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Appeals court says American can't sue FBI over abuse claihttp://townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2015/10/23/appeals-court-says-american-cant-sue-fbi-over-abuse-claims-n2070220ms" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Oct 23, 2015
A U.S. citizen who claims American officials falsely imprisoned and tortured him for several months in Africa can't sue the FBI agents involved because the conduct took place overseas during a terrorism investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit acknowledged that Amir Meshal's allegations of abuse were "quite troubling," but said he is without recourse to pursue claims that agents violated his constitutional rights.
"Matters touching on national security and foreign policy fall within an area of executive action where courts hesitate to intrude absent congressional authorization," Judge Janice Rogers Brown said in upholding a lower court decision that threw out Meshal's case last year.
Meshal, a New Jersey resident, said he traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2006 to "broaden his understanding of Islam." After violence erupted, he and other civilians fled to neighboring Kenya, where he was later arrested by Kenyan authorities and turned over to the FBI.
The lawsuit, which the American Civil Liberties Union filed on Meshal's behalf, claims U.S. officials sent him back to Somalia and eventually to Ethiopia, where he was imprisoned in secret for several months. He says FBI agents accused him of receiving training from al-Qaida and subjected him to harsh interrogations while denying him access to a lawyer, his family or anyone else. He was released in May 2007 with no explanation, according to the lawsuit.
While law enforcement officials can be sued for violating a person's constitutional rights, Brown said courts have been hesitant to allow such lawsuits in cases "involving the military, national security, or intelligence." Those concerns are heightened when the conduct takes place outside the United States, she said.
Brown said the fact that Meshal is a U.S. citizen does not outweigh the court's reluctance to interfere with matters of national security.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh agreed with Brown, but wrote separately to stress that it's up to Congress, not the courts, to decide whether U.S. officials can be sued for conduct in foreign countries "in connection with the war against al Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations."
In dissent, Judge Nina Pillard said the government had not backed up its claims that allowing the lawsuit would undercut national security and diplomatic relations.
"When the government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land," Pillard said.
Brown and Kavanaugh are Republican appointees. Pillard was appointed by President Barack Obama.
In a statement, Meshal's lawyer Jonathan Hafetz said he was disappointed by the ruling "which recognizes the gravity of Mr. Meshal's allegations of unlawful detention and abuse but denies him any remedy."
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Government officials had argued that allowing the case to go forward could reveal sensitive information about national secu
FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
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msfreeh
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msfreeh
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Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
http://www.richmond.com/business/ap/art ... 46b28.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI takes a bullet in banks’ $50 billion fee war with retailers
FILE - This Nov. 18, 2009 file photo shows credit and bank cards with electronic chips in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. In the wake of recent high-profile data breaches, including this week’s revelation that hackers stole consumer data from eBay’s computer systems, Visa and MasterCard are renewing a push to speed the adoption of microchips into U.S. credit and debit cards.
Posted: Sunday, November 8, 2015 10:30 pm
Perhaps the FBI should have stuck to catching bank robbers, rather than weighing in on bank cards.
Last month, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency issued a seemingly innocuous fraud alert telling shoppers to use a PIN with new credit cards embedded with computer chips.
Though the goal was to promote security, the bureau instead found itself ensnared in a decadelong dispute between banks and retailers, in which about $50 billion in annual fees are at stake.
The blowback from both sides has been intense.
Banks said they were blindsided by the notice and forced the bureau to retract it
FBI takes a bullet in banks’ $50 billion fee war with retailers
FILE - This Nov. 18, 2009 file photo shows credit and bank cards with electronic chips in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. In the wake of recent high-profile data breaches, including this week’s revelation that hackers stole consumer data from eBay’s computer systems, Visa and MasterCard are renewing a push to speed the adoption of microchips into U.S. credit and debit cards.
Posted: Sunday, November 8, 2015 10:30 pm
Perhaps the FBI should have stuck to catching bank robbers, rather than weighing in on bank cards.
Last month, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency issued a seemingly innocuous fraud alert telling shoppers to use a PIN with new credit cards embedded with computer chips.
Though the goal was to promote security, the bureau instead found itself ensnared in a decadelong dispute between banks and retailers, in which about $50 billion in annual fees are at stake.
The blowback from both sides has been intense.
Banks said they were blindsided by the notice and forced the bureau to retract it
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msfreeh
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- Posts: 7718
Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
FBI Chief Tells Half The Story
by Paul Bass | Nov 16, 2015 7:39 pm
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/inde ... y/id_81393" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Comey: “Good people” don’t question law enforcement.
The FBI’s embattled director came to town to tout his enlightened past remarks on race and policing and to credit a federal program for cutting New Haven’s gun violence.
He didn’t mention his more recent remarks that have inflamed racial tensions. Or the skyrocketing gun violence in another city, Bridgeport, with the same federal program.
FBI Director James Comey (pictured at left) made those remarks—and didn’t make those remarks—at a national confab held Monday at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.
The confab was entitled “Building Bridges: The Community and Law Enforcement.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office organized the conference with the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, led by the Rev. Boise Kimber, in the stated interest of improving relations between police and communities of color. In addition to Comey, the conference featured national NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock among the afternoon’s worth of speakers. (Click here to read Markeshia Ricks’ report of Brock’s remarks.)
“I imagine two lines in America in law enforcement,” Comey told the law enforcement officials and community activists scattered amid the seats in the lower level of Coop’s theater. “One is made up of people who serve and protect. The other is made up of communities we serve and protect. Especially communities of color. I feel those lines arcing away from each other. I feel this has been going on for much of this year. In some ways I feel that arcing accelerating.”
To try to bridge the gap between law enforcement and communities of color, Comey continued, he gave a speech this past February at Georgetown University about “hard truths.” At that time he called for candid reflection on all sides of the divide, including law enforcement, about racial bias.He called for examining his own agency’s past misdeeds (while denying the existence of any current or lingering problems under his own watch). The speech was a hit, celebrated as an enlightened contribution to a difficult national discourse.
Comey gave another highly publicized speech on the subject much more recently. On Oct. 23. At University of Chicago Law School. A speech that led to calls for his resignation and earned a rare rebuke from the White House for ignorantly stoking racial tensions and blocking public accountability of law enforcement’s misdeeds.
He didn’t mention that speech in New Haven Monday.
In New Haven on Monday, Comey did pop a question, though. Violent crime has shot up in cities across America in the past ten months. “What could be driving an increase in murder in all these cities at the same time?” he asked.
Comey didn’t provide an answer Monday. He did provide an answer in that Oct. 23 speech. In that speech, he blamed the “Ferguson effect.” “Nobody says it on the record, nobody says it in public, but police and elected officials are quietly saying it to themselves,” he claimed then. “And they’re saying it to me, and I’m going to say it to you… In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?”
In New Haven Monday Comey did not use any of his allotted speaking time (nor did he offer an opportunity to field questions) to address “hard truths” people raised about those remarks. Such as: What evidence exists to back up that assertion? And: Given that those famous YouTube videos often showed out-of-control cops killing defenseless African-Americans, would he prefer the cops not be recorded committing such acts?
Counter-Facts Ignored
While he offered no new theories to explain the uptick in violence, Comey did offer a partial solution in New Haven Monday: New Haven itself. Where for four straight years violent crime has plummeted, defying the national trend.
He identified what he called the reason for that drop: Project Longevity, which the Justice Department (where he works) launched with city and state cops and the New Haven community. The project identifies the small number of gangbangers most responsible for shootings, then presents them a choice: accept help going straight or face intense prosecution on federal charges. Click here to read about one Project Longevity “call-in” where that choice was presented. And here for a story of how the project helped nabbed a particularly murderous crew.
“New Haven offers hope and inspiration” for the natio
by Paul Bass | Nov 16, 2015 7:39 pm
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/inde ... y/id_81393" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Comey: “Good people” don’t question law enforcement.
The FBI’s embattled director came to town to tout his enlightened past remarks on race and policing and to credit a federal program for cutting New Haven’s gun violence.
He didn’t mention his more recent remarks that have inflamed racial tensions. Or the skyrocketing gun violence in another city, Bridgeport, with the same federal program.
FBI Director James Comey (pictured at left) made those remarks—and didn’t make those remarks—at a national confab held Monday at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.
The confab was entitled “Building Bridges: The Community and Law Enforcement.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office organized the conference with the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, led by the Rev. Boise Kimber, in the stated interest of improving relations between police and communities of color. In addition to Comey, the conference featured national NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock among the afternoon’s worth of speakers. (Click here to read Markeshia Ricks’ report of Brock’s remarks.)
“I imagine two lines in America in law enforcement,” Comey told the law enforcement officials and community activists scattered amid the seats in the lower level of Coop’s theater. “One is made up of people who serve and protect. The other is made up of communities we serve and protect. Especially communities of color. I feel those lines arcing away from each other. I feel this has been going on for much of this year. In some ways I feel that arcing accelerating.”
To try to bridge the gap between law enforcement and communities of color, Comey continued, he gave a speech this past February at Georgetown University about “hard truths.” At that time he called for candid reflection on all sides of the divide, including law enforcement, about racial bias.He called for examining his own agency’s past misdeeds (while denying the existence of any current or lingering problems under his own watch). The speech was a hit, celebrated as an enlightened contribution to a difficult national discourse.
Comey gave another highly publicized speech on the subject much more recently. On Oct. 23. At University of Chicago Law School. A speech that led to calls for his resignation and earned a rare rebuke from the White House for ignorantly stoking racial tensions and blocking public accountability of law enforcement’s misdeeds.
He didn’t mention that speech in New Haven Monday.
In New Haven on Monday, Comey did pop a question, though. Violent crime has shot up in cities across America in the past ten months. “What could be driving an increase in murder in all these cities at the same time?” he asked.
Comey didn’t provide an answer Monday. He did provide an answer in that Oct. 23 speech. In that speech, he blamed the “Ferguson effect.” “Nobody says it on the record, nobody says it in public, but police and elected officials are quietly saying it to themselves,” he claimed then. “And they’re saying it to me, and I’m going to say it to you… In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?”
In New Haven Monday Comey did not use any of his allotted speaking time (nor did he offer an opportunity to field questions) to address “hard truths” people raised about those remarks. Such as: What evidence exists to back up that assertion? And: Given that those famous YouTube videos often showed out-of-control cops killing defenseless African-Americans, would he prefer the cops not be recorded committing such acts?
Counter-Facts Ignored
While he offered no new theories to explain the uptick in violence, Comey did offer a partial solution in New Haven Monday: New Haven itself. Where for four straight years violent crime has plummeted, defying the national trend.
He identified what he called the reason for that drop: Project Longevity, which the Justice Department (where he works) launched with city and state cops and the New Haven community. The project identifies the small number of gangbangers most responsible for shootings, then presents them a choice: accept help going straight or face intense prosecution on federal charges. Click here to read about one Project Longevity “call-in” where that choice was presented. And here for a story of how the project helped nabbed a particularly murderous crew.
“New Haven offers hope and inspiration” for the natio
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msfreeh
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Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
2 stories about the Boston FBI office
1.
Whitey Bulger and the FBI’s Sordid History
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
07.01.134:45 AM ET
In the history of the FBI, there have likely been few special agents as unimaginative in their corruption as John Morris. As supervisor of the bureau’s organized-crime squad in Boston from 1976 to 1983, and later part of a local organized-crime task force, Morris accepted from gangsters $7,000 in bribes, bottles of wine, a silver-plated wine bucket, and airfare for his secretary, who also happened to be his mistress. Morris took these gratuities from the very men he was empowered to investigate, mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and his partner Steve “the Rifleman” Flemmi.
On the witness stand Thursday and Friday, at the Moakley Federal Courthouse on the South Boston waterfront, Morris, age 67, wants you to know that this weighed heavily on his mind. As a key witness in the ongoing trial of the infamous Whitey Bulger, who faces 32 criminal counts, including racketeering charges and 19 counts of murder, Morris came across as remarkably bland. He has a tight little mouth and beady eyes. His complexion somewhat rosy from his retirement years as a “wine educator,” Morris is soft-spoken and hollow, the face of corruption as white bread and Velveeta cheese.
“I don’t know why I did it,” said Morris from the stand. “I had given over all my power and authority at this point to John Connolly.”
John J. Connolly was Morris’s subordinate, a hotshot special agent in the FBI’s organized-crime squad with vast contacts in Boston, both in the underworld and in the legitimate world of politics and business. It was Connolly who, starting in 1975, had enlisted Bulger as a source of underworld information. To Connolly and Morris, Bulger was a TE, or top-echelon informant, the highest designation in the Bureau for a snitch. Having a TE under your jurisdiction was a major feather in the cap of any agent, the kind of accomplishment that could lead to commendations from headquarters, financial rewards, and promotions within the ranks of what J. Edgar Hoover once called “the sacred trust.”
The government’s case against Bulger is based partly on his role as an FBI informant, particularly how he used his connections with law enforcement to engage in an underworld version of insider trading. Bulger received information from Morris and Connolly about investigations conducted by other law-enforcement agencies into his criminal activities. The agents tipped him off about potential informants in his organization. Bulger allegedly used that information to murder said informants before they could do him any harm. Incredibly, in 1983, Morris and Connolly even allowed Bulger and Flemmi to listen to highly confidential Title III recordings from a bug they had placed in the main headquarters of the Mafia in Boston. They did so over wine in a celebratory fashion in a room at the Colonnade Hotel, where Morris got so drunk he needed to have one of the gangsters drive him home.
From the stand, Morris related how he and Connolly often engaged in “puffery” in memos that exaggerated Bugler’s value as an informant, how they routinely took information given to them by other informants—including Flemmi—and put it in Whitey’s file. Even worse, they knowingly allowed Bulger to plant disinformation into FBI files, through memos they signed off on, about crimes his gang had committed, effectively derailing the likelihood of Bulger being investigated and prosecuted for innumerable horrendous acts, including murder.
[Bulger] also told Morris, ‘You took money from me. If I go to jail, you’re coming with me.’
“You knew this information was false,” said Fred Wyshak, the lead prosecutor, of one such memo.
“I did,” said the former agent.
Over time, as Morris told it in direct testimony elicited by Wyshak, other agents from his squad were introduced to Bulger and Flemmi. They shared drinks and dinners cooked by Morris in his own home. Nicholas Gianturco, James Ring, and other agents received cash and gifts from the gangsters. Before long, the entire organized-crime squad in Boston had been, to use Morris’s word, “compromised” by Bulger and Flemmi.
The defense is hoping to posit Bulger as merely one player in a sweeping historical narrative, in which a tradition of corruption and secrecy was passed along from generation to generation.
Morris sought to appear contrite and even sympathetic as he described how he presided over one of the most venal and corrupt investigative squads in FBI history, all while he was being touted in internal performance-evaluation memos as “consistently excellent … a highly motivated and capable supervisor … Exceptional.” Morris was cited and praised for being “directly involved in the development of one of the bureau’s most valuable top echelon informants”—meaning Bulger.
Morris knew it was all a lie. “I knew I was completely trapped,” he said from the stand. “I was in so far I could never get out of it. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful.”
2.
http://m.telegram.com/article/20151123/NEWS/151129603" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
New FBI chief in Boston talks on terror, espionage
Special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston division Harold Shaw speaks Monday with a reporter in his office in Boston.
http://m.telegram.com/article/20151123/NEWS/151129603" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Posted Nov 23, 2015 at 6:00 PM
BOSTON — For Harold Shaw, starting a job as the new special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office is a bit of a homecoming.
Shaw, who grew up in Weymouth and Hingham, returned to Boston last month after spending much of his nearly 17-year FBI career in the New York office. Shaw has worked on several high-profile terror investigations, including the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and the Benghazi attacks in 2012.
Shaw, 49, said his priorities for Boston are similar to the FBI's national priorities, including national security, identifying homegrown violent extremists and preventing cyber espionage.
"Really, in the last year alone, you're looking at in excess of $400 billion in terms of economic espionage that is happening," Shaw said.
"It's a significant problem that's happening ... especially in our area where we have a number of high-end businesses ... that could be targeted by any foreign state actor or any criminal organization in terms of the loss."
Shaw began working for the F
1.
Whitey Bulger and the FBI’s Sordid History
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
07.01.134:45 AM ET
In the history of the FBI, there have likely been few special agents as unimaginative in their corruption as John Morris. As supervisor of the bureau’s organized-crime squad in Boston from 1976 to 1983, and later part of a local organized-crime task force, Morris accepted from gangsters $7,000 in bribes, bottles of wine, a silver-plated wine bucket, and airfare for his secretary, who also happened to be his mistress. Morris took these gratuities from the very men he was empowered to investigate, mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and his partner Steve “the Rifleman” Flemmi.
On the witness stand Thursday and Friday, at the Moakley Federal Courthouse on the South Boston waterfront, Morris, age 67, wants you to know that this weighed heavily on his mind. As a key witness in the ongoing trial of the infamous Whitey Bulger, who faces 32 criminal counts, including racketeering charges and 19 counts of murder, Morris came across as remarkably bland. He has a tight little mouth and beady eyes. His complexion somewhat rosy from his retirement years as a “wine educator,” Morris is soft-spoken and hollow, the face of corruption as white bread and Velveeta cheese.
“I don’t know why I did it,” said Morris from the stand. “I had given over all my power and authority at this point to John Connolly.”
John J. Connolly was Morris’s subordinate, a hotshot special agent in the FBI’s organized-crime squad with vast contacts in Boston, both in the underworld and in the legitimate world of politics and business. It was Connolly who, starting in 1975, had enlisted Bulger as a source of underworld information. To Connolly and Morris, Bulger was a TE, or top-echelon informant, the highest designation in the Bureau for a snitch. Having a TE under your jurisdiction was a major feather in the cap of any agent, the kind of accomplishment that could lead to commendations from headquarters, financial rewards, and promotions within the ranks of what J. Edgar Hoover once called “the sacred trust.”
The government’s case against Bulger is based partly on his role as an FBI informant, particularly how he used his connections with law enforcement to engage in an underworld version of insider trading. Bulger received information from Morris and Connolly about investigations conducted by other law-enforcement agencies into his criminal activities. The agents tipped him off about potential informants in his organization. Bulger allegedly used that information to murder said informants before they could do him any harm. Incredibly, in 1983, Morris and Connolly even allowed Bulger and Flemmi to listen to highly confidential Title III recordings from a bug they had placed in the main headquarters of the Mafia in Boston. They did so over wine in a celebratory fashion in a room at the Colonnade Hotel, where Morris got so drunk he needed to have one of the gangsters drive him home.
From the stand, Morris related how he and Connolly often engaged in “puffery” in memos that exaggerated Bugler’s value as an informant, how they routinely took information given to them by other informants—including Flemmi—and put it in Whitey’s file. Even worse, they knowingly allowed Bulger to plant disinformation into FBI files, through memos they signed off on, about crimes his gang had committed, effectively derailing the likelihood of Bulger being investigated and prosecuted for innumerable horrendous acts, including murder.
[Bulger] also told Morris, ‘You took money from me. If I go to jail, you’re coming with me.’
“You knew this information was false,” said Fred Wyshak, the lead prosecutor, of one such memo.
“I did,” said the former agent.
Over time, as Morris told it in direct testimony elicited by Wyshak, other agents from his squad were introduced to Bulger and Flemmi. They shared drinks and dinners cooked by Morris in his own home. Nicholas Gianturco, James Ring, and other agents received cash and gifts from the gangsters. Before long, the entire organized-crime squad in Boston had been, to use Morris’s word, “compromised” by Bulger and Flemmi.
The defense is hoping to posit Bulger as merely one player in a sweeping historical narrative, in which a tradition of corruption and secrecy was passed along from generation to generation.
Morris sought to appear contrite and even sympathetic as he described how he presided over one of the most venal and corrupt investigative squads in FBI history, all while he was being touted in internal performance-evaluation memos as “consistently excellent … a highly motivated and capable supervisor … Exceptional.” Morris was cited and praised for being “directly involved in the development of one of the bureau’s most valuable top echelon informants”—meaning Bulger.
Morris knew it was all a lie. “I knew I was completely trapped,” he said from the stand. “I was in so far I could never get out of it. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful.”
2.
http://m.telegram.com/article/20151123/NEWS/151129603" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
New FBI chief in Boston talks on terror, espionage
Special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston division Harold Shaw speaks Monday with a reporter in his office in Boston.
http://m.telegram.com/article/20151123/NEWS/151129603" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Posted Nov 23, 2015 at 6:00 PM
BOSTON — For Harold Shaw, starting a job as the new special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office is a bit of a homecoming.
Shaw, who grew up in Weymouth and Hingham, returned to Boston last month after spending much of his nearly 17-year FBI career in the New York office. Shaw has worked on several high-profile terror investigations, including the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and the Benghazi attacks in 2012.
Shaw, 49, said his priorities for Boston are similar to the FBI's national priorities, including national security, identifying homegrown violent extremists and preventing cyber espionage.
"Really, in the last year alone, you're looking at in excess of $400 billion in terms of economic espionage that is happening," Shaw said.
"It's a significant problem that's happening ... especially in our area where we have a number of high-end businesses ... that could be targeted by any foreign state actor or any criminal organization in terms of the loss."
Shaw began working for the F
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
We brought Frank Wilkinson to speak at our conference
on 3 different occasions
https://privacysos.org/blog/fbi-files-a ... ots-oh-my/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI files and assassination plots, oh my!
01/04/2013
The recently revealed assassination plot against Occupy Wall Street leaders isn’t the first such scheme to be uncovered in publicly released FBI files.
You’ve likely heard by now of the mysterious plot directed against OWS, revealed in the FBI files published by the Partnership for Civil Justice. There are two references to this apparent assassination plot in the 112 pages of documents. The first occurs in a document so heavily redacted that we don’t know who wrote it, or from which FBI office it originated. Here’s the relevant section:
An identified [redacted] of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas. [Redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.
