FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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msfreeh
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see link for full story
http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2945207/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI’s Incapacitating Cover-up
William A. Hamilton / Washington DC - Resolving the FBI’s persistent and incapacitating information technology problems was one of the main recommendations of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 in its December 2002 Final Report. The “persistence” is the result of efforts to conceal the fact that the FBI’s primary information management system is based on software the U.S. Department of Justice stole from a vendor. Justice covertly disseminated the software beyond U.S. Attorneys Offices, the entities authorized to use it, and the government then converted PROMIS to track wire transfers in banks, to track intelligence information in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies, and to steal intelligence secrets from foreign governments by selling them a Trojan-horse version.

The FBI’s cover-up of its role in the early 1980s theft of the PROMIS case management software from INSLAW, Inc. prevented the FBI from taking advantage in the mid-1990s of new computing technology that would have enabled dramatic improvements in the software’s ease-of-use. The FBI’s decision to disguise the PROMIS origins of its software, rather than upgrade its ease-of-use, not only fooled experts appointed by a court at the behest of Congress in 1996 but also prevented the FBI from connecting the dots five years later on 9/11 between investigative leads about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training. Connecting those dots might have unraveled the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI. The FBI then wasted the first several years of the war on terrorism on a failed $170 million project to upgrade the ease-of-use on its own.

The cover-up also prompted the FBI to pull its punches when the FBI’s Albuquerque office conducted an investigation into a PROMIS sale in New Mexico during the summer of 1984, the same year the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters created the first Bureau-wide case management system using a stolen copy of PROMIS. Employees of New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratory, one of the two main U.S. intelligence centers on nuclear warfare, complained to FBI Albuquerque that the foreign national who made the PROMIS sale was simultaneously doing business with the Soviet Union. The Intelligence Division supervised all FBI counterintelligence investigations. FBI Albuquerque abruptly terminated its investigation without reversing the illegal PROMIS sale, and advised the Sandia witnesses that they could appeal the decision to FBI Headquarters if they wished.

The example the FBI gave to its own employees in 1984 of the FBI as lawbreaker was not lost on an American spy, an FBI Agent with an unusual interest in software, who worked in the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters while it was installing PROMIS. When the FBI’s PROMIS became operational in 1985 under the name FOIMS, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen began the most productive phase of his 20 years of espionage for the Soviet Union and Russia. Hanssen made extensive use of the FBI’s software in his espionage, according to the FBI’s early 2001 complaint against him. The U.S. Government also used Hanssen, a senior FBI counterintelligence agent, to help Germany and England with the installation and use of their stolen copies of PROMIS.

Hanssen also gave the Russians copies of the PROMIS software code used in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies to track their intelligence information, and installed by in banks to enable U.S. intelligence to track electronic fund transfers. This software later made its way on the Russian black market to al Qaeda, which used it both to find out what the United States knew about al Qaeda’s plans, by accessing U.S. Government intelligence systems, and to move its funds through the banking system.

INSLAW retained attorney C. Boyden Gray in October 2001 to seek a settlement of its PROMIS copyright-infringement claims by having the government buy a license to the new and fully-tested and debugged point-and-click generation of PROMIS for the war on terrorism. The Bush Justice Department stonewalled Gray, while the FBI worked secretly and in vain to upgrade its version of PROMIS, then and now known as ACS, on its own. Two months after Gray became Ambassador to the European Union in January 2006, Gray’s co-counsel wrote to White House Counsel Harriet Miers to arrange to send her a document on a national security case for which Gray had been lead counsel. He also explained the President’s intervention was essential. Miers telephoned to say that she had spoken to Ambassador Gray in Brussels, and that Gray identified the case as the INSLAW case and added that the government owes INSLAW money. Miers emphasized, however, that INSLAW’s problem is with the government, and she represents the President, and, consequently, INSLAW’s only recourse is to Congress.

There were three significant developments during the summer of 2001 on the connection between the PROMIS software scandal and U.S. vulnerability to al Qaeda.

The first development, the debriefing in 2001 of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen, revealed that al Qaeda had acquired copies of PROMIS used in the FBI, U.S. intelligence agencies, and banks, and was using the software to stay one step ahead of the United States. On June 14, 2001, The Washington Times published a front-page story entitled Software Likely in Hands of Terrorist, attributed to federal law enforcement staff familiar with Hanssen’s debriefing. The story appeared three months before 9/11, on the day Justice submitted its plea agreement with Hanssen in court under seal. Through that agreement, Justice abandoned its demand for the death penalty in exchange for Hanssen’s confession. The article stated that Hanssen gave copies of PROMIS to his Russian handlers, who later sold copies to bin Laden for $2 million, and that the sophisticated software gives bin Laden access to databases on specific targets of his choosing and the ability to monitor electronic banking sources, easing money-laundering …

The second development, also in June 2001, was the FBI’s award of its Virtual Case File contract to retrofit a point-and-click User Interface to the FBI’s case management software. A point-and-click User Interface is as important to software’s ease of use as an automatic transmission is to an automobile’s ease of use. The technology for building a system with a point-and-click User Interface has been available in the computer industry since 1993, two years before the FBI began the development of the current ACS version of its PROMIS software. However, the FBI not only failed to take advantage of the new point-and-click technology under its $67 million ACS Project in 1995 and 1996, but also failed in its unacknowledged effort to retrofit point-and-click technology to ACS under its four-year, $170 million Virtual Case File project that began in 2001. The use of outdated 1980s case management software in the 21st Century leaves FBI agents at a severe disadvantage in performing their duties, according to Justice’s Inspector General.

The third development during the summer of 2001 was the failure of the FBI to connect the dots between a July 2001 lead from its Phoenix office about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training, and the FBI’s August 2001 arrest of al Qaeda terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui, at a flight training school in Minneapolis. Both FBI Phoenix and FBI Minneapolis had entered leads into ACS about these items. Because the FBI had never upgraded ACS with a point-and-click User Interface, ACS was difficult to use, and the FBI did not bother to search it to find connections. Minneapolis sent 70 messages in the weeks before 9/11 fruitlessly seeking support from FBI Headquarters for a national security warrant to search Moussaoui’s laptop computer. Had Minneapolis checked ACS, it would have discovered the Phoenix lead, and it could have used it to bolster its request to FBI Headquarters. Minneapolis obtained the warrant after 9/11. What it found could have enabled it to unravel the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI.

Approximately a month after 9/11, on October 16, 2001, Fox News reported that it had learned from government officials that Osama bin Laden may have purchased PROMIS from Russian sources after Russia got it from Robert Hanssen and that the concern is that bin Laden or al Qaeda could get on-line and use it to monitor the worldwide criminal investigation and hide themselves, to monitor the worldwide financial investigation and hide their money, or monitor operations of governments that use the software. Fox News also reported that Hansen, on behalf of the U.S. Government, had helped allies like Germany and England with the installation and use of their versions of the PROMIS program, and that both Germany and England had stopped using PROMIS in the several months since Hanssen’s mid-2001 confession. When Fox News asked what the U.S. Government was doing to plug the holes in U.S. security caused by the software being in the wrong hands, the government’s spokesperson replied that the United States had stopped using PROMIS, but refused to say when. This was the first time the government admitted, even indirectly, its use of PROMIS for intelligence applications.

In reality, the FBI never stopped using PROMIS. The FBI used its ACS software development project in 1995 and 1996 to disguise the PROMIS origins of FOIMS, the FBI’s primary information management system, by converting (translating) the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS from the COBOL computer programming language in which INSLAW had written it, to the NATURAL language made by Software AG. The FBI also later changed the name from FOIMS to ACS. The following excerpt from a May 1996 email message from Software AG in Reston, Virginia to its parent company in Germany is about the conversion of the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS:

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/0 ... y-charges/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

IMPORTANT TO SEE LINK AND TWEET SENT BY SABU
see link for full story

US Attorney Who Prosecuted FBI Informant & Hacker ‘Sabu’ Indicts Reuters Employee for Conspiracy Charge
By: Kevin Gosztola Thursday March 14, 2013 8:27 pm


The Justice Department indicted Matthew Keys, the deputy social media editor for Reuters.com, for allegedly conspiring with members of Anonymous and giving them login information so they could “hack into and alter” the Los Angeles Times‘ website.

The indictment should raise suspicion, however, because Hector Xavier Monsegur or ”Sabu,” who the FBI flipped and used to catch and, to some extent, entrap LulzSec hackers, is likely involved in the indictment.

Keys is charged with “conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer,” “transmission of malicious code” and “attempted transmission of malicious code.”

From Matthew Keys’ indictment, US Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner, who prosecuted “Sabu,” and Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman allege, ”Between on or about December 8, 2010, and or about December 15, 2010, in the State and Eastern District of California and elsewhere, Matthew Keys, together with at least one other person, did conspire to knowingly cause the transmission of a program, information, code and command and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally caused damage without authorization to a protected computer, causing loss to a person during a 1-year period aggregating at least $5,000 in value,” which violated a section of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Who could that other person be? On March 14, the same day as this indictment, Wagner and Assistant US Attorney Matthew D. Segal filed a “notice of related cases” to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, where the indictment was filed.

The notice:

Both cases related to computer hacking attacks by the group that called itself “Anonymous.” The Keys case alleges that Keys gave login credentials to members of Anonymous and encouraged them to vandalize the web site of his former employer, a news organization. Defendant Monsegur, who used the nickname “Sabu,” appeared in the Internet chat log at the core of the Keys case, and, in that chat log, offered advice on how to conduct the network intrusion. Monsegur later became a cooperating defendant in the Southern District of New York.

In Parmy Olson’s book, We Are Anonymous, Olson writes that Sabu claimed, “Keys had given away administrator access to the online publishing system of Tribune, his former employer, in return for a chance to ‘hang out in our channel.’” Keys denied this.

“Sabu” sent this tweet:

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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see link for full story of taxpayer funded FBI Operation Mop Up
http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/03/new ... assinated/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Your Black History: Did You Know that Dr. King’s Mother was Assassinated?
March 14, 2013

Most people know the amazing stories about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They know about his most famous speech, his legendary marches and the principals by which he lived his life. What most people do not know is what happened to his family. There are stories about the numerous tragedies endured by the Kennedy family, but after reading this, you might know that the King family could give them a run for their money.

Shortly after Dr. King’s death in 1968, Martin’s brother Alfred became co-pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father and brother preached. In July of 1969, just a few days before his 39th birthday, Alfred was found dead in a swimming pool. The case was ruled as an accidental drowning, but many speculate something more sinister might have happened. According to his father, he was a good swimmer.

Alberta King, Dr. King’s mother, was shot and killed in 1974 while playing the organ at her church. The shooting was allegedly done by a 23-year old black man by the name of Marcus Wayne Chenault. Chenault didn’t give any reason for the shooting, except to say that “all Christians are my enemies.”

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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see link for full story
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/nati ... udge-rules" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

March 15, 2013
National Security Letters Are Unconstitutional, Federal Judge Rules
Court Finds NSL Statutes Violate First Amendment and Separation of Powers

San Francisco - A federal district court judge in San Francisco has ruled that National Security Letter (NSL) provisions in federal law violate the Constitution. The decision came in a lawsuit challenging a NSL on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

In the ruling publicly released today, Judge Susan Illston ordered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stop issuing NSLs and cease enforcing the gag provision in this or any other case. The landmark ruling is stayed for 90 days to allow the government to appeal.

"We are very pleased that the court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "The government's gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience."

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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http://www.campusactivism.org/phpBB3/vi ... a969a7dd52" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/03/senator ... -book-ban/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Senator Feinstein’s Book Ban
Published on Friday, March 15, 2013


Senator Cruz recently asked the following question to Senator Feinstein:

Eatontown, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- “The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is,” said Cruz to Feinstein, “Would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?”

Senator Feinstein should have honestly answered “Yes.”

In 1997 her bill, S.936 the so-called “Feinstein Amendment”, became law. It banned books and other speech. Her law made it illegal to distribute bomb-making information, punishable by a $250,000 fine and 20 years’ imprisonment. It became a federal crime to “… distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, with the intention that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal criminal offense or a State or local criminal …” The law was in response to the Oklahoma bombing, in which Timothy McVeigh had two books titled Homemade C-4, A Recipe for Survival and Ragnar’s Big Book of Homemade Weapons and Improvised Explosives.

There are key differences between Senator Feinstein’s attacks on the First Amendment compared to her attacks on the Second Amendment. Her law limiting free speech requires that one must distribute the information “…with the intention…” that it be used for a crime. However, no such intentions matter when it comes to her gun bans.

Not long after 9/11 I had a case in which my client worked for a scrap metals company. He would remove the mercury switches from thermostats and would get paid per switch. He had been raided by the police over a false claim of domestic violence in which they seized his guns and observed his pile of mercury switches. The police also seized some books on weapons and explosives that he had bought at a gun show. Amongst the books were Poor Man’s James Bond by Kurt Saxon and Uncle Fester’s Home Workshop Explosives. The next thing he knew was that the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit wanted to speak with him. I went with him to see what the FBI wanted and discovered that they were only interested in his books! Even though these books were commonly available and protected by the First Amendment, the FBI Agent frankly told us that they were desperate to get a conviction under the “Feinstein Amendment” but had been unable to do so because of the difficulty in having to prove the “intent” part of the law.

The FBI Agent had hoped that my client at some point had personal contact with the authors, who the FBI was eager to prosecute. Needless to say, my client was unable to help them. This encounter with the FBI made me reflect on how important our First Amendment rights are and how, without that amendment, American politicians would have had no hesitation in acting flat out bans on books and other speech. Unfortunately, the Second Amendment is not treated with the same respect.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ex-fbi-ag ... its/25725/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Ex-FBI Agent Probed for Aiding Mob Hits

By JERRY CAPECI | January 12, 2006



Authorities are investigating allegations that a former mob-busting FBI agent helped Colombo capo Gregory Scarpa carry out four Brooklyn murders during the years the gangster served as a top echelon informer for the agent, Gang Land has learned.

Two of the slayings - one committed by Scarpa, the other by an associate - took place after the FBI agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, allegedly told the gangster that two Brooklyn hoodlums were stool pigeons just like him, sources said.

Mr. DeVecchio allegedly told Scarpa that mobster Joseph "Joe Brewster" DeDomenico had "found God" and was prepared to tell the truth if subpoenaed, and that Patrick Porco, a young drug dealing buddy of Scarpa's son Joseph, was talking to police, sources said.

DeDomenico, 44, was shot to death on September 17, 1987. Porco, 18, was killed over the Memorial Day weekend in 1990.

Sources said the Brooklyn district attorney's office also has evidence that Mr. DeVecchio, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing as an FBI agent, aided Scarpa in the murders of two rival hoodlums he shot to death during the bloody 1991-92 mob family war.

The victims, mob associate Larry Lampesi and capo Nicholas "Nicky Black" Grancio, members of a rival Colombo faction headed byVictor "Little Vic" Orena, were shot to death by Scarpa's crew in 1992. Sources said Mr. DeVecchio facilitated Grancio's murder by calling off a police surveillance team to allow Scarpa to kill him, and assisted Scarpa in Lampesi's murder by letting him know where to find his target.

"The evidence is credible but it remains to be seen whether a murder case can be made," a law enforcement source said, noting that the statute of limitations has long since passed on all other possible charges.

"Lin discussed the murders with Greg before they happened, and after they happened, and knew they were going to happen - that is the allegation," a source who is familiar with the probe by the D.A.'s office said.

Just how far Mr. DeVecchio went in aiding his prized informant has been kicked around by federal prosecutors and mob defense lawyers for more than a decade. He was investigated by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Integrity in 1997, but no charges were ever brought.

Accounts by Scarpa's family detailing Mr. DeVecchio's close, allegedly corrupt, working relationship with Scarpa reached Gang Land a decade ago. Those charges could never be confirmed and Mr. DeVecchio has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The central figure in the new investigation, sources said, is Scarpa's longtime lover, Linda Schiro, who hooked up with the then 36-year-old mobster in 1964 several months before her 19th birthday and raised two children with him. Their son, Joseph, was shot to death in a drug-related gang murder in 1995 at 24. Scarpa, who contracted the AIDS virus in a blood transfusion, died in prison a year earlier at 66. Ms. Schiro, now 60, met Mr. DeVecchio numerous times during visits to the gangster's home, according to court documents.

While Ms. Schiro is the linchpin of the investigation, the allegations were delivered to the D.A.'s office by Angela Clemente, a private investigator who obtained much of her information from a woman with whom Ms. Schiro planned to write a book several years ago, sources said.

