Theres a song on the solo album by Tom Gabel of Against Me! called ‘Anna is a Stool Pigeon.’ (Gabel now goes by Laura Jane Grace, but the album came out when she was a he, so…) Anyway, the song is about an FBI informant who entraps some eco-activists into a bomb plot. I never bothered to research the story since their are so many details in the song, but here’s a profile of Anna the stool pigeon and Eric McDavid, the guy serving 20 years in jail.

Anna had a sharp tongue and was quick to laugh, and McDavid was both attracted and intimidated. She dropped names of activists she knew and had obvious experience, while he was a newbie who hadn’t done anything. McDavid was an occasional student at Sierra College, in his hometown of Auburn, California, a gentle, athletic redhead who’d played high-school football, had worked as a carpenter, and was interested in political protest and anarchist theory. He came from a loving family and had never experienced any particular radicalizing event other than a few sobering moments when he grasped the effects of construction sprawl on his beloved Sierra Nevada. The wildest thing he’d ever done was march against the war in Iraq.