Seven pages later in the file dump, in a Jacksonville, Florida FBI "Domain Program Management – Domestic Terrorism” document, there’s another reference to this murder plot. There the FBI briefly makes note of an unknown party’s “interest[] in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." The group or person with the “interest” in these murders is redacted from the publicly available files.
The natural response to this revelation is and largely has been: Why didn’t the FBI warn people they were the targets of an assassination plot?
TechDirt’s Timothy Geigner puts it like this:
What's plain as day is that some group somewhere was plotting to murder OWS leadership in Texas. It's also clear that the FBI never bothered to inform the targets of the threats against their lives. This stands in apparent contrast to how closely they worked and coordinated with private banks to handle the OWS protests as a whole. And, remember, this is the same FBI who has put tremendous effort over the past few years into breaking up its own terrorist plots. You'd think that when it had a chance to go after actual plots to assassinate leaders of a political movement, they might, you know, actually do something and then trumpet the success in stopping a real plot. Apparently not.
The news shocked people who paid any attention to it. (Admittedly, that wasn’t very many people — the story was universally ignored in the mainstream press.) But it isn’t the first time heavily redacted FBI files released pursuant to a FOIA request have revealed a would-be assassination attempt on the lives of political activists.
Fred Wilkinson, the First Amendment felon
Back in 1964, political organizer, housing and civil liberties advocate and House Un-American Activities Committee resistor Frank Wilkinson was almost assassinated. Wilkinson didn’t find out about the designs on his life until decades later, however, after he’d finally pried his 132,000 page FBI file out of the bureau’s hands.
In a must-read account of Wilkinson’s inspiring life and work, First Amendment Felon: The Story of Frank Wilkinson, His 132,000-Page FBI File, and His Epic Fight for Civil Rights and Liberties, Robert Sherrill writes:
On March 4, 1964, when Frank was out of jail and doing field organizing full tilt, he was almost assassinated. It remains unclear precisely who instigated it. We know the FBI was working hard to monitor his every movement, and to disrupt his activities, so they must have known of this? Yes, there is a two page FBI teletype marked "urgent" of the date, talking about the assassination. Five lines are blacked out and then "contacted by an undisclosed source to assist in an assassination attempt on Frank Wilkinson…" It notes he was to speak at a private home to an ACLU group in Los Angeles. It notes the FBI "will stake out residents…." And "matter will be closely followed and pertinent developments promptly reported." A follow-up memo from shortly after, initialed by Hoover, notes "that no attempt has been made on the life of Wilkinson and there have been no further developments in this matter." Under orders from the Federal District Court, the FBI subsequently confirmed that house was staked out by the L.A. Police’s Anti-Subversive division.
Like the 2012 revelation of an occupy assassination plot, the disclosure of the FBI’s knowledge of a plot against Wilkinson’s life raised "a few pertinent questions."
Sherill:
Who instigated the assassination? To this day this is not confirmed. Were the L.A. police officers staking out the house to have done the act, or just watch someone else do it? We don’t know. Did the FBI warn Wilkinson that he might be killed? No. Did the FBI ever tell Wilkinson his life had been or still might be in danger? No. Did the FBI know who was to do the assassination? We can’t tell, but it sounds like it from the file. If the FBI didn’t know the alleged assassin, did it try to find out? Not from record of the files. Did it prosecute or refer this for local law enforcement to prosecute? No.
This memo alone makes a laughingstock of any allegation that the FBI was tasked to protect citizens. It clearly assigned itself the job of spying on people engaged in dissent activity, without letting evidence of the worst kind of criminal conduct (i.e., assassination) get in the way of some important spying.
[snip]
By 1983, when these files became public, activists were a little jaded from seeing the results of a civil suit against Chicago prosecutors and police proving that they, with active FBI assistance, had assassinated Black Panther Party activists Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. The guilt of law enforcement in that Chicago case also was upheld in February 1983 by the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet this evidence of related FBI behavior just a few years previously, against a white guy like Frank, showed a clear pattern of behavior.
We don’t know and probably never will know who set out to assassinate Frank Wilkinson or any OWS leaders because the FBI will probably never tell us. But we know the bureau didn’t warn the public or activists in the movement about threats against them, back in the 1960s or in 2012. And given what we know about the FBI's history, that's enough to make you wonder.
on 3 different occasions
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FBI files and assassination plots, oh my!
01/04/2013
The recently revealed assassination plot against Occupy Wall Street leaders isn’t the first such scheme to be uncovered in publicly released FBI files.
You’ve likely heard by now of the mysterious plot directed against OWS, revealed in the FBI files published by the Partnership for Civil Justice. There are two references to this apparent assassination plot in the 112 pages of documents. The first occurs in a document so heavily redacted that we don’t know who wrote it, or from which FBI office it originated. Here’s the relevant section:
An identified [redacted] of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas. [Redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.
Seven pages later in the file dump, in a Jacksonville, Florida FBI "Domain Program Management – Domestic Terrorism” document, there’s another reference to this murder plot. There the FBI briefly makes note of an unknown party’s “interest[] in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." The group or person with the “interest” in these murders is redacted from the publicly available files.
The natural response to this revelation is and largely has been: Why didn’t the FBI warn people they were the targets of an assassination plot?
TechDirt’s Timothy Geigner puts it like this:
What's plain as day is that some group somewhere was plotting to murder OWS leadership in Texas. It's also clear that the FBI never bothered to inform the targets of the threats against their lives. This stands in apparent contrast to how closely they worked and coordinated with private banks to handle the OWS protests as a whole. And, remember, this is the same FBI who has put tremendous effort over the past few years into breaking up its own terrorist plots. You'd think that when it had a chance to go after actual plots to assassinate leaders of a political movement, they might, you know, actually do something and then trumpet the success in stopping a real plot. Apparently not.
The news shocked people who paid any attention to it. (Admittedly, that wasn’t very many people — the story was universally ignored in the mainstream press.) But it isn’t the first time heavily redacted FBI files released pursuant to a FOIA request have revealed a would-be assassination attempt on the lives of political activists.
Fred Wilkinson, the First Amendment felon
Back in 1964, political organizer, housing and civil liberties advocate and House Un-American Activities Committee resistor Frank Wilkinson was almost assassinated. Wilkinson didn’t find out about the designs on his life until decades later, however, after he’d finally pried his 132,000 page FBI file out of the bureau’s hands.
In a must-read account of Wilkinson’s inspiring life and work, First Amendment Felon: The Story of Frank Wilkinson, His 132,000-Page FBI File, and His Epic Fight for Civil Rights and Liberties, Robert Sherrill writes:
On March 4, 1964, when Frank was out of jail and doing field organizing full tilt, he was almost assassinated. It remains unclear precisely who instigated it. We know the FBI was working hard to monitor his every movement, and to disrupt his activities, so they must have known of this? Yes, there is a two page FBI teletype marked "urgent" of the date, talking about the assassination. Five lines are blacked out and then "contacted by an undisclosed source to assist in an assassination attempt on Frank Wilkinson…" It notes he was to speak at a private home to an ACLU group in Los Angeles. It notes the FBI "will stake out residents…." And "matter will be closely followed and pertinent developments promptly reported." A follow-up memo from shortly after, initialed by Hoover, notes "that no attempt has been made on the life of Wilkinson and there have been no further developments in this matter." Under orders from the Federal District Court, the FBI subsequently confirmed that house was staked out by the L.A. Police’s Anti-Subversive division.
Like the 2012 revelation of an occupy assassination plot, the disclosure of the FBI’s knowledge of a plot against Wilkinson’s life raised "a few pertinent questions."
Sherill:
Who instigated the assassination? To this day this is not confirmed. Were the L.A. police officers staking out the house to have done the act, or just watch someone else do it? We don’t know. Did the FBI warn Wilkinson that he might be killed? No. Did the FBI ever tell Wilkinson his life had been or still might be in danger? No. Did the FBI know who was to do the assassination? We can’t tell, but it sounds like it from the file. If the FBI didn’t know the alleged assassin, did it try to find out? Not from record of the files. Did it prosecute or refer this for local law enforcement to prosecute? No.
This memo alone makes a laughingstock of any allegation that the FBI was tasked to protect citizens. It clearly assigned itself the job of spying on people engaged in dissent activity, without letting evidence of the worst kind of criminal conduct (i.e., assassination) get in the way of some important spying.
[snip]
By 1983, when these files became public, activists were a little jaded from seeing the results of a civil suit against Chicago prosecutors and police proving that they, with active FBI assistance, had assassinated Black Panther Party activists Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. The guilt of law enforcement in that Chicago case also was upheld in February 1983 by the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet this evidence of related FBI behavior just a few years previously, against a white guy like Frank, showed a clear pattern of behavior.
We don’t know and probably never will know who set out to assassinate Frank Wilkinson or any OWS leaders because the FBI will probably never tell us. But we know the bureau didn’t warn the public or activists in the movement about threats against them, back in the 1960s or in 2012. And given what we know about the FBI's history, that's enough to make you wonder.
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Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
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Pro Libertate
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Merrick Garland, Richard W. Roberts, and the Kenneth Trentadue Murder: The Deep State Takes Care of Its Own
Not a suicide victim: Kenneth Trentadue's brutalized body in his open-casket funeral.
“You have to trust the government,” Justice Department attorney Richard Roberts unctuously told Jesse Trentadue. Seeking to understand why his younger brother Kenneth had died while in federal custody, Jesse, a trial attorney in Salt Lake City, had asked to see the findings of a federal grand jury investigation of the case.
In an incandescent response to Roberts’s patronizing dismissal, Trentadue reminded the Justice Department functionary that the proper relationship between citizens and the government is not one of “trust,” but rather of “accountability from that government to the citizens.”
“The Department of Justice has yet to account to the family for the death of my brother,” Trentadue pointed out. “There is no love between us, and there certainly is no trust.”
By the time Jesse had sent that October 16, 1997 letter to Roberts – who was Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Section – more than two years had passed since his brother Kenneth had died in a federal prison cell in Oklahoma City. In the August 22, 1995 phone call notifying Kenneth’s mother Wilma about her son’s death, the warden casually mentioned that the body was scheduled for cremation within hours.
Wilma demanded to know if Kenneth’s wife had authorized the disposition of his body. The warden replied that she hadn’t been aware that Kenneth was married. After making it clear that her son’s remains were not to be cremated, Wilma joined Jesse in Oklahoma City, where they took custody of Kenneth’s body.
After carefully scraping away several layers of ineptly applied makeup, Wilma and Jesse understood why authorities had been determined to dispose of Kenneth’s body. The official story was that he had committed suicide by hanging himself in what was described as a suicide-proof cell. This wouldn’t explain why his face and torso were mottled with bruises testifying of a severe beating inflicted by several people, or why his throat appeared to have been cut and his scalp was split open.
"Trust the government": Judge/prosecutor/rapist Roberts.
By the time Kenneth’s family had collected his body, all of the evidence in the crime scene had been destroyed. In violation of Oklahoma state law, the floors and walls of the cell had been sanitized, erasing fingerprints and wiping away blood and DNA evidence. The victim’s clothing and bedding had been confiscated by FBI Special Agent Jeff Jenkins, who kept this evidence hidden in the trunk of his car until putrefaction set in, rendering it useless to the FBI Crime Lab.
One witness in a nearby cell testified that he heard the sounds of a struggle shortly before Kenneth’s lifeless body was “discovered” by a guard. Several other witnesses reported seeing bloody riot gear, uniforms, and batons belonging to the facility’s SORT (Special Operations Response Team) unit.
The Bureau of Prisons designated “suicide by asphyxia” as the cause of Kenneth’s death, insisting that his other injuries were “self-inflicted.”
Dr. Fred Jordan, Oklahoma’s Chief State Medical Examiner, was pressured to validate the official story that Kenneth was a suicide victim, despite the fact that his body was “covered in blood … soaked in blood, covered with bruises,” as Jordan would later recall. He was forbidden by federal officials to have access to the death scene until five months after the death. An application of Luminol, a blood reagent, left the cell “lit up like a candle because of the blood still present on the walls after four or five months.”
Rather than acceding to federal demands, Jordan listed the cause of Kenneth’s death as “unknown.” Kevin Rowland, chief investigator for the ME’s office, filed a complaint with the FBI describing the incident as “murder.” He also consulted with Col. William T. Gormley of the United States Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who concurred with Dr. Jordan’s findings.
Rowland, intriguingly, was recently subjected to the pointless torment over a “sexual battery” charge arising from an incident in which he allegedly twisted a male co-worker’s nipple. That alleged incident, furthermore, occurred decades ago. Bear in mind the nature of that charge, and the institutional memory that led to it being filed against this whistleblower; this will become relevant anon.
All of the pertinent facts about Kenneth’s murder were exhumed by Trentadue and his colleagues long after the Justice Department had concluded what Criminal Section Chief Richard Roberts claimed was a “flawless” and “thorough” investigation – one that began on August 21, 1995, and was closed the following day. The findings of that one-day “investigation” were submitted to a federal grand jury – not one on Oklahoma City – which ratified the Justice Department’s official story.
When Trentadue requested access to the federal grand jury’s findings, Roberts parried that petition with a patronizing admonition to “trust the government.” The following year, Roberts was selected by Bill Clinton to serve on the District Court for the District of Columbia, an appointment that could be seen as a reward for his role in consummating a vital cover-up.
Kenneth Trentadue, Jesse learned from an anonymous caller shortly after his brother’s death, was “murdered by the FBI” in a lethal case of mistaken identity. In appearance, body type, distinguishing features (including, however implausibly, tattoos), age, and criminal background, Kenneth was a near-twin of Richard Lee Guthrie – who was in the custody of the federal prison system when Kenneth was arrested for an alleged parole violation shortly after the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
For several years, Guthrie was involved in an FBI-protected gang called the Aryan Republican Army (ARA), which staged bank robberies to fund white supremacist activities across the country. The ARA was an asset of the FBI’s PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy) program, which seeded “radical right” groups with informants and provocateurs.
The Oklahoma City bombing was the result of a PATCON operation – most likely a security theater production that went badly off-script. Guthrie is one of several very good candidates for the enigmatic “John Doe #2” whom many witnesses saw in the company of Timothy McVeigh on the morning of the bombing – and whose identity the government has sought to conceal ever since. Just a few months after Kenneth’s traumatized body was “found” dangling in a cell at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma, Guthrie died in a similarly unconvincing “suicide.” Shortly before he was killed, Guthrie had somewhat imprudently announced his intention to write a memoir disclosing critical secrets regarding the Oklahoma City bombing.
Implacably pursuing justice: Jesse
The source who told Jesse that Kenneth had been killed by the FBI described the murder as “an interrogation gone wrong.” Before his parole, Kenneth had been a bank robber, albeit one not affiliated with the alpha gang of the criminal underworld, the FBI. He couldn’t answer any PATCON-related questions, and so he was tortured to death. His captors may have really believed that he was Guthrie. They may have realized that he wasn’t, but decided that it would be compromising to let him live. In either case, the objective was to tie up a loose end quickly. Fortunately, enough of a thread was left dangling for Jesse to find it. He has been tugging on it for more than twenty years.
Learning the identity of “John Doe #2” is necessary to solve the mystery of his brother’s murder, Jesse believes, and the identity of that PATCON asset remains a protected state secret.
In response to a July 2009 Freedom of Information Act request by Jesse, the FBI turned over six DVDs that supposedly contained all of the video recordings collected after the bombing. Missing from that collection – and pointedly ignored in the FBI’s response to Jesse’s request – is a video captured by the exterior surveillance camera located on the Regency Tower
Apartments near the ill-fated Murrah Building.
In May 2011, a federal judge ordered the FBI to conduct additional searches and turn over all video records collected, from whatever source, of the Oklahoma City bombing. The bureau has refused to comply with that order, claiming that if the video exists it is irretrievably lost in a long-forgotten evidence vault.
The existence of that video is proven by the testimony of FBI Special Agent Jon Hersley during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995 preliminary hearing. Hersley, who was among those agents tasked “to further identify and locate other individuals who may have been involved in the bombing,” testified that within “two or three days” of the bombing he had been shown “still photos” culled from a the video captured by the Regency Tower surveillance system. The film itself, he explained, was in the control of other agents within the bureau.
During cross-examination, defense counsel John Coyle, challenging the foundation for video evidence implicating his client, asked Agent Hersley, “who are those agents that are tasked with the responsibility of reviewing photographs and film footage?”
That entirely reasonable question prompted an objection by the lead prosecutor, a Justice Department attorney named Merrick Garland. The objection being overruled, Hersley identified the agent in question as Walt Lamar. As Coyle continued to pursue this line of inquiry, Garland objected a second time, protesting that “we are going in the area of discovery now.”
The second objection was sustained, the matter was dropped, and potential “discovery” of evidence that could have revealed the identity of John Doe #2 was foreclosed by the man who, two decades later, would be chosen to fill a critical vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Assuming that the Senate holds confirmation hearings on the Garland nomination, some senators reportedly plan to ask why he recused himself in a judicial misconduct case involving a colleague – none other than Richard Roberts, who resigned a few days later for “health” reasons. Roberts was under investigation by the Utah Attorney General’s Office and both the House and Senate oversight committees regarding allegations that he had raped a 16-year-old witness during a civil rights case in Utah in 1980.
At the time, the 27-year-old Roberts was an attorney with the Justice Department’s civil rights division. He was dispatched to Salt Lake City to head the federal civil rights prosecution of Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist serial killer who murdered two African-American joggers, Ted Fields and David Martin from an ambush in August 1980.
Terry Mitchell (whose last name at the time was Elrod) had accompanied the two men and a girlfriend during the jog. She was hit by shrapnel but survived. Two months earlier she had been raped by a man named Philip George Moore, which was merely the latest of several such assaults she had endured since childhood. As if the cumulative trauma of those events hadn’t been sufficient, Terry and her family were subjected to hostility and suspicion owing to the fact that the father was involved in a local motorcycle club called the Barons, a fact seized on by some to suggest that Terry had lured the victims into an ambush.
Terry Mitchell in 2016.
A few weeks after the shooting, Terry fled to Arizona to live with grandparents. She returned the following October to testify in the trial.
During the following January and February, the 27-year-old Roberts sexually exploited the 16-year-old, beginning with an episode in which he lured her into his office on the pretext of reviewing her testimony. Once he had separated the teenager from her mother, Roberts quickly disposed of the fiction that they were going to discuss the case and invited her to dinner.
While Terry was puzzled and concerned, and wanted to go home to fix dinner for her younger sisters, “she complied because … Roberts was an authority figure and she had learned to comply with those in positions of authority,” recounts a lawsuit she recently filed against the former judge. With the practiced, methodical patience of a veteran sexual predator, Roberts lured the intimidated girl into his hotel room, where he compelled her to service him sexually, “then raped her twice.”
While maintaining the pretense that he and his victim were engaged in a consensual “affair,” Roberts made it clear that Terry couldn’t disclose what was going on. A mistrial would have resulted, and Franklin – who had yet to be tried for the murders – may have been let loose. If this were to happen, Roberts told his victim, it would be her fault.
After securing Franklin’s conviction, Roberts left, and Terry rarely heard from him again. In 2013, after the serial killer wasexecuted for a murder committed in Missouri, Roberts contacted Terry anew. Terry recorded the phone call and submitted it to investigators for the Utah Attorney General’s office, which verified the substance of her story.
Roberts has admitted to preying upon the then-sixteen-year-old witness, but continues to characterize the matter as a “consensual” affair and a regrettable “lapse in judgment.” Under current state law, the conduct to which Roberts confesses would be statutory rape or perhaps even child molestation. At the time, however, the age of consent was sixteen. Roberts never faced the prospect of serious criminal charges arising from his calculated exploitation of a traumatized and vulnerable girl.
Today (March 22) Roberts has learned that the misconduct case against him has been dropped, meaning that he will be able to enjoy h
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Pro Libertate
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Merrick Garland, Richard W. Roberts, and the Kenneth Trentadue Murder: The Deep State Takes Care of Its Own
Not a suicide victim: Kenneth Trentadue's brutalized body in his open-casket funeral.
“You have to trust the government,” Justice Department attorney Richard Roberts unctuously told Jesse Trentadue. Seeking to understand why his younger brother Kenneth had died while in federal custody, Jesse, a trial attorney in Salt Lake City, had asked to see the findings of a federal grand jury investigation of the case.
In an incandescent response to Roberts’s patronizing dismissal, Trentadue reminded the Justice Department functionary that the proper relationship between citizens and the government is not one of “trust,” but rather of “accountability from that government to the citizens.”
“The Department of Justice has yet to account to the family for the death of my brother,” Trentadue pointed out. “There is no love between us, and there certainly is no trust.”
By the time Jesse had sent that October 16, 1997 letter to Roberts – who was Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Section – more than two years had passed since his brother Kenneth had died in a federal prison cell in Oklahoma City. In the August 22, 1995 phone call notifying Kenneth’s mother Wilma about her son’s death, the warden casually mentioned that the body was scheduled for cremation within hours.
Wilma demanded to know if Kenneth’s wife had authorized the disposition of his body. The warden replied that she hadn’t been aware that Kenneth was married. After making it clear that her son’s remains were not to be cremated, Wilma joined Jesse in Oklahoma City, where they took custody of Kenneth’s body.
After carefully scraping away several layers of ineptly applied makeup, Wilma and Jesse understood why authorities had been determined to dispose of Kenneth’s body. The official story was that he had committed suicide by hanging himself in what was described as a suicide-proof cell. This wouldn’t explain why his face and torso were mottled with bruises testifying of a severe beating inflicted by several people, or why his throat appeared to have been cut and his scalp was split open.
"Trust the government": Judge/prosecutor/rapist Roberts.
By the time Kenneth’s family had collected his body, all of the evidence in the crime scene had been destroyed. In violation of Oklahoma state law, the floors and walls of the cell had been sanitized, erasing fingerprints and wiping away blood and DNA evidence. The victim’s clothing and bedding had been confiscated by FBI Special Agent Jeff Jenkins, who kept this evidence hidden in the trunk of his car until putrefaction set in, rendering it useless to the FBI Crime Lab.