Sources said Ms. Clemente, who has investigated Mr. DeVecchio and other alleged government abuses for years, filed a report with the D.A.'s office last year after a federal judge refused to toss Little Vic Orena's murder and racketeering conviction based on lesser allegations against the 65-year-old retired G-man.

Sources said the report is based largely on information Ms. Clemente obtained from Sandy Harmon, who had planned to pen the Schiro-Scarpa book, and that it contains allegations that have been knocked down by detectives and investigators for Brooklyn's D.A., Charles Hynes.

One discredited charge is that Joseph Scarpa killed Porco, a lifelong friend whose bullet-riddled body was found on May 27, 1990, in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, on orders from his father.

"Greg wanted him to, pushed him to do it, but the kid couldn't do it," a source said.

Prosecutors have confirmed the essence of the report, however, and plan to cajole or coerce Ms. Schiro to testify before a grand jury in the hope of lodging murder charges against Mr. DeVecchio and others, sources said.

Ms. Shiro, who implicated Mr. DeVecchio in two minor transgressions during an internal FBI probe - she said he accepted a plate of lasagna and a Cabbage Patch doll as gifts from her and Greg - declined to comment when contacted by Gang Land.

"These allegations are preposterous," Mr. DeVecchio's attorney, Douglas Grover, said. "There's no way that such a well-respected, talented agent who enjoyed a great career with the FBI was ever going to get involved in something like this. There is no doubt that Scarpa was a murderous thug, but there is nothing to suggest that Lin participated in or condoned any of Scarpa's conduct while he was a major FBI informant."

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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TWO STORIES
see link for full story
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/region ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Swartz protesters go to prosecutor’s home
By Dave Eisenstadter

March 17, 2013
Milton police on March 16 responded to a small demonstration by people who went to the home of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz to protest her handling of the Aaron Swartz case. The protesters, who identified with the Occupy movement, placed “Wanted” posters bearing Ortiz’s name near her Milton home and left a cake on the property with the words “Justice for Aaron” written in frosting, according to Deputy Police Chief Charles Paris. Police sent the cake to the FBI, he said. Ortiz said last week that she respected the rights of individuals to express views, but added that protesters wearing masks in her neighborhood frightened her children and neighbors. Swartz, who was charged with illegally obtaining documents from protected computers, committed suicide in January.


IMPORTANT LESSON TO LEARN ABOUT THE FBI and FBI AGENTS

In the news wires today appeared the story about the Gardner Museum heist
in Boston Mass that happened over 20 years ago. Appearing in all the news stories
was Boston FBI Office Agent in Charge Richard Dsauliers. If you actually read the stories
you discover the FBI still does not know who committed the crime.

Some of you might remember the name of FBI Supervisor Richard Dsauliers
from other posts on this forum about Aaron Swartz the creator of Reddit , a feature of the internet
that is now widely used. FBI Supervisor Richard Dsauliers recently bullied Aaron Swartz into committing suicide. see http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/01/15/s ... s-funeral/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The FBI used it's power over the media to try and re-brand Richard Dsauliers as one of the good guys.
But you and I know better, eh?




here are just a few of the stories.


New York Times

$5 Million Reward Offered for Stolen Gardner Museum Artwork
Federal Bureau of Investigation (press release)-9 hours ago
Today, the FBI—along with Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts—asked for the public's help in recovering ...
FBI Says It Has Clues in '90 Boston Art Theft
New York Times-1 hour ago
FBI: We know who was behind massive 1990 Boston art theft
CNN-9 hours ago
FBI: We know who carried out greatest art heist in American history
In-Depth
-Fox News-9 hours ago
FBI Says It Knows Who's Behind Biggest Art Museum Heist In History
Blog
-NPR (blog)-7 hours ago
►►
The Associated Press
►►
TheBostonChannel.com

NPR (blog)

News1130

The Atlantic Wire

Smithsonian (blog)

WBUR
all 95 news sources »
On 23rd anniversary, FBI says it has identified the thieves in Gardner ...
Boston.com-10 hours ago
“The FBI believes with a high degree of confidence in the years after the theft the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region and some of the ...


FBI takes to the internet in search of stolen art worth $500 million
The Verge-by Chris Welch-7 hours ago
In all, the stolen goods were valued at $300 million by the FBI, though other experts say that figure should be closer to $500 million. The Gardner heist remains ...
FBI believes it knows identities of thieves in massive '90 Boston art ...
Washington Post-8 hours ago
BOSTON — The FBI says it has solved the decades-old mystery of who stole $500 million in artwork from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but it is ...


FBI turns up heat in investigation of 1990 Boston art heist
Reuters-10 hours ago
BOSTON (Reuters) - The FBI believes it has identified the thieves who stole 13 artworks from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 in the costliest ...
FBI zeroes in on $500M art heist; Philly involved?
Philadelphia Inquirer-6 hours ago
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers, right, stands next to a poster that shows a Rembrandt painting and a reward ...
FBI: We know who stole the Gardner paintings, but we don't know ...
Boston Business Journal (blog)-by Galen Moore-10 hours ago
Mystery solved - sort of: The FBI says it knows the identity of the culprits in the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. Johannes Vermeer's "The Concert" ...

FBI Identifies Thieves In 1990 Gardner Museum Art Heist
CBS Local-10 hours ago
BOSTON (CBS) – The FBI says it knows the identities of the thieves involved in the 1990 theft of up to $500 million worth of art from Boston's Isabella Stewart ...

The FBI Says It Knows Who Committed The Biggest Art Heist Of All ...
Business Insider-by Julie Zeveloff-9 hours ago
Authorities did not identify the thieves by name, but Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, said in a press release that they ...
FBI Knows Suspects in $500 Million Art Theft
Voice of America-9 hours ago
The FBI says it has identified suspects in the 1990 theft of half a billion dollars worth of ... The FBI has a website aimed at getting help to crack the case at www.

FBI to Discuss Developments in '90 Mass. Art Heist
TIME-10 hours ago
BOSTON (AP) — The FBI believes it knows the identities of the thieves who stole art valued at up to $500 million from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner ...
Washington Post


FBI to reveal new details of 1990 Boston museum heist
Yahoo! News (blog)-12 hours ago
Reuters/Reuters - FBI posters displaying works by artists Johannes Vermeer and Edgar Degas are seen during a press conference held to appeal to the public ...
FBI Announces $5M Reward for Info on the $500M in Artwork Stolen ...
BostInno (blog)-9 hours ago
In a press statement today, the FBI announced that they now know the thieves' identities, but still do not know the location of the art. The FBI launched a public ...






FBI: We Know Who Robbed the Gardner Museum
Patch.com-9 hours ago
Note: This article has been updated to note the FBI is seeking the public's help to locate the 13 missing pieces of art. A previous version of article suggested the ...
FBI Identifies Thieves Behind Infamous Isabella Gardner Museum ...
Boston magazine's Boston Daily (blog)-9 hours ago
After more than $500 million of artwork was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston more than 23 years ago, FBI investigators said Monday ...
FBI Asks for Help with Gardner Heist
WGBH NEWS-7 hours ago
The FBI's Boston office announced today that it is confident it knows the identities of the thieves who stole 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner.
FBI Continues Search for Art Stolen from Mass. Museum
abc40-7 hours ago
FBI investigators announced Monday that they have are confident that the 13 works of art taken from the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990, ...

FBI says it has identified suspects in $500M art heist
Toronto Sun-9 hours ago
The FBI believes it has identified the thieves who stole 13 artworks from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, in the costliest art theft in U.S. ...



Gardner Museum Heist: FBI Close To Recovering $500 Million In Art ...
International Business Times-9 hours ago
On the 23rd anniversary of the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the FBI and federal authorities said they were close to nabbing the ...

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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see link for full story
http://forums.utsandiego.com/showthread ... 39&page=42" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI's Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats
Kevin Poulsen Email 07.18.07 | 2:00 AM

FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and report back to a government server, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Wired News.

The court filing offers the first public glimpse into the bureau's long-suspected spyware capability, in which the FBI adopts techniques more common to online criminals.

The software was sent to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against Timberline High School near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who on Monday pleaded guilty to making bomb threats, identity theft and felony harassment.

In an affidavit seeking a search warrant to use the software, filed last month in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington, FBI agent Norman Sanders describes the software as a "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV.

FBI Spyware in a Nutshell

The full capabilities of the FBI's "computer and internet protocol address verifier" are closely guarded secrets, but here's some of the data the malware collects from a computer immediately after infiltrating it, according to a bureau affidavit acquired by Wired News.

• IP address
• MAC address of ethernet cards
• A list of open TCP and UDP ports
• A list of running programs
• The operating system type, version and serial number
• The default internet browser and version
• The registered user of the operating system, and registered company name, if any
• The current logged-in user name
• The last visited URL

Once that data is gathered, the CIPAV begins secretly monitoring the computer's internet use, logging every IP address to which the machine connects.

All that information is sent over the internet to an FBI computer in Virginia, likely located at the FBI's technical laboratory in Quantico.

Sanders wrote that the spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL.

The CIPAV then settles into a silent "pen register" mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.

Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance -- which does not capture the content of the communications -- can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the data when using the internet.

According to the affidavit, the CIPAV sends all the data it collects to a central FBI server located somewhere in eastern Virginia. The server's precise location wasn't specified, but previous FBI internet surveillance technology -- notably its Carnivore packet-sniffing hardware -- was developed and run out of the bureau's technology laboratory at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

The FBI's national office referred an inquiry about the CIPAV to a spokeswoman for the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, who declined to comment on the technology.

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56031 ... s.html.csp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


March 20, 2013

Retired FBI Agent Jailed After Feds Accuse Him of Contacting Potential Witness



A retired FBI agent accused of trying to derail an investigation into military fraud was jailed Tuesday after a federal judge in Utah said he violated terms of his release, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

U.S. District Court judge ordered Robert G. Lustyik Jr., 50, to jail after prosecutors provided “clear and convincing” evidence that the 50-year-old retired agent asked a third party to deliver cash to apotential witness in the case, the Tribune wrote.

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

What are the odds that current and former FBI agents are pulling the strings
at the A & E Cable Channel and Discovery Channel?
Where do you think FBI agents go to work after fixing cases for corporations?


Two of the most important films in the last 50 years get pulled from
A & E and Discovery then get sealed.
They will not even sell them.


1st read





For the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Nigel Turner produced three more installments of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy": The Love Affair, The Smoking Guns and The Guilty Men. The third of these documentaries looked at the possibility that Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm Wallace and Edward A. Clark were involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The programme used evidence from the book by Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK by Barr McClellan. It also used other sources such as the testimony of Madeleine Brown and Billie Sol Estes and the research of Walt Brown, Ed Tatro, Rick Russo, Glen Sample, and Gregory Burnham.

The Guilty Men, probably the best in the series, was immediately banned .

Does anyone know the latest situation concerning The Guilty Men?

answer



I watched "The Guilty Men" again last night on DVD. It is probably the best in Nigel Turner's series of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". I noticed that Turner wrote, produced and directed the programme and the copyright was held by A & E Networks. How then were the History Channel able to make it "unavailable" to the general public?

to watch the GUILTY MEN on youtube see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m--UyT3CiD4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


2nd read
media have consistently suppressed an even more explosive and related story.

For years, former Nebraska State Sen. John DeCamp has spearheaded an inquiry into a massive pedophile ring with a base of operations in Omaha, Nebraska, that has been linked to high-ranking political figures in Washington. Recently, DeCamp won a $1 million civil judgment against former big-name Republican Party figure Larry King (an Omaha credit union founder) on behalf of a young man, Paul Bonacci, who charged that King had molested him and brought him into the pedophile ring.

DeCamp was the guest on the February 24 broadcast of Radio Free America, the weekly talk forum sponsored by AFP (American Free Press) with host Tom Valentine. Valentine’s questions are in boldface. DeCamp’s responses are in regular text. Caller’s comments are in italics.

When your client, Paul Bonacci, filed a law suit against Larry King of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, you also named the Catholic Arch diocese of Omaha as a co-defendant. Why?

The reason was that my client said that it was because of a couple of Catholic priests there started doing improper things to him at a very young age that started him into the tragic life that he led. The federal judge ruled that it was not possible to name the archdiocese—that it couldn’t possibly be guilty of anything, because how would they know what individual priests had been doing. In other words: “How would the bishop have known anything to stop it?”

This sounds just like the current controversy in Boston, except this happened long before the Boston scandal.

That’s right. It was exactly like Boston. I took it so seriously at the time that I went to Rome and met with Cardinal Ratzinger. He’s the one who has been in charge of this systemic problem in the church of priests involved in pedophilia. Ratzinger is now in the limelight over this issue, but he couldn’t get anyone to do anything 12 or 13 years ago when I was writing about this and filing my lawsuit.

I appealed the decision removing the diocese from my lawsuit. I went before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and they upheld the judge’s decision in favor of removal of the diocese.

I went on to win the rest of the lawsuit against Larry King, but I was always bitter because I knew that I was right. This problem of priests abusing their position and abusing young children was a serious problem and not being properly dealt with by the church.

Of course, there have been some major cases in recent years, but these cases trace back to events many years ago. So now we have the Catholic Archdiocese in Boston paying out millions to settle claims. But my case in Omaha was thrown out.

When in the course of your investigations did you begin to realize that Boys Town in Omaha was essentially a “farm” for what you determined to be a national network of pedophiles that extended well beyond pedophilic priests?

When the children I was representing—and in the course of interviewing others—brought the role of Boys Town up as a central point. At least certain elements of Boys Town were being improperly used.

How did you get the British Broadcasting Company [BBC] interested in coming over and doing the explosive documentary that they produced on Boys Town (but which was never aired)?

I did nothing to get them interested. Somehow the BBC got a copy of an early edition of my book. They sent over a preliminary team and, for whatever reason unknown to me, the BBC sent over an entire investigative mission. Over a period of nine months or so they produced the program entitled Conspiracy of Silence. It was scheduled in all of the TV guides to appear on the Discovery Channel on a particular date and at the last minute it was pulled and never saw daylight.

I called the individual who handles the Discovery Channel programming and he told me that the program had been bought up and sealed and was never to be seen. However, a copy of the video was sent to me from parties unknown, who were obviously concerned that the program was not going to be aired.

Some $500,000 was paid to buy the airtime for the program. So, whoever bought it at the last minute was able to prevent it from being shown. However, the copies of the videotape are out there and are being widely distributed.*

Now you have picked up a new client and it ties directly into Boys Town.

My client is the former head of Boys Town. He was the head longer than anyone in the history of Boys Town. His name is Monsignor Robert Hupp. In 1976, he was appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations, the only clergyman ever appointed to that position.

He contacted me. He’s 87 years old. I met with him and he needed some help. He felt, I guess, at his advanced age that he wanted to correct some problems and abuses that he had tried to years ago. Just after I was asked to represent him, he completed a major recorded deposition in the presence of many church lawyers, and also attorneys for a number of altar boys who had been abused by priests.

Did he come to you because there were suits against Boys Town?

There were lawsuits against the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha and Boys Town is a part of the archdiocese. The position of the church, which was very public, was that they knew nothing about the abuse and, if they had known, they would have done something about it.

That’s very important to understand. They are saying, “We didn’t know, so how can we be held responsible. If we had known, we would have done something about it.”

However, the essence of what Monsignor Hupp asked me to do was to help get the true story out, because what he had to say was rather shocking and would totally disprove that claim here in Omaha and probably in a lot of other places.

I made the arrangements so that he could get his story out under oath. The deposition that he gave in this case may be sealed, but one way or another the story he had to tell will come out.




Press Release

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS, INC., ANNOUNCES NEW ROLE OF FOUNDER JOHN S. HENDRICKS EFFECTIVE JUNE 17, 2004

Judith A. McHale Slated for the President and CEO Post on June 17, 2004

(Silver Spring, MD - March 9, 2004) Discovery Communications, Inc. (Discovery) announced today that Founder John S. Hendricks recommended to Discovery's shareholders at their meeting on March 8 that the currently-combined positions of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer be separated on June 17, 2004, a date which marks the beginning of Discovery Channel's 20th Anniversary Year. Mr. Hendricks currently holds the title of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He will become Chairman on June 17, 2004 in accordance with his recommendation, and he will continue his active strategic leadership for Discovery. Judith A. McHale, Discovery's current President and Chief Operating Officer, will assume the CEO post on that date.

