What Was FBI Agent Fred Gutt Doing On June 1 2020?
For six years I've hammered public records requests, filed lawsuits, and submitted FOIAs, slowly chipping away at a fortress of information closely held by the feds and local police. Each piece of information filling in a mosaic of the 2020 protests. Some portions are lucid, others remain fractured and unknown.
It's taken a mammoth effort to try and unpack how the FBI infiltrated the 2020 protests in Seattle. We may never fully understand the FBI's clandestine work of domestic intelligence collection and disruption, but one part of the mosaic is becoming a little clearer.
Last year, I first revealed with Real Change that the FBI used informants to infiltrate Seattle's 2020 protests. The opening of that report started on the night of June 1, 2020, where an FBI "agent was punched in the face while on 'an approved surveillance operation' inside Seattle’s 2020 Black Lives Matter protests."
HardPressed can now reveal new details of this incident and the identity of the FBI agent, all gleaned from documents obtained through public records requests.
FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt appeared to be operating as part of an FBI "I-Team," a pair of two FBI agents in plain clothes engaged in street level intelligence collection.
At the time, an active FBI investigation was opened and ongoing, #266H-3272708, operated by the Seattle Field Office's CT3 domestic terrorism squad which included Joint Terrorism Task Force detectives from the King County Sheriff's Office, University of Washington and Seattle Police.
Another FBI intelligence report from June 1 2020 noted that "all supervisors shall ensure that any I Teams are actively displaying their location in 683tech.com, and are communicating over the radio their departure, intended area of operations, and reports of significant activities."
638tech is an internal FBI communications and training platform.
Gutt is a veteran FBI agent who gave a presentation to the "Washington Terrorism Advisory Committee" in March 2003 titled "International Terrorism and bank fraud" according to records obtained from the Washington State Archives. In 2004, he was called to testify in a case brought against four men accused of bank and immigration fraud. In other public reporting, Gutt appears to have been involved in the hunt for "D.B. Cooper."
On June 1 2020, at 9p.m., one block to the East of SPD's East Precinct, Gutt was punched in the face after a group of people "objected to the SA [Special Agent] taking photo of protesters. This group initiated an altercation with two Seattle SAs. The other SA was unhurt in this altercation," according to an FBI intelligence report. Gutt's nose was broken.
Days later, "Gutt had a successful operation required as a result of the assault he sustained by an UNSUB," according to an email sent by another Seattle FBI agent to his own squad.
The FBI Seattle Division wrote to HardPressed that "it has no further context to add about documents released through public records requests. In general, the FBI does not comment on the content of files released through public records requests, nor do we comment on or confirm employment for personnel."
To this day, the UNSUB remains in-the-wind and the reason why Gutt and another FBI agent were taking photos of protesters remains publicly unknown.
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You can find more reporting on the FBI's infiltration of the 2020 protests here:
https://www.realchangenews.org/FBI-recruited-informants-to-infiltrate-CHOP