One witness in a nearby cell testified that he heard the sounds of a struggle shortly before Kenneth’s lifeless body was “discovered” by a guard. Several other witnesses reported seeing bloody riot gear, uniforms, and batons belonging to the facility’s SORT (Special Operations Response Team) unit.
The Bureau of Prisons designated “suicide by asphyxia” as the cause of Kenneth’s death, insisting that his other injuries were “self-inflicted.”
Dr. Fred Jordan, Oklahoma’s Chief State Medical Examiner, was pressured to validate the official story that Kenneth was a suicide victim, despite the fact that his body was “covered in blood … soaked in blood, covered with bruises,” as Jordan would later recall. He was forbidden by federal officials to have access to the death scene until five months after the death. An application of Luminol, a blood reagent, left the cell “lit up like a candle because of the blood still present on the walls after four or five months.”
Rather than acceding to federal demands, Jordan listed the cause of Kenneth’s death as “unknown.” Kevin Rowland, chief investigator for the ME’s office, filed a complaint with the FBI describing the incident as “murder.” He also consulted with Col. William T. Gormley of the United States Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who concurred with Dr. Jordan’s findings.
Rowland, intriguingly, was recently subjected to the pointless torment over a “sexual battery” charge arising from an incident in which he allegedly twisted a male co-worker’s nipple. That alleged incident, furthermore, occurred decades ago. Bear in mind the nature of that charge, and the institutional memory that led to it being filed against this whistleblower; this will become relevant anon.
All of the pertinent facts about Kenneth’s murder were exhumed by Trentadue and his colleagues long after the Justice Department had concluded what Criminal Section Chief Richard Roberts claimed was a “flawless” and “thorough” investigation – one that began on August 21, 1995, and was closed the following day. The findings of that one-day “investigation” were submitted to a federal grand jury – not one on Oklahoma City – which ratified the Justice Department’s official story.
When Trentadue requested access to the federal grand jury’s findings, Roberts parried that petition with a patronizing admonition to “trust the government.” The following year, Roberts was selected by Bill Clinton to serve on the District Court for the District of Columbia, an appointment that could be seen as a reward for his role in consummating a vital cover-up.
Kenneth Trentadue, Jesse learned from an anonymous caller shortly after his brother’s death, was “murdered by the FBI” in a lethal case of mistaken identity. In appearance, body type, distinguishing features (including, however implausibly, tattoos), age, and criminal background, Kenneth was a near-twin of Richard Lee Guthrie – who was in the custody of the federal prison system when Kenneth was arrested for an alleged parole violation shortly after the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
For several years, Guthrie was involved in an FBI-protected gang called the Aryan Republican Army (ARA), which staged bank robberies to fund white supremacist activities across the country. The ARA was an asset of the FBI’s PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy) program, which seeded “radical right” groups with informants and provocateurs.
The Oklahoma City bombing was the result of a PATCON operation – most likely a security theater production that went badly off-script. Guthrie is one of several very good candidates for the enigmatic “John Doe #2” whom many witnesses saw in the company of Timothy McVeigh on the morning of the bombing – and whose identity the government has sought to conceal ever since. Just a few months after Kenneth’s traumatized body was “found” dangling in a cell at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma, Guthrie died in a similarly unconvincing “suicide.” Shortly before he was killed, Guthrie had somewhat imprudently announced his intention to write a memoir disclosing critical secrets regarding the Oklahoma City bombing.
Implacably pursuing justice: Jesse
The source who told Jesse that Kenneth had been killed by the FBI described the murder as “an interrogation gone wrong.” Before his parole, Kenneth had been a bank robber, albeit one not affiliated with the alpha gang of the criminal underworld, the FBI. He couldn’t answer any PATCON-related questions, and so he was tortured to death. His captors may have really believed that he was Guthrie. They may have realized that he wasn’t, but decided that it would be compromising to let him live. In either case, the objective was to tie up a loose end quickly. Fortunately, enough of a thread was left dangling for Jesse to find it. He has been tugging on it for more than twenty years.
Learning the identity of “John Doe #2” is necessary to solve the mystery of his brother’s murder, Jesse believes, and the identity of that PATCON asset remains a protected state secret.
In response to a July 2009 Freedom of Information Act request by Jesse, the FBI turned over six DVDs that supposedly contained all of the video recordings collected after the bombing. Missing from that collection – and pointedly ignored in the FBI’s response to Jesse’s request – is a video captured by the exterior surveillance camera located on the Regency Tower
Apartments near the ill-fated Murrah Building.
In May 2011, a federal judge ordered the FBI to conduct additional searches and turn over all video records collected, from whatever source, of the Oklahoma City bombing. The bureau has refused to comply with that order, claiming that if the video exists it is irretrievably lost in a long-forgotten evidence vault.
The existence of that video is proven by the testimony of FBI Special Agent Jon Hersley during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995 preliminary hearing. Hersley, who was among those agents tasked “to further identify and locate other individuals who may have been involved in the bombing,” testified that within “two or three days” of the bombing he had been shown “still photos” culled from a the video captured by the Regency Tower surveillance system. The film itself, he explained, was in the control of other agents within the bureau.
During cross-examination, defense counsel John Coyle, challenging the foundation for video evidence implicating his client, asked Agent Hersley, “who are those agents that are tasked with the responsibility of reviewing photographs and film footage?”
That entirely reasonable question prompted an objection by the lead prosecutor, a Justice Department attorney named Merrick Garland. The objection being overruled, Hersley identified the agent in question as Walt Lamar. As Coyle continued to pursue this line of inquiry, Garland objected a second time, protesting that “we are going in the area of discovery now.”
The second objection was sustained, the matter was dropped, and potential “discovery” of evidence that could have revealed the identity of John Doe #2 was foreclosed by the man who, two decades later, would be chosen to fill a critical vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Assuming that the Senate holds confirmation hearings on the Garland nomination, some senators reportedly plan to ask why he recused himself in a judicial misconduct case involving a colleague – none other than Richard Roberts, who resigned a few days later for “health” reasons. Roberts was under investigation by the Utah Attorney General’s Office and both the House and Senate oversight committees regarding allegations that he had raped a 16-year-old witness during a civil rights case in Utah in 1980.
At the time, the 27-year-old Roberts was an attorney with the Justice Department’s civil rights division. He was dispatched to Salt Lake City to head the federal civil rights prosecution of Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist serial killer who murdered two African-American joggers, Ted Fields and David Martin from an ambush in August 1980.
Terry Mitchell (whose last name at the time was Elrod) had accompanied the two men and a girlfriend during the jog. She was hit by shrapnel but survived. Two months earlier she had been raped by a man named Philip George Moore, which was merely the latest of several such assaults she had endured since childhood. As if the cumulative trauma of those events hadn’t been sufficient, Terry and her family were subjected to hostility and suspicion owing to the fact that the father was involved in a local motorcycle club called the Barons, a fact seized on by some to suggest that Terry had lured the victims into an ambush.
Terry Mitchell in 2016.
A few weeks after the shooting, Terry fled to Arizona to live with grandparents. She returned the following October to testify in the trial.
During the following January and February, the 27-year-old Roberts sexually exploited the 16-year-old, beginning with an episode in which he lured her into his office on the pretext of reviewing her testimony. Once he had separated the teenager from her mother, Roberts quickly disposed of the fiction that they were going to discuss the case and invited her to dinner.
While Terry was puzzled and concerned, and wanted to go home to fix dinner for her younger sisters, “she complied because … Roberts was an authority figure and she had learned to comply with those in positions of authority,” recounts a lawsuit she recently filed against the former judge. With the practiced, methodical patience of a veteran sexual predator, Roberts lured the intimidated girl into his hotel room, where he compelled her to service him sexually, “then raped her twice.”
While maintaining the pretense that he and his victim were engaged in a consensual “affair,” Roberts made it clear that Terry couldn’t disclose what was going on. A mistrial would have resulted, and Franklin – who had yet to be tried for the murders – may have been let loose. If this were to happen, Roberts told his victim, it would be her fault.
After securing Franklin’s conviction, Roberts left, and Terry rarely heard from him again. In 2013, after the serial killer wasexecuted for a murder committed in Missouri, Roberts contacted Terry anew. Terry recorded the phone call and submitted it to investigators for the Utah Attorney General’s office, which verified the substance of her story.
Roberts has admitted to preying upon the then-sixteen-year-old witness, but continues to characterize the matter as a “consensual” affair and a regrettable “lapse in judgment.” Under current state law, the conduct to which Roberts confesses would be statutory rape or perhaps even child molestation. At the time, however, the age of consent was sixteen. Roberts never faced the prospect of serious criminal charges arising from his calculated exploitation of a traumatized and vulnerable girl.
Today (March 22) Roberts has learned that the misconduct case against him has been dropped, meaning that he will be able to enjoy h
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Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
Bonus read
Major Physics Magazine, Europhysics News, Publishes 9/11 Article by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter
kawika fri, 08/26/2016 - 6:22am
Major Physics Magazine, Europhysics News, Publishes 9/11 Article by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter
Read It Now! >> http://www.europhysicsnews.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Earlier this week, the magazine of the European Physical Society, Europhysics News, published a 3,000-word feature article by Dr. Steven Jones, Dr. Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter, entitled 15 years later: on the physics of high-rise building collapses.
Europhysics News bills itself as the magazine of the European physics community. That sounds about right — given their circulation of around 25,000 copies per issue!
It is with great enthusiasm that we invite you to read the online version of the article, which can be accessed for free at EurophysicsNews.org. The hard copy will be distributed to the magazine’s 25,000 subscribers in mid-September.
60,000 and Counting!
That brings to a staggering 60,000 the number of engineers and scientists who will be exposed to our literature in the coming weeks — 35,000 who will receive a copy of World Trade Center Physics and 25,000 who will receive the current issue of Europhysics News.
You can help grow that number by purchasing copies of World Trade Center Physics in bulk — virtually at cost — and distributing them on your own, either by popping them in the mail or by handing them out.
Nearly 2,500 copies have been sold since World Trade Center Physics went on sale two days ago. We’ve got 7,500 left in stock waiting to be distributed around the 15th anniversary of 9/11.
Place your bulk order by Monday, August 29, http://www.shop.ae911truth.org/WTC-Phys ... er_c25.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and you’ll receive the package by Saturday, September 10 (this applies to U.S. residents only).
See PDF page 21
http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles ... 6-47-4.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
15 YEARS LATER:
ON THE PHYSICS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDING COLLAPSES
---Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti and Ted Walter
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1.
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FBI's 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal
American Thinker
FBI's 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal .... That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the ...
By Jonathan F. Keiler
The biggest and most damning takeaway from Hillary Clinton's July interview with the FBI, at least as it concerns the FBI itself and by extension the rectitude of our government, is, to borrow from Arthur Conan Doyle, the dog that didn't bark. That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.
Clinton's lawyers deliberately withheld these emails from the public and forced the FBI to recover them. They clearly demonstrate Clinton's motive in setting up the server, thereby intentionally endangering the classified material that she and her cohorts knew would inevitably be sent through it. This motive and intent is further demonstrated by Clinton's obfuscations, lies, and destruction of evidence that followed in the course of over a year.
FBI agents never inquired about any of it during the interview. Since they are presumably well trained and experienced investigators (including a section chief), the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that they were deliberately tasked with not pursuing this obvious line of inquiry, as it would have undermined the narrative that Director James Comey intended to deliver to the nation a few days later – that Hillary should not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence of intent.
The FBI's investigatory reports covering Hillary Clinton's July interview (cynically released just before Labor Day) confirm suppositions of FBI critics that the interview was
2.
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/09/co ... strik.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Cop fired for corruption strikes tentative deal to plead guilty to federal charges
The U.S. Courthouse in Harrisburg (Matt Miller, PennLive)
September 04, 2016 at 9:09 AM
A fired Fairview Township police officer accused of stealing money during drug investigations has struck a tentative agreement to plead guilty to federal theft charges.
3.
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... ker-163286" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117078597/The ... les-Bowden" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
[Esquire magazine, September 1998]
VETERAN DRUG AGENTS BACKED WEBB STORY
Contributor's profile:
Two weeks after Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series appeared in
4.
around the corner
September 3, 2016 Uncategorized ADHD, central banks, CIA in Istanbul, Fentanyl, global shipping bankruptcy, Hagopian and Barrett talk false flags, Hanjin, Hillary, Hillary’s RAM, Obama, Saudi 9/11 more?, TPP
around the corner
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... he-corner/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
“… Viktor Shvets, a strategist at Macquarie in Hong Kong, has a big note out on declining productivity. In it, he discussed a common Wall Street metric usually applied to capital or equity to humans.
His argument, in short, is that the “return on humans” is declining.
He said:
“Long-term structural decline in rate of “return on humans” due to deep structural changes in relationships between humans; humans & machines; humans, machines & society. The pressure has been intensifying over the last three decades with the peak of ‘crescendo’ just around the corner.” ….”
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress. ... man-value/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV1Vq2kqDNw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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The Central Banks Are Now Ready To Launch Their ‘Brave New World’
Posted: September 2, 2016 at OathKeepers
This article comes from Alt-Market.com by Brandon Smith The latest Federal Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is over and
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CIA’s clandestine meeting in Istanbul on coup night
Posted on September 2, 2016 by
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress. ... /02/80482/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
** ## **
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/ci ... urnos.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* * ## **
DHS’S NEW ELECTION CYBERSECURITY COMMITTEE HAS NO CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS
The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) [yes, there’s an association for everything] has just announced its selections to head up a DHS “working group” tackling “election infrastructure cybersecurity.” Like any committee formed in response to a hot-button topic, the appointees are better known for their years of tenure in government positions than their technical acumen, as the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian points out. About the only thing the appointees have going for them is that they fit the description: all four are state-level secretaries of state. Beyond that, there’s very little to indicate they’re qualified to take on cybersecurity issues.
** ## **
The Election Has Been Hacked
By John W. Whitehead
** ## **
From https://solari.com/blog/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:
Civil Rights Coalition files FCC Complaint Against Baltimore Police Department for
Illegally Using Stingrays to Disrupt Cellular Communications
EFF | 25 August 2016
Pernicious surveillance…
Game of Drones: Inside the Killer Robot ‘Arms Race’ Where the World’s Five Leading Superpowers are Secretly Preparing for an All-out Futuristic War
The Sun | 25 August 2016
Less than…
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars: An Introduction Programming Manual
Lawful Path | 02 September 2016
Operations Research Technical Manual – TW-SW7905.1
Survivors of Aurora Shooting Ordered to Pay Theater’s $700,000 Legal Bill
Guns America | 01 September 2016
Ordering the plaintiffs to pay Cinemark’s…
10 Mind-blowing Facts about the CERN Large Collider You Need to Know
RT | 01 September 2016
Science – and religion – sounding the…
French Coca-Cola Workers Discover $56Mn Worth of Cocaine in Shipment
RT | 01 September 2016
Produces concentrates for…
4.
Locals get close look at evidence recovery in FBI's Citizen's Academy
Wyoming Tribune-
Arlen Scholl, the FBI's supervisory senior resident agent in Cheyenne, said the goal of the course is to show the public and community leaders what the FBI ...
5.
Amazon plan new show based on Whitey Bulger crime drama “The ...
IrishCentral-
FBI agent John Connolly was the basis of Matt Damon's character, Colin Sullivan. While Scorcese's film was based in Boston, the new Amazon show will be set ...
6.
FBI Octopus
InfoSec is people
CSO Australia-
... Timothy Wallach, the Supervisory Special Agent Cyber Taskforce at the FBI, and Dhanya Thakkar, Vice President of Trend Micro. The first three speakers then ...
7.
Clinton's Excuses Fall Outside the Realm of Plausible Deniability
Hawaii Reporter-
In an unbelievable explanation covered by the Washington Examiner, Hillary Clinton testified under sworn deposition to FBI agents that she believed the ...
8.
FBI: Clinton staff destroyed devices with hammers
WKYT-
CNNs Evan Perez confirms Trump campaign senior adviser Boris Epshteyns claim that Hillary Clinton staffers destroyed her previous mobile devices using ...
9.
CBS Misleadingly Suggests Clinton Emails Marked 'C' Not Actually ...
NewsBusters (blog)
On CBS This Morning on Monday, at the end of a report recalling the notes the FBI released which document that Hillary Clinton claimed not to know that "(C)" ...
10.
One of Hillary Clinton's Laptops Got 'Lost' in The Mail
Townhall-
New revelations from a Friday FBI document dump show a Clinton Foundation laptop containing Hillary Clinton's personal email server archive was "lost" in the ...
11.
FBI Never Got Hillary's 8 State Dept. BlackBerrys
Newsmax
The FBI released the summary to provide context on its recommendation that the Justice Department shouldn't prosecute Clinton or her aides for using the ...
12.
How to investigate the Cheryl Mills claim of attorney-client privilege ...
American Thinker (blog)-
Cheryl Mills sat in on Hillary Clinton's FBI interrogation – a highly irregular procedure, given her status as a material witness and possible suspect.
Hillary Clinton is Shameless
CounterPunch-
Brazen out FBI findings of duplicity, criminality (though the Agency demurs from the charge), inadvertence in destroying evidence, a bottomless well of rotten ...
SEPTEMBER 5, 2016
Hillary Clinton is Shameless
by NORMAN POLLACK
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/05/ ... shameless/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Never has a candidate for President been so solicitous—and transparent about it—of major wealth, what the New York Times (stepping out of character) admits is her appeal to the Ultrarich. In Chozick and Martin’s, “Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich,” Sept. 3, we find the most lopsided appeal to wealth—at the expense of normal campaigning—in US electoral history: estate after estate, party after party, closed doors, the pampered and selfish, coming out of the woodwork, to bask in the love of one who gravitates to them like moths to a light.
Hillary Clinton has no shame. Forget press conferences. Brazen out FBI findings of duplicity, criminality (though the Agency demurs from the charge), inadvertence in destroying evidence, a bottomless well of rotten practice—and this the darling of liberals and so-called progressives. Weighed in the scales of decency and social justice, how is she better than Donald Trump? Both are fascistically-inclined, both have contempt for working people and minorities, both have chauvinistic militarism in their blood. How can there be a choice of the lesser of two evils when each vies for the pinnacle of Evil-ness?
Whore? For $125,000, you get dinner and a meet-the-candidate (some as high as a quarter $M)—and if under 16 years old at the gathering, for $10,000 you can ask the candidate a question. Auction-block politics, except that it is the American people on the slave-block. In this hothouse atmosphere, the host ensures Clinton will not be embarrassed. Why should she be, they’re all bosom buddies, all see eye-to-eye, gatherings of the self-righteous that make a Mafia summit look like a children’s tea party.
What is to be done? Trump is hardly an alternative. The plebeian billionaire is capable of anything. Clinton has disqualified and perjured herself as unworthy of any office. She and her husband, the Bonnie & Clyde of Mammon worship (even Trump, hard to believe, seems to have more character). As for the decisive area of foreign policy, there is little to choose: the sophistication of liberal think-take, national-security genocidal adventurism on one hand, gut-authoritarians, simple-minded zealots on the other. Of the two, the former may well be the more dangerous.
Is the Third Party a valid alternative? To many, yes, but here we still do not have a clean break from the Cold War mentality. (And Bernie Sanders wins a medal as outstanding disappointment with his ersatz Revolution funneled into the Clinton camp.) America is a declining Empire, desperately grasping for straws. Anything to stand on top, its strategic focus on counterrevolution, its political focus on structural-ideological hierarchy to keep the poor at bay and in their place. At some point, the malaise of fascist boredom will possibly solve our problems for us, with the mushroom cloud. There is nothing to indicate a spirit of freedom in the works, except possibly on cultural issues which—everything else the same—do not and cannot translate into authentic democratic feeling.
I may overstate the gloom-and-doom scenario, in which case CounterPunchers might find incentive in promoting fruitful ways of radicalizing America. Thinking small will not do it, whether the commune or political capture of a single town. Power has been centralized at the bayonet-point of perfection, easily able to absorb when not crushing societal dissidence. But the very least one can ask of any human being is not to support either major-party candidate. Militarism is in the air—the stench, overpowering. Ditto, plutocracy. The two go together, and any alternative must tackle them both, shrink and ultimately destroy the cancer metastasizing in the American body politic.
Join the debate on Facebook
Norman Pollack Ph.D. Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at [email protected].
Major Physics Magazine, Europhysics News, Publishes 9/11 Article by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter
kawika fri, 08/26/2016 - 6:22am
Major Physics Magazine, Europhysics News, Publishes 9/11 Article by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter
Read It Now! >> http://www.europhysicsnews.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Earlier this week, the magazine of the European Physical Society, Europhysics News, published a 3,000-word feature article by Dr. Steven Jones, Dr. Robert Korol, Tony Szamboti, and Ted Walter, entitled 15 years later: on the physics of high-rise building collapses.
Europhysics News bills itself as the magazine of the European physics community. That sounds about right — given their circulation of around 25,000 copies per issue!
It is with great enthusiasm that we invite you to read the online version of the article, which can be accessed for free at EurophysicsNews.org. The hard copy will be distributed to the magazine’s 25,000 subscribers in mid-September.
60,000 and Counting!
That brings to a staggering 60,000 the number of engineers and scientists who will be exposed to our literature in the coming weeks — 35,000 who will receive a copy of World Trade Center Physics and 25,000 who will receive the current issue of Europhysics News.
You can help grow that number by purchasing copies of World Trade Center Physics in bulk — virtually at cost — and distributing them on your own, either by popping them in the mail or by handing them out.
Nearly 2,500 copies have been sold since World Trade Center Physics went on sale two days ago. We’ve got 7,500 left in stock waiting to be distributed around the 15th anniversary of 9/11.
