Beginning a few years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, a squad of New York City detectives, known as the Citywide Debriefing Team, has combed the city's jails for Muslim and other immigrants who might be persuaded to become police informants, reports the New York Times.
Last month, the police department disbanded a controversial surveillance unit that had sent plainclothes detectives into Muslim communities to listen in on conversations and build files on where people ate, prayed and shopped. The continuing work of the debriefing team shows that the department has not backed away from other counterterrorism initiatives it created after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the first quarter of this year, the team conducted 220 interviews.