Mr. Hendricks, 51, issued the following statement concerning his recommendation:

"I incorporated Discovery at age 30 on September 8, 1982. During 2002, 20 years after incorporation, I began to consider a new management structure in which I could continue to provide strategic leadership by developing and overseeing an ambitious growth agenda at the board level. I strongly believe that I will be best able to focus my energies on further corporate expansion by relinquishing my daily chief executive officer duties. I think the beginning of Discovery Channel's 20th Anniversary Year on June 17 is just the right time for me to begin enjoying the creative freedom that the position of Chairman will offer. For some time now I have believed, in terms of modern corporate governance, that the skill sets and passion of a founding entrepreneur are best channeled through a Chairman role after a company has successfully navigated the challenges of early development and has clearly established a market leadership position within 20 years of the company's founding.

My fellow shareholders, Cox, Liberty, and Advance/Newhouse, are supportive of this recommendation, and together we look forward to many more years in building this global media enterprise. I remain impressed and continually amazed by the quality of insight and the depth of dedication that Dob Bennett, John Malone, Bob Miron, and Jim Robbins offer in their service on the Discovery Board. It is a privilege for me to Chair a group with such a powerful and united commitment to making Discovery the most valuable of all the world's media companies.

In like fashion, I am constantly inspired by the members of our bright and creative management team led by Judith McHale, who I am very pleased to report will assume the CEO's post on June 17. Judith's passion for the Discovery brand offers our Company a great future, and it is a pleasure for me to be able to continue to work with Judith as she represents the very best management talent in our industry. She is the best business partner that a company founder could ever hope to have."

Speaking on behalf of the Discovery shareholders, Robert Miron, Chairman and CEO of Advance/Newhouse Communications, stated: "Over the years, the shareholders of Discovery have been very rewarded by following John Hendricks' recommendations for growth. So, it should not be surprising that we support his recommendation that he be freed up to focus his creative energies on finding the right new assets to develop and acquire and to continue his visionary role as Founder and Chairman of the Board. The Board, having a first-hand knowledge of Judith's remarkable leadership skills, was equally supportive of John's recommendation that Judith succeed him in the CEO post when the currently-combined positions are separated on June 17."

"I deeply appreciate this vote of confidence from John and our Board of Directors in me and in our strong management team," Judith McHale said. "For me, the most important part of this step is knowing that I will continue to work as closely as we have for the last 16 years with John Hendricks, one of the most creative forces in the world, and with the extraordinarily supportive members of our Board of Directors. I thank them all for this tremendous opportunity and for making it possible for Discovery Communications to continue to grow well into the future."

Discovery Communications, Inc. (DCI) is the leading global real-world media and entertainment company. DCI has grown from its core property, the Discovery Channel, first launched in the United States in 1985, to current global operations in 152 countries with 180 million total subscribers. DCI's programming is tailored to the specific needs of viewers around the globe, and distributed through 77 separate feeds in 33 languages. DCI's 33 networks of distinctive programming represent 14 entertainment brands including TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, Discovery Kids, and a family of digital channels. DCI's other properties consist of Discovery.com and 165 Discovery Channel retail stores. DCI also distributes BBC America in the United States.


A&E (Arts & Entertainment) Television Networks is a media company that owns several TV networks on cable and satellite. The company is jointly owned by ABC, Inc., The Hearst Corporation, and NBC Universal. AETN's networks include:

* A&E Network
* The History Channel
* The Biography Channel
* History International
* The History Channel en Español
* Military History Channel
* Crime & Investigation Network
NBC Universal, Inc. (a subsidiary of General Electric and Vivendi)

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/03/ ... triot-act/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
When the government demands silence -- the ugliness of the Patriot Act

Published March 21, 2013

In 1798, when John Adams was president of the United States, the feds enacted four pieces of legislation called the Alien and Sedition Acts. One of these laws made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous or malicious writing -- even if true -- about the president or the federal government, notwithstanding the guarantee of free speech in the First Amendment.

The feds used these laws to torment their adversaries in the press and even successfully prosecuted a congressman who heavily criticized the president. Then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson vowed that if he became president, these abominable laws would expire. He did, and they did, but this became a lesson for future generations: The guarantees of personal freedom in the Constitution are only as valuable and reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those to whom we have entrusted it for safekeeping.

We have entrusted the Constitution to all three branches of the federal government for safekeeping. But typically, they fail to do so. Presidents have repeatedly assaulted the freedom of speech many times throughout our history, and Congresses have looked the other way. Abraham Lincoln arrested Northerners who challenged the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson arrested Americans who challenged World War I. FDR arrested Americans he thought might not support World War II. LBJ and Richard Nixon used the FBI to harass hundreds whose anti-Vietnam protests frustrated them.

In the post-9/11 era the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government’s signature anti-terror legislation: the Patriot Act.

In our own post 9/11 era, the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government’s signature anti-terror legislation: the Patriot Act. It was born in secrecy, as members of the House of Representatives were given 15 minutes to read its 300 pages before voting on it in October 2001, and it operates in silence, as those who suffer under it cannot speak about it.

The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs). This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that that security can only be violated by a search warrant issued by a neutral judge and based upon probable cause of crime.

The probable cause requirement compels the feds to acquire evidence of criminal behavior about the person whose records they seek, so as to prevent politically motivated invasions of privacy and fishing expeditions like those that were common in the colonial era. Judges are free, of course, to sign the requested warrant, to modify it and sign it, or to reject it if it lacks the underlying probable cause.

The very concept of a search warrant authorized by law enforcement and not by the courts is directly and profoundly antithetical to the Constitution -- no matter what the warrant is called. Yet, that’s what Congress and President Bush made lawful when they gave us the Patriot Act.

When FBI agents serve the warrants they’ve written for themselves -- the NSLs as they call them -- they tell the recipient of the warrant that he or she will commit a felony if he or she tells anyone -- a lawyer, a judge, a spouse, a priest in confessional -- of the receipt of the warrant. The NSLs are typically not served on the person whose records the FBI wants; rather, they are served on the custodians of those records, such as computer servers, the Post Office, hospitals, banks, delivery services, telephone providers, etc.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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see link for full story
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/217627 ... -informant" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
'Out of Control:' Senator blasts Boston FBI over mob informant

A top-ranking U.S. Senator is leveling harsh criticism against the Boston office of the FBI for its handling of local mob informant Mark Rossetti, saying the office needs a major shakeup.
"I thought it was pretty clear after Bulger as an example, now Rossetti coming out and not having learned any lessons. There needs to be big changes. I'm not running the FBI but this has been going on too long. There have to be big changes," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told FOX Undercover.
Grassley launched his own investigation of the FBI's handling of Rossetti after his informant status was publicly revealed in 2011.
Rossetti is a mob captain and suspected murderer who was charged in 2010 with running an organized crime ring including heroin trafficking, loan sharking and extortion. A State Police wiretap on Rossetti that gathered evidence used to indict and ultimately convict him also recorded conversations with his FBI handler, showing he was committing crimes while acting as a paid informant.
"It's very difficult with the use of a Rossetti or a previous person that they wouldn't know it's going on and there wasn't some knowledge of it. And if there isn't knowledge of it there ought to be, otherwise the FBI is not doing its job," Grassley said.
The Boston FBI's office's use of Rossetti is particularly troubling because it was the office where corrupt former agent John Connolly dealt with former mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger.
"Going back a ways, don't you have an FBI agent that was convicted of some wrongdoing because he was involved in this process as well? Doesn't that tell you something about the local office probably being out of control?" Grassley said.
"Do the guidelines for dealing with informants need to be revised again?" Beaudet asked him.
"First of all, they revised them and then they work with Rossetti, and that's a conflict with the original guidelines. I don't know whether just a revision again is going to make any difference. There's something in the culture of the FBI in this particular part of the country that needs to be dealt with. I don't know whether another revision of guidelines would make much difference," Grassley replied.
The FBI in a statement said the internal review is still underway pending access to some state court documents.
"The review consists of thousands of documents, interviews with those directly involved in the matter, including members of the Massachusetts State Police, FBI, district attorney's office and the U.S. Attorney's Office," the FBI statement said.
The culture of the FBI office in Boston was also part of Grassley's investigation. He found that the FBI's relationship with the State Police organized crime section was still poisoned from the Bulger years.
Court records revealed that, early in the investigation, State Police asked the FBI if Rossetti was an informant, which the FBI denied.
"The FBI never communicated with authorities in Massachusetts, particularly with the State Police, that he was an informant, and there was information that was very clear to the FBI that he was involved in criminal activity," Grassley said.
After Rossetti's informant status was publicly revealed, the FBI and State Police issued a joint statement suggesting their relationship was just fine.
"The FBI cooperated for months with the Massachusetts State Police, assisting their organized crime unit until the investigation was complete," the statement said.
Grassley said the press release "was not true."
"There's a great deal of antagonism between the FBI and the State Police. The State Police does not trust the FBI," he said.
"All law enforcement in this country ought to be working together and the FBI is the granddaddy of them all in a sense of being national and federal and crossing state lines and all that. They should be setting the example for cooperation and see local police and state police as a helping hand rather than seeing them as somewhat of an enemy," he said.
The FBI statement says "(T)he FBI cooperated with the MSP in the manner requested by police officials. The FBI and the MSP work closely together on a day-to-day basis in furtherance of our mutual commitment to public safety."
Rossetti pleaded guilty last week to the last of his charges from the state police investigation. He won't be out of prison until he's in his sixties.
But Grassley says it shouldn't be case closed with the Boston FBI.
"I'm not saying just in this case in Boston, in Massachusetts, and I'm not saying it just with the FBI, I'm saying across government, if heads don't roll you don't get any change of behavior," he said.
But in the statement, FBI headquarters is standing by its Boston office.
"FBI leadership has full confidence in FBI Boston management and employees," the statement says.

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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The Persecution Of Barrett Brown -- And How To Fight It
By Glenn Greenwald (about the author)
OpEdNews Op Eds 3/21/2013


http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Pe ... 1-620.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism

Journalist and activist Barrett Brown in a 2012 interview with RT Photograph: screen grab

Aaron's Swartz's suicide in January triggered waves of indignation, and rightly so. He faced multiple felony counts and years in prison for what were, at worst, trivial transgressions of law. But his prosecution revealed the excess of both anti-hacking criminal statutes, particularly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and the fixation of federal prosecutors on severely punishing all forms of activism that challenge the power of the government and related entities to control the flow of information on the internet.

Part of what drove the intense reaction to Swartz's death was how sympathetic a figure he was, but as noted by Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor in the DOJ's computer crimes unit and now a law professor at GWU, what was done to Swartz is anything but unusual, and the reaction to his death will be meaningful only if channeled to protest other similar cases of prosecutorial abuse:

"I think it's important to realize that what happened in the Swartz case happens in lots and lots of federal criminal cases. . . . What's unusual about the Swartz case is that it involved a highly charismatic defendant with very powerful friends in a position to object to these common practices. That's not to excuse what happened, but rather to direct the energy that is angry about what happened. If you want to end these tactics, don't just complain about the Swartz case. Don't just complain when the defendant happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country -- mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring."

Prosecutorial abuse is a drastically under-discussed problem in general, but it poses unique political dangers when used to punish and deter online activism. But it's becoming the pre-eminent weapon used by the US government to destroy such activism.

Just this week alone, a US federal judge sentenced hactivist Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer to 3-1/2 years in prison for exploiting a flaw in AT&T's security system that allowed him entrance without any hacking, an act about which Slate's Justin Peters wrote: "it's not clear that Auernheimer committed any actual crime," while Jeff Blagdon at the Verge added: "he cracked no codes, stole no passwords, or in any way 'broke into' AT&T's customer database -- something company representatives confirmed during testimony." But he had a long record of disruptive and sometimes even quite ugly (though legal) online antagonism, so he had to be severely punished with years in prison.

Also this week, the DOJ indicted the deputy social media editor at Reuters, Matthew Keys, on three felony counts which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for allegedly providing some user names and passwords that allowed Anonymous unauthorized access into the computer system of the Los Angeles Times, where they altered a few stories and caused very minimal damage. As Peters wrote about that case, "the charges under the CFAA seem outrageously severe" and, about Keys' federal prosecutors, observed: "apparently, they didn't take away any lessons from the Aaron Swartz case."
<a href="http://ox-d.lanistaconcepts.com/w/1.0/r ... UMBER_HERE" ><img src="http://ox-d.lanistaconcepts.com/w/1.0/a ... UMBER_HERE" border="0" alt=""></a>

But the pending federal prosecution of 31-year-old Barrett Brown poses all new troubling risks. That's because Brown - who has been imprisoned since September on a 17-count indictment that could result in many years in prison -- is a serious journalist who has spent the last several years doggedly investigating the shadowy and highly secretive underworld of private intelligence and defense contractors, who work hand-in-hand with the agencies of the Surveillance and National Security State in all sorts of ways that remain completely unknown to the public. It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism.

A brief understanding of Brown's intrepid journalism is vital to understanding the travesty of his prosecution. I first heard of Brown when he wrote a great 2010 essay in Vanity Fair defending the journalist Michael Hastings from attacks from fellow journalists over Hastings' profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone, which ended the general's career. Brown argued that establishment journalists hate Hastings because he has spent years challenging, rather than serving, political and military officials and the false conventional wisdom they spout.

In an excellent profile of Brown in the Guardian on Wednesday, Ryan Gallagher describes that "before he crossed paths with the FBI, Brown was a prolific writer who had contributed to publications including Vanity Fair, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and satirical news site the Onion." He also "had a short stint in politics as the director of communications for an atheist group called Enlighten the Vote, and he co-authored a well-received book mocking creationism, Flock of Dodos."

But the work central to his prosecution began in 2009, when Brown created Project PM, "dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance." Brown was then moved by the 2010 disclosures by WikiLeaks and the oppressive treatment of Bradley Manning to devote himself to online activism and transparency projects, including working with the hacktivist collective Anonymous. He has no hacking skills, but used his media savvy to help promote and defend the group, and was often referred to (incorrectly, he insists) as the Anonymous spokesman. He was particularly interested in using what Anonymous leaked for his journalism. As Brown told me several days ago in a telephone interview from the Texan prison where he is being held pending trial, he devoted almost all of his waking hours over the last several years to using these documents to dig into the secret relationships and projects between these intelligence firms and federal agencies.

The real problems for Brown began in 2011. In February, Anonymous hacked into the computer system of the private security firm HB Gary Federal and then posted thousands of emails containing incriminating and nefarious acts. Among them was a joint proposal by that firm -- along with the very well-connected firms of Palantir and Berico -- to try to persuade Bank of America and its law firm, Hunton & Williams, to hire them to destroy the reputations and careers of WikiLeaks supporters and, separately, critics of the Chamber of Commerce (as this New York Times article on that episode details, I was named as one of the people whose career they would seek to destroy). HB Gary Federal's CEO Aaron Barr, who advocated the scheme, was fired as a result of the disclosures, but continues to this day to play a significant role in this public-private axis of computer security and intelligence.

Brown became obsessed with journalistically investigating every strand exposed by these HB Gary Federal emails and devoted himself to relentlessly exposing this world. He did the same with the 2012 leak of millions of emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, obtained by Anonymous and published by WikiLeaks. As Gallagher describes about Brown's fixation on these documents:

"Hackers would sometimes obtain data and then pass it on to him. He would spend days and nights hunkered down in his small uptown Dallas apartment pouring through troves of hacked documents, writing blog posts about US government intelligence contractors and their 'misplaced power' while working to garner wider media coverage. ...

"Brown was frustrated that mainstream media outlets were not covering stories he felt deserved attention. He would complain that reporters would often approach him and ask about the personalities of some of the more prominent hackers ... but ignore the deeper issues about governments and private contractors contained in documents that had been hacked."

The issues Brown was investigating are complex and serious, and I won't detail all of that here. In addition to Gallagher's article, two superb and detailed accounts of Brown's journalism in these areas have been published by Christian Stork of WhoWhatWhy and Vice's Patrick McGuire; read those to see how threatening Brown's work had become to lots of well-connected people. Suffice to say, Brown, using the documents obtained by Anonymous, was digging around -- with increasing efficacy -- in places which National Security and Surveillance State agencies devote considerable energy to concealing.

All of this is the crucial background to the charges he currently faces. In March of last year, Brown's home was raided by the FBI, armed with a search warrant relating to both the HB Gary Federal and the Stratfor leaks. Brown told me they were intent on finding out what he had learned about those firms, particularly HB Gary Federal. Having apparently learned that the FBI agents were coming, Brown went to his mother's home, so the FBI broke down his door and entered his apartment. They seized various documents but could find nothing linking him to either hack, so he was not arrested.