Place your bulk order by Monday, August 29, http://www.shop.ae911truth.org/WTC-Phys ... er_c25.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and you’ll receive the package by Saturday, September 10 (this applies to U.S. residents only).
See PDF page 21
http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles ... 6-47-4.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
15 YEARS LATER:
ON THE PHYSICS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDING COLLAPSES
---Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti and Ted Walter
http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles ... 474p21.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
1.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... andal.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI's 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal
American Thinker
FBI's 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal .... That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the ...
By Jonathan F. Keiler
The biggest and most damning takeaway from Hillary Clinton's July interview with the FBI, at least as it concerns the FBI itself and by extension the rectitude of our government, is, to borrow from Arthur Conan Doyle, the dog that didn't bark. That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.
Clinton's lawyers deliberately withheld these emails from the public and forced the FBI to recover them. They clearly demonstrate Clinton's motive in setting up the server, thereby intentionally endangering the classified material that she and her cohorts knew would inevitably be sent through it. This motive and intent is further demonstrated by Clinton's obfuscations, lies, and destruction of evidence that followed in the course of over a year.
FBI agents never inquired about any of it during the interview. Since they are presumably well trained and experienced investigators (including a section chief), the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that they were deliberately tasked with not pursuing this obvious line of inquiry, as it would have undermined the narrative that Director James Comey intended to deliver to the nation a few days later – that Hillary should not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence of intent.
The FBI's investigatory reports covering Hillary Clinton's July interview (cynically released just before Labor Day) confirm suppositions of FBI critics that the interview was
2.
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/09/co ... strik.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Cop fired for corruption strikes tentative deal to plead guilty to federal charges
The U.S. Courthouse in Harrisburg (Matt Miller, PennLive)
September 04, 2016 at 9:09 AM
A fired Fairview Township police officer accused of stealing money during drug investigations has struck a tentative agreement to plead guilty to federal theft charges.
3.
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... ker-163286" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117078597/The ... les-Bowden" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
[Esquire magazine, September 1998]
VETERAN DRUG AGENTS BACKED WEBB STORY
Contributor's profile:
Two weeks after Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series appeared in
4.
around the corner
September 3, 2016 Uncategorized ADHD, central banks, CIA in Istanbul, Fentanyl, global shipping bankruptcy, Hagopian and Barrett talk false flags, Hanjin, Hillary, Hillary’s RAM, Obama, Saudi 9/11 more?, TPP
around the corner
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... he-corner/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
“… Viktor Shvets, a strategist at Macquarie in Hong Kong, has a big note out on declining productivity. In it, he discussed a common Wall Street metric usually applied to capital or equity to humans.
His argument, in short, is that the “return on humans” is declining.
He said:
“Long-term structural decline in rate of “return on humans” due to deep structural changes in relationships between humans; humans & machines; humans, machines & society. The pressure has been intensifying over the last three decades with the peak of ‘crescendo’ just around the corner.” ….”
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress. ... man-value/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
** ## **
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV1Vq2kqDNw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
** ## **
The Central Banks Are Now Ready To Launch Their ‘Brave New World’
Posted: September 2, 2016 at OathKeepers
This article comes from Alt-Market.com by Brandon Smith The latest Federal Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is over and
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CIA’s clandestine meeting in Istanbul on coup night
Posted on September 2, 2016 by
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress. ... /02/80482/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/ci ... urnos.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* * ## **
DHS’S NEW ELECTION CYBERSECURITY COMMITTEE HAS NO CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS
The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) [yes, there’s an association for everything] has just announced its selections to head up a DHS “working group” tackling “election infrastructure cybersecurity.” Like any committee formed in response to a hot-button topic, the appointees are better known for their years of tenure in government positions than their technical acumen, as the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian points out. About the only thing the appointees have going for them is that they fit the description: all four are state-level secretaries of state. Beyond that, there’s very little to indicate they’re qualified to take on cybersecurity issues.
** ## **
The Election Has Been Hacked
By John W. Whitehead
** ## **
From https://solari.com/blog/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:
Civil Rights Coalition files FCC Complaint Against Baltimore Police Department for
Illegally Using Stingrays to Disrupt Cellular Communications
EFF | 25 August 2016
Pernicious surveillance…
Game of Drones: Inside the Killer Robot ‘Arms Race’ Where the World’s Five Leading Superpowers are Secretly Preparing for an All-out Futuristic War
The Sun | 25 August 2016
Less than…
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars: An Introduction Programming Manual
Lawful Path | 02 September 2016
Operations Research Technical Manual – TW-SW7905.1
Survivors of Aurora Shooting Ordered to Pay Theater’s $700,000 Legal Bill
Guns America | 01 September 2016
Ordering the plaintiffs to pay Cinemark’s…
10 Mind-blowing Facts about the CERN Large Collider You Need to Know
RT | 01 September 2016
Science – and religion – sounding the…
French Coca-Cola Workers Discover $56Mn Worth of Cocaine in Shipment
RT | 01 September 2016
Produces concentrates for…
4.
Locals get close look at evidence recovery in FBI's Citizen's Academy
Wyoming Tribune-
Arlen Scholl, the FBI's supervisory senior resident agent in Cheyenne, said the goal of the course is to show the public and community leaders what the FBI ...
5.
Amazon plan new show based on Whitey Bulger crime drama “The ...
IrishCentral-
FBI agent John Connolly was the basis of Matt Damon's character, Colin Sullivan. While Scorcese's film was based in Boston, the new Amazon show will be set ...
6.
FBI Octopus
InfoSec is people
CSO Australia-
... Timothy Wallach, the Supervisory Special Agent Cyber Taskforce at the FBI, and Dhanya Thakkar, Vice President of Trend Micro. The first three speakers then ...
7.
Clinton's Excuses Fall Outside the Realm of Plausible Deniability
Hawaii Reporter-
In an unbelievable explanation covered by the Washington Examiner, Hillary Clinton testified under sworn deposition to FBI agents that she believed the ...
8.
FBI: Clinton staff destroyed devices with hammers
WKYT-
CNNs Evan Perez confirms Trump campaign senior adviser Boris Epshteyns claim that Hillary Clinton staffers destroyed her previous mobile devices using ...
9.
CBS Misleadingly Suggests Clinton Emails Marked 'C' Not Actually ...
NewsBusters (blog)
On CBS This Morning on Monday, at the end of a report recalling the notes the FBI released which document that Hillary Clinton claimed not to know that "(C)" ...
10.
One of Hillary Clinton's Laptops Got 'Lost' in The Mail
Townhall-
New revelations from a Friday FBI document dump show a Clinton Foundation laptop containing Hillary Clinton's personal email server archive was "lost" in the ...
11.
FBI Never Got Hillary's 8 State Dept. BlackBerrys
Newsmax
The FBI released the summary to provide context on its recommendation that the Justice Department shouldn't prosecute Clinton or her aides for using the ...
12.
How to investigate the Cheryl Mills claim of attorney-client privilege ...
American Thinker (blog)-
Cheryl Mills sat in on Hillary Clinton's FBI interrogation – a highly irregular procedure, given her status as a material witness and possible suspect.
Hillary Clinton is Shameless
CounterPunch-
Brazen out FBI findings of duplicity, criminality (though the Agency demurs from the charge), inadvertence in destroying evidence, a bottomless well of rotten ...
SEPTEMBER 5, 2016
Hillary Clinton is Shameless
by NORMAN POLLACK
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/05/ ... shameless/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Never has a candidate for President been so solicitous—and transparent about it—of major wealth, what the New York Times (stepping out of character) admits is her appeal to the Ultrarich. In Chozick and Martin’s, “Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich,” Sept. 3, we find the most lopsided appeal to wealth—at the expense of normal campaigning—in US electoral history: estate after estate, party after party, closed doors, the pampered and selfish, coming out of the woodwork, to bask in the love of one who gravitates to them like moths to a light.
Hillary Clinton has no shame. Forget press conferences. Brazen out FBI findings of duplicity, criminality (though the Agency demurs from the charge), inadvertence in destroying evidence, a bottomless well of rotten practice—and this the darling of liberals and so-called progressives. Weighed in the scales of decency and social justice, how is she better than Donald Trump? Both are fascistically-inclined, both have contempt for working people and minorities, both have chauvinistic militarism in their blood. How can there be a choice of the lesser of two evils when each vies for the pinnacle of Evil-ness?
Whore? For $125,000, you get dinner and a meet-the-candidate (some as high as a quarter $M)—and if under 16 years old at the gathering, for $10,000 you can ask the candidate a question. Auction-block politics, except that it is the American people on the slave-block. In this hothouse atmosphere, the host ensures Clinton will not be embarrassed. Why should she be, they’re all bosom buddies, all see eye-to-eye, gatherings of the self-righteous that make a Mafia summit look like a children’s tea party.
What is to be done? Trump is hardly an alternative. The plebeian billionaire is capable of anything. Clinton has disqualified and perjured herself as unworthy of any office. She and her husband, the Bonnie & Clyde of Mammon worship (even Trump, hard to believe, seems to have more character). As for the decisive area of foreign policy, there is little to choose: the sophistication of liberal think-take, national-security genocidal adventurism on one hand, gut-authoritarians, simple-minded zealots on the other. Of the two, the former may well be the more dangerous.
Is the Third Party a valid alternative? To many, yes, but here we still do not have a clean break from the Cold War mentality. (And Bernie Sanders wins a medal as outstanding disappointment with his ersatz Revolution funneled into the Clinton camp.) America is a declining Empire, desperately grasping for straws. Anything to stand on top, its strategic focus on counterrevolution, its political focus on structural-ideological hierarchy to keep the poor at bay and in their place. At some point, the malaise of fascist boredom will possibly solve our problems for us, with the mushroom cloud. There is nothing to indicate a spirit of freedom in the works, except possibly on cultural issues which—everything else the same—do not and cannot translate into authentic democratic feeling.
I may overstate the gloom-and-doom scenario, in which case CounterPunchers might find incentive in promoting fruitful ways of radicalizing America. Thinking small will not do it, whether the commune or political capture of a single town. Power has been centralized at the bayonet-point of perfection, easily able to absorb when not crushing societal dissidence. But the very least one can ask of any human being is not to support either major-party candidate. Militarism is in the air—the stench, overpowering. Ditto, plutocracy. The two go together, and any alternative must tackle them both, shrink and ultimately destroy the cancer metastasizing in the American body politic.
Join the debate on Facebook
Norman Pollack Ph.D. Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at [email protected].
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... ree-zones/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI FINALLY RELEASES TESLA DOCUMENTS ON DEATH RAY, BALL LIGHTNING AND MORE
At long last, the FBI has released its document cache of files containing information on Nikola Tesla, including his inventions like death ray and ball lightning, as well as how the government obtained his notes and memos following his death. Tesla, an inventor and innovator considered at least decades ahead of his time, predicted and helped develop an early prototype of a smartphone, among many other things.
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NASA to reveal ‘surprising’ activity on Jupiter’s moon Europa PhysOrg (Chuck L)
How the FDA Manipulates the Media Scientific American (Randy K). Wowsers.
Twitter Is Said to Be Discussing a Possible Takeover New York Times. Bye bye Twitter.
Syraqistan
Airstrikes, Obfuscation and Propaganda in Syria Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch. Bill B: “Lies and damned lies from both sides.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Exclusive: Probe of leaked U.S. NSA hacking tools examines operative’s ‘mistake’ Reuters. EM: “How dare Reuters try to absolve Vladimir Putin here? Traitors. Make sure to read to the end, to appreciate the tortured logic used by ‘Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ in order to get right back to ‘the Rooskies did it!’”
With U.S. drone rules set, firms race for flight data Reuters (EM)
2016Ted Cruz Will Back Donald Trump For President NPR
Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly Washington Post. Note we featured this theory last week, via American Conservative.
Ted Cruz on Why He Decided to Support Trump (Joe H). God told him.
Your Vote For Jill Stein Is Not A Wasted Vote Mint Press (Judy B). IMHO, 1. voting is important, if nothing else for down-ticket races. 2. Making sure neither major party candidate gets more than 45% of the popular vote, as in cannot possibly claim to have a mandate, is also important, given that we have unacceptable choices. So third party or write-in votes are valuable.
Ex-Cuomo advisers, others charged in New York corruption cases Reuters (EM)
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Moments Before Keith Lamont Scott’s Fatal Shooting Seen in New Video ABC (furzy)
‘Don’t shoot!’ wife tells Charlotte police in video BBC
St. Louis cop accused of planting gun on black man he shot to death Boing Boing (resilc)
Wells Fargo
Not Wells Fargo’s First Rodeo… Adam Levitin, Credit Slips. From a few days ago, still germane.
It’s strike three for Warren Buffett as Wells Fargo faces investigation – MarketWatch
Wells Fargo Whistleblower: “They Are All Riding the Stagecoach to Hell” Truthout (J-LS). Important. Wells had quotas for subprime that also produced fraudulent conduct.
Stumpf Is Lucky’: Comments of the Week American Banker. Hoisting in full:
Stumpf is lucky. A community bank CEO having presided over a fraud proportionally this large would already have his assets frozen, be awaiting prosecution, and have been personally fined a substantial amount of money, not to mention that he would be under an order barring him from ever working at a bank for the rest of his life. Stumpf gets to keep his hundreds of millions and worst case, resign and enjoy his several homes.
Sullivan & Cromwell Hires Top NY Fed Lawyer American Lawyer (Adrien)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/links-92416.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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https://theintercept.com/2016/09/24/cha ... -released/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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https://theintercept.com/2016/09/24/mes ... -continue/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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“Stephen Hawking Wants to Find Aliens Before They Find Us”
September 22nd, 2016 by Kevin
Via: Cnet:
In his new half-hour program “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places” on science-themed subscription service CuriosityStream, the world’s most famous theoretical physicist flies by the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832c in a CGI spaceship as part of his hypothetical dream itinerary for a tour of the universe.
The super-Earth is only 16 light-years away and just the sort of world the Hawking-supported Breakthrough: Listen initiative hopes to scan for signs of alien signals using our most sensitive radio telescopes.
“If intelligent life has evolved (on Gliese 832c), we should be able to hear it,” he says while hovering over the exoplanet in the animated “U.S.S. Hawking.” “One day we might receive a signal from a planet like this, but we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.”
Posted in [???], Elite, False Flag Operations, Social Engineering, UFOs, War
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FBI FINALLY RELEASES TESLA DOCUMENTS ON DEATH RAY, BALL LIGHTNING AND MORE
At long last, the FBI has released its document cache of files containing information on Nikola Tesla, including his inventions like death ray and ball lightning, as well as how the government obtained his notes and memos following his death. Tesla, an inventor and innovator considered at least decades ahead of his time, predicted and helped develop an early prototype of a smartphone, among many other things.
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NASA to reveal ‘surprising’ activity on Jupiter’s moon Europa PhysOrg (Chuck L)
How the FDA Manipulates the Media Scientific American (Randy K). Wowsers.
Twitter Is Said to Be Discussing a Possible Takeover New York Times. Bye bye Twitter.
Syraqistan
Airstrikes, Obfuscation and Propaganda in Syria Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch. Bill B: “Lies and damned lies from both sides.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Exclusive: Probe of leaked U.S. NSA hacking tools examines operative’s ‘mistake’ Reuters. EM: “How dare Reuters try to absolve Vladimir Putin here? Traitors. Make sure to read to the end, to appreciate the tortured logic used by ‘Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ in order to get right back to ‘the Rooskies did it!’”
With U.S. drone rules set, firms race for flight data Reuters (EM)
2016Ted Cruz Will Back Donald Trump For President NPR
Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly Washington Post. Note we featured this theory last week, via American Conservative.
Ted Cruz on Why He Decided to Support Trump (Joe H). God told him.
Your Vote For Jill Stein Is Not A Wasted Vote Mint Press (Judy B). IMHO, 1. voting is important, if nothing else for down-ticket races. 2. Making sure neither major party candidate gets more than 45% of the popular vote, as in cannot possibly claim to have a mandate, is also important, given that we have unacceptable choices. So third party or write-in votes are valuable.
Ex-Cuomo advisers, others charged in New York corruption cases Reuters (EM)
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Moments Before Keith Lamont Scott’s Fatal Shooting Seen in New Video ABC (furzy)
‘Don’t shoot!’ wife tells Charlotte police in video BBC
St. Louis cop accused of planting gun on black man he shot to death Boing Boing (resilc)
Wells Fargo
Not Wells Fargo’s First Rodeo… Adam Levitin, Credit Slips. From a few days ago, still germane.
It’s strike three for Warren Buffett as Wells Fargo faces investigation – MarketWatch
Wells Fargo Whistleblower: “They Are All Riding the Stagecoach to Hell” Truthout (J-LS). Important. Wells had quotas for subprime that also produced fraudulent conduct.
Stumpf Is Lucky’: Comments of the Week American Banker. Hoisting in full:
Stumpf is lucky. A community bank CEO having presided over a fraud proportionally this large would already have his assets frozen, be awaiting prosecution, and have been personally fined a substantial amount of money, not to mention that he would be under an order barring him from ever working at a bank for the rest of his life. Stumpf gets to keep his hundreds of millions and worst case, resign and enjoy his several homes.
Sullivan & Cromwell Hires Top NY Fed Lawyer American Lawyer (Adrien)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/links-92416.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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“Stephen Hawking Wants to Find Aliens Before They Find Us”
September 22nd, 2016 by Kevin
Via: Cnet:
In his new half-hour program “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places” on science-themed subscription service CuriosityStream, the world’s most famous theoretical physicist flies by the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832c in a CGI spaceship as part of his hypothetical dream itinerary for a tour of the universe.
The super-Earth is only 16 light-years away and just the sort of world the Hawking-supported Breakthrough: Listen initiative hopes to scan for signs of alien signals using our most sensitive radio telescopes.
“If intelligent life has evolved (on Gliese 832c), we should be able to hear it,” he says while hovering over the exoplanet in the animated “U.S.S. Hawking.” “One day we might receive a signal from a planet like this, but we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.”
Posted in [???], Elite, False Flag Operations, Social Engineering, UFOs, War
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-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
Ed Tatro is a speaker at this event
He sent me this email
I’M THE LAST SPEAKER–APPROXIMATELY THE SIX HOUR MARK:
This is the 1st 6.5 hrs. of the conference. As you might expect the major issue is with the microphone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxLN-d0D-zA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Judyth Baker presents JFK Conference Live
http://www.youtube.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Please Visit http://JFKconference.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for more information. This streaming video production is FREE –but you can say ‘thank-you’ and help keep it online by going to …
Heat is Online
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Volkswagen plans big changes, betting on electric cars and other new technology
http://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2 ... -encounter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Cambridge police defend sergeant’s actions in video-recorded encounter
By The Boston Globe November 22, 2016
An internal investigation into a Cambridge police sergeant who detained a Dorchester man for allegedly bumping into him found no wrongdoing, the department said in a statement posted online Tuesday.
Responding to a Globe story published Tuesday morning and to video of the incident in Porter Square, the Cambridge Police Department statement said Detective Sergeant Thomas Ahern’s “actions were consistent with his duty obligations.”
Read the complete story at Boston
FBI Presstitutes
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Fighting for Civil Rights: FBI in Mississippi
| Posted: Tue 5:45 PM, Nov 22, 2016 | Updated: Tue 7:02 PM, Nov 22, 2016
JACKSON, Miss. (WTOK) - The FBI has a long history of taking down the bad guys and stopping crime with agents all over the country. But it wasn't always that way. In a special two-part series, Newscenter 11 takes a look at how the FBI in Miss
After assassinating Martin Luther King FBI decides
to diversify.
http://patch.com/texas/houston/houston- ... ial-agents" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Houston FBI Looking For Special Agents
Patch.com-
From the FBI Houston Field Office: Partner with the FBI to help us diversify our Special Agent workforce. Through the Diversity Agent Recruitment (DAR) Program
https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2 ... -hospital/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Martin Luther King survived shooting, was murdered in hospital: an interview with William Pepper and his new book Truth and Shadows - WordPress.com
WordPress.com › truthandshadows › kin...
Sep 3, 2016 - William Pepper with his friend Martin Luther King. ... Known to Ron as “Uncle Clyde,” the high-level FBI official often delivered cash to ...
Montgomery County community calendar, Nov. 24-Dec. 1, 2016
Washington Post
The late FBI agent Steven Carr, who cracked the case, lived in the Damascus area. 3-4:30 p.m. Damascus Library, 9701 Main St., Damascus. 240-773-9444.
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/ ... ml?ref=yfp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
'Model' New Orleans cop had secret life for years as serial sexual predator, police say
NOV 21, 2016 - 10:45 PM (68)
For years, the New Orleans Police Department held Marcellus White out as a model cop. His work mentoring young Iberville housing development residents won him an “Angel Award,” glowing newspaper profiles and the praise of future NOPD Superintendent Eddie Compass.
But lurking beneath the surface, New Orleans police now allege, was a serial sexual predator.
White now stands accused of molesting and assaulting at least four boys over the course of 16 years.
On Monday, he was rebooked on 13 new sex crimes counts, two months after he was first accused of raping a
FBI Octopus
Indian Country Today Media Network
Walter Lamar, Blackfeet/Wichita, is a former FBI special agent, deputy director of BIA law enforcement, and is currently president of Lamar Associates. He said: ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... urder.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The missed opportunities to catch a serial killer: Scotland Yard is under investigation for failing to stop a gay chef who drugged, raped and murdered men he met online
Stephen Port, 41, met young men online before poisoning them
He was today found guilty of murdering four men at his London flat
Scotland Yard admits 'missed opportunities' in catching him
17 officers - including a detective inspector - referred to watchdog
Victim's family said they had to 'force' the police to investigate properly
Police are reviewing 58 other deaths in the capital linked to the drug GHB
PUBLISHED: 05:45 EST, 23 November 2016 | UPDATED: 14:07 EST, 23 November 2016
Stephen Port met his victims on gay hook-up sites before raping or killing them. He was today convicted of four murders, four rapes and four sexual assaults
The Met Police is under investigation for failing to stop the almost identical killings of four young men who were lured to their
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4QrVpUJp6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2885024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Four Texas women known as the "San Antonio 4" were declared innocent Wednesday after they served nearly 15 years for child sex crimes they did not commit.
