're being prosecuted based on the collective actions of others,'' Mumford argued. Defense lawyers, he said, don't know what these confidential sources "did or how they contributed'' to the alleged conspiracy during the 41-day armed takeover of the federal bird sanctuary in eastern Oregon. U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown asked the government to provide her with unredacted reports from the 15 informants. Each is formally described by the FBI as a "CHS'' or confidential human source. Defense lawyers had received heavily redacted reports on the sources, and their identities were unknown. Brown later Friday learned that there are 129 reports stemming from the sources that she plans to review over the weekend before ruling whether to grant Mumford's motion to compel release of the sources' names or other information...more