After that, FBI agents went to his mother's home. They found Brown there and asked for his laptop, which he denied having. Over the next several months, FBI agents continued to harass not only Brown but also his mother, repeatedly threatening to arrest her and indict her for obstruction of justice for harboring Brown and helping him conceal documents by letting him into her home.

Those months of FBI pursuit, but particularly the threats against his mother, finally caused Brown to explode with rage. Brown has been open in discussing his past battles with substance abuse, and at the time, he had stopped taking various medications which he uses to control his addiction problems. In September, he posted a YouTube video detailing that the FBI and HB Gary Federal had threatened to ruin his life, and was particularly incensed about the threats against his mother. Obviously distraught, he said he intended to do the same to the FBI agent making the threats against his mother, FBI agent Robert Smith. While expressly disavowing any intent to physically harm Smith, Brown issued rambling threats to "destroy" Smith.

That was more than enough pretext to allow the FBI to do what they long wanted: arrest Brown. The same day he posted the video on YouTube, the FBI arrested him on charges of threatening a federal agent, and then kept him imprisoned with no indictment for weeks on the ground that he posed an immediate threat to Smith. Finally in October, the DOJ unveiled an indictment charging him with three counts of, essentially, harassing a federal officer online.

In December, the DOJ filed a second indictment, which is now the heart of the government's case against him. It alleged that he "trafficked" in stolen goods, namely the Stratfor documents leaked by Anonymous and published by WikiLeaks. The indictment focuses on one small part of the leak: a list of Straftor clients and their credit card numbers. Critically, the indictment does not allege that Brown participated in the hack or in obtaining any of those documents.

Instead, it simply alleges that he helped "disseminate" the stolen information. He did that, claims the DOJ, when he was in a chat room and posted a link to those documents that were online. As the harsh Anonymous critic Adrian Chen of Gawker wrote:

"Is it a crime for someone simply to share a link to stolen information? That seems to be the message conveyed by today's indictment of former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown, over a massive hack of the private security firm Stratfor. Brown's in legal trouble for copying and pasting a link from one chat room to another. This is scary to anyone who ever links to anything ...

"This charge does not allege Brown actually had the credit card numbers on his computer or even created the link: He just allegedly copied a link to a publicly-accessible file with the numbers from one chat room and pasted it into another. ... As a journalist who covers hackers and has 'transferred and posted' many links to data stolen by hackers -- in order to put them in stories about the hacks -- this indictment is frightening because it seems to criminalize linking."

What makes all of this even worse is that there is zero suggestion that Brown made use of these credit card numbers. To the contrary, when Anonymous advocated that people use the numbers to donate money to charity, Brown vocally condemned that suggestion as a distraction from Anonymous' mission. He told me in our telephone interview that he did the same privately. As McGuire wrote: "It's obvious by looking at the most recent posts on Barrett Brown's blog that while he is highly interested in Stratfor, it wasn't the credit card information that motivated him."

The documents to which he linked contained all sorts of other information that he wanted to investigate and write about, including Straftor's client list. There are countless legitimate reasons to link to those documents, particularly for a journalist. That this extremely dubious allegation now forms the crux of the DOJ's case against him reveals what a persecution this actually is.

In January, the DOJ filed yet another indictment against Brown, its third. This one added charges of "obstruction of justice" for allegedly failing to tell them about his laptop when they came to his mother's house (it also alleged that his mother "aided and abetted" him in these acts, thus maintaining the implicit threat to indict her for having let her son into her home). Those charges, by themselves, carry a possible prison sentence of 20 years.

So here we have the US government targeting someone they clearly loathe because of the work he is doing against their actions. Then -- using the most dubious legal theories, exploiting vague and broad criminal statutes, and driving him to ill-advised behavior with deliberately vindictive harassment (including aimed at his mother) -- they transform what is at worst very trivial offenses into a multi-count felony indictment that has already resulted in his imprisonment for six months and threatens to imprison him for many years more. In his great analysis of the case, Christian Stork compares Brown's treatment to Swartz's (about which Stork wrote previously) and captures perfectly what is going on here and what is at stake:

"Swartz's treatment wasn't anomalous, but 'a symptom of the entire disease' that underlies America's singular status as the world's jailer -- of those who anger formidable interests, and those without friends in the right places.

"Brown's case is even more egregious: As even the government itself concedes, ProjectPM comes under the definition of the legitimate practice of journalism. Brown simply harnessed information gathered from someone else's 'criminal' hack. Then he used it to expose the foul and potentially illegal activities of some of the world's leading corporations -- in partnership with secretive sectors of the government.

"Brown punctured a wall of secrecy, constructed over the past decade, that shields the state from accountability to its citizens. For that, he is threatened with a century behind bars.

"His tale deserves to be told, not just because of the injustice involved. It also shows the awesome power of the Internet in adjusting the balance sheet between the big guys and the small ones. And the lengths the insiders will go to keep their advantage."

Brown may not be as cuddly as Swartz, and certainly does not have the same roster of influential friends. Nor can it be categorically argued that Brown did nothing wrong (just as many of Swartz's most ardent defenders acknowledged about him): that YouTube video, made when he was admittedly struggling with impaired judgment, was certainly ill-advised.

But none of that should matter. The claim with prosecutorial abuse is never that the person targeted is a perfect being or even that he never did anything wrong. The issue with prosecutorial abuse is that the punishments being meted out are wildly disproportionate to the alleged acts when the trivial harms of the acts are considered and/or that the prosecution is being pursued for improper purposes. That's particularly true when viewed next to the far more egregious criminality the US government shields.

Both prongs of prosecutorial abuse are clearly present in Brown's case. There is no evidence that the link he posted to already published documents resulted in any unauthorized use of credit cards, and certainly never redounded in any way to his benefit. More important, this prosecution is driven by the same plainly improper purpose that drove the one directed at Aaron Swartz and so many others: the desire to exploit the power of criminal law to deter and severely punish anyone who meaningfully challenges the government's power to control the flow of information on the internet and conceal its vital actions. Brown's acts, like Swartz's, were political in nature, and the excessive prosecution is equally political.

What the US government counts on above all else is that the persons it targets are unable to defend themselves against the government's unlimited resources. It takes an enormous amount of money to mount an effective defense. That's what often drives even the most innocent people to plead guilty and agree to long prison terms: they simply have no choice, because their reliance on committed and able but time-strapped public defenders makes conviction at trial highly likely, which -- under an outrageous system that punishes people for exercising their right to a fair trial -- means a much harsher punishment than if they plead guilty.

If the US government is going to attempt to imprison activists and journalists like this, it should at the very least be a fair fight. That means that Brown, who is now represented by a public defender, should have a vigorous defense able to devote the time and energy to his case that it deserves. He told me in the telephone interview we had that he believes this is the key to enabling him to avoid pleading guilty and agreeing to a prison term: something he has thus far refused to do in part because he insists he did nothing criminal, and in part because he refuses to become a government informant.

A legal defense fund has been created by several young, smart and committed internet freedom activists, two of whom I had the chance to meet and speak with in the Boston area several weeks ago. I really hope everyone who is able to do so will donate what they can to his defense fund. You can do that at this link here, or via paypal to freebbfund@gmail.com. All donations will be used exclusively to hire private criminal defense counsel and to fund his defense.

The US government's serial prosecutorial excesses aimed at internet freedom activists, journalists, whistleblowers and the like are designed to crush meaningful efforts to challenge their power and conduct. It is, I believe, incumbent on everyone who believes in those values to do what they can to support those who are taking real risks in defense of those freedoms and in pursuit of real transparency. Barrett Brown is definitely such a person, and enabling him to resist these attacks is of vital importance.
Whistleblower documentary

Obviously related to all of this: the great filmmaker Robert Greenwald (no relation) has a new documentary coming out in April entitled "War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State." Among other things, it contains interviews with Dan Ellsberg, the Washington Post's Dana Priest, former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, persecuted whistleblowers and others (I'm interviewed as well). Here is the new trailer for the documentary:


Q-and-A session tomorrow

Tomorrow (Friday), we're going to have here another Q-and-A session similar to the one we did weeks ago, where I will answer reader questions. The column will be posted at noon Eastern, and you can leave your questions in the comment section. I will then begin answering them in real-time starting at 3:00 pm Eastern.

* Editor's note: this article originally referred to private security firm HB Gary Federal as HB Gary; this was amended at 3pm ET on 21 March.


For the past 10 years, I was a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, civil rights cases, and corporate and securities fraud matters. I am the author of the New York Times Best-Selling book, more...)

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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Acquitted cop sues feds for $17M

March 23, 2013

A Westchester cop who beat the rap in a criminal civil-rights case sued an FBI agent yesterday for allegedly destroying evidence favorable to him.

José Quinoy’s Manhattan federal court suit seeks $17 million in damages from Agent Catherine Pena and the US government for malicious prosecution.

In 2009, Quinoy, then a cop in Sleepy Hollow, was charged with roughing up two suspects and intimidating a fellow cop who was a witness against him.

A jury cleared Quinoy after a judge ruled that Pena had apparently destroyed secret recordings and lied about it ahead of the trial.

see link for full story

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manh ... trzg6MjrsI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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see link for full story
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/lo ... enate_race" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Aaron Swartz case an issue in Mass. Senate race
Saturday, March 23, 2013


BOSTON — The federal prosecution and suicide of Aaron Swartz has galvanized Internet activists and prompted attacks by hackers. Now it's dividing candidates in Massachusetts' special U.S. Senate campaign.

Among the toughest critics of the case against Swartz is Republican Senate candidate Daniel Winslow, a Norfolk state representative and former judge. Winslow said the case shows the dangers of allowing prosecutors unchecked authority.

Swartz was facing decades behind bars after being indicted in Boston in 2011 for allegedly downloading millions of academic articles when he hanged himself in his New York City apartment this year.

Prosecutors said he was offered a deal under which he would have spent just four to six months in prison.

Responding to a question in a recent Republican debate, Winslow said there has to be "some sense of proportion, some sense of balance" in decisions about what cases to pursue and how to prosecute them.

msfreeh
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Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

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Chemtrails: Aerosol and Electromagnetic Weapons in the Age of Nuclear War
By Amy Worthington
Global Research, March 23, 2013

North America is now suffering its seventh year of conspicuous and dangerous aerosol and electromagnetic operations conducted by the U.S. government under the guise of national security. Concerned citizens watch in fear as military tankers discolor the skies with toxic chemicals that morph into synthetic clouds.

We continually witness bizarre meteorological occurrences as powerful electromagnetic devices manipulate both the jet stream and individual storm fronts to create artificial weather and climatic conditions. Black operations projects embedded within these aerosol missions are documented to sicken and disorient select populations with biological test agents and psychotronic mind/mood control technologies.Part of what is happening in the atmosphere above us involves the Pentagon’s secret space weapons program, designed for strategic, operational and tactical levels of war. NASA missions will soon be transferred to Pentagon control.1 The Air Force Space Command declares that, in order to monitor and shape world events, it must fight intense, decisive wars with great precision from space.2 Air Force Secretary James G. Roche has stated: “Space capabilities are integrated with, and affect every link in the kill chain.”3 A glimpse into new death technologies under construction is in legislation introduced by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinch. His unsuccessful Space Preservation Act of 2001 was intended to ban space deployment of:4

* electronic, psychotronic and information weaponry* high altitude ultra low frequency weapons

* plasma, electromagnetic, sonic and ultrasonic weapons

* laser weapons

* strategic, theater, tactical or extraterrestrial weapons

* chemical biological, environmental climate or tectonic weapons

* chemtrails (this item was stricken from a later version, suggesting duress)

In their quest to remain top dog in the kill chain, the purveyors of perpetual war have deliberately dimmed earth’s life-giving sunlight,5 and reduced atmospheric visibility with lung-clogging particulates and polymers.6 This ecological terrorism has severely compromised public health, according to thousands of testimonials. Years of mass appeals to legislators, media and military officials for information, and for cessation of catastrophic atmospheric degradation, have fallen on deaf bureaucratic ears. Public awareness of what befalls us remains as murky as our skies because those “in the know” are muzzled by national secrecy laws and Americans have no authority to challenge matters of national security. Left to gather clues, we know this much so far:

1. At least part of the aerosol project has been dubbed Operation Cloverleaf,7 probably due to its multi-faceted operations, which include: weather modification, military communications, space weapons development, ozone and global warming research plus biological weaponry and detection testing.

2. Dumping tons of particulate matter from aircraft has geo-engineered our planetary atmosphere into a highly charged, electrically-conductive plasma useful for military projects.8 The air we breathe is laden with asbestos-sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum, and reportedly, radioactive thorium.9 These materials act as electrolytes to enhance conductivity of military radar and radio waves.10 Poisonous on par with arsenic and a proven suppressant of the human immune system,11 atmospheric barium weakens human muscles, including those of the heart.12 Inhaled aluminum goes directly to the brain and medical specialists confirm that it causes oxidative stress within brain tissue, leading to formation of Alzheimer’s like neurofibrillary tangles.13 Radioactive thorium is known to cause leukemia and other cancers.14

3. Only a small percentage of the military’s atmospheric modification projects are visibly obvious. What we can’t see is equally dangerous. The ionosphere, the earth and its inhabitants are continually bombarded with high frequency microwaves used to manipulate the charged atmosphere for weather modification, information gathering and for tectonic (earthquake-producing) weaponry.15 Independent chemtrail researcher Clifford Carnicom confirms that we are also continuously subjected to extremely low electromagnetic frequencies (ELF) pulsing at 4 hertz multiples, frequencies known to profoundly affect human biological and mental functioning.16

4. There is a well-documented biological component to continuously ongoing atmospheric studies in which nations and regions are furtively inoculated via specially designed delivery systems with combinations of viruses, bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma, desiccated blood cells and exotic biological markers so that testmasters can assess human, animal and plant response.17

5. The multi-organizational megalith perpetrating these bio-chem projects against humanity includes the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and its research arm DARPA, plus the Department of Energy (DOE) with its huge network of national labs and universities. Private defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies are heavily involved.18 Cooperating governments of other nations and probably some United Nations agencies are complicit, since the aerosol projects are global in scope.

Gross chemical and electromagnetic pollution is only part of the horrific realities we endure. The sociopaths who brazenly pervert skies, climate and weather for power and profit are the same madmen who have waged four limited nuclear wars since 1991. Radioactive weaponry, declared both illegal and immoral by the entire civilized world, has been used by the Pentagon in Desert Storm, the Balkans campaign and the on-going occupation-wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Few Americans understand the extent of carnage inflicted in their name across the planet.

By scientific definition, the missiles, tank penetrators and bunker busting bombs unleashed against Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. and British forces in the so-called war on terror are nuclear weapons.19 Refuse from radioactive weaponry does not disperse, but remains in the atmosphere organotoxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic to all living flesh for 4.5 billion years.

Inhabitants of the Pentagon’s two newly “liberated” nations are now slowly dying of radiation and heavy metal poisoning. Victims of U.S. weaponry used in Afghanistan have a concentration of non-depleted uranium isotopes in their bodies never before seen in civilian populations.20 Tons of depleted and non-depleted uranium contaminating their land, air, food and water guarantee their painful demise. Using data from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), nuclear scientist Leuren Moret calculates that the estimated 2,500+ tons of depleted uranium used against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 is sufficient to cause 25 million new cancers.21 Is it a coincidence that the population of Iraq, according to the CIA, is 25 million?

The quarter million U.S. and British fighting forces who have helped the Pentagon deliver this holocaust also face inevitable radiological death by slow burn. Rotated into atomic war zones since 2001, coalition troops have inhaled and ingested millions of tiny invisible ceramic uranium particles which emit alpha, beta and gamma radiation as they embed in lungs, kidneys, blood, lymph and bone.22 Radiation exposure to a single internalized U-238 (uranium) alpha particle is 50 times the allowable whole body dose for one year under international standards.23 As U-238 decays into daughter isotopes, it becomes ever more radioactive, causing cell and organ destruction to escalate over time.24 Uranium contamination leads to incapacitating, multi-organ system disorders identical to illnesses suffered by thousands of Gulf War I vets. Bodily fluids poisoned with uranium isotopes sicken spouses and visit upon offspring a genetic Armageddon.25

Who knows what a disabled and prematurely dying military population will mean to future stability and safety of USA? Yet Senator Chuck Hagel (R- Neb.) now demands that America provide more fodder for its atomic battlefields by reinstating the military draft so that “all of our citizens…bear some responsibility and pay some price” in order to “understand the intensity of the challenges we face.”26

Despite disingenuous denials that biological harm will result from atomic warfare,27 the Pentagon knows full well the gruesome realities of uranium weaponry by virtue of its own voluminous studies spanning 60 years. Pentagon documents confirm that America’s war establishment knowingly exposes its own troops to dangerous levels of radiation.28 The resulting illness of those now returning from the war zones is already making headlines.29

Because our military-industrial overlords brazenly poison the very grunts who make their war games possible, we must logically conclude there is virtually nothing they would not secretly and sadistically do to the rest of us. Military officials lie as perniciously about chemtrail operations30 as they do about effects of DU weaponry. If people were to consider the published science regarding chemtrails and DU, they would understand that we are all in mortal jeopardy.