The majority opinion issued by Texas Court of Criminal Appeals states that Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera and Anna Vasquez did not sexually assault two young girls, and as a result the four women could become eligible for millions of dollars in state compensation.
"We can't believe it!" Vasquez said, reacting to the ruling on Wednesday, according to News 4 San Antonio.
"It's going to be a very good Thanksgiving for all four of them," said lawyer Mike Ware of the the Innocence Project. "The court has issued a very well-reasoned and excellent opinion. Really a courageous opinion."
Woman could be freed from prison after 16 years as niece recants sexual assault claim
Ware said he will ask the court to quickly issue a formal mandate, after which the women would be able to file a claim that could pay each of them $80,000 for each year spent in prison.
The "San Antonio 4" were convicted in 1998 after two of Ramirez's nieces, ages 7 and 9, accused them of sexually assaulting and threatening to kill them four years earlier. Ramirez was sentenced to at least 37 years in prison, and the other three received 15 years.
Three of
http://www.boston.com/news/crime/2016/1 ... -probation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Massachusetts trooper convicted of punching girlfriend gets probation
November 23, 2016
SALEM, Mass. — A suspended Massachusetts state trooper who was convicted of punching his former girlfriend in the head has received probation.
A Salem Superior Court jury convicted Thomas Downs of assault and battery Tuesday after a five-day trial.
Prosecutors said the victim was attempting to leave the Salisbury home she shared with Downs on Feb. 22, 2015, when he blocked her car from leaving and punched her in the head several times. She suffered multiple contusions.
Downs was acquitted of a suffocation
http://touch.orlandosentinel.com/#secti ... -91964537/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Federal prosecutors form new unit aimed at reducing violent crime
Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith speaks before a Black Lives Matter march and rally in Sanford on Sunday, July 17, 2016. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)
Stephanie Allen, Orlando Sentinel
2:05 pm, November 23, 2016
When several investigators approached Sanford police Chief Cecil Smith earlier this year about violent activity they were seeing in the city, the veteran law enforcement officer had an idea about who might be able to help stop it: The feds.
He couldn't have predicted, though, that his idea would eventually prompt the U.S. Attorney's Office in Orlando to create a special prosecution unit aimed at ridding Central Florida of violent criminals.
Or that it would lead to partnerships for other local law enforcement agencies throughout the area.
Smith said his investigators had noticed there were a few small groups of people involved in the majority of violent crimes in Sanford. Some had been arrested before, but they rarely stayed off the streets for long.
"One of the big problems we were having was getting the prosecutions done and getting the longer jail sentences," Smith said.
Smith needed help getting the most dangerous suspects out of the community.
So, he reached out to Roger Handberg, chief assistant U.S. Attorney in Orlando, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about working together on some of the cases that might involve a federal crime. He then contacted Seminole-Brevard State Attorney Phil Archer's office and everyone decided it'd be in their best interests to start working together.
Several months and 65 arrests later, Sanford officers had recovered 56 guns and the U.S. Attorney's Office had charged four people with federal gun crimes. The other 61 suspects faced various state charges and as of earlier this month, more than 20 have already been sentenced.
Handberg said the partnership was working so well it only seemed logical to keep it going, and to open it up to other agencies in Central Florida. He assigned four prosecutors — unofficially dubbed the "gun unit" — to focus on crimes involving firearms and especially dangerous criminals.
In May, the unit reached out the Orange County Sheriff's Office and Orlando Police Department about partnering, and during the past few months have been working on cases with Volusia County officials. Handberg said the number of gun-crime prosecutions his office has done this year is already up more than 50 percent over last year.
'Long-term problem' arrested
Jesse Ingram has been arrested more than 40 times in Florida on charges ranging from aggravated assault with a weapon to shooting into a vehicle, but has spent no more than three years in state prison after a burglary arrest in the early 2000s, records show.
The 34-year-old Apopka resident is a registered felon and accused street gang leader who has several times been accused of illegally carrying a weapon, Orange County court records show. More than once, though, including after an arrest in January 2015 when he was accused of threatening and trying to bribe a witness into not testifying against him, prosecutors ended up dropping the charges.
"Over 40 times, he had been in-and-out of the state system and every time he would be back," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Justin Crenshaw said. "...He was a real long-term problem for Apopka PD."
And, he's the exact type of person Crenshaw said officials are hoping the gun unit will remove from the community.
Orange County sheriff's deputies arrested Ingram in August
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2884929" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
KING: Black teen James Means killed by remorseless white man
Wednesday, November 23, 2016, 12:05 PM
James Means, A 15-Year-Old Teen Shot And Killed At A Dollar General Store
NY Daily News
James Means.
You will know this name. Tragically, it now belongs in the ever-increasing roll call of unarmed black victims of racial violence.
On this past Monday evening, outside of a Dollar General Store in Charleston, West Virginia, 15-year-old James Means, was shot and killed by William Ronald Pulliam, 62, police said.
Means, like Emmett Till and Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin before him, did nothing to ever even warrant a confrontation from Pulliam. Witnesses claim that what set Pulliam off was that Means accidentally bumped into him while entering the store.
KING: Oregon white supremacist chases down, kills black teen
James Means, 15, was shot and killed on Monday. (HANDOUT)
After Pulliam left the store, the two exchanged words a second time, and Pulliam shot the teen twice in the abdomen, leaving him to die, then proceeded to go home, eat dinner, then go hang out at a friend's house, according to a criminal complaint.
In 2012, when Michael Dunn shot and killed teenager Jordan Davis because the music in his friend's car was too loud, he did virtually the same thing. Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, after firing 10 rounds into the car full of teenagers, went back to his hotel room, watched television, ordere
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2773565" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
White supremist runs down, kills black teen
SHAUN KING
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, September 1, 2016, 12:27 A
http://twitchy.com/sd-3133/2016/11/23/n ... -her-file/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
‘Not lawful’: Sharyl Attkisson wants to know why FBI won’t let her see her file
Posted at 7:31 pm on November 23, 2016 by Sarah D.
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
@SharylAttkisson You HAVE an FBI file?
— Mark Overby (@Mark_Overby) November 24, 2016
Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is claiming that the FBI won’t give her access to the file they’ve apparently got on her — and she’s
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jud ... -1.2885331" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A judge tossed a lawsuit Thursday brought by an Upper West Side high school teacher who said she was fired for teaching her class about the Central Park Five.
English teacher Jeena Lee-Walker had said in her suit that administrators at High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry railroaded her after she talked to students about the controversial case.
Her bosses asked the lessons on the Central Park Five should be more “balanced” and worried they could “rile up” black students” and cause “riots,” she alleged in her suit.
But Manhattan Federal Judge John Koeltl ruled that Lee-Walker’s suit failed on legal grounds because her speech in the classroom was not protected by the First Amendment.
“The plaintiff’s speech was the speech of a public employee pursuant to her official duties,” Koeltl wrote.
“Although the plaintif
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2885313" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
La. politician in sexting scandal with teen says he is not gay
Wednesday, November 23, 2016, 3:31 PM
FOX 8 WVUE New Orleans News, Weather, Sports, Social
The Louisiana politician who refused to step down following a sexting scandal with a 17-year-old boy admits he made a "stupid" mistake, but insists that there was no sexual contact and that he is not gay.
Jefferson Parish President Michael Yenni, who is married, told WVUE in an extensive interview that texting with the teen was "one of the stupidest decisions that I've ever made."
"This is a mistake that I made that I shouldn't have done, being a married man, being a father and being an elected official," he told reporter Lee Zurik.
Yenni, a Republican, was mayor of Kenner when the improper behavior took place. The FBI is investigating the texts, and officials in the area have called for Yenni to resign.
La. politician refuses to resign despite teen sexting scandal
Michael Yenni admits texting with 17-year-old boy was "stupid." (ELECTMIKEYENNI.COM)
The teen told WWL that he met Yenni at a school function, and then the pol began visiting him where he worked and gave him designer underwear. The teen said that Yenni kissed him.
When asked by Zurik if he meant what he wrote to the teen, Yenni answered "probably not, because nothing was acted upon."
"You know, there was ... there was no sex, you know?" Yenni told Zurik. "Everybody thinks, oh, something sexual happened. But
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/d ... -1.2881474" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI coverup of
JFK assassination
BY MARK SHAW
DAILY NEWS CONTRIBUTOR Monday, November 21, 2016, 12:00 PM
A very wise man once wrote, "The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
This "wise man" was none other than John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. And though he wasn't talking about his own death, he could have been, based on the mythical dialogue that was perpetuated to the American public within a few short days after he died on Nov. 22, 1963.
Distortions of what truly happened permeated instantly after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover first advocated the "Oswald Alone" theory when he called White House aide Walter Jenkins and told him, "The thing I am most concerned about and so is (Assistant Attorney General) Mr. Katzenbach is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."
Hoover then instructed aide Clyde Tolson to "prepare a memorandum to the attorney general setting out the evidence that Oswald was responsible for the shooting that killed the president."
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963
Soon Hoover's edict was conveyed to the American people and the myth spread far and wide despite the presence of a viable motive: Lee Harvey Oswald had singlehandedly shot and killed JFK.
And, yes, the American people bought that garble and thus began decades of belief/denial that any other potential existed for not one
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MOTHERBOARD
The FBI Hacked Over 8,000 Computers In 120 Countries Based on One Warrant
November 22, 2016 // 06:18 PM EST
In January, Motherboard reported on the FBI's “unprecedented” hacking operation, in which the agency, using a single warrant, deployed malware to over one thousand alleged visitors of a dark web child pornography site. Now, it has emerged that the campaign was actually an order of magnitude larger.
In all, the FBI obtained over 8,000 IP addresses, and hacked computers in 120 different countries, according to a transcript from a recent evidentiary hearing in a related case.
The figures illustrate the largest ever known law enforcement hacking campaign to date, and starkly demonstrate what the future of policing crime on the dark web may look like. This news comes as the US is preparing to usher in changes that would allow magistrate judges to authorize the mass hacking of computers, wherever in the world they may be located.
“We have never, in our nation's history as far as I can tell, seen a warrant so utterly sweeping,” federal public defender Colin Fieman said in a hearing at the end of October, according to the transcript. Fieman is representing several defendants in affected cases.
Those cases revolve around the FBI's investigation into dark web child pornography site Playpen. In February 2015, the FBI seized the site, but instead of shutting it down, the agency ran Playpen from a government server for 13 days. However, even though they had administrative control of the site, investigators were unable to see the real IP address of Playpen's visitors, because users typically connected to it through the Tor network.
In order to circumvent that anonymity, the FBI deployed what it calls a network investigative technique (NIT), or a piece of malware. That malware, which included a Tor Browser exploit, broke into the computer of anyone who visited certain child pornography threads on Playpen. It then sent the suspect's real IP address back to the FBI.
According to court filings, the FBI obtained over 1,000 IP addresses of alleged US-based users. Over the past year, Motherboard has also found that the FBI hacked computers in Australia, Austria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Greece, and likely the UK, Turkey, and Norway too.
But, those are only a tiny handful of countries in which the FBI was hacking computers. According to the newly published transcript, the FBI hacked computers in at least 120 countries.
“The fact that a single ma
Here are some reasons why taxpayer funded FBI agents ran child porn sites
FBI supervisor Edward Rodgers ran the Child Abuse program at the
FBI.
He started having sex with his 3 daughters
when they were 2 years old.
see link for full story
CNN exclusive: FBI misconduct reveals sex, lies and videotape
By Scott Zamost and Kyra Phillips, CNN Special Investigations Unit
January 27, 2011
Washington (CNN) -- An FBI employee shared confidential information with his girlfriend, who was a news reporter, then later threatened to release a sex tape the two had made.
A supervisor watched pornographic videos in his office during work hours while "satisfying himself."
And an employee in a "leadership position" misused a government database to check on two friends who were exotic dancers and allowed them into an FBI office after hours.
These are among confidential summaries of FBI disciplinary reports obtained by CNN, which describe misconduct by agency supervisors, agents and other employees over the last three years
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/27/siu.fb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... index.html
Read the FBI documents obtained by CNN
-- An employee had "a sexual relationship with a source" over seven months. The punishment was a 40-day suspension.
-- The supervisor who viewed "pornographic movies in the office while sexually satisfying himself" during work hours received a 35-day suspension.
-- The employee in a "leadership position" who misused a "government database to conduct name checks on two friends who were foreign nationals employed as exotic dancers" and "brought the two friends into FBI space after-hours without proper authorization" received a 23-day suspension. The same employee had been previously suspended for misusing a government database.
-- An employee who was drunk "exploited his FBI employment at a strip club," falsely claiming he was "conducting an official investigation." His punishment was a 30-day suspension.
-- And an employee conducted "unauthorized searches on FBI databases" for "information on public celebrities the employee thought were 'hot'" received a 30-day suspension.
see link for full story
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... alers.html
February 22, 2013
FBI agents caught sexting and dating drug dealers
Dating drug dealers, harassing ex-boyfriends with naked pictures, and pointing guns at pet dogs: these were just a few of the offences committed recently by serving FBI agents, according to internal documents.
The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.
Disciplinary files from the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility record an extraordinary range of transgressions that reveal the chaotic personal lives of some of America's top law enforcers.
One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress's house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent "drunk and uncooperative" and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.
A woman e-mailed a "nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend's wife" and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.
see link for full story
http://www.wgrz.com/news/article/192104" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ent-Busted
Buffalo FBI Agent Busted
Dec 10, 2012
BUFFALO, NY - A Special Agent working in the Buffalo office of the FBI is due in Eden Town Court later this month, after being arrested by New York State Police last Friday night, charged with exposing himself to a fellow motorist on the New York State Thruway.
State Police Lt. David Denz confirmed for WGRZ-TV that John A. Yervelli Jr., 48, of Lakeview, was charged with Public Lewdness, a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail.
According to Denz, a truck driver from central New York was traveling in the right lane while east bound on the Thruway near mile marker 442, between Exits 57 and 57A, when he noticed a grey minivan pull alongside him in the passing lane.
The trucker told police that when he looked down, he noticed the driver of the other vehicle (who had turned his dome light on) was not wearing pants.
"At that point the complainant stated that the driver of the minivan was exposing himself and making lewd gestures," Denz told 2 On Your Side.
Denz says the trucker called police, who then intercepted the minivan at the Hamburg toll plaza, where the trucker also went to identify Yervelli. Denz said it appeared Yervelli was wearing pants when he was pulled over.
"He denied exposing himself," Denz told Channel 2, but added that "inconsistencies" in the account given by Agent Yervelli lead State Police to file charges.
A source says Yervelli insisted to the trooper who pulled him over that he was attempting to relieve himself into a bottle while he was driving. However, the location where he said that occurred was within a few miles (or minutes) of the exit he was headed to, and even closer to a Thruway rest stop.
"I don't want to give you too many specifics as far as what he stated, but he made statements that would lead you to believe that the truck driver's story was credible," Denz said.
Child Porn Probe Leads To FBI Headquarters
Target claims inquiry is just a “misunderstanding”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... adquarters
JANUARY 5 2011--The government’s pursuit of suspects trafficking in child pornography recently led federal agents to a familiar address--the FBI’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, where a bureau official is the subject of an ongoing criminal probe, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The investigation by the Department of Justice’s inspector general is focusing on FBI employee Joseph Bonsuk’s receipt of nearly 80 illicit images that were e-mailed to him by an Illinois sex offender whose rap sheet includes felony convictions for bank robbery and solicitation of a minor.
Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader
January 3, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Conn. --Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to the death of his accuser.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Form" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... -86217.php
Former Scout leader, FBI agent indicted on child sex charges
News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)
Saturday, February 4, 2006
NEW HAVEN (AP) - A retired FBI agent was indicted Friday on federal child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested Friday. The federal grand jury indictment accuses Hutton of enticing a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.
"It's obviously devastating. He was an FBI agent in this district and was reputed in this district," defense attorney Hugh Keefe said.
"The people who worked with him in the U.S. attorney's office and FBI respected him."
Keefe said the investigation has been going on for years. He would not discuss the details of the case or how the allegations surfaced.
Investigators asked anyone who knows anything about the case to call the FBI. U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said that's standard practice whenever there might be more victims.
"In any case that's a concern," O'Connor said. "Whether that's the situation here I can't say."
If convicted on all four charges, Hutton faces up to 30 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
Hutton was released on a $200,00 bond. He may not own any firearms or have any unsupervised contact with children. He was also ordered to stay away from playgrounds, schools, arcades or anywhere children congregate.
http://www.headwatersproductions.com/pr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... icle5.html
Edward Rodgers was in charge of investigating cases of Child Abuse at the FBI
THE DENVER POST - Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse
By Howard Prankratz
Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer
Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.
The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.
Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.
http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/FormerL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ntArrested
Local attorney arrested
On child indecency accusations
Updated: Wednesday, 22 Apr 2009, 1:33 PM CDT
Published : Monday, 20 Apr 2009,
MOBILE, Ala. - Mobile Police arrested 52-year-old Phillip Kent Baxley on child indecency charges. Baxley is a local attorney in Mobile, but he's also a former coach and acting president for the Mobile Soccer Club.
"I'm surprised to hear it," said Mobile Soccer Club Director, Mohammed Elzare. "He's a former FBI agent and attorney. So we're definitely saddened to hear this."
Baxley was arrested at his Dauphin Street office on a fugitive felony warrant out of Harris County, Texas.
Texas police officers say Baxley was involved in an incident with a nine-year-old girl in 2004.
Investigators say it happened at a family member's house in a Houston suburb, but the girl waited some time before saying anything.
"When the victim, the nine-year-old made the outcry she was interviewed in another county and all of the information was forwarded to us and the investigation went from there," said Lt. Wade Conner with the Deer Park, Texas Police Department.
Mobile Soccer Club Board Members say they were blind-sided by the news on Monday. For now, the board likely plans to distance itself from Baxley.
"Stopping ties until this situation is resolved and hopefully it comes out to a good outcome," said Elzare.
But Texas investigators are confident the charges will stick, despite Baxley's background. "If they're a pedophile then we deal with them all the same," said Wade. "It doesn't matter what they do for a living."
Baxley is locked up in the Mobile County Jail. That's where he'll stay until he's extradited to Texas.
FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/was" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... hief_x.htm
Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer
https://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forum" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 1077052156
WASHINGTON (AP) - The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.
John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.
Monday August 8, 2005 Longtime FBI agent sentenced to prison on child porn count
also see http://www.policeone.com/news/113935-Lo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... hild-Porn/
BOISE, Idaho- A longtime FBI agent who helped arrest infamous outlaw Claude Dallas has been sentenced to a year in prison for possessing child pornography.
William Buie, 64, was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty in March. Buie told authorities that he learned to access child pornography Web sites while attending a seminar on preventing child exploitation in 2000 or 2001.
February 22, 2007
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 007/262383
Ex-FBI man gets 7 years for child sex
Former FBI analyst sentenced in child sex case
A 17-year veteran of the FBI will serve seven years in prison for having sexual relations with a young girl in Spotsylvania County, a judge ruled yesterday.
Anthony John Lesko, 44, entered an Alford plea yesterday in Spotsylvania Circuit Court to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child.
Lesko, who later moved to Jacksonville, Fla., worked as an intelligence analyst at the FBI for 17 years, according to his attorney, James A. Carter II. He is a major in the U.S. Army Reserves and has received numerous military awards.
An Alford plea means Lesko doesn't admit guilt but believes there is enough evidence for a conviction. Under the terms of the plea, he was sentenced to seven years in prison with another 15 years suspended.
Lesko engaged in a sex act with a girl, 9 and 10 at the time, at least nine times in 2003-2004, according to evidence put forth by Spotsylvania Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely.
The girl told a member of the Spotsylvania Department of Social Services about the activity in February 2004, according to the evidence. Lesko at first denied the allegations, but later spoke with a U.S. Navy counselor about them.
Lesko told the counselor that he was the victim of the sexual assault; he said the girl initiated the contact, according to the plea. Lesko entered the plea partly to spare the girl the pain of a trial, his attorney said.
on for 12 months after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.
William Buie, 64, of Boise, most recently worked as an investigator for the Idaho attorney general's office.
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. ... _pris.html
May 25, 2007
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
Posted by, Marissa Pasquet KOLD News 13 News Editor
FBI Special Agent Ryan Seese, 34, is facing sex offense charges after a cleaning woman said she found him masturbating in a women's lavatory on campus, according to a University of Arizona police spokesman.
FBI Workers Suspected of Secretly Taping Teens in Dressing Room
April 20, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517222,00.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall.
The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday.
see link for full story
http://fox59.com/2013/04/10/former-fbi-" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... y-charges/
April 9, 2013
Former FBI agent files petition to enter guilty plea for child pornography charges
A local former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent arrested on child pornography charges filed a petition to enter a guilty plea.
Donald Sachtleben was arrested in May 2012, following an investigation into the distribution of child pornography. Authorities said they were able to trace online activity back to Sachtleben’s Carmel home.
According to court documents, Sachtleben hid behind the email ‘[email protected]’ and openly traded child porn. In one email he attached nine images of child pornography and child erotica and wrote:
“Saw your profile… Hope you like these and can send me some of (y)ours. I have even better ones if you like.”
Police obtained a search warrant on May 3. During an initial forensic examination of Sachtleben’s laptop computer, approximately 30 images and video files containing child pornography were reportedly discovered.
Former top FBI agent charged with child porn distribution
By Bill Mears, CNN
May 15, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/15/justice/e" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... index.html
(CNN) -- A former supervisory FBI agent has been arrested and jailed on child pornography charges.
