Suburban Detroit Parents Blame FBI for Their Son’s Death in Ukraine
By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
DETROIT — The life and death tale of Billy Reilly is gut-wrenching. It involves his counterterrorism work online for Detroit FBI agents, penetrating radical groups under false names, and a three-year, worldwide odyssey by Oakland County parents in search of their missing son.
Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Forrest chronicles his movie-like saga. Through laborious investigative reporting and fingerprint identification, he finds that Reilly had been murdered in the Ukraine in 2015 at age 28.
The FBI insists he was not there on a bureau assignment or suggestion. William and Theresa Reilly, the parents living in Oxford, aren’t so sure.
“The FBI never directed William Reilly to travel overseas to perform any work for the FBI,” Brian P. Hale of bureau headquarters in Washington responded.
(Photo: FBI)
The Journal’s lengthy Oct. 11 story raises many questions about what the FBI knew. The agency had asked the Reillys to talk the paper out of publishing it.
Oakland University graduate
The saga began when Reilly was attending a Catholic high school after Sept. 11, 2001 and took an interest in in Islam and the koran. Reilly went on to get a biology degree from Oakland University.
In 2010, when he was 23, the FBI came to the family house, the Journal reports. An agent said U.S. forces had raided an Al Qaeda position and found communcations from an IP address traced to the Reilly home.
Billy explained to the FBI he had found his way into restricted jihadist chat rooms. During their conversation, the agent asked Billy, who had knowledge of Arabic, if he had any interest in working with the FBI.
He said yes and became a part-timer or paid “source” for the bureau, working undercover online to unearth counterterrorism information. Forrest, the journalist, points out that sources work in a dangerous world, with little training and no government benefits “beyond an occasional paycheck and a pat on the back.”
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Posted: October 21st, 2019 under News Story.
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