Both the Pentagon’s aerosol operations and its limited nuclear wars are deeply interconnected. We can trace the beginnings of Operation Cloverleaf right to the Strangelove brain of Dr. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and proponent of nuking inhabited coast lines to rearrange them for economic projects.31 Before he died in 2003, Teller was director emeritus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where plans for nuclear, biological and directed energy weapons are crafted. In 1997, Teller publicly outlined his proposal to use aircraft to scatter in the stratosphere millions of tons of electrically-conductive metallic materials, ostensibly to reduce global warming.32

Shortly after Teller’s presentation, the public began seeing frenetic chemtrailing. In 2000, CBS News admitted that scientists were “looking at drastic solutions for global warming, including manipulating the atmosphere on a massive scale.” CBS confirmed that the plan to load the air with tiny particles would “deflect enough sunlight to trigger global cooling.”33

Teller estimated that commercial aircraft could be used to spew these particles at a cost of 33 cents a pound.34 This gives credence to a report by an airline manager, forced by a compulsory non-disclosure agreement to remain anonymous, that commercial aircraft have been co-opted to assist the military in consummating Project Cloverleaf.35 A 1991 Hughes aircraft patent confirms that sunscreen particulate materials can be run through jet engines.36 A science textbook now used in some public schools discusses the sunscreen project by showing a large orange-red jet with the caption, “Jet engines running on richer fuel would add particles to the atmosphere to create a sunscreen.” The logo on the plane says “Particle Air.”37 The implications of this crucial information should not be understated. A program to make America’s millions of annual jet flights a source of specially designed particulate pollution is serious business.

Cloverleaf particles and polymers saturating the air we breathe are smaller than 10 microns (PM 10) and are invisible to the human eye. By comparison, a human hair is 60 to 100 microns in thickness. Scientists and the EPA report that because PM10 and sub-micron pollution particles bypass lung filters and enter the blood stream, they cause radical changes in the endocrine and nervous systems. 38 They can trigger high blood pressure and cause heart attack within two hours of inhalation.39 They cause the blood to become sticky, making it tougher for the heart to pump and increasing the risk of blood clots and vessel damage.40 Now researchers in Taiwan document “a significant increase” in the number of stroke victims when PM10 pollutant levels rise.41 The American Lung Association confirms that we are breathing more toxic air than ever.42 No wonder nationwide asthma rates have been soaring in recent years.43

Tiny synthetic filaments called polymers are part of the brew. In 1990, a NATO report detailed how high-flying aircraft can modify the atmosphere by spraying polymers to absorb electromagnetic radiation.44 U.S. patent number 6315213 describes how cross-linked aqueous polymers dispersed into a storm diminish rain.45

Polymer chemist Dr. R. Michael Castle has studied atmospheric polymers for years. He has found that some of them contain bioactive materials, which can cause “serious skin lesions and diseases when absorbed into the skin.”46 He has identified microscopic polymers comprised of genetically-engineered fungal forms mutated with viruses. He says that trillions of fusarium (fungus)/virus mutated spores, which secrete a powerful mico-toxin, are part of the air we breathe.47 Allergies anyone?

We can safely bet that into our particle-enriched air, experimenters are also dumping nanoparticles, developed for a variety of military and industrial uses. These engineered carbon molecules, as small as one-thousandth the diameter of human hair, display bizarre chemical properties and are known to trigger organ damage.48 A recent study at Southern Methodist University found that fish exposed to one type of nanoparticle suffered severe brain damage after only 48 hours.49

The military’s aerosol operations have been climate altering to the extreme. Air traffic is a huge source of greenhouse pollution. Increasing that traffic exponentially in order to scatter tons of heat-trapping metallic particulates and heat-liberating barium salts have undoubtedly led to accelerated global warming. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, have reached a record high this year.50 As carbon dioxide levels rise, oxygen levels decrease.

In 1996, Scientists for Global Responsibility compiled a report contending that dangerous geoengineering, as proposed by Teller and the Global Change Research Coordination Office, would be absolutely ineffective in mitigating global warming. The report noted that climate engineering research is funded by industry with a vested interest in continued high consumption of fossil fuels.51 The hair-brained scheme of particle engineering was contrived to ensure that industry polluters will never be forced to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. But because warming and pollution trends have worsened drastically since the aerosol projects began, we must suspect that the warming mitigation program is a hoax and that chemtrailing is really intended, among other things, to create a series of “hobgoblins.”

The establishment’s modus operandi for maintaining a fierce and lucrative hold upon the collective American mind has been defined precisely by satirist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) who wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and thus clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

In The Report from Iron Mountain published in 1967, just as the Pentagon’s lucrative Vietnam War was being revved into high gear, establishment braintrusters confirmed that perpetual war is absolutely vital for controlling and manipulating the masses. The document even suggested a number of options for creating fictitious enemies, noting that perpetual war induces populations to give blind allegiance to political authority.52

Since the 1930s, when the Eastern Establishment, including the Bush family, used its New York banks and oil companies to secretly fund Hitler’s German Nazi party,53 our controllers have employed FEAR, the concept of ENEMY and WAR to keep us in bondage. Chemtrailing is a manifestation of the Fourth Reich, an era of corporate fascism ushered in by a powerful military juggernaut, which manufactures enemies and unleashes fake terror attacks to scare us into voiceless submission.

Both Saddam Hussein and the al Queda networks have long been nourished with U.S. government and corporate funding and groomed by U.S. military and corporate advisors to play useful roles as “enemies.”54 Former German Technology Minister Andreas von Bulow recently confirmed on U.S. radio that hijacked planes were able to fly around the eastern U.S. on 9/11 unimpeded by military interdiction because those attacks were part of a carefully-orchestrated “covert operation” designed to coerce America into perpetual conflict with the Muslim world.55

Now, a “secret” Pentagon report has been conveniently leaked to the media. It contends that abrupt climate change is the most fearful hobgoblin yet.56 Authored by change agents with ties to the CIA and the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the report contends that abrupt climate change will lead to a global catastrophe of monumental proportions, including nuclear war and natural disasters, as whole nations disappear beneath the encroaching sea and survivors fight for dwindling food, water and energy supplies.

Yet the Pentagon has been involved for decades in the drastic manipulation of weather, climate and atmospheric conditions. The U.S. used a chemical agent dubbed Olive Oil during Operation Popeye to induce heavy rains in Vietnam 40 years ago.57 The Air Force document titled “Weather As a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025″ lists its weaponized agenda for creating abrupt climate change including: Storm creation and modification, fog and cloud creation, precipitation enhancement, precipitation denial, drought inducement and artificial creation of “space weather.” This document also states that the military’s radical weather modification agenda will “become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications.”58

Weather weapons are now routinely used in war zones. A citizen reporting from Serbia noted that during NATO operations in the Balkans, black clouds suddenly materialized out of blue skies, hailstones were the size of eggs, and surreal thunder and lightening terrified the people. He reported that scientists found that the electromagnetic field over Serbia had been punctured, causing rain systems to circumvent the region.59 In addition to manufactured drought, scientists also predict that Serbia will suffer 10,000 cancer deaths from DU weaponry used there.60

According to University of Ottawa Professor Michael Chossudovsky, the military’s High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), operating in Alaska as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, is a powerful tool for weather and climate modification.61 Operated jointly by the U.S. Navy and Air Force, HAARP antennas bombard and heat the ionosphere, causing electromagnetic frequencies to bounce back to earth, penetrating everything living and dead.62

HAARP transmissions make holes in the ozone,63 creating yet another hobgoblin. HAARP inventor Bernard Eastlund described in his original patent how antenna energy can interact with plumes of atmospheric particles, used as a lens or focusing device, to modify weather.64 HAARP is capable of triggering floods, droughts and hurricanes, much to the chagrin of both the European Parliament and the Russian Duma.65

HAARP also generates sweeping pulses through the ULF/ELF range.66 In 2000, independent researchers monitored HAARP transmissions of 14 hertz. They found that when these signals were broadcast at high output levels, wind speeds topped 70 miles per hour. They watched as these same transmissions dispersed a huge weather front approaching the west coast from California to British Columbia. Although precipitation had been originally forecast, the front was seen shredding apart on satellite photos and rain did not materialize.67 The hobgoblin drought can be an enriching and empowering tool for certain corporate and governing entities.

HAARP is not only capable of destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems anywhere on the planet, but its effects can target select regions to affect human physical, mental and emotional responses during non-lethal warfare projects.68 HAARP frequencies beamed at specific targets can generate catastrophic earthquakes,69 exactly like the quake last December which killed thousands of people in Iran, a nemesis nation according to the Bush administration.

The Pentagon’s warning about climate catastrophe is surely nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to prepare the masses for the bizarre atmospheric upheavals we can expect as the military continues to brutalize our planet and near space with its grotesque toys. And we ain’t seen nothing yet. Dr. Eastlund and his ilk have developed plans for solar power satellites designed to modify the weather with electromagnetic beam output that dwarfs the present HAARP system.70 As abrupt climate change is increasingly orchestrated, we will surely need additional fascist agencies, an ever-growing military budget and more poison-particle projects that just happen to ensure population reduction as a side benefit.

Despite visual evidence that every aspect of our physical environment is being manipulated and damaged for war games, some Americans cannot accept that dangerous covert operations are being conducted by a government they still believe to be a virtuous defender of freedom. Their stumbling block is a numbing belief that their own officials would never perpetrate dangerous experimentation on humanity since “they have families too.” History and the release of declassified government documents disprove such naiveté.

Although “they” had families too, the U.S. government and its defense contractors exposed citizens of the northwest U.S. to huge and deliberate releases of radioactive iodine 131 from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where plutonium was produced for nuclear bombs.71 Those Cold War releases unleashed radiation illnesses upon thousands of downwinders, some of whom received up to 350 rads of radiation when a maximum safety dose is set at .025 rads annually.72 Between 1949 and 1952, radioactive pellets, dust and particles were tested on the hapless citizens of Utah and New Mexico.73

By 1963, 1,200 nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada test site had exposed every person in the U.S. to deadly radioactive fallout, causing millions of fetal deaths, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths and birth defects.74 The U.S. government also conducted over 4,000 radiation experiments on individual human test subjects without their informed consent.75 The delayed effects of decades of radiation exposure from weapons testing are today demonstrated by a U.S. population plagued with epidemic cancer and heart disease, neurological disorders, low fertility, chronic fatigue, obesity (thyroid involvement), immune system dysfunction and learning disabilities. Approximately half of all pregnancies in the U.S. result in prenatal or postnatal death or an otherwise less than healthy baby.76 As military tankers spew white chemical plumes across America at a cost of $3,448 per hour per tanker,77 we are reminded of Dr. Leonard Cole’s 1994 testimony before a Senate Committee regarding 45 years of open air testing during which military aircraft sprayed American cities with bacteria, fungus and carcinogenic chemicals.78 Between 1962-1973, the U.S. Navy conducted hundreds of bio-chem tests known as Operation SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense). SHAD projects like Autumn Gold and Copper Head exposed 10,000 navy personnel to aircraft spray laden with biological and chemical warfare agents, including sarin nerve gas.79 The cocktails used in those genocidal “tests” are now linked to cancer, heart and lung problems suffered by surviving guinea pigs.

We are told that defense officials perpetrated these atrocities so that scientists could learn about how to “protect” Americans from attack. So why, in the late 80s, would our “protectors” fall all over themselves to supply Saddam Hussein’s war machine with 90 shipments of chemical and biological weaponry, including sarin, anthrax, botulism, brucella and West Nile Virus?80

It will likely be years before Americans are told what is being tested upon them during our present chemtrail/space wars era. The Hanford downwinders did not learn until 1986 what had been unleashed upon them some 30 years earlier; SHAD victims filed suit in 2003 to learn the extent to which they were intentionally exposed to dangerous substances in the 60s.

To understand how our nation has arrived at this doomsday corruption, we must recall that immediately after WWII ended, the U.S. government initiated Operation Paperclip through which a large number of German Nazi scientists were imported to the United States. Once issued new identities, these death industry pros were employed in U.S. military laboratories to develop a dazzling array of secret weaponry projects.81 With congressional funding, the crowning achievement of this nexus was the creation of ghastly new bioweapons, including the AIDS virus82 and an incapacitating chronic fatigue agent engineered from mycoplasma and brucella.83

The military is empowered to continue lethal experimentation by devious wording of Section 1520a Chapter 32 of U.S. Code Title 50. The law states that the Secretary of Defense may NOT conduct any chemical or biological test or experiment on civilian populations, unless such tests are for medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial purposes or for research in general or for protection against weapons or for law enforcement purposes, including riot control. So DOD may not use us for guinea pigs, unless it is for any “good” reason under the sun! The law states that human subjects must give informed consent. But a nasty loophole in Section 1515 of Chapter 32 allows informed consent to be suspended by executive order during a period of national emergency, a situation under which this nation perpetually labors by deliberate hobgoblin design.

Few American test rats realize that the Pentagon’s boys in Congress have now:

* appropriated millions of dollars for the manufacture and testing of new “mini nukes” and bunker buster bombs.84* authorized the DOE to resume nuclear testing in Nevada.85

* exempted DOD and DOE from landmark environmental laws in the development of these new weapons.86

America’s 70,000 nuclear weapons manufactured since 1945 are not sufficient! As DOE gears up to develop and test fourth-generation nukes, numerous reports continue to surface about the agency’s sordid corruption and mismanagement. DOE’s habitual cover-up of site contamination and its devious efforts to downplay serious illnesses suffered by many of its nuclear workers are among recent scandals.87

When new “low yield” nuclear weapons (defined as being smaller than 5 kilotons) are tested in Nevada, downwinders might like to know that a mini .5 kiloton nuclear warhead would have to burrow 150 feet to eliminate atmospheric fallout. No weapon yet developed can penetrate more than 40 feet into the earth. A tested nuclear warhead that burrows to only 40 feet will throw a million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the atmosphere.88

The Pentagon’s new nuke era is in the capable hands of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has so ably presided over the pre-emptive nuclear incineration of Middle Eastern Muslims. Rumsfeld has never adequately explained why his Department was unable to defend the Pentagon building despite a full hour’s notice that hijacked planes were in the air. Should Rumsfeld be replaced due to the Pentagon’s Iraqi torture scandal, we are assured that his Bush-appointed successor will share his have-nuke-will-travel ideology.

Working closely with Rumsfeld is a coven of pro-nukers, including his advisor Keith Payne, a vocal advocate of pre-emptive nuclear war. Payne has written that an “intelligent” nuclear offensive launched by the U.S. would result in only 20 million U.S. casualties, “a level compatible with national survival and recovery.”89

Now that we have tied together the historical and political realities for which we mindlessly wave our flags, we still hope that sufficient numbers of American lab rats will miraculously awaken from their collective stupor and take stock of our appalling situation. After all, rodents have a notoriously short life span and are always killed when no longer useful to those conducting research. The irony of this horror story is that we rats are being plundered to finance our own demise. Our national debt of 7.2 trillion grows by $1.8 billion a day.90 The Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 trillion of its shadowy transactions.91

The radioactive operations in Iraq are costing $3.7 billion a month, those in Afghanistan $900 million a month.92 No one knows how many $billions are being flushed into Operation Cloverleaf and other hobgoblin projects. The U.S. spends $11,000 per second on weapons, according to calculations of celebrated author William Thomas.93

So, while we await the great awakening, have a wonderful, barium-dried summer under a synthetic tarpaulin of aluminum-white, particle-laden, electrically-charged aviation scum that passes for sky. Endure well your respiratory and ocular difficulties while staring at huge oily sun rings and smeary sundogs, the patent signature of chemical assault. Don’t forget to salute and click your heels when you see tanker formations patriotically saturating the atmosphere with such a dense, micro-particulate brew that they cast black shadows alongside or ahead of themselves.