Donald Sachtleben was taken into custody and charged Monday after a nationwide undercover investigation of illegal child porn images traded over the Internet.
A federal complaint alleges 30 graphic images and video were found on Sachtleben's laptop computer late last week when FBI agents searched his home, about 23 miles north of Indianapolis.
Sachtleben is currently an Oklahoma State University visiting professor, according to his online resume. He is director of training at the school's Center for Improvised Explosives, but all references to his work have now been removed from the university's website. There was no indication from the school as to whether it had suspended him. Calls to the university and his Indianapolis attorneys were not immediately returned.
He had been an FBI special agent from 1983 to 2008, serving as a bomb technician. He worked on the Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber investigations, according to his university biography.
A separate LinkedIn profile filled out by Sachtleben says he is an "accomplished investigator with more than 25 years of experience in FBI major case management, counter terrorism investigations, bombing prevention, post blast investigations and public speaking."
FBI agent arrested on child sexual assault charge
Associated Press - January 15, 2008 6:14 PM ET
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_7978377" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) - An FBI agent is under arrest in Pueblo for investigation of sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust.
Authorities say 53-year-old David Allan Johnson is being held in the Pueblo County jail today on a $100,000 bail.
Former Great Falls FBI agent sentenced on child sex charges
Jan 23, 2008
A man from Great Falls who's accused of sexually assaulting five underage girls will be spending the next 10 years behind bars.
Stanley Perkins, 64, changed his plea to guilty after police began investigating him for child molestation in August 2006.
The former educator, who also served two years as an FBI agent, was sentenced on one count of felony sexual assault.
see link for full story
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ormer.html
Jail for former FBI worker from Va.
Washington Post Editors
A 65-year-old former FBI employee from Prince William County was sentenced to nearly four years in prison Friday for possessing child pornography.
Samuel I. Kaplan, of Gainesville, who pleaded guilty June 2 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, was sentenced to 46 months behind bars.
Kaplan was an information technology program manager at an FBI facility in Chantilly when authorities discovered that he had used the FBI's computer network to "facilitate sexually explict communications," the Justice Department said.
Investigators said they later found 10 to 20 images on Kaplan's home computer showing juveniles involved in sex acts.
http://franklincoverup.com/index.php?op" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... &Itemid=26
Ex-FBI agent gets 2 1/2 years for assault on marshal
A federal judge today sentenced retired FBI special agent Gary L. John
to 2 ½ years in prison for assaulting a U.S. marshal trying to place him
under arrest.
John, formerly of 110 Post Rd., Westerly, had been on the lam for two
months, when U.S. marshals working with Rhode Island Sheriffs
Department, tracked him to Stratford, Conn., in December 2005. He was
wanted in Rhode Island at the time for allegedly violating orders
barring him from contacting his ex-wife and for failing to appear in
court.
see link for full story
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... -fbi-agent
FBI agent convicted of daughters' abuse
July 11, 1993|By Traci A. Johnson | Traci A. Johnson,Staff Writer
An FBI agent who lives in Carroll County has been convicted of sexually abusing his daughters over a 14-year period.
The agent, as part of an agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty Friday before Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold to two counts of second-degree sexual offense and two counts of child abuse.
The agent's name is being withheld to protect the privacy of the victims.
In exchange for the agent's plea, the state dropped 18 other counts against him, ordered a presentence investigation and agreed to let him remain free on $125,000 bond pending sentencing Sept. 10.
The agent was suspended from the FBI's Baltimore field office when he was arrested in December.
The original indictment also charged the man with fondling his oldest daughter's friend several years ago when the girl had slept over at the agent's home.
An investigation began after one of the man's daughters told a county child-abuse investigator of at least five incidents of molestation from 1980 to 1987, court documents said.
The victims said their father performed sexual acts ranging from fondling to intercourse beginning when each was preschool age. The abuse lasted until the girls were in their early teens, said Assistant State's Attorney Kathi Hill in a statement of facts presented in court.
In February, defense attorney John E. Harris Sr. tried unsuccessfully to have the case moved out of Carroll on the grounds that pretrial publicity had damaged the defendant's chance for a fair trial.
Ms. Hill said the state will recommend a sentence of 35 years in state prison, with 15 years suspended.
Although Ms. Hill said she once argued that the agent should be incarcerated until his trial, she said Friday she was not worried about whether he will return for his sentencing.
"Even if he'd take a walk, when he eventually comes back he wouldn't have to be tried again. He'd just be sentenced," Ms. Hill said. "There's not so much fear on our part, because we don't have to prove the case again."
He sent me this email
I’M THE LAST SPEAKER–APPROXIMATELY THE SIX HOUR MARK:
This is the 1st 6.5 hrs. of the conference. As you might expect the major issue is with the microphone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxLN-d0D-zA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Judyth Baker presents JFK Conference Live
http://www.youtube.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Please Visit http://JFKconference.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for more information. This streaming video production is FREE –but you can say ‘thank-you’ and help keep it online by going to …
Heat is Online
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Volkswagen plans big changes, betting on electric cars and other new technology
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Cambridge police defend sergeant’s actions in video-recorded encounter
By The Boston Globe November 22, 2016
An internal investigation into a Cambridge police sergeant who detained a Dorchester man for allegedly bumping into him found no wrongdoing, the department said in a statement posted online Tuesday.
Responding to a Globe story published Tuesday morning and to video of the incident in Porter Square, the Cambridge Police Department statement said Detective Sergeant Thomas Ahern’s “actions were consistent with his duty obligations.”
Read the complete story at Boston
FBI Presstitutes
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Fighting for Civil Rights: FBI in Mississippi
| Posted: Tue 5:45 PM, Nov 22, 2016 | Updated: Tue 7:02 PM, Nov 22, 2016
JACKSON, Miss. (WTOK) - The FBI has a long history of taking down the bad guys and stopping crime with agents all over the country. But it wasn't always that way. In a special two-part series, Newscenter 11 takes a look at how the FBI in Miss
After assassinating Martin Luther King FBI decides
to diversify.
http://patch.com/texas/houston/houston- ... ial-agents" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Houston FBI Looking For Special Agents
Patch.com-
From the FBI Houston Field Office: Partner with the FBI to help us diversify our Special Agent workforce. Through the Diversity Agent Recruitment (DAR) Program
https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2 ... -hospital/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Martin Luther King survived shooting, was murdered in hospital: an interview with William Pepper and his new book Truth and Shadows - WordPress.com
WordPress.com › truthandshadows › kin...
Sep 3, 2016 - William Pepper with his friend Martin Luther King. ... Known to Ron as “Uncle Clyde,” the high-level FBI official often delivered cash to ...
Montgomery County community calendar, Nov. 24-Dec. 1, 2016
Washington Post
The late FBI agent Steven Carr, who cracked the case, lived in the Damascus area. 3-4:30 p.m. Damascus Library, 9701 Main St., Damascus. 240-773-9444.
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/ ... ml?ref=yfp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
'Model' New Orleans cop had secret life for years as serial sexual predator, police say
NOV 21, 2016 - 10:45 PM (68)
For years, the New Orleans Police Department held Marcellus White out as a model cop. His work mentoring young Iberville housing development residents won him an “Angel Award,” glowing newspaper profiles and the praise of future NOPD Superintendent Eddie Compass.
But lurking beneath the surface, New Orleans police now allege, was a serial sexual predator.
White now stands accused of molesting and assaulting at least four boys over the course of 16 years.
On Monday, he was rebooked on 13 new sex crimes counts, two months after he was first accused of raping a
FBI Octopus
Indian Country Today Media Network
Walter Lamar, Blackfeet/Wichita, is a former FBI special agent, deputy director of BIA law enforcement, and is currently president of Lamar Associates. He said: ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... urder.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The missed opportunities to catch a serial killer: Scotland Yard is under investigation for failing to stop a gay chef who drugged, raped and murdered men he met online
Stephen Port, 41, met young men online before poisoning them
He was today found guilty of murdering four men at his London flat
Scotland Yard admits 'missed opportunities' in catching him
17 officers - including a detective inspector - referred to watchdog
Victim's family said they had to 'force' the police to investigate properly
Police are reviewing 58 other deaths in the capital linked to the drug GHB
PUBLISHED: 05:45 EST, 23 November 2016 | UPDATED: 14:07 EST, 23 November 2016
Stephen Port met his victims on gay hook-up sites before raping or killing them. He was today convicted of four murders, four rapes and four sexual assaults
The Met Police is under investigation for failing to stop the almost identical killings of four young men who were lured to their
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4QrVpUJp6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2885024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Four Texas women known as the "San Antonio 4" were declared innocent Wednesday after they served nearly 15 years for child sex crimes they did not commit.
The majority opinion issued by Texas Court of Criminal Appeals states that Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera and Anna Vasquez did not sexually assault two young girls, and as a result the four women could become eligible for millions of dollars in state compensation.
"We can't believe it!" Vasquez said, reacting to the ruling on Wednesday, according to News 4 San Antonio.
"It's going to be a very good Thanksgiving for all four of them," said lawyer Mike Ware of the the Innocence Project. "The court has issued a very well-reasoned and excellent opinion. Really a courageous opinion."
Woman could be freed from prison after 16 years as niece recants sexual assault claim
Ware said he will ask the court to quickly issue a formal mandate, after which the women would be able to file a claim that could pay each of them $80,000 for each year spent in prison.
The "San Antonio 4" were convicted in 1998 after two of Ramirez's nieces, ages 7 and 9, accused them of sexually assaulting and threatening to kill them four years earlier. Ramirez was sentenced to at least 37 years in prison, and the other three received 15 years.
Three of
http://www.boston.com/news/crime/2016/1 ... -probation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Massachusetts trooper convicted of punching girlfriend gets probation
November 23, 2016
SALEM, Mass. — A suspended Massachusetts state trooper who was convicted of punching his former girlfriend in the head has received probation.
A Salem Superior Court jury convicted Thomas Downs of assault and battery Tuesday after a five-day trial.
Prosecutors said the victim was attempting to leave the Salisbury home she shared with Downs on Feb. 22, 2015, when he blocked her car from leaving and punched her in the head several times. She suffered multiple contusions.
Downs was acquitted of a suffocation
http://touch.orlandosentinel.com/#secti ... -91964537/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Federal prosecutors form new unit aimed at reducing violent crime
Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith speaks before a Black Lives Matter march and rally in Sanford on Sunday, July 17, 2016. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)
Stephanie Allen, Orlando Sentinel
2:05 pm, November 23, 2016
When several investigators approached Sanford police Chief Cecil Smith earlier this year about violent activity they were seeing in the city, the veteran law enforcement officer had an idea about who might be able to help stop it: The feds.
He couldn't have predicted, though, that his idea would eventually prompt the U.S. Attorney's Office in Orlando to create a special prosecution unit aimed at ridding Central Florida of violent criminals.
Or that it would lead to partnerships for other local law enforcement agencies throughout the area.
Smith said his investigators had noticed there were a few small groups of people involved in the majority of violent crimes in Sanford. Some had been arrested before, but they rarely stayed off the streets for long.
"One of the big problems we were having was getting the prosecutions done and getting the longer jail sentences," Smith said.
Smith needed help getting the most dangerous suspects out of the community.
So, he reached out to Roger Handberg, chief assistant U.S. Attorney in Orlando, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about working together on some of the cases that might involve a federal crime. He then contacted Seminole-Brevard State Attorney Phil Archer's office and everyone decided it'd be in their best interests to start working together.
Several months and 65 arrests later, Sanford officers had recovered 56 guns and the U.S. Attorney's Office had charged four people with federal gun crimes. The other 61 suspects faced various state charges and as of earlier this month, more than 20 have already been sentenced.
Handberg said the partnership was working so well it only seemed logical to keep it going, and to open it up to other agencies in Central Florida. He assigned four prosecutors — unofficially dubbed the "gun unit" — to focus on crimes involving firearms and especially dangerous criminals.
In May, the unit reached out the Orange County Sheriff's Office and Orlando Police Department about partnering, and during the past few months have been working on cases with Volusia County officials. Handberg said the number of gun-crime prosecutions his office has done this year is already up more than 50 percent over last year.
'Long-term problem' arrested
Jesse Ingram has been arrested more than 40 times in Florida on charges ranging from aggravated assault with a weapon to shooting into a vehicle, but has spent no more than three years in state prison after a burglary arrest in the early 2000s, records show.
The 34-year-old Apopka resident is a registered felon and accused street gang leader who has several times been accused of illegally carrying a weapon, Orange County court records show. More than once, though, including after an arrest in January 2015 when he was accused of threatening and trying to bribe a witness into not testifying against him, prosecutors ended up dropping the charges.
"Over 40 times, he had been in-and-out of the state system and every time he would be back," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Justin Crenshaw said. "...He was a real long-term problem for Apopka PD."
And, he's the exact type of person Crenshaw said officials are hoping the gun unit will remove from the community.
Orange County sheriff's deputies arrested Ingram in August
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2884929" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
KING: Black teen James Means killed by remorseless white man
Wednesday, November 23, 2016, 12:05 PM
James Means, A 15-Year-Old Teen Shot And Killed At A Dollar General Store
NY Daily News
James Means.
You will know this name. Tragically, it now belongs in the ever-increasing roll call of unarmed black victims of racial violence.
On this past Monday evening, outside of a Dollar General Store in Charleston, West Virginia, 15-year-old James Means, was shot and killed by William Ronald Pulliam, 62, police said.
Means, like Emmett Till and Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin before him, did nothing to ever even warrant a confrontation from Pulliam. Witnesses claim that what set Pulliam off was that Means accidentally bumped into him while entering the store.
KING: Oregon white supremacist chases down, kills black teen
James Means, 15, was shot and killed on Monday. (HANDOUT)
After Pulliam left the store, the two exchanged words a second time, and Pulliam shot the teen twice in the abdomen, leaving him to die, then proceeded to go home, eat dinner, then go hang out at a friend's house, according to a criminal complaint.
In 2012, when Michael Dunn shot and killed teenager Jordan Davis because the music in his friend's car was too loud, he did virtually the same thing. Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, after firing 10 rounds into the car full of teenagers, went back to his hotel room, watched television, ordere
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2773565" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
White supremist runs down, kills black teen
SHAUN KING
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, September 1, 2016, 12:27 A
http://twitchy.com/sd-3133/2016/11/23/n ... -her-file/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
‘Not lawful’: Sharyl Attkisson wants to know why FBI won’t let her see her file
Posted at 7:31 pm on November 23, 2016 by Sarah D.
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
@SharylAttkisson You HAVE an FBI file?
— Mark Overby (@Mark_Overby) November 24, 2016
Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is claiming that the FBI won’t give her access to the file they’ve apparently got on her — and she’s
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jud ... -1.2885331" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A judge tossed a lawsuit Thursday brought by an Upper West Side high school teacher who said she was fired for teaching her class about the Central Park Five.
English teacher Jeena Lee-Walker had said in her suit that administrators at High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry railroaded her after she talked to students about the controversial case.
Her bosses asked the lessons on the Central Park Five should be more “balanced” and worried they could “rile up” black students” and cause “riots,” she alleged in her suit.
But Manhattan Federal Judge John Koeltl ruled that Lee-Walker’s suit failed on legal grounds because her speech in the classroom was not protected by the First Amendment.
“The plaintiff’s speech was the speech of a public employee pursuant to her official duties,” Koeltl wrote.
“Although the plaintif
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2885313" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
La. politician in sexting scandal with teen says he is not gay
Wednesday, November 23, 2016, 3:31 PM
FOX 8 WVUE New Orleans News, Weather, Sports, Social
The Louisiana politician who refused to step down following a sexting scandal with a 17-year-old boy admits he made a "stupid" mistake, but insists that there was no sexual contact and that he is not gay.
Jefferson Parish President Michael Yenni, who is married, told WVUE in an extensive interview that texting with the teen was "one of the stupidest decisions that I've ever made."
"This is a mistake that I made that I shouldn't have done, being a married man, being a father and being an elected official," he told reporter Lee Zurik.
Yenni, a Republican, was mayor of Kenner when the improper behavior took place. The FBI is investigating the texts, and officials in the area have called for Yenni to resign.
La. politician refuses to resign despite teen sexting scandal
Michael Yenni admits texting with 17-year-old boy was "stupid." (ELECTMIKEYENNI.COM)
The teen told WWL that he met Yenni at a school function, and then the pol began visiting him where he worked and gave him designer underwear. The teen said that Yenni kissed him.
When asked by Zurik if he meant what he wrote to the teen, Yenni answered "probably not, because nothing was acted upon."
"You know, there was ... there was no sex, you know?" Yenni told Zurik. "Everybody thinks, oh, something sexual happened. But
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/d ... -1.2881474" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
FBI coverup of
JFK assassination
BY MARK SHAW
DAILY NEWS CONTRIBUTOR Monday, November 21, 2016, 12:00 PM
A very wise man once wrote, "The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
This "wise man" was none other than John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. And though he wasn't talking about his own death, he could have been, based on the mythical dialogue that was perpetuated to the American public within a few short days after he died on Nov. 22, 1963.
Distortions of what truly happened permeated instantly after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover first advocated the "Oswald Alone" theory when he called White House aide Walter Jenkins and told him, "The thing I am most concerned about and so is (Assistant Attorney General) Mr. Katzenbach is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."
Hoover then instructed aide Clyde Tolson to "prepare a memorandum to the attorney general setting out the evidence that Oswald was responsible for the shooting that killed the president."
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963
Soon Hoover's edict was conveyed to the American people and the myth spread far and wide despite the presence of a viable motive: Lee Harvey Oswald had singlehandedly shot and killed JFK.
And, yes, the American people bought that garble and thus began decades of belief/denial that any other potential existed for not one
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fbi-ha ... ne-warrant" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
MOTHERBOARD
The FBI Hacked Over 8,000 Computers In 120 Countries Based on One Warrant
November 22, 2016 // 06:18 PM EST
In January, Motherboard reported on the FBI's “unprecedented” hacking operation, in which the agency, using a single warrant, deployed malware to over one thousand alleged visitors of a dark web child pornography site. Now, it has emerged that the campaign was actually an order of magnitude larger.
In all, the FBI obtained over 8,000 IP addresses, and hacked computers in 120 different countries, according to a transcript from a recent evidentiary hearing in a related case.
The figures illustrate the largest ever known law enforcement hacking campaign to date, and starkly demonstrate what the future of policing crime on the dark web may look like. This news comes as the US is preparing to usher in changes that would allow magistrate judges to authorize the mass hacking of computers, wherever in the world they may be located.
“We have never, in our nation's history as far as I can tell, seen a warrant so utterly sweeping,” federal public defender Colin Fieman said in a hearing at the end of October, according to the transcript. Fieman is representing several defendants in affected cases.
Those cases revolve around the FBI's investigation into dark web child pornography site Playpen. In February 2015, the FBI seized the site, but instead of shutting it down, the agency ran Playpen from a government server for 13 days. However, even though they had administrative control of the site, investigators were unable to see the real IP address of Playpen's visitors, because users typically connected to it through the Tor network.
In order to circumvent that anonymity, the FBI deployed what it calls a network investigative technique (NIT), or a piece of malware. That malware, which included a Tor Browser exploit, broke into the computer of anyone who visited certain child pornography threads on Playpen. It then sent the suspect's real IP address back to the FBI.
According to court filings, the FBI obtained over 1,000 IP addresses of alleged US-based users. Over the past year, Motherboard has also found that the FBI hacked computers in Australia, Austria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Greece, and likely the UK, Turkey, and Norway too.
But, those are only a tiny handful of countries in which the FBI was hacking computers. According to the newly published transcript, the FBI hacked computers in at least 120 countries.
“The fact that a single ma
Here are some reasons why taxpayer funded FBI agents ran child porn sites
FBI supervisor Edward Rodgers ran the Child Abuse program at the
FBI.
He started having sex with his 3 daughters
when they were 2 years old.
see link for full story
CNN exclusive: FBI misconduct reveals sex, lies and videotape
By Scott Zamost and Kyra Phillips, CNN Special Investigations Unit
January 27, 2011
Washington (CNN) -- An FBI employee shared confidential information with his girlfriend, who was a news reporter, then later threatened to release a sex tape the two had made.
A supervisor watched pornographic videos in his office during work hours while "satisfying himself."
And an employee in a "leadership position" misused a government database to check on two friends who were exotic dancers and allowed them into an FBI office after hours.
These are among confidential summaries of FBI disciplinary reports obtained by CNN, which describe misconduct by agency supervisors, agents and other employees over the last three years
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/27/siu.fb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... index.html
Read the FBI documents obtained by CNN
-- An employee had "a sexual relationship with a source" over seven months. The punishment was a 40-day suspension.
-- The supervisor who viewed "pornographic movies in the office while sexually satisfying himself" during work hours received a 35-day suspension.
-- The employee in a "leadership position" who misused a "government database to conduct name checks on two friends who were foreign nationals employed as exotic dancers" and "brought the two friends into FBI space after-hours without proper authorization" received a 23-day suspension. The same employee had been previously suspended for misusing a government database.
-- An employee who was drunk "exploited his FBI employment at a strip club," falsely claiming he was "conducting an official investigation." His punishment was a 30-day suspension.
-- And an employee conducted "unauthorized searches on FBI databases" for "information on public celebrities the employee thought were 'hot'" received a 30-day suspension.
see link for full story
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... alers.html
February 22, 2013
FBI agents caught sexting and dating drug dealers
Dating drug dealers, harassing ex-boyfriends with naked pictures, and pointing guns at pet dogs: these were just a few of the offences committed recently by serving FBI agents, according to internal documents.
The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.
Disciplinary files from the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility record an extraordinary range of transgressions that reveal the chaotic personal lives of some of America's top law enforcers.
One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress's house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent "drunk and uncooperative" and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.
