Peter Thiel was an FBI informant. Here's how you could become one.

• Billionaire megadonor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel became an FBI informant in 2021, Insider reported.
• The FBI has thousands of informants; they can recruit lawyers, clergy, minors, prison guards, overseas individuals, and more.

The FBI runs thousands of informants within the US and overseas — and billionaire megadonor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel became one of them in 2021, Insider reported this week.

The tech executive has backed GOP politicians like Trump, J.D. Vance, and failed Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, but his work for the FBI was likely related to foreign governments' efforts to infiltrate Silicon Valley, Thiel's associate and right-wing influencer Charles Johnson told Insider. Johnson said he helped recruit Thiel as an informant by introducing him to an agent.

What does an FBI informant do?

The main responsibility of an FBI informant is, as the name suggests, to provide information and intelligence to the bureau.

Thiel became a confidential human source in the summer of 2021, according to Insider's reporting, and started providing information to Johnathan Buma, a Los Angeles-based FBI agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign influence operations.

Anyone can be an informant. According to an internal FBI guide, the FBI can recruit lawyers, reporters, clergy members, prison officials, and even minors and individuals who live overseas.

The Intercept reported that the bureau had 1,500 confidential human sources in 1975; by 2017, that number had ballooned to 15,000.

How do you become an FBI informant?

People can volunteer to be informants if they think they have information that's relevant to an ongoing investigation. The process typically starts with contacting the FBI's tip line or going to a field office to share what they know. Officials will then vet both the information they've provided, as well as their background to gauge if they'd be a valuable source to revisit.

They'll also consider an individual's motivations in providing the intel, the risks associated with using them as an informant, and how they could affect a potential criminal trial.

The process for vetting informants is extensive, rigorous, and involves multiple levels of approval.

Confidential human sources enter "into a relationship with the FBI, and that relationship will forever affect the life of that individual," the guide said. They "will be either an 'FBI source' or a 'former FBI source' and, in turn, his or her conduct or misconduct will reflect upon the FBI."

Only people who are able to provide "valuable information … on a recurring basis" are granted CHS status, according to the policy.

The guidelines for the use of informants are set out by the US attorney general's office and they apply to informants who could be called to testify in domestic cases. They do not cover the use of informants in foreign intelligence or counterintelligence investigations.

While anyone can volunteer to be an FBI informant, more often than not, the FBI will usually approach or try to recruit those they think could be informants. And in cases where someone may be unwilling to take on the risks associated with becoming an informant, the bureau has been accused of leveraging their criminal history or immigration status to coerce their cooperation.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, for instance, the FBI's top priority was counterterrorism, and it focused its attention on recruiting informants from Muslim communities in the US.

The bureau's internal guide has an entire chapter devoted to immigration, and The Intercept reported that although it's not explicitly stated in the guide, other government documents have suggested dangling the possibility of "immigration relief" to get reluctant recruits to cooperate.

The FBI has itself acknowledged the risks associated with being an informant.

The "use of informants to assist in the investigation of criminal activity may involve an element of deception, intrusion into the privacy of individuals, or cooperation with persons whose reliability and motivation may be open to question," it said. "Although it is legally permissible for the FBI to use informants in its investigations, special care is taken to carefully evaluate and closely supervise their use so the rights of individuals under investigation are not infringed."