As you witness the noxious drama in the skies, remember, it’s all just part of the “kill chain.”

NOTES

1. “USAF Plans to Utterly Dominate, Rule Space,” Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times.com, 9-14-03.

2. Almanac 2000, Journal of the Air Force Association, May 2000, Vol. 83.

3. Roche’s “kill chain” statement was made during his October 2002 speech at the Conference on the Law and Policy Relating to National Security Activities in Outer Space.

4. “Pentagon Preps for War in Space,”Noah Shachtman, http://www.wirednews.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; , 2-20-04.

5. “The Theft of Sunlight,” Clifford Carnicom, 10-25-03: “…Measurements show a rapid reduction in the transmission of sunlight from a value of 97% on a ‘clear day’ to the lower level of approximately 80% during the early stages of heavy aerosol operations….The absorption and displacement of this solar energy into environmental, military, biological and electromagnetic operations represents a theft of the natural and divine rights of the inhabitants of this planet.” http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

6. “Visibility Standards Changed,” Clifford Carnicom, 3-30-01: “It will be noted that in October of 1997, a change in the reporting system of visibility data was reduced from a former maximum of 40 miles to a limit of 10 miles. It is a reasonable question to ask as to why that change was made, and whether or not it was made in anticipation of…large scale aircraft aerosol operations over large scale geographic regions.” http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

7. “A Meeting,” Clifford Carnicom, 7-26-03. See http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

8. “Atmospheric Conductivity,” Clifford Carnicom, 7-09-01, http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

9. For facts on barium toxicity, see Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, September 1995. For references on barium related to chemtrails, see http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for the following articles: “Barium Tests are Positive,” Clifford Carnicom, 5-10-04; “Sub-micron Particulates Isolated,” Carnicom, 4-26-04; “Barium Affirmed by Spectroscopy,” Clifford Carnicom, 11-1-2000; “Electrolysis and Barium,” Carnicom, 5-27-02; “Rainwater Metals,” Carnicom, 7-30-01; “Barium Identification Further Confirmed,” Carnicom, 11-28-00.

10. “The Plasma Frequency: Radar Applications,” Clifford Carnicom, 11-05-01; See http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

11. “Functional heterogeneity in the process of T lymphocyte activation; barium blocks several modes of T-cell activation, but spares a functionally unique subset of PHA-activable T cells,” Clinical Experimental Immunology, Pecanha and Dos Reis, May 1989.

12. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Safety Data Sheet.

13. Aluminum Toxicity, Barbara Barnett, MD, 11-26-02. See http://www.emedicine.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

14. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, July 1999; For information on thorium in chemtrails: “The Methodic Demise of Natural Earth,” Dr. Mike Castle, 3-27-04, http://www.willthomas.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

15. Angels Don’t Play This HAARP, Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, 1995; “HAARP: Vandalism in the Sky?” Begich and Manning, Nexus Magazine, January 1996.

16. “Elf Radiation is Confirmed,” Clifford Carnicom, 11-17-02; “Elf Disruption & Countermeasures,” Clifford Carnicom 11-27-02; “A Proposal of Cascading Resonance,” Clifford Carnicom, 4-21-03. See http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for these and numerous other frequency studies; also “Electromagnetic Waves Linked to Children’s Brain Tumor,” Kyodo News Service, 6-8-03.

17. Death In the Air, Global Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, Leonard G. Horowitz, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001; “Military Conducting Biological Warfare in Washington,” 12-12-97, http://www.rense.com;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Probing the Chemtrails Conundrum, William Thomas, Essence Publications, 2000, http://www.willthomas.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

18. For a comprehensive list of those involved in Operation Cloverleaf and associated projects, see: “Chemtrails–Top Intel, Military, and Defense Contractors Watching Carnicom.com,” rense.com, 1-12-00. Among agencies most interested in opposition to chemtrail projects is the United States Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute associated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. See: “The Monitors of JGI,” Clifford Carnicom, March 17, 2003, carnicom.com. 19. The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War– A paper presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference at the University of Hamburg, October 16-19, 2003, Dr. Leuren Moret. Dr. Moret is a former staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her work is highly documented with scientific papers.

20. Uranium Medical Research Centre, “Afghan Field Trip #2 Report,” November 2002; http://www.umrc.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ; also “Astoundingly High Afghan Uranium Levels Spark Alert,” Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 5-23-03.

21. Moret, op. cit.

22. “Medical Effects of Internal Contamination with Uranium,” Dr. Asaf Durakovich, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington D.C. March 1999. Volume 40, No. 1

23. Moret, op. cit.

24. “Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others By Depleted Uranium,” Leonard A. Dietz, 2-21-99.

25. Durakovich, op cit; Dietz, op. cit. Moret, op. cit.

26. “Republican Senator: Bring Back the Draft,” World Net Daily, 4-20-04.

27. “Pentagon’s Uranium Denial,” New York Daily News, 4-27-04; “Pentagon: Uranium Didn’t harm N.Y. Unit,” Associated Press, 5-3-04. “Pentagon-Depleted Uranium No Health Risk,” Dr. Doug Rokke; 3-15-03. Dr. Rokke was an U.S. Army DU expert (1991-1995) and he confirms that the Pentagon is lying about DU risks.

28. Documents in which the hazards of uranium and depleted uranium exposure are discussed include: U.S. Army Training Manual STP-21-1-SMCT: Soldiers Manual of Common Tasks; “Health Effects of Depleted Uranium,” David E. McClain, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) Bethesda, Maryland; Marine Corp Memo Concerning DU (unclassified) 9-8-90; US Army Training Video, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project video: Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness, 1995; “Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal With Depleted Uranium Contamination,” General Accounting Office, January 1993; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Memorandum from Bernard Rostker to chiefs of all military branches re: Depleted Uranium Ammunition Training, 9-09-97.

29. “Soldiers Believe Depleted Uranium Cause of Illnesses,” Associate Press, 4-9-04; “Poisoned?” Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, 4-4-04. Other stories in this series are: “Inside Camp of Troubles” and “Army to Test N.Y. Guard Unit.”

30. “Air Force Increases Rank of Lie,” letter by Walter M. Washabaugh, Colonel, USAF, denying the existence of chemtrails, received by e-mail on May 22, 2001 and posted at http://www.carnicom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; by Clifford E Carnicom, May 22 2001.

31. Begich and Manning, op. cit. p. 51.

32. Global Warming and Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change, Edward Teller and Lowell Wood, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, prepared for invited presentation at the International Seminar On Planetary Emergencies, Erice, Italy, August 20-23, 1997; also “The Planet Needs a Sunscreen,” Wall Street Journal, 10-17-97.

33. CBS News Eye on America Report : Cooling the Planet in two parts: 1-15-01 and 1-16-01.

34. Teller and Wood, op. cit.

35. “An Airline Manager’s Statement,” Posted by C.E. Carnicom on behalf of the author, 5-22-00. Quote: “The few airline employees who were briefed on Project Cloverleaf were all made to undergo background checks, and before we were briefed on it we were made to sign non-disclosure agreements which basically state that if we tell anyone what we know we could be imprisoned….They told us that the government was going to pay our airline, along with others, to release special chemicals from commercial aircraft….When we asked them why didn’t they just rig military aircraft to spray these chemicals, they stated that there weren’t enough military aircraft available to release chemicals on such a large basis as needs to be done….Then someone asked why all the secrecy. The government reps then stated that if the general public knew that the aircraft they were flying on were releasing chemicals into the air, environmentalist groups would raise hell and demand the spraying stop.”

36. US patent 5003186; Stratospheric Welsbach Seeding for Reduction of Global Warming, Hughes Aircraft Company, issued March 26, 1991.

37. Secondary school text book: Science I Essential Interactions, published by Centre Point Learning, Inc. of Fairfield, Ohio. See “Chemtrail Sunscreen Taught in Schools,” William Thomas, http://www.willthomas.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

38. “Dirty Air and High Blood Pressure Linked,” Reuters Health, 3-31-01; “Bad Air Worsens Heart Trouble: Study Blames Particulates for Many Sudden Deaths,” Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2000.

39. “Tiny Air Pollutants In the Air May Trigger Heart Attacks,” John McKenzie, ABC News 6-21-01, u .

40. “Air Pollution ‘Increases Stroke Risk,’” BBC News, 10-10-2003.

41. Ibid.

42. “Americans Breathing More Polluted, Toxic Air Than Ever,” Natalie Pawelski, CNN Environmental Unit, http://www.cnn.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

43. Asthma Statistics, http://www.getasthmahelp.org;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; “Asthma Deadly Serious,” Spokesman Review, 7-6-97; http://www.asthmainamerica.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

44. NATO paper: “Modification of Tropospheric Propagation Conditions,” May, 1990.

45. US patent 6,315,213 (Cordani) issued November 13, 2001.

46. “Chemtrails, Bio-Active Crystalline Cationic Polymers,” Dr. Mike Castle, 7-14-03 See u .

47. Ibid.

48. “Nanoparticles Toxic in Aquatic Habitat, Study Finds,” Rick Weiss, Washington Post, 3-29-04.

49. Ibid.

50. “Greenhouse Gas Level Hits Record High,” 3-22-04, http://www.NewScientist.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

51. Climate Engineering: A Critical Review of Proposals, Scientists for Global Responsibility, School of Environmental Sciences, UEA, Norwich NR47TJ, November 1996.

52. Lewin L. C et al. Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, New York: The Dial Press, 1967.

53. Trading With the Enemy, Charles Higham, Delacorte Press, 1983; Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony Sutton, 1976; “IBM Sued by Holocaust Lawyers –100 other US Firms Targeted for Nazi Links,” Paterson and Wastel, The Telegraph, UK, 2-18-0l; “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration,” Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, 11-30-98; “How the Bush Family Made Its Fortune From the Nazis,” John Loftus, 7-2-02, http://www.rense.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . (John Loftus was a U.S. Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes prosecutor.)

54. This is a “Google project” that can fill volumes. Go to Google and type “CIA and al Queda,” then “CIA and Saddam.” Do the same with “Carlyle Group” for information on the Bush family’s shady dealings with the “enemy.”

55. Former German Defense Minister Confirms CIA Involvement in 9/11: Alex Jones Interviews Andreas von Bulow, 2-17-21, http://www.apfn.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

56. “Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us,” Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, The Observer, UK 2-24-04; “Climate Collapse, The Pentagon’s Weather Nightmare Could change Radically and Fast,” David Stipp, Fortune Magazine, 2-9-04.

57. The Dead Farmer’s Almanac, Who Really Controls the Weather? Jim Larranaga, Priority Publications, 2001.

58. Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather In 2025, June 17, 1996. This report was produced by directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force.

59. “Very Weird Weather in Serbia, What’s Happening?” Goran Pavlovic, 10-30-03, rense.com.

60. “The Secret Nuclear War,” Eduardo Goncalves, The Ecologist, 3-22-01.

61. “Washington’s New World Order Weapons Have the Ability to Trigger Climate Change,” Center for Research on Globalization, Professor Michael Chossudovsky, University of Ottawa, January 2001.

62. “HAARP: Vandalism in the Sky?” Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, Nexus Magazine, December 1995.

63. Ibid.; also Castle, op. cit. Dr. Castle presents information on how HAARP punches massive holes in the open-air column ozone and how the Air Force then uses toxic chemicals to “patch” the holes it has created: Dr. Castle says: “Welsbach seeding and ozone hole remediation sciences utilize chemistries that are toxic to humans and the environment.”

64. “HAARP: Vandalism in the Sky?” Begich and Manning; Researcher David Yarrow is quoted as saying that Earth’s axial spin means that HAARP bursts are like a microwave knife producing a “long tear–an incision” in the multi-layer membrane of ionospheres that shield the Earth’s surface from intense solar radiation.

65. U.S. HAARP Weapon Development Concerns Russian Duma, Interfax News Agency, 8-10-02.

66. HAARP Update, Elfrad Group, http://elfrad.org/2000/Haarp2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; 6-27-00.

67. “14 Hertz Signal Suppresses Rainfall, Induces Violent Winds,” 10-25-00, Newshawk Inc.; “When the Army Owns the Weather–Chemtrails and HAARP,” Bob Fitrakis, 2-13-02: In this article HAARP inventor Bernard Eastlund is quoted on how HAARP can affect the weather: “Significant experiments could be performed. The HAARP antenna as it is now configured modulates the auroral electrojet to induce ELF waves and thus could have an effect on the zonal winds.” Find this article with search engine at http://www.rense.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

68. Angels Don’t Play This HAARP, Begich and Manning, op. cit.

69. Ibid.

70. “Space Based Weather Control: The ‘Thunderstorm Solar Power Satellite,’ ” Michael Theroux. See http://www.borderlands.com/spacewea.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

71. “After 12-year Wait for Trial, Downwinders Losing Hope,” Spokesman Review, 5-18-03; also “Hanford Plaintiffs Seek Details,” Spokesman Review, 4-2-04.

72. “Hanford Put Area At Risk: Spokane, North Idaho Were Exposed to Significant Radiation,” Spokesman Review,” April 22, 1994.

73. “Sick Century,” Eduardo Goncalves, The Ecologist, 11-22-01.

74. Moret, op. cit. “The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War” contains excellent statistics on the U.S. health ramifications of Cold War nuclear weapons testing and includes references to numerous scientific papers which document this tremendous damage to the national health.

75. Undue Risk, Secret State Experiments on Humans, Jonathan D. Moreno, Freeman & Co. 1999: Moreno was a senior staff member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments which completed in 1995 its studies of horrific U.S. government radiation experiments conducted since World War II.

76. Information reported by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine in a 2000 study titled: Scientific Frontiers in Developmental Toxicology, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology.

77. “Trouble With Tankers,” William Thomas, http://www.willthomas.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

78. Testimony by Dr. Leonard A. Cole before the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, May 6, 1994; also Clouds of Secrecy, The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas, Leonard A. Cole, Rowman & Littlefield, 1988.

79. “Secret Germ Warfare Experiments?” CBS News, 5-15-2000; “Pentagon to Reveal Biowarfare Tests,” CBS News, 9-20-2000; “US Navy Sprayed BioWarfare Chemtrails on Its Own Ships and Men,” NewsMax.com, 7-8-00; “Sailors: ‘We Were Used,’ ” Florida Today, 1-31-03.

80. Senate Banking Committee Report 103-900 (Riegle Report) issued May 25, 1994. This 551-page document contains a comprehensive list of biological and chemical warfare agents shipped to Saddam by U.S. companies under purview of the U.S. Commerce Department for use against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the late 80s during the regime of George Bush Sr.

81. Moreno, op.cit. “To this day few Americans know about the special top-secret program that brought German scientists to the United States after World War II, and fewer still know that their number included medical scientists. Code-named Operation Paper Clip…hundreds of ‘specialists’ …entered the United States under Joint Chiefs’ protection, avoiding regular immigration procedures and requirements…It is hard to escape the conclusion that many of the German recruits were for decades important consultants on a myriad of military-medical projects.”

82. Emerging Viruses: Aids and Ebola, Dr. Len Horowitz, Tetrahedron Inc., 1996.

83. The Brucellosis Triangle, Donald W. Scott, Chelmstreet Publishers, 1998.

84. “Bush Signs Bill for New Generation Nuclear Weapons,” rense.com, 12-2-03. The Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act of 2004 allocates millions for new nuclear weapons and bolsters readiness for new weapons testing at the Nevada nuclear test site.

85. Ibid.

86. “House Approves Pentagon Wish List–Bill Includes Military Exemptions From Environmental Laws,” Nick Anderson, Los Angeles Times, 11-8-03.

87. “DOE Count of Worker Injuries Inaccurate,” Spokesman Review, 3-28-04; also “Book Alleges Cover-up at Nuclear Site,” Spokesman Review 3-28-04; also DOE Has Record of Broken Promises, editorial, 4-11-04.

88. “Kennedy Warns on Nuclear Tests,” Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; , 4-30-03.

89. “Rumsfeld’s Dr. Strangelove,” Fred Kaplan, MSN.com, 5-12-03.

90. “Bush Drives the Nation Towards Bankruptcy,” Peter Eavis, The American Conservative, 2-15-04.

91. The War on Waste, 1-29-02, cbsnews.com.

92. “Money for Iraq Fight Running Out,” The Australian 2-12-04 These figures are from U.S Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker.

