“In today’s America, you can’t start a flower sniffing club with more than two people without one being a fed.
More than ten, there are fed’s on the board of directors or management.
Over 100? The feds are running the group.”
From a friend about thirty years ago.
I do believe that about the big, dangerous, or potentially threatening large organizations and have since we learned so much from the 1960s groups, 60s/70s terrorists groups, and the KKK.
At times it helps but it is so much abused and the federal plants have sometimes been the element and/or leadership that turned peaceful groups into what it took to get them to cross a line leading to arrest.
One of the oddest recent fed mysteries is their role in that attempted mass shooting at the Mohamed drawing contest in Texas, where the informants or agents were in a car behind the shooters.