# Air Force Academy Cadet Informants

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-force-academy-cadet-informants/675521>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 4, 2013, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-force-academy-cadet-informants/675521 "2013-12-04T22:46:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2013, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-force-academy-cadet-informants/675521/1 "2013-12-04T22:46:00Z")

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The Colorado Springs Gazette has a history of running articles that have a local focus but national implications. The latest series is about two parts of the Air Force that seem to have been working at cross purposes.

> [@](#):
>
> For one former academy student, becoming a covert government operative meant not only betraying the values he vowed to uphold, it meant being thrown out of the academy as punishment for doing the things the Air Force secretly told him to do.
> 
> Eric Thomas, 24, was a confidential informant for the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI — a law enforcement branch of the Air Force. OSI ordered Thomas to infiltrate academy cliques, wearing recorders, setting up drug buys, tailing suspected rapists and feeding information back to OSI. In pursuit of cases, he was regularly directed by agents to break academy rules.

[http://www3.gazette.com/projects/project/usafa-informant-program/](http://www3.gazette.com/projects/project/usafa-informant-program/)

Here’s a follow-up article.

> **[Air Force Academy defends use of student informants, challenges reliability...](https://gazette.com/news/air-force-academy-defends-use-of-student-informants-challenges-reliability-of-ex-cadet/article_846b1852-fa3a-5ef4-bf96-2504c23eb24c.html)**
>
> The Air Force Academy stood by its use of confidential student informants Tuesday, noting that it's a practice used across the Air Force that provides what it calls "vital information

The brass is both claiming that the story is incorrect, and that they knew little about this program. I can understand that law enforcement/intelligence might well decide that even high-ranking officers don’t have a “need to know,” but it seems that at the very least, the Superintendent of the Academy would be kept somewhat informed.

I know that there are several Dopers who are current or former military. Has anybody heard of anything like this before?