Provocateur

Traditionally, an agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs, French for "inciting agent") is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action.

An agent provocateur may be a police officer or a secret agent of police who encourages suspects to carry out a crime under conditions where evidence can be obtained; or who suggests the commission of a crime to another, in hopes they will go along with the suggestion and be convicted of the crime.

A political organization or government may use agents provocateurs against political opponents. The provocateurs try to incite the opponent to counter-productive or ineffective acts to foster public disdain—or provide a pretext for aggression against the opponent (see Red-baiting).

Historically, labor spies, hired to infiltrate, monitor, disrupt, or subvert union activities, have used agent provocateur tactics.

Agent provocateur activities raise ethical and legal issues. In common law jurisdictions, the legal concept of entrapment may apply if the main impetus for the crime was the provocateur.

In the United States, the COINTELPRO program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had FBI agents pose as political radicals in order to disrupt the activities of radical political groups in the U.S., such as the Black Panthers, Ku Klux Klan, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

New York City Police officers were accused of acting as agents provocateurs during protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

Denver Police officers were also found to have used undercover detectives to instigate violence against police during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, in a botched attempt to be extracted. This ultimately resulted in the accidental use of chemical agents against their own men.

Source