93. “Fight of the Century,” William Thomas, http://www.willthomas.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

FBI Memo Advised Schmoozing 'Slow' Mexicans, Duping Blacks With Phony Insurance Pitches

FBI agents were trained to exploit the perceived weaknesses of various minority groups, including Mexicans, Catholics and black people, according to a bureau memo from 1947, the U.S. News & World Report writes.

Compiled for the FBI’s field agents, the memo describes Mexicans as “slow to respond.”

Catholics, according to the report, are easier to get information from, especially after leaving a confessional booth.

Phony insurance salespeople can easily dupe African-Americans into giving them information, according to the report.

see link for full story
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washin ... ce-pitches" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story
don't you love the media FBI spin using the word "missteps"
I would have used criminal negligence which is a crime


Son Of Hijacked Pilot Analyzes Fatal FBI Missteps
Posted: Mar 27, 2013
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Andy Downs has spent years gathering information on the FBI's failed negotiations with the hijacker of his father's plane, which ended with the deaths of three people at a Florida airport in 1971.

He still hasn't gotten the apology he's sought, but the FBI recently reached out to him in an important gesture of reconciliation.

His father, Brent Downs, was the pilot of a charter plane taken at gunpoint by a man who had kidnapped his estranged wife and intended to escape to Cuba. The hijacking ended early on the morning of Oct. 4, 1971, after FBI agents surrounded the plane at a Jacksonville airport and started shooting.

The kidnapper shot the pilot, his estranged wife and then himself. The highly publicized shootout led to the first successful wrongful death lawsuit against the FBI and contributed to the creation of the FBI's hostage negotiation training.

Andy Downs, just 18 months old when his father died, has pried reams of material about the case from the FBI through years of litigation, and he's used the information in what he treats as a full-time job as a lecturer for law enforcement training classes. Last month, the FBI invited him to talk at an agency event in Nashville - the first time it's asked him to do a lecture.

"It has been a long road for me and my family dealing with everything we have been through," said Downs. "The FBI of that era did not treat my family well at all."

Downs has spent about six years working to get the FBI to turn over records from the hijacking and has amassed more than 10,000 documents, including court testimony of witnesses, audio recordings of his father talking with the FBI, pictures from the scene and previously sealed FBI documents.

One evening in late February, Downs addressed the FBI's Citizen Academy, a class for community leaders to teach them about how the FBI works. His talk went over in great detail how his father died.

George Giffe Jr., a former Peabody College professor with a troubled marriage, ordered Downs and his co-pilot, Randal G. Crump, to take off from Nashville airport at gunpoint. He took along his distraught and crying young wife, Susan, who had left him just the week before, and a friend, Nashville nightclub owner Bobby Wayne Wallace.

Downs convinced Giffe that he needed to stop in Jacksonville for more fuel to get them to the Bahamas, which the pilot convinced him was a better destination than Cuba.

FBI agents were waiting when the plane landed. An agent told Downs by radio to shut off the engine and said there would be no fuel.

In an audio clip, Downs' voice sounded urgent as he pleaded for fuel because Giffe claimed he had plastic explosives.

"You're endangering lives by doing this, and we have no other choice but to go along. And for the sake of those lives, I request some fuel, please," Downs said to the FBI.

Giffe then allowed the co-pilot to leave the plane, and Wallace also got out and was immediately taken into custody.

Downs obtained copies of the FBI's policy for plane hijackings at that time that stated that the FBI could not forcibly disable the plane or attempt to board without the permission of the pilot.

But without warning, agents started shooting at the tires and the engine to keep the plane from leaving. It was dark and foggy that morning and when the shooting started, Giffe fired back through the plane's windshield.

Less than 20 minutes after the plane landed in Jacksonville, Giffe opened fire inside the plane and fatally shot the pilot from behind, along with his estranged wife Susan, and then he shot himself.

Wallace was charged with air piracy but acquitted, and no one served any time for the deaths.

Andy Downs finished his account to the FBI class by explaining how the failed negotiations led to important changes for the law enforcement agency. His mother, Janie Downs, sued the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover and received a $366,000 judgment that was split with the daughter of Susan Giffe and the charter aircraft company.

Downs sold his air charter company about six years ago and devoted himself full-time into discovering the unknown details about the hijacking.

He speaks to law enforcement groups around the country about twice a month. He said they are eager to learn more details about the case.

"Even though the Downs v. USA case is what legally started the hostage negotiation teams, it was still just a footnote in their textbooks and they really didn't know the facts or they weren't able to fill out that part of the story," said Downs, who is trying to raise money to produce a documentary about the hijacking.

Former FBI agent and author Tom Strentz helped build the FBI's first hostage negotiations training program at Quantico in the early 1970s. He said the 1971 hijacking of Downs' plane and the deaths of Israeli hostages during the Munich Olympics in 1972 influenced the training.

"This case happened 40 years ago and there are still those in the bureau who say that it was a miscarriage of justice and the bureau was right," Strentz said. "Well, we weren't right. We were wrong and we paid the price and made the changes."

Strentz, who met Andy Downs during one of his presentations, said he was glad to hear the local FBI office reached out to Downs.

"I guess it's a new bureau that will tolerate criticism, but under Hoover, oh my god, he was a whole different ball game," he said.

Downs said that while his mother and younger brother support his efforts, he has gotten criticism from some family members and law enforcement officials about his dedication.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story
http://www.shipleylegalfund.com/facts.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SHIPLEY LEGAL DEFENSE


Here are the facts

John is not talking about this per his attorney's instructions, but here are the basic facts:

John was involved with a case in 2003, where a woman of Iranian descent was arrested for assaulting a crew member on a Southwest Airlines flight. She was arrested and booked into jail. The next day, John spoke with the other agents who had interviewed other passengers and the crew. John pieced the story together and concluded that the woman was innocent. One of John's superiors at the FBI told him to "just lock her up and let the system work it out."

John went and spoke to the Judge in his chambers and relayed the facts to the Judge. The Judge called the prosecutor and asked why the agent was saying the defendant was innocent and the prosecutor was authorizing prosecution. John feels that this embarrassed the prosecutor. The prosecutor dropped all charges and the passenger was released. If you Google "John Shipley FBI" you will see information on this case. John felt bad for arresting her when she was actually innocent. She felt indebted to John because he did what was right. Our family and the passenger became friends. John even asked the FBI if it was ok to become friends with her and the local FBI attorney from his office said it was fine. The passenger told John that she was going to sue Southwest Airlines and she offered to give John the money if she won. John told her it was wrong and he would not accept any money from her. John told her to give the money to the Cancer Society because her mom had leukemia and John's friend had recently died from colon cancer. John also told the local FBI attorney in his office about her offer to assure the FBI didn't think he was doing anything wrong or illegal.

John was subpoenaed to testify in her civil suit against Southwest airlines. John told the truth at her trial. The jury found in her favor and awarded her $27.5 million. Her attorney was Enrique Moreno in El Paso. Enrique Moreno is a Harvard Law School graduate and was nominated by President Clinton to be a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Enrique Moreno called John "An American Hero" for standing up for the innocent. John NEVER accepted any money from her.

A few years ago, someone made an allegation that John accepted money from her. There was a criminal investigation conducted by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ/OIG). After they figured out that John didn't accept money from her, they changed the investigation to an administrative investigation and accused him of perjury. I think they were trying to get him on anything they could. John cooperated with their investigation and we are still waiting to hear the results of the administrative investigation. Sometime in 2007, John legally sold a rifle from his personal firearms collection to an El Paso Deputy Sheriff. He was later contacted by the ATF who said they recovered the gun in Mexico. John offered to help and provided information about that gun and who he sold it to. The next thing we know, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General and the ATF had a search warrant for the Shipley house (May of 2008). They seized 28 guns from the house. Nine of the guns were John's grandfather's old guns that were passed down to John. At the time that the search warrant was served, John was accused of dealing firearms without a license, conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of justice. Then in June of 2009, the Assistant United States Attorney in El Paso brought this before the Federal Grand Jury and John was indicted for dealing firearms without a license, causing a federal firearms license holder to have false records and false statements. John is innocent of these charges.

Here is what is interesting.

The Assistant United States Attorney's office for the Western District of Texas is the same one who went after the two Border Patrol agents, Ramos and Compean.
The DOJ/OIG agent was the same for the first criminal investigation, the administrative investigation and the criminal gun case.
The DOJ/OIG agent also wrote the search warrant (not ATF).

We feel this is clearly retaliation against John for telling the truth in the Southwest Airlines case.

John has followed the ATF rules.

The ATF federal firearms regulations reference guide clearly states:

"as applied to a dealer in firearms, as defined in section 921(a)(11)(A), a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principle objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms" It further states, "the term "with the principle objective of livelihood and profit" means that the intent underlying the sale or disposition of firearms is predominantly one of obtaining livelihood and pecuniary gain, as opposed to other intents such as improving or liquidating a personal firearms collection."

John has been a FBI agent for the past thirteen years. He is required to work 50 hours per week. That is his livelihood. His hobby is collecting and shooting his guns. He had nothing to do with the gun that ended up in Mexico. He legally sold the gun to a El Paso County Deputy Sheriff. What happened to it after he sold it was beyond his knowledge and control.

You can also go to a website that John's parents set up to help. It is http://www.shipleylegalfund.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

It tells a lot about the case and what is happening. It also has details about John's history (Honorably discharged Army Officer, Disabled Veteran, 13 year FBI agent, SWAT agent, FBI sniper, etc.). There are more facts about this case that John's attorney can clarify. Both James Yeager and Attorney Robert Perez would love to talk to Lou Dobbs and the national media about this injustice. If they are allowed to prosecute him, no one will be allowed to sell their personal firearms without first getting a firearms license.

Thanks for sending something to Lou Dobbs and anyone else in the national media that you think can help. Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have all proven dedicated to fighting injustices against law abiding citizens and law enforcement professionals. Lou Dobbs may be particularly interested in what is happening to John because this is the same US Attorney's Office in the Western District of Texas that prosecuted Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean and Sheriff's Deputy Gilmer Hernandez out of Rock Springs, Texas. Mr. Dobbs and Congressman Ted Poe (2nd District of Texas) were very big supporters of the Border Patrol agents and directly criticized this US Attorney's office. Here they go again prosecuting law enforcement agents. But this time, it affects the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans.

We need your support, please pass this information far and wide, tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell a stranger, everyone must know the facts. This can happen to you if we let it, we must join together and fight this injustice. Lastly, John's legal defense fees are growing daily. We would appreciate any help via donations that you can give. Thank you for your support and all the kind words, prayers and suggestions that we have received.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/29/agency-of-fear/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Weekend Edition March 29-31, 2013
The FBI's Bomb Factory
Agency of Fear
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

It’s nearing dusk on November 26, 2010. More than 25,000 people have gathered in a light rain at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, Oregon to watch the annual lighting of the holiday tree, a 100-foot-tall Douglas-fir logged from the Willamette National Forest.

Three men in a nearby hotel room have just finished eating a take-out pizza. The TV turned to a local news channel, which is covering holiday celebration. The men spread towels on the floor and say an Islamic prayer, asking that Allah bless their operation. The men pat each other on the back, leave the room and walk to their vehicle, a white van.

One of the men is a teenager named Mohamed. The other two men are older. One is called Youssef. The leader of the group is a man in his fifties who known only as Hussein. Hussein is a bomb-maker for al-Qaeda. He’s been making explosives for three decades. Their operation to set off a massive bomb in the heart of Portland has been in the works for more than three months.

Hussein unlocks the doors to the van and takes the driver’s seat. The young Mohamed, who is wearing a hard-hat, slides into the passenger seat. In the cargo hold of the van sit six 55-gallon blue drums filled with nearly 2,000 pounds of fertilizer-based explosives. Each drum has an explosive cap. They are linked together by a detonation cord, which runs up to a toggle switch.

As Hussein pulls the van, which reeks of diesel fuel, out into traffic, the bomb-maker begins to chant loudly in Arabic. Hussein parks the van on Yamhill Street, directly across from Pioneer Square. He orders Mohamed to flip the toggle switch, arming the bombs.

The two men get out of the van and scurry down Broadway Street and then up to 10th avenue, where Youssef is waiting for them in an SUV. They drive to the Portland train station, where they drop Youssef off, and then park the vehicle in a lot a couple of blocks away.

Hussein mutters “Allahu Akbar.” Then turns to his teenage sidekick and asks, “You read?” Mohamed nods his head, “Ready.”

The bomb-maker hands Mohamed a cell phone. The phone is meant to activate the bomb. He reads out a number. Mohammed nervously enters the digits on the phone. There is no explosion.

Hussein suggests that the signal may be poor and that they should step out of the van. The two men get out of the van and Mohamed reenters the numbers. The phone begins to ring. Then dozens of voices shatter the tense scene, screaming “FBI! FBI!” The two men are ordered to the ground. As Hussein is being handcuffed, he struggles with the federal agents and continues to chant “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” When Mohamed spits at an officer, Hussein says, “I love that.”

The federal agents have arrived, it seems, just in the nick of time. Their felicitous intervention has disrupted a sophisticated terrorist operation and saved thousands of innocent lives. The bomb plotters had been caught and trundled off to prison: another triumphant day in the battle to protect the homeland from al-Qaeda’s terror cells.

But wait a minute. Almost nothing about this scenario was true. The cell phone wasn’t connected to the toggle switch. The detonation cords weren’t wired to an explosive device. The blue drums weren’t filled with diesel-saturated fertilizer, but harmless grass seed. Mohamed wasn’t a member of al Qaeda. Of Somali origin, he was a troubled college dropout from Beaverton, Oregon, home of Nike. Youssef wasn’t a member of al Qaeda. Hussein was not one of al Qaeda’s top bomb makers. Youssef and Hussein were not really arrested and neither was charged with being part of a terrorist plot. Youssef and Hussein were both federal agents.

The bomb plot itself was not an al Qaeda idea. It was hatched by the FBI. Young Mohamed Mohamud did not seek out the bomb plotters; they found him and seduced the young man into joining their conspiracy. The teenager did not build the bomb. The fake bomb was actually constructed by John Hallock, who later testified that he designed the device for “maximum effect.” Mohamed did not select the target. The order to activate the device came from a federal agent. The order to detonate the bomb also came from a federal agent. From conception to execution, the infamous Portland Christmas Tree Bomb Plot was scripted by the FBI.

Yet it was Mohamed Mohamud who was arrested, slapped with federal terrorism and conspiracy changes, subjected to a bruising trial in January and convicted on all counts by a jury that deliberated less than six hours.

After the verdict was read, the gleeful FBI agents and federal prosecutors hailed their victorious sting operation, braying that they had rid the streets of a dangerous jihadist. But this was not a government sting. It was a textbook case of entrapment, where federal agents recruited a disaffected kid, whose only previous legal entanglement had been an unproven allegation of date rape during his freshman year at college, into a fake bomb plot that they had concocted.

Mohamed Mohamud was not a terrorist when the FBI began spying on him while he was still in high school. In the two years he was under FBI surveillance, he did not commit a terrorist act or join a terrorist group. It took the FBI to recruit him into a terrorist cell, indoctrinate him into terrorist ideology and lure him into participating in its bomb plot.

Our government increasingly fantasizes about blowing things up here at home. This is the sixth case where the FBI has invented a bomb plot aimed at snagging hapless, often alienated, individuals who were not terrorists until they were enticed into joining the agency’s own conspiracy. So what is the point of these operations? To scoop up a handful of estranged, young Muslim men? To make suburban Americans feel safer?

Hardly. The point is fear. The government needs to keep the public in a state of terror anxiety in order to justify its own ever-encroaching powers.

So, Mohamed sits in prison. The Constitution lies in tatters. Fear rules the land.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book (with Joshua Frank) is Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for your tax dime
http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/fbi-plans-to ... n-on-ammo/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI plans to spend $100 million on ammo

WND recently reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased well over a billion rounds of ammunition over the past year.

The magnitude of the federal government’s ammunition buildup has made headlines as members of the military, police departments and consumers find shelves bare.

But the full impact may yet to be seen, as WND has uncovered a plan by the FBI to spend up to $100 million over five years on millions of rounds for its machine guns and pistols.

According to a solicitation revised and released March 25 that WND discovered during routine database research, the FBI is gathering the ammunition “to be carried and fired [by FBI Special Agents] in defense of life” as well as for training purposes.

The ammunition includes a combination of field-ready Glock 9mm rounds as well as reduced-lead training ammo. Weapons listed in the Statement of Work, or SOW, are Glock Model 17, Glock Model 19, Glock Model 26, SIG Sauer P226, SIG Sauer P228, Heckler and Koch MP5 9mm submachine gun (K, A2, A3, SF and SD versions).