A woman e-mailed a "nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend's wife" and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.
see link for full story
http://www.wgrz.com/news/article/192104" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ent-Busted
Buffalo FBI Agent Busted
Dec 10, 2012
BUFFALO, NY - A Special Agent working in the Buffalo office of the FBI is due in Eden Town Court later this month, after being arrested by New York State Police last Friday night, charged with exposing himself to a fellow motorist on the New York State Thruway.
State Police Lt. David Denz confirmed for WGRZ-TV that John A. Yervelli Jr., 48, of Lakeview, was charged with Public Lewdness, a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail.
According to Denz, a truck driver from central New York was traveling in the right lane while east bound on the Thruway near mile marker 442, between Exits 57 and 57A, when he noticed a grey minivan pull alongside him in the passing lane.
The trucker told police that when he looked down, he noticed the driver of the other vehicle (who had turned his dome light on) was not wearing pants.
"At that point the complainant stated that the driver of the minivan was exposing himself and making lewd gestures," Denz told 2 On Your Side.
Denz says the trucker called police, who then intercepted the minivan at the Hamburg toll plaza, where the trucker also went to identify Yervelli. Denz said it appeared Yervelli was wearing pants when he was pulled over.
"He denied exposing himself," Denz told Channel 2, but added that "inconsistencies" in the account given by Agent Yervelli lead State Police to file charges.
A source says Yervelli insisted to the trooper who pulled him over that he was attempting to relieve himself into a bottle while he was driving. However, the location where he said that occurred was within a few miles (or minutes) of the exit he was headed to, and even closer to a Thruway rest stop.
"I don't want to give you too many specifics as far as what he stated, but he made statements that would lead you to believe that the truck driver's story was credible," Denz said.
Child Porn Probe Leads To FBI Headquarters
Target claims inquiry is just a “misunderstanding”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... adquarters
JANUARY 5 2011--The government’s pursuit of suspects trafficking in child pornography recently led federal agents to a familiar address--the FBI’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, where a bureau official is the subject of an ongoing criminal probe, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The investigation by the Department of Justice’s inspector general is focusing on FBI employee Joseph Bonsuk’s receipt of nearly 80 illicit images that were e-mailed to him by an Illinois sex offender whose rap sheet includes felony convictions for bank robbery and solicitation of a minor.
Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader
January 3, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Conn. --Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to the death of his accuser.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Form" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... -86217.php
Former Scout leader, FBI agent indicted on child sex charges
News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)
Saturday, February 4, 2006
NEW HAVEN (AP) - A retired FBI agent was indicted Friday on federal child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested Friday. The federal grand jury indictment accuses Hutton of enticing a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.
"It's obviously devastating. He was an FBI agent in this district and was reputed in this district," defense attorney Hugh Keefe said.
"The people who worked with him in the U.S. attorney's office and FBI respected him."
Keefe said the investigation has been going on for years. He would not discuss the details of the case or how the allegations surfaced.
Investigators asked anyone who knows anything about the case to call the FBI. U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said that's standard practice whenever there might be more victims.
"In any case that's a concern," O'Connor said. "Whether that's the situation here I can't say."
If convicted on all four charges, Hutton faces up to 30 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
Hutton was released on a $200,00 bond. He may not own any firearms or have any unsupervised contact with children. He was also ordered to stay away from playgrounds, schools, arcades or anywhere children congregate.
http://www.headwatersproductions.com/pr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... icle5.html
Edward Rodgers was in charge of investigating cases of Child Abuse at the FBI
THE DENVER POST - Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse
By Howard Prankratz
Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer
Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.
The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.
Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.
http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/FormerL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ntArrested
Local attorney arrested
On child indecency accusations
Updated: Wednesday, 22 Apr 2009, 1:33 PM CDT
Published : Monday, 20 Apr 2009,
MOBILE, Ala. - Mobile Police arrested 52-year-old Phillip Kent Baxley on child indecency charges. Baxley is a local attorney in Mobile, but he's also a former coach and acting president for the Mobile Soccer Club.
"I'm surprised to hear it," said Mobile Soccer Club Director, Mohammed Elzare. "He's a former FBI agent and attorney. So we're definitely saddened to hear this."
Baxley was arrested at his Dauphin Street office on a fugitive felony warrant out of Harris County, Texas.
Texas police officers say Baxley was involved in an incident with a nine-year-old girl in 2004.
Investigators say it happened at a family member's house in a Houston suburb, but the girl waited some time before saying anything.
"When the victim, the nine-year-old made the outcry she was interviewed in another county and all of the information was forwarded to us and the investigation went from there," said Lt. Wade Conner with the Deer Park, Texas Police Department.
Mobile Soccer Club Board Members say they were blind-sided by the news on Monday. For now, the board likely plans to distance itself from Baxley.
"Stopping ties until this situation is resolved and hopefully it comes out to a good outcome," said Elzare.
But Texas investigators are confident the charges will stick, despite Baxley's background. "If they're a pedophile then we deal with them all the same," said Wade. "It doesn't matter what they do for a living."
Baxley is locked up in the Mobile County Jail. That's where he'll stay until he's extradited to Texas.
FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/was" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... hief_x.htm
Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer
https://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forum" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 1077052156
WASHINGTON (AP) - The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.
John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.
Monday August 8, 2005 Longtime FBI agent sentenced to prison on child porn count
also see http://www.policeone.com/news/113935-Lo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... hild-Porn/
BOISE, Idaho- A longtime FBI agent who helped arrest infamous outlaw Claude Dallas has been sentenced to a year in prison for possessing child pornography.
William Buie, 64, was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty in March. Buie told authorities that he learned to access child pornography Web sites while attending a seminar on preventing child exploitation in 2000 or 2001.
February 22, 2007
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 007/262383
Ex-FBI man gets 7 years for child sex
Former FBI analyst sentenced in child sex case
A 17-year veteran of the FBI will serve seven years in prison for having sexual relations with a young girl in Spotsylvania County, a judge ruled yesterday.
Anthony John Lesko, 44, entered an Alford plea yesterday in Spotsylvania Circuit Court to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child.
Lesko, who later moved to Jacksonville, Fla., worked as an intelligence analyst at the FBI for 17 years, according to his attorney, James A. Carter II. He is a major in the U.S. Army Reserves and has received numerous military awards.
An Alford plea means Lesko doesn't admit guilt but believes there is enough evidence for a conviction. Under the terms of the plea, he was sentenced to seven years in prison with another 15 years suspended.
Lesko engaged in a sex act with a girl, 9 and 10 at the time, at least nine times in 2003-2004, according to evidence put forth by Spotsylvania Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely.
The girl told a member of the Spotsylvania Department of Social Services about the activity in February 2004, according to the evidence. Lesko at first denied the allegations, but later spoke with a U.S. Navy counselor about them.
Lesko told the counselor that he was the victim of the sexual assault; he said the girl initiated the contact, according to the plea. Lesko entered the plea partly to spare the girl the pain of a trial, his attorney said.
on for 12 months after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.
William Buie, 64, of Boise, most recently worked as an investigator for the Idaho attorney general's office.
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. ... _pris.html
May 25, 2007
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public
Posted by, Marissa Pasquet KOLD News 13 News Editor
FBI Special Agent Ryan Seese, 34, is facing sex offense charges after a cleaning woman said she found him masturbating in a women's lavatory on campus, according to a University of Arizona police spokesman.
FBI Workers Suspected of Secretly Taping Teens in Dressing Room
April 20, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517222,00.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall.
The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday.
see link for full story
http://fox59.com/2013/04/10/former-fbi-" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... y-charges/
April 9, 2013
Former FBI agent files petition to enter guilty plea for child pornography charges
A local former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent arrested on child pornography charges filed a petition to enter a guilty plea.
Donald Sachtleben was arrested in May 2012, following an investigation into the distribution of child pornography. Authorities said they were able to trace online activity back to Sachtleben’s Carmel home.
According to court documents, Sachtleben hid behind the email ‘[email protected]’ and openly traded child porn. In one email he attached nine images of child pornography and child erotica and wrote:
“Saw your profile… Hope you like these and can send me some of (y)ours. I have even better ones if you like.”
Police obtained a search warrant on May 3. During an initial forensic examination of Sachtleben’s laptop computer, approximately 30 images and video files containing child pornography were reportedly discovered.
Former top FBI agent charged with child porn distribution
By Bill Mears, CNN
May 15, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/15/justice/e" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... index.html
(CNN) -- A former supervisory FBI agent has been arrested and jailed on child pornography charges.
Donald Sachtleben was taken into custody and charged Monday after a nationwide undercover investigation of illegal child porn images traded over the Internet.
A federal complaint alleges 30 graphic images and video were found on Sachtleben's laptop computer late last week when FBI agents searched his home, about 23 miles north of Indianapolis.
Sachtleben is currently an Oklahoma State University visiting professor, according to his online resume. He is director of training at the school's Center for Improvised Explosives, but all references to his work have now been removed from the university's website. There was no indication from the school as to whether it had suspended him. Calls to the university and his Indianapolis attorneys were not immediately returned.
He had been an FBI special agent from 1983 to 2008, serving as a bomb technician. He worked on the Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber investigations, according to his university biography.
A separate LinkedIn profile filled out by Sachtleben says he is an "accomplished investigator with more than 25 years of experience in FBI major case management, counter terrorism investigations, bombing prevention, post blast investigations and public speaking."
FBI agent arrested on child sexual assault charge
Associated Press - January 15, 2008 6:14 PM ET
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_7978377" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) - An FBI agent is under arrest in Pueblo for investigation of sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust.
Authorities say 53-year-old David Allan Johnson is being held in the Pueblo County jail today on a $100,000 bail.
Former Great Falls FBI agent sentenced on child sex charges
Jan 23, 2008
A man from Great Falls who's accused of sexually assaulting five underage girls will be spending the next 10 years behind bars.
Stanley Perkins, 64, changed his plea to guilty after police began investigating him for child molestation in August 2006.
The former educator, who also served two years as an FBI agent, was sentenced on one count of felony sexual assault.
see link for full story
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ormer.html
Jail for former FBI worker from Va.
Washington Post Editors
A 65-year-old former FBI employee from Prince William County was sentenced to nearly four years in prison Friday for possessing child pornography.
Samuel I. Kaplan, of Gainesville, who pleaded guilty June 2 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, was sentenced to 46 months behind bars.
Kaplan was an information technology program manager at an FBI facility in Chantilly when authorities discovered that he had used the FBI's computer network to "facilitate sexually explict communications," the Justice Department said.
Investigators said they later found 10 to 20 images on Kaplan's home computer showing juveniles involved in sex acts.
http://franklincoverup.com/index.php?op" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... &Itemid=26
Ex-FBI agent gets 2 1/2 years for assault on marshal
A federal judge today sentenced retired FBI special agent Gary L. John
to 2 ½ years in prison for assaulting a U.S. marshal trying to place him
under arrest.
John, formerly of 110 Post Rd., Westerly, had been on the lam for two
months, when U.S. marshals working with Rhode Island Sheriffs
Department, tracked him to Stratford, Conn., in December 2005. He was
wanted in Rhode Island at the time for allegedly violating orders
barring him from contacting his ex-wife and for failing to appear in
court.
see link for full story
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... -fbi-agent
FBI agent convicted of daughters' abuse
July 11, 1993|By Traci A. Johnson | Traci A. Johnson,Staff Writer
An FBI agent who lives in Carroll County has been convicted of sexually abusing his daughters over a 14-year period.
The agent, as part of an agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty Friday before Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold to two counts of second-degree sexual offense and two counts of child abuse.
The agent's name is being withheld to protect the privacy of the victims.
In exchange for the agent's plea, the state dropped 18 other counts against him, ordered a presentence investigation and agreed to let him remain free on $125,000 bond pending sentencing Sept. 10.
The agent was suspended from the FBI's Baltimore field office when he was arrested in December.
The original indictment also charged the man with fondling his oldest daughter's friend several years ago when the girl had slept over at the agent's home.
An investigation began after one of the man's daughters told a county child-abuse investigator of at least five incidents of molestation from 1980 to 1987, court documents said.
The victims said their father performed sexual acts ranging from fondling to intercourse beginning when each was preschool age. The abuse lasted until the girls were in their early teens, said Assistant State's Attorney Kathi Hill in a statement of facts presented in court.
In February, defense attorney John E. Harris Sr. tried unsuccessfully to have the case moved out of Carroll on the grounds that pretrial publicity had damaged the defendant's chance for a fair trial.
Ms. Hill said the state will recommend a sentence of 35 years in state prison, with 15 years suspended.
Although Ms. Hill said she once argued that the agent should be incarcerated until his trial, she said Friday she was not worried about whether he will return for his sentencing.
"Even if he'd take a walk, when he eventually comes back he wouldn't have to be tried again. He'd just be sentenced," Ms. Hill said. "There's not so much fear on our part, because we don't have to prove the case again."
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: Obama choses James Comey, a man who tortures to head the FBI
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/01/27/par ... dly-force/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Parker: Supreme Court Strengthens Qualified Immunity for Law Enforcement Officers’ Use of Deadly Force
It was a tough year for law enforcement officers. Line of duty deaths, especially intentional killings of police, were up dramatically. Several categories of violent crime, including homicides, rose significantly after two decades of steady decline in crime statistics. Recruitment of new officers is becoming difficult, and officers confronting deadly situations are justifiably wary about the public (and media) second-guessing life or death decisions that had to be made under pressure within seconds.
Heather MacDonald, in her recent book The War On Cops, blames these developments on an anti-law enforcement movement led by groups like Black Lives Matter, accentuated by media attention, and facilitated by the policies of the Obama Administration. Whether you buy all of her conclusions, she does make a persuasive case that the current atmosphere in some segments of the public about law enforcement has resulted in officers being less aggressive in discretionary policing and that is a factor in a new crime wave, especially in the nation’s cities.
Into this troubling and dangerous situation, a potential boost in law enforcement confidence came this month from an unlikely source, a per curiam opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Per curiam (Latin: by the Court) decisions are judgments by appellate courts as a whole in which no particular judge or Justice is identified as the author. In the Supreme Court per curiam opinions are almost always unanimous and usually represent brief rulings on non-controversial subjects. They tend to be short. They seldom set an important precedent or alter the rule of law.
But there are exceptions. In 1972 the per curiam opinion by the Court in Furman v. Georgia turned capital punishment upside down when it struck down every death penalty law and practice in the country as arbitrary and capricious under the 8th Amendment. It took four years for the states to re-institute death penalty statutes and, in many ways, the case began to diminish the role of the supreme penalty which continues to this day.
Bush v. Gore
In Bush v. Gore (2000) the Court issued a per curiam opinion in one of the most controversial cases in the Court’s history. The Court upheld the razor-thin Florida vote which gave the presidency to George Bush by a single electoral vote over Al Gore. The 5-4 vote followed party lines with the Republican appointed Justices in the majority, but the ruling was brief and unauthored. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz called it the “single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history,” but others thought it was a profile in courage which preserved the republic.
new_mexico_state_police
Earlier this month the Court decided another per curiam opinion which has gotten much less attention but which could have profound implications, especially to law enforcement officers on the front line. White v. Pauly was an appeal from a civil ruling by a federal district court against New Mexico State Police Officer Ray White, who had shot and killed Samuel Pauley in a police confrontation outside of Santa Fe.
Witnesses had called 911 to report Pauley as a drunk driver. Two police officers went to his residence where he lived with his brother Daniel Pauly in a secluded area to talk with Pauly. They ordered him to open the door. It was asserted in the complaint that the brothers had not heard the officers identify themselves. The Paulys got their firearms.
A few minutes after the initial confrontation, Officer White arrived at the scene outside of the Pauly residence. The Paulys yelled that they had guns and Daniel fired two shotgun blasts outside the back door. Samuel stuck his handgun outside a window in the front of the house and pointed it in the officers’ direction. All three of the officers took cover, White behind a stone wall. One of the initial two officers fired his gun at Pauly and missed. Officer White fired and killed Samuel Pauly.
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/01/27/bor ... wall-plan/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Border Patrol Chief Steps Down After Trump Reveals Wall Plan
Border Patrol chief, Mark Morgan
The Border Patrol chief stepped down Thursday after President Trump signed executive orders increasing border security.
It remains unclear whether Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan resigned voluntarily or under pressure, CNN reports.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/edi ... 1701310059" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: FBI Went too Far Running a Child Porn Site
The FBI is supposed to protect children from predators, not use them as pawns in a pornography sting. That is what happened, however, and now the agency is under fire from civil rights groups, defense attorneys and even some scholars and federal judges. Not for the first time — remember when agents impersonated a journalist in pursuit of a teenager who was making bomb threats to a school? — the FBI has demonstrated embarrassingly poor judgment in an internet-based investigation.
For two weeks in 2015, after seizing control of a child porn website, the FBI not only allowed the site to remain operational but operated it, becoming what The Seattle Times called “one of the largest purveyors of child pornography on the internet.” The goal of Operation Pacifier was to identify those who used the site and file charges against them. By the time the FBI pulled the plug, it had the goods on nearly 190 people, thanks to special technology it used to hack into users’ computers.
When is distribution of child porn not a crime? According to the FBI, when it’s the one doing the distributing. Its operation of the site allowed visitors to access pornographic images, further exploiting the victims. It’s even been accused of improving the site’s functionality, making it friendlier for porn-seekers to use during the sting.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN15922L" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Trump May Bring Back Secret CIA Torture ‘Black Site’ Prisons
President Trump may bring back so-called CIA “black site” prisons where terrorism suspects are held and were once tortured.
President George W. Bush used the black sites to combat the “war on terrorism” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but former President Barack Obama closed them.
In the next few days, Trump is expected to sign an executive executive order to call for a high-level review into “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” and if the CIA should run the facilities, Reuters reports.
The information comes from a copy of
http://gizmodo.com/the-fbis-colossal-fa ... 1791708294" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The FBI's Colossal Failure Investigating GamerGate
Gizmodo-
The FBI appeared to find a lead on a bomb threat and interviewed the ... the FBI's utter misunderstanding of trolling and internet culture led an agent to ask an ...
http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/ ... _of_1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
North Randall police officer who sold guns to felons loses ...
cleveland.com-
Lumpkin also said FBI agent Michael Haynie should not have been allowed to testify about whether he thought Lumpkin was lying in an interview. Rogers wrote ...
http://www.whsv.com/content/news/Border ... 89515.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Border Patrol chief says he's been forced out
WHSV-2
The former FBI agent briefly led the internal affairs department at the Border Patrol's parent agency before heading the agency of roughly 20,000 agents.
Reveal | from The Center for Investigative Reporting
https://www.revealnews.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
America's Worst Charities Criminal Justice Day Care Education Guns Health Care Impact Inside the Newsroom Money and Politics National Security Religion ...
When it comes to Trump, this union is strong
Reveal (blog)-
Thursday's ouster of Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan, a former FBI official who ... A former top agent in the FBI's El Paso office, Morgan was publicly assailed by ...
Trial for former BRPD officers accused of abuse of power involving sex act continues
Thursday, January 26th 2017, 6:25 pm ESTThursday, January 26th 2017, 6:25 pm EST
The trial of three former Baton Rouge Police officers accused of abuse of power related to a sex act that allegedly occurred in a park is now in its second day.
Travis Wheeler, Emerson Jackson, and Isaac Bolden are accused of going up to a man and woman in a car at a BREC park and telling the man to leave and asking the woman to perform a sex act on one of the officers while the two other officers watched.
http://www.ksla.com/story/34358417/tria ... -continues" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thursday's testimony included the man who was with the woman in the car, along with a
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ry-edwards" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Texas prisoner dies of lethal injection after last-minute appeal fails
The Guardian-
But Edwards' attorneys say a review they commissioned last year by a former FBI agent contradicts this, and argues: “The testing and evidence introduced at trial ...
Parker: Supreme Court Strengthens Qualified Immunity for Law Enforcement Officers’ Use of Deadly Force
It was a tough year for law enforcement officers. Line of duty deaths, especially intentional killings of police, were up dramatically. Several categories of violent crime, including homicides, rose significantly after two decades of steady decline in crime statistics. Recruitment of new officers is becoming difficult, and officers confronting deadly situations are justifiably wary about the public (and media) second-guessing life or death decisions that had to be made under pressure within seconds.
Heather MacDonald, in her recent book The War On Cops, blames these developments on an anti-law enforcement movement led by groups like Black Lives Matter, accentuated by media attention, and facilitated by the policies of the Obama Administration. Whether you buy all of her conclusions, she does make a persuasive case that the current atmosphere in some segments of the public about law enforcement has resulted in officers being less aggressive in discretionary policing and that is a factor in a new crime wave, especially in the nation’s cities.
Into this troubling and dangerous situation, a potential boost in law enforcement confidence came this month from an unlikely source, a per curiam opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Per curiam (Latin: by the Court) decisions are judgments by appellate courts as a whole in which no particular judge or Justice is identified as the author. In the Supreme Court per curiam opinions are almost always unanimous and usually represent brief rulings on non-controversial subjects. They tend to be short. They seldom set an important precedent or alter the rule of law.
But there are exceptions. In 1972 the per curiam opinion by the Court in Furman v. Georgia turned capital punishment upside down when it struck down every death penalty law and practice in the country as arbitrary and capricious under the 8th Amendment. It took four years for the states to re-institute death penalty statutes and, in many ways, the case began to diminish the role of the supreme penalty which continues to this day.
Bush v. Gore
In Bush v. Gore (2000) the Court issued a per curiam opinion in one of the most controversial cases in the Court’s history. The Court upheld the razor-thin Florida vote which gave the presidency to George Bush by a single electoral vote over Al Gore. The 5-4 vote followed party lines with the Republican appointed Justices in the majority, but the ruling was brief and unauthored. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz called it the “single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history,” but others thought it was a profile in courage which preserved the republic.
new_mexico_state_police
Earlier this month the Court decided another per curiam opinion which has gotten much less attention but which could have profound implications, especially to law enforcement officers on the front line. White v. Pauly was an appeal from a civil ruling by a federal district court against New Mexico State Police Officer Ray White, who had shot and killed Samuel Pauley in a police confrontation outside of Santa Fe.