“The FBI is the federal government’s principal agency responsible for investigating violations of more than 260 federal statutes,” the SOW points out. “As the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI Special Agents (SA), in the pursuit of duty, may be involved in high threat assignments where deadly force may be used in the face of violent confrontations.”

Contractors are peppering the bureau with questions as they jockey for position to secure the lucrative contract, the amended solicitation indicates. Once the FBI decides on a provider, that contractor will deliver the ammunition within 60 days to FBI facilities and “other approved federal government locations” in the continental U.S. as well as Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/fbi-plans-to ... KBJVHHM.99" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/when- ... ame-a-wmd/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When an RPG Became a WMD

March 30th, 2013



Let us appreciate the irony. A U.S. citizen fights for an opposition group against a government that is no longer recognised as legitimate, credible and legal in the eyes of the international community. (International here is loose, variegated and questionable.) The group he so happens to fight for was the Syrian al-Nusra front. The dolts in the US State Department have decided that the group is a “terror group”, as distinct from other groups, who presumably do not dabble in “terror” so much as watering the tree of patriotism with a good deal of blood.

This is the bad comedy that is facing Eric Harroun, who served in the U.S. Army from 2000 to 2003 and found himself in the octane-driven circumstances of attempting to overthrow the steely cool Bashir al-Assad. But what is the beef of FBI agent Paul Higginbotham against this American veteran? Harroun, it seemed, crossed into Syria in January 2013 to fight alongside members of the Jabhat al-Nusra group against Assad. All of that is fine, till one consults the list of terrorist organisations to find al-Nusra firmly planted there.

Criminal it might be to fight alongside a designated terror organisation, but the foolishness of the accusation is bound to throw us into hysterics of laughter when we read that Harroun is charged with “conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, i.e. a Rocker Propelled Grenade, outside the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2332a(b).”

Ever since Iraq was invaded in March 2003, the political satirists have struggled to find briefs and chart new waters. The joke factory has been taken over by the error prone psychopaths. The term “Weapons of Mass Destruction” is not so much a confection of weasel words as a combination of conjured fancy. The conjuring trick, however, has persisted, much like irritable bowel syndrome. Here, we find the reductio ad absurdum – officials in the U.S. government believing that a rocket propelled grenade is a WMD equivalent to the destructive power of a nuclear device. President Bush must be proud, for it bears the cerebral strength and lightness of his reasoning.

Harroun’s treatment strikes a chord for those familiar with the treatment of Australian convict David Hicks, who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan at a time when it was fashionable to do so. Both were a bit sparse in the top drawer, but they, as no doubt their mothers might say “meant well”. Harroun was medically discharged in 2004 after a car accident, and has found the adventures of travel and war irresistible. Being a creature of social media, he has happily posted pictures of his exploits on Facebook, showing, incidentally, his love of “WMDs”, at least those that fall within U.S. law. Not perhaps the brightest thing to do, but hardly, in the current political climate, as foolish as you might think.

Naturally, Harroun should have done the good thing and killed for the Free Syrian Army with weapons that were not, shall we say, of the WMD character. They are the pin-up boys of the moment, the feted thugs who titillate the security establishments in Europe and the United States with calls of liberation. Every gangster has a soft spot, every murderer, a kind streak. But he evidently found the violence offered by al-Nusra that much more exotic.

As Spencer Ackerman claims, writing in Wired (Mar 29), “U.S. law isn’t particularly diligent about differentiating dangerous weapons from apocalyptic ones.” W. Seth Carus of the Centre for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction has also commented on the evolution of the term in an occasional paper (No. 8, Jan 2012), noting that “high explosives” found its way into the definition over time. Lunacy is common place among the armchair experts.

A “destructive device” is more likely the term to be used for Harroun, but the case has already produced its own absurdities, with more to come. Some of us are bound to be very entertained.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

May 4, 2007
Kent State, Gov. Rhodes and the FBI
Why Four Died in Ohio

By BOB FITRAKIS

Ten days after Governor James A. Rhodes assumed office on January 14, 1963, a Cincinnati FBI agent wrote Director J. Edgar Hoover a memo stating:

"At this moment he [Rhodes] is busier than a one-armed paper hanger . . . . Consequently, I do not plan to establish contact with him for a few months. We will have no problem with him whatsoever. He is completely controlled by an SAC [Special Agent in Charge] contact, and we have full assurances that anything we need will be made available promptly. Our experience proves this assertion."

Why would the FBI assert that the newly-inaugurated governor of Ohio is "completely controlled"? Media sources like Life magazine noted the governor's alleged ties to organized crime and the Mafia in specific. Gov. Rhodes' FBI file, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, suggests that it may be because of the FBI's extensive knowledge of Rhodes' involvement in the numbers rackets in the late 1930's that the Bureau could count on his cooperation. FBI declassified material suggests that the Bureau's extensive influence over Governor Rhodes, perhaps due to their knowledge of his ties to the numbers rackets, may have played a role in the Governor's hard line law and order tactics that led to the deaths of four students at Kent State in 1970.

A November 19, 1963 FBI memo, again from a Cincinnati agent to Director Hoover, outlines specific allegations from a Bureau's confidential informant about Rhodes' involvement in the numbers racket between 1936-38. The informant, a bagman for local organized crime, gave detailed information about pick ups at a cigar store located between Buttles and Goodale Avenues reportedly owned by Rhodes' sister. Rhodes purportedly was running the gambling operation. Years ago, a Dispatch reporter told the Free Press that the governor had run a gambling operation in the Short North, called Jimmy's Place.

As Rhodes assumed public office, first as a Columbus School Board member, and later as the Mayor of the city, he began to make overtures to Director Hoover. In a February 1949 letter, Mayor Rhodes invited Hoover to sit on the advisory board of the All- American Newspaper Boys Sports Scholarships organization. Hoover declined. Rhodes thanked him and then invited him to address a banquet for the National Newspaper Boys Association in August of 1949. Hoover again declined.

Two years later, Rhodes was again attempting to contact Hoover. On July 27, 1951, Rhodes called the FBI director's office and at first refused to speak to Hoover's assistant L.B. Nichols. When told that the director was in "travel status," Rhodes explained the important nature of his call. He wanted "to invite the director to attend a celebrity golf tournament, . . . since its benefits were to go to youth organizations and he knew of the director's interest in youth work." Nichols declined on behalf of Hoover.

Finally, Rhodes persistence paid off. Rhodes and his wife were given a special tour of the FBI building in Washington D.C. on January 19, 1953. "During the tour Mr. Rhodes stated he wanted to say with all possible sincerity that during all these years he has had continued and absolute faith in one government agency ñ the FBI," reads the 1963 memo.

The "completely controlled" memo showed great sympathy to Rhodes' youthful gambling enterprise: "It is understandable that Rhodes has previously said that it was necessary during the Depression to do many things to keep body and soul together and to provide food for existence." Although the FBI fails to point out that Rhodes came from an affluent family who paid his way at Ohio State University during the Depression.

The memo goes on to describe Rhodes in the following manner: "He is a friend of law enforcement and believes in honest, hard- hitting law enforcement. He respects and admires FBI."

Moreover, the agency recommended taking "no further action" against Governor Rhodes and his alleged ties to the gambling racket since, "persons very close to him, such as SAC contact Robert H. Wolfe, Publisher, the Columbus Dispatch, speak very highly of Rhodes and his personal attributes. Wolfe knows Rhodes well and was an active financier of the campaign of Rhodes . . . ."

The SAC of the Cincinnati office took special interest in Rhodes' first election as governor. Incumbent Governor Michael V. Disalle had hired a former FBI agent to investigate and dig up dirt on Rhodes: "We have arranged with friendly newspaper contacts to endeavor to avoid any headline or other prominent mention of the former FBI status of [deleted]."

Following Rhodes' 1962 election, the FBI described the governor-elect in the following terms: "Rhodes is a Bureau friend of long standing. Our first contact of record was in November, 1943." The memo goes on to record that, "On June 18, 1945, the SAC of Cincinnati transmitted a news clipping from the 'Columbus Dispatch' of 6-7-45 indicating that Mayor Rhodes urged the establishment of a Bureau field office at Columbus." Rhodes is portrayed as very "active and very friendly toward the Bureau." Later FBI files would not include these early contacts between the FBI and Rhodes.

The Bureau does detail one obvious connection between Rhodes and organized crime in Columbus: "One informant stated that the gambling element in Columbus has made a great effort to influence Mayor Rhodes to permit open gambling in the city but without success. In 1949, however, it was noted that the informants alleged that Rhodes did not interfere with the 'numbers racket' as apparently he was still interested in the colored vote."

In July of 1963, a memo from the Cincinnati office on the subject of "Communist Speakers on College Campuses" noted that "Governor James A. Rhodes has signed into law legislation authorizing the trustees of any state-operated college or university to bar from using campus facility any person that they wish to bar."

The SAC in charge of the Cincinnati Bureau wrote Hoover on October 9, 1967 to relay a conversation he had with Rhodes three days earlier regarding the civil unrest and riots that had rocked the nation during the summer of 1967. "During the conference, we discussed matters of mutual interest, particularly civil disorders and the high crime rate. The Governor told me that he would extend his full facilities, and he is all for stopping racial discord the moment it starts. He revealed that his plan is to immediately deploy troops and/the state patrol as soon as trouble arises," the memo states.

The Cincinnati SAC concludes, "Our relationship with the Governor is of the highest order and he assured me that we can expect full cooperation from the State of Ohio on any matter of mutual concern."

By the mid-1960s, the CIA and the FBI were working together through the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on radical groups and harass peace organizations. The FBI's operation was known as COINTELPRO. The CIA's was Operation CHAOS.

In 1967, declassified government documents reveal that CIA Director Richard Helms, Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson believed that the domestic protest movements against the Vietnam War were being orchestrated by the Communist governments in Moscow, Peking, Havana and Hanoi.

Governor Rhodes used former SAC Ed Mason as an intermediary in an attempt to meet with Hoover on March 25, 1968. The FBI memo on the matter reads, "He formerly served as mayor of Columbus, Ohio and is a good friend of [deleted] of the 'Columbus
Dispatch.'"

The FBI memo said, "SAC, Cincinnati advises that Rhodes has been extremely cooperative." Surprisingly, "there's no indication that Governor Rhodes has ever met Mr. Hoover and he has not received an autographed photograph."

Less than year before the tragic shootings at Kent State, the SAC of the Cincinnati Bureau sent Hoover a memo detailing Rhodes' attitude towards civil unrest: "He personally feels that the Director is the outstanding American and that he is the only person who has consistently opposed those persons who would subvert our government. He feels that the Director's stated position of dealing firmly with these groups is the only sensible method."

"He [Rhodes] commented on the riots and unrest which have occurred repeatedly and said that some of this might well have been avoided if the Director's warnings and advice had been followed. In Ohio, he has not hesitated to use the National Guard to deal with these situations and has instructed the Guard to act quickly and firmly. He feels that this is the only way to maintain law and order, and that the maintenance of law and order is the only way our government can survive," the memo records.

On May 4, 1970, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause and William Schroeder were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State. Numerous investigative accounts have alleged that the FBI was involved in the burning of the campus ROTC building, which led to the deaths of the students.

The SAC in Cincinnati paid a "courtesy call" on Governor Rhodes 18 days after the shootings. Governor Rhodes informed the FBI agent that he intended to keep the Ohio State University campus open, despite what some historians regard as one of the largest student riots in U.S. history. ". . . He [Rhodes] intends to mobilize sufficient members of the Ohio National Guard (ONG) to accomplish this, 'even if he has to put a guard in every classroom,'" the memo reads.

The Governor blamed the unrest on outside agitators and "commented that of the upwards of 100 persons arrested on May 21 and May 22, 1970, only a few were OSU students. . ." the memo notes. The FBI memo cites that of the 78 arrests, 35 were OSU students and two OSU employees, even though the majority of the arrests were made off-campus.

". . . the Governor also referred to the current investigation at Kent State University (KSU) and commented that he felt this would present an excellent opportunity for the Department of Justice, through some detailed statement to the news media after the investigation is completed, to get to the public the true story of campus agitation and to identify the organizers of the violence. The Governor appeared somewhat concerned at the possibility that members of the Ohio National Guard might finally end up being charged with an offense in connection to the shooting of the students at Kent," the memo stated, "He commented at one point that if the ONG members were indicted in regards to this matter that he felt a million dollars should be spent to defend them, if necessary."

The memo also records for history that, "The Governor commented several times on the close relationship he has enjoyed with the Bureau locally and as a whole."

Critics have long charged that the FBI deliberately covered up information about those responsible for ordering the Kent State shootings. A tape was recently released revealing what appears to be an order to shoot at Kent State. FBI declassified documents strongly suggest that the FBI's extensive influence over Governor Rhodes, perhaps due to their knowledge of his ties to organized crime and the numbers rackets, may have played a key role in the Governor's violent and repressive tactics that led to death of four students at Kent State in 1970.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7691

Re: FBI WATCH Making Cruelty visible

Post by msfreeh »

FBI Supervisor Bernazzani violated the Hatch Act by campaigning for Public Office while working as a FBI agent .
Bernanzanni was allowed to retire and collect his pension by his friend FBI Director Mueller.
When a complaint about James Bernazzani was filed with the Office of Special Counsel the Federal Agency that investigates violations of the Hatch Act the FBI raided their offices two days later. The Office of Special Counsel never investigated the complaint.

TWO STORIES


1st read
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008 ... _post.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Local FBI chief apologizes to staff
He considers his options for future
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
By Gordon Russell

Jim Bernazzani, the former special agent in charge of the FBI's Louisiana operations, apologized to his staff Monday for the public flirtation with political office that brought his ouster and told them he would spend two weeks mulling his options.

In the meantime, Mark Gant has been named acting special agent in charge for the FBI's New Orleans headquarters, the bureau announced. Gant, an 18-year veteran of the agency, has since 2003 been one of the office's two assistant special agents in charge. He reported directly to Bernazzani.

Several people who attended Monday's meeting in the bureau's Lakefront offices said Bernazzani, 52, thanked employees for their service and told his staff he was sorry for creating a stir by speaking publicly of his political aspirations in two television appearances last week.
Advertisement





Federal law prohibits employees of the FBI and other agencies from seeking elective office. The law also frowns upon such employees publicly "seeking support for or undertaking an initial 'campaign' to secure nomination."

It's not clear whether Bernazzani's televised appearances last week -- in which he suggested he was strongly considering a run for office -- violated that law. But his remarks were clearly too much for FBI brass, who quickly ordered his transfer.

The agency confirmed late Friday that Bernazzani had been reassigned to headquarters in Washington, effective immediately, because his interest in running for mayor "could create the appearance of a conflict of interest." In his capacity as special agent in charge, the bureau noted, Bernazzani was charged with making decisions about investigations into the dealings of corrupt public officials, among other duties.

Those present at Monday's meeting said their former boss told them he was considering several courses of action: resigning the agency and staying in New Orleans; moving to Houston, where his children live; or accepting the transfer to Washington that the FBI has imposed.

FBI officials expressed confidence that the transition in leadership would be seamless. The special agent in charge of the New Orleans division oversees all of the bureau's roughly 300 Louisiana employees.

Gant, the acting special agent in charge, is an "experienced, veteran agent who will serve in that capacity until the application process is completed and the FBI director makes his decision," said Special Agent Sheila Thorne, spokeswoman for the bureau.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten also stressed the continuity of the feds' mission in Louisiana in a prepared statement he issued Monday. The statement thanked Bernazzani for his service, but emphasized that the successes federal authorities have had in combating crime and corruption owe mostly to the foot soldiers in the agencies that investigate and prosecute such offenses.

"It is these men and women, guided by the highest standards and principles, who are the fabric of these great institutions, and who will continue to provide uninterrupted, uncompromised, fair, impartial and effective law enforcement necessary to wage and ultimately win the battles against corruption and crime in the defense of our citizens," the statement said in part.

Rafael Goyeneche, president of the nonprofit watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, said he's been hearing from residents who are concerned that Bernazzani's sudden departure will somehow throw a wrench into the feds' anti-corruption crusade. Not so, he said.

"I guarantee none of the investigations that were under way last Friday have been derailed because of these events," he said.


2nd read
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90223448" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI Raids Special Counsel Office, Seizes Records

by Ari Shapiro
May 06, 2008 4:44 PM


FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistle-blowers. The agents seized computers and shut down e-mail service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, as first reported by NPR News.

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