Witnesses had called 911 to report Pauley as a drunk driver. Two police officers went to his residence where he lived with his brother Daniel Pauly in a secluded area to talk with Pauly. They ordered him to open the door. It was asserted in the complaint that the brothers had not heard the officers identify themselves. The Paulys got their firearms.
A few minutes after the initial confrontation, Officer White arrived at the scene outside of the Pauly residence. The Paulys yelled that they had guns and Daniel fired two shotgun blasts outside the back door. Samuel stuck his handgun outside a window in the front of the house and pointed it in the officers’ direction. All three of the officers took cover, White behind a stone wall. One of the initial two officers fired his gun at Pauly and missed. Officer White fired and killed Samuel Pauly.
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/01/27/bor ... wall-plan/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Border Patrol Chief Steps Down After Trump Reveals Wall Plan
Border Patrol chief, Mark Morgan
The Border Patrol chief stepped down Thursday after President Trump signed executive orders increasing border security.
It remains unclear whether Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan resigned voluntarily or under pressure, CNN reports.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/edi ... 1701310059" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: FBI Went too Far Running a Child Porn Site
The FBI is supposed to protect children from predators, not use them as pawns in a pornography sting. That is what happened, however, and now the agency is under fire from civil rights groups, defense attorneys and even some scholars and federal judges. Not for the first time — remember when agents impersonated a journalist in pursuit of a teenager who was making bomb threats to a school? — the FBI has demonstrated embarrassingly poor judgment in an internet-based investigation.
For two weeks in 2015, after seizing control of a child porn website, the FBI not only allowed the site to remain operational but operated it, becoming what The Seattle Times called “one of the largest purveyors of child pornography on the internet.” The goal of Operation Pacifier was to identify those who used the site and file charges against them. By the time the FBI pulled the plug, it had the goods on nearly 190 people, thanks to special technology it used to hack into users’ computers.
When is distribution of child porn not a crime? According to the FBI, when it’s the one doing the distributing. Its operation of the site allowed visitors to access pornographic images, further exploiting the victims. It’s even been accused of improving the site’s functionality, making it friendlier for porn-seekers to use during the sting.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN15922L" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Trump May Bring Back Secret CIA Torture ‘Black Site’ Prisons
President Trump may bring back so-called CIA “black site” prisons where terrorism suspects are held and were once tortured.
President George W. Bush used the black sites to combat the “war on terrorism” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but former President Barack Obama closed them.
In the next few days, Trump is expected to sign an executive executive order to call for a high-level review into “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” and if the CIA should run the facilities, Reuters reports.
The information comes from a copy of
http://gizmodo.com/the-fbis-colossal-fa ... 1791708294" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The FBI's Colossal Failure Investigating GamerGate
Gizmodo-
The FBI appeared to find a lead on a bomb threat and interviewed the ... the FBI's utter misunderstanding of trolling and internet culture led an agent to ask an ...
http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/ ... _of_1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
North Randall police officer who sold guns to felons loses ...
cleveland.com-
Lumpkin also said FBI agent Michael Haynie should not have been allowed to testify about whether he thought Lumpkin was lying in an interview. Rogers wrote ...
http://www.whsv.com/content/news/Border ... 89515.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Border Patrol chief says he's been forced out
WHSV-2
The former FBI agent briefly led the internal affairs department at the Border Patrol's parent agency before heading the agency of roughly 20,000 agents.
Reveal | from The Center for Investigative Reporting
https://www.revealnews.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
America's Worst Charities Criminal Justice Day Care Education Guns Health Care Impact Inside the Newsroom Money and Politics National Security Religion ...
When it comes to Trump, this union is strong
Reveal (blog)-
Thursday's ouster of Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan, a former FBI official who ... A former top agent in the FBI's El Paso office, Morgan was publicly assailed by ...
Trial for former BRPD officers accused of abuse of power involving sex act continues
Thursday, January 26th 2017, 6:25 pm ESTThursday, January 26th 2017, 6:25 pm EST
The trial of three former Baton Rouge Police officers accused of abuse of power related to a sex act that allegedly occurred in a park is now in its second day.
Travis Wheeler, Emerson Jackson, and Isaac Bolden are accused of going up to a man and woman in a car at a BREC park and telling the man to leave and asking the woman to perform a sex act on one of the officers while the two other officers watched.
http://www.ksla.com/story/34358417/tria ... -continues" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thursday's testimony included the man who was with the woman in the car, along with a
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ry-edwards" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Texas prisoner dies of lethal injection after last-minute appeal fails
The Guardian-
But Edwards' attorneys say a review they commissioned last year by a former FBI agent contradicts this, and argues: “The testing and evidence introduced at trial ...
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
Link du jour
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... hoto-death
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... es-6183732
http://www.vachss.com/downloads.html
http://www.space4peace.org/contact.htm
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... uce-gagnon
http://ctn5.org/shows/issue/issue-bruce-gagnon-7889
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... retiremen/
May 3, 2017
J. Edgar Hoover’s gambit to force his enemies into retirement came close to ending his career
Nixon administration mulled on what to do about mounting pressure to oust the aging Director
Written by Michael Best
Edited by JPat Brown
When J. Edgar Hoover forced William “Bill” Sullivan, the Bureau’s domestic intelligence chief, into retirement he set into motion a chain reaction which nearly forced him into retirement as well. While Hoover was no stranger to attempts to push him into retirement, his handling of Bill Sullivan appears to have been a bridge too far for the Bureau.
Memos, found in CIA’s archive, were passed through the White House, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and the offices of General Haig, Henry Kissinger and John Ehrlichman’s office detail concerns about Hoover’s dismissal of Sullivan was going to be handled in the press.
Sullivan’s dismissal by Hoover had hardly been cordial, or even what most would term as professional. Rather than be fired or asked to retire, Sullivan had come into the office seven days before the PFIAB memo was written to find that he was locked out of his office on Hoover’s orders. With the locks changed and his nameplate removed from his office door, Sullivan had no choice but to retire from the Bureau. At the time, Sullivan was the head of FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division and the third highest ranking person in the Bureau.
The move was controversial at the time, both within and without the Bureau - not only was Sullivan well respected (despite his participation in illegal activities including COINTELPRO and the FBI letter urging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide), but his forced departure was seen as a political move. Sullivan had been increasingly critical of J. Edgar Hoover and some of the FBI’s policies and activities, and had “a reputation as the only liberal Democrat ever to break into the top ranks of the bureau.”
PFIAB saw the coverage of the matter as a partisan issue - “liberal democrats”, the PFIAB warned, might seek to “discredit Mr. Hoover and embarrass the administration.” If so, this would “provoke a reaction” from Hoover’s right wing friends within both political parties. Despite concern that the effort was a result of the pressure from the New York Times editorial board, the outrage went well beyond that and brought “a variety of sources” to the Times, with the result being that they were very well informed. So despite PFIAB’s attempts to frame it as one, it wasn’t a partisan issue or a case of the media trying to undermine the Bureau - merely to report on it accurately.
The net result was a “hot potato” which the President needed to be made aware of. The political ramifications of the problem were such that no action was recommended or taken at the time, though the matter remain of considerable concern to the PFIAB and the National Security Council.
A month later, the matter was still on their mind and the concerns were shared throughout the White House.
Attempts to force Hoover into retirement ultimately proved fruitless, and his death a few months later rendered the issue moot. Had Hoover survived, it’s almost certain that he would’ve been forced into retirement soon after by the scandals of his time as FBI Director, his handling of Sullivan and the imminent Watergate scandal which would begin making headlines six weeks after Hoover’s death. A copy of the memo is embedded below.
DOCUMENT
PAGES
TEXT
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3025269
Proposed Texas bill to fine unregulated masturbation moves ahead
BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, April 6, 2017, 1:46 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... rd-murrow/
Dissent and Disloyalty: The FBI’s obsessive inquiry into Edward R. Murrow
by Grace Raih
May 03, 2017
In the white heat of the Red Scare, journalists were often at the center of the unceasing national probe over patriotism. Over 700 pages of files on Edward R. Murrow detail the FBI’s intricate special inquiry into the mythical American newsman.
Read More
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/p ... -1.3136589
Tony Alamo, former preacher convicted of sexually abusing young girls he considered his wives, dies in prison
Thursday, May 4, 2017, 11:02 AM
. - Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher whose apocalyptic ministry grew into a multimillion-dollar network of businesses and property before he was convicted in Arkansas of sexually abusing young girls he considered his wives, has died in prison. He was 82.
Once known for designing elaborately decorated jackets for celebrities including Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, Alamo died on Tuesday at a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The disgraced preacher was convicted in 2009 on charges that he took underage girls across state lines for sex, including a 9-year-old. The judge who sentenced him to the maximum 175 years in prison told him: "One day you will face a higher and a greater judge than me. May he have mercy on your soul."
"Consent is puberty," Alamo once said.
"Consent is puberty," Alamo once said. (DANNY JOHNSTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Alamo started preaching along the California streets in the 1960s, advocating a mixture of virulent anti-Catholicism and apocalyptic rhetoric. He claimed God authorized polygamy, professed that gays were the tools of Satan, and believed girls were fit for marriage even at a young age.
Jurors convict Ark. evangelist on 10 sex-abuse counts
"Consent is puberty," Alamo told The Associated Press in September 2008, during the same weekend state and federal agents raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in the tiny southwest Arkansas town of Fouke to investigate possible child abuse and pornography.
Witnesses in the ensuing trial said Alamo made all key decisions in the compound: who got married, what children were taught in school, who received clothes, who was allowed to eat. They said he began taking multiple wives in the early 1990s, including a 15-year-old girl in 1994, followed by increasingly younger girls.
Alamo was convicted after five women testified they were "married" to him in secret ceremonies at his compound when they were minors — including one when she was only 8 years old — and later taken to places outside Arkansas for sex.
"There's no telling how many little girls' lives he destroyed," Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis told the AP on Wednesday. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now."
FBI: Evangelist Tony Alamo arrested in child sex case
Former followers said Alamo grew increasingly unhinged after his wife, Susan, died from cancer in 1982. Devotees prayed for months for her resurrection, and her body was eventually placed in a crypt on the ministry's 300-acre compound in Dyer. Her body remained there until Alamo ordered his followers to flee in 1991, before federal marshals seized the property to settle a court judgment. Alamo returned his wife's remains to her family seven years later, after being threatened with jail.
Initially, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries attracted hippies and youngsters alienated from their parents when it started in the streets of Los Angeles in the 1960s. The self-proclaimed "Jesus Freaks" preached a wrathful version of Pentecostalism known for spirited worship and a belief in modern-day miracles.
In the 1970s and '80s, the ministry sold elaborately designed denim jackets to celebrities including Presley, Jackson and several country music stars. The iconic black leather jacket on Jackson's "Bad" album was an Alamo original later sold at auction to settle $7.9 million in federal tax claims.
At its height, Alamo's ministry claimed thousands of members nationwide and was perhaps most known for leaving fliers on car windshields with screeds against the Vatican, homosexuality and a perceived one-world government.
John Wesley Hall, a lawyer who had represented Alamo, said Wednesday that the ministry still produces the fliers.
"My staff still gets them in the mail," Hall said, noting that Alamo "denied that he ever did anything (wrong)."
In a 2008 interview with the AP, Alamo claimed to be unique among Christian preachers because he was born a Jew and had a "supernatural experience" through which he became a born-again Christian.
From his initial compound in northwest Arkansas, Alamo presided over several businesses — including gas stations, a hog farm, a grocery store and a restaurant — that funded his ministry. He was convicted of tax evasion and served four years in prison despite claiming he had no tax liability because he received no salary.
Alamo also was accused in 1991 of child abuse after an 11-year-old boy told police he was paddled 140 times by four men on orders from Alamo in 1988 at the church's compound in Saugus, California. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, saying too much time had passed. The same year he was charged with threatening to kidnap a federal judge in Arkansas. He was acquitted by a jury.
It was after he left prison in the 1990s that he started the compound in Fouke in southwestern Arkansas with about 100 followers.
Tony Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman on Sept. 20, 1934, to a Jewish family in Joplin, Missouri. He arrived in Los Angeles in the 1960s, claiming he was a music promoter with clients including the Beatles. He and his wife legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo after they married in Las Vegas in 1966.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... et-police/
Congress’ secret police
by Caitlin Russell
May 04, 2017
After the arrest and conviction of a woman for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing, one might be curious to see the incident report filed by the police. Unfortunately, the arresting agency, the United States Capitol Police, is a “legislative branch entity,” and therefore not subject to FOIA.
Read More
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/05/04/ste ... stigation/
Late night comedian Stephen Colbert had harsh words for FBI Director James Comey following controversial testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Colbert played clips of Wednesday’s committee hearing in which Comey defended his decision to notify Congress that the Hillary Clinton investigation had reopened.
Colbert also ribbed Comey for saying he was “mildly nauseous” for potentially upending the election.
“Maybe it’s morning sickness — after all, you did screw the whole country,” Colbert said.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientolog ... in/2322624
Documents detail FBI investigation of Scientology that never resulted in charges
Thomas C. TobinThomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 3, 2017 5:26pm
Guccifer 2.0 - DCLeaks - APT 28
By Adam Carter --- April 17th, 2017
The DCLeaks - APT 28 Attribution
DCLeaks was a site established last year, at the beginning of June (with the domain initially registered on April 19th). Initially, it began publishing leaks covering emails from members of the US government and military.
APT28 (also known as: Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sofacy, Sednit and STRONTIUM) is a name given to an "Active Persistent Threat" group discovered in October of 2014 and thought to have been operational for anything up to a decade prior to this. - The "APT28" designation is effectively a collective term for the group and all of the Internet infrastructure they make use of. APT28 is considered by various cyber-security firms to be linked to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
In the first quarter of 2016, a breach at the DNC was reported by CrowdStrike (a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC). In that report, CrowdStrike essentially blamed APT28 for the hack.
In August of 2016, ThreatConnect reported that, following their own investigations, It appeared that the DCLeaks.com domain was initially handled by a nameserver that only had 14 other domain names resolving to it and was a nameserver for a domain suspected as being a part of APT28 (service-yandex.ru), as well as phishing/scam domains set up by others not deemed part of APT28).
Other examples cited included things like DCLeaks using a free webmail service to initially register their domain (via the "@europe.com" domain, operated by 1&1) and it is noted that "@europe.com" was the same free webmail provider that was used by whoever registered a dodgy 'misdepartment' domain (which was attributed to a phishing attack considered to originate from APT28).
So it seemed there was at least some overlap on service providers and name servers historically (if the assumptions/suspicions of various domains being part of APT28 are correct).
Certainly the overlaps are noteworthy, it does seem to hint that there could easily be an association between them, but... even if domains suspected of being a part of APT28 have used the same service providers or name servers that DCLeaks started using at a later date - it's not proof of a direct link between them and relies to a degree on guilt-by-assocation.
However, whether you are or aren't convinced by the DCLeaks-APT28 attributions, there is another association in the chain that needs scrutiny.
http://g-2.space/dcl/
The DCLeaks 'Leadership' - Guccifer 2.0 Attribution
On 27 June, 12 days after its initial appearance, Guccifer2.0 shared a password with the press that gave access to an area on DCLeaks listing leaks (mundane emails from Sarah Hamilton, apparently from a phishing attack she fell victim to).
As The Smoking Gun (TSG) concedes in their reporting, it's clear the password given them by Guccifer 2.0 gave limited access to the site. However, when TSG later inquired about leaks in a different (and 'protected' section of the site). DCLeaks, independently, seemed quite happy to release a password to TSG on the condition they'd write a story about the leaks.
Examples of links to the leadership given by ThreatConnect follow:
Guccifer 2.0 has not publicly mentioned or promoted DCLeaks. Only in private communications with TSG does Guccifer 2.0 reveal prior knowledge of DCLeaks.
If you're communicating apparent controversy with a well known publisher AND know that you're going to be revealed as a "Russian hacker" due to fabricated evidence you've planted there is no reason to expect it to remain a "private communication" for long. Instead, it becomes an attribution that would be expected to become public knowledge sooner or later.
Guccifer 2.0 is the first known entity to have prior knowledge of and privileged access to exclusive content (Sarah Hamilton Emails) on the DCLeaks webpage before it was publicly available.
If Guccifer 2.0 was also the uploader of the content - that would make perfect sense and if Guccifer 2.0 is a covert effort to poison-the-well of whistle blowers and leak sites (an extension of its apparent purpose to discredit Wikileaks as its actions on June 15th reveal it to be) - it would explain how the emails could have been sourced (internally) for the sake of forging a perceived attribution with DCLeaks.
Guccifer 2.0 claimed that DCLeaks is a Wikileaks subproject where there is no public evidence of any formal or informal relationships between DCLeaks and Wikileaks.
This of course adds credence to what I suggest above: that this was an extension of the effort to discredit Wikileaks and create false attribution in an effort to discredit leakers and whistle-blowers, tainting everything with an association to its faux-"Russian hacker" persona.
So... we've got a password for a section of the site that Guccifer 2.0 could have been provided and could have been the source of the content for.
While this certainly shows he communicated with DCLeaks before his email on 27th of June and had a password to access a portion of the site - what was there that specifically could link him to the administration or leadership of the DCLeaks site to a greater degree than a leak contributor?
To really see how tenuous the link between Guccifer2 and DCLeaks is we have to take a detour through a separate hacking incident in Florida and this is where things start to get strange...
BadWolf/Badvolf, DCLeaks & Guccifer 2.0
If you haven't heard of BadWolf/BadVolf you won't know that BadWolf was someone linked to a site critical of Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office under Ric Bradshaw on the domain "PBSOTalk.com" (a site originally founded by Mark Dougan, Ric Bradshaw's former deputy).
Following a raid on Mark Dougan and covering BadWolf's involvement, Gawker, reported the following in March 2016:
The agents were apparently there to investigate the recent hacking of thousands of names and addresses of law enforcement officers and others living in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, which were published last month on a website founded by Dougan. A significant portion of the targeted individuals were FBI agents themselves. A few days after the first of these hacks, the local press reported that the sheriff’s office was launching an official investigation. One strange detail in those reports stuck out: The suspected hacker was apparently located in Russia, 5,000 miles from the beachfront county he targeted.
The man who claims to be responsible calls himself БадВолф, or BadWolf to his English-speaking friends and enemies. He lives in Moscow, where he works in IT for a local government agency (he won’t say which), and is alternately puckish and self-righteous when describing his strikes against American law enforcement. He says he lifted the Palm Beach names and addresses from a database maintained by the county property appraiser and published it as retaliation against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which he believes is a deeply corrupt institution. The Miami-Dade address dump, which was published weeks later, also appears to target the PBSO
So, it would seem, a Russian hacker, working in a local government agency, going by the name of BadWolf had hacked into databases and posted them to Dougan's site.
Fast forward to September 25th, 2016 - PBSOTalk.com has since been taken down following the FBI investigating and apparently resurrected as PBSOTalk.ru (however, the contact details are private and no longer associated to the original domain's registrant, see below).
ORIGINAL PBSOTALK.COM DOMAIN REGISTRANT:
Name: Alexey drobyshev
Company: Drobyshev Intl
Address: M.Kutuzova 7, #.207, Moscow, Moscow, 143080, Russian Federation
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 79019035319
Databreaches.net reports that a new leak claim is posted to PBSOTalk.ru, this time relating to the Florida Bar Association. However, it seems specious, lacks the data that it claims is being leaked, the method of proving access is odd and the Florida Bar Association disagree strongly with the notion they were hacked.
Following this, 'Dissent' of databreaches.net spoke with BadVolf and in that conversation, the evidence (in the form of MP4 videos, a screengrab of which is featured below) that he provides regarding the hack claims suggest he's the root administrator of DCLeaks, not only that but Guccifer 2.0 apparently appears during their conversation.
source: www.databreaches.net
As 'Dissent' explains in the article (emphasis mine):
Unsurprisingly, I asked for some proof. But when BadVolf attempted to provide me with copies of all the emails – including, he said, emails that had not yet appeared on WikiLeaks, he was unable to do so, and said he needed to contact Guccifer2.0, who, to my surprise, showed up in our chat to provide a new link where I was able to download everything. But there was nothing in what I downloaded that hadn’t already appeared on WikiLeaks. Despite repeated requests, I was not given any material that might have proved I was dealing with those who had had access to Clinton’s email server or Democrats.org
and later:
why couldn’t BadVolf provide me with the kind of proof requested to prove that he had access to DCLeaks? BadVolf’s explanation – that he was the database guy and not the web server guy, was not totally convincing to those who reviewed the mp4 files he provided.
This descends into madness with Guccifer 2.0 and BadVolf providing what they claim are login details from the DNC but these logins date from before the DNC hack was detected and passwords changed (so they were passwords that couldn't be verified!)
According to them, Hillary Clinton's passwords included "LeadTheSheeple2016" and Bill was using "Saxaphone1994%" as his password.
It also turns out that the BadVolf, in this instance, claimed to work for an Insurance company rather than work in a local government agency (as previously claimed before the FBI raid on Dougan, the domain being seized and the FBI investigating)
Conclusion: Conflation Confusion
So... we've got the fact Guccifer 2.0 had a password to the Sarah Hamilton leaks on DCLeaks (which he could have been provided and may have been responsible for uploading content to) and we have a bizarre theatrical performance using multimedia props that BadWolf/BadVolf (or a BadWolf imposter) and Guccifer 2.0 seem to have put on for the benefit of databreaches.net
Do BadWolf, Guccifer 2.0 and the MP4s prove DCLeaks-Guccifer2.0 collusion? - No, they demonstrate yet another example of trying to bamboozle reporters with easily fabricated materials and, as the databreaches article reports, fail to actually demonstrate a genuine breach of access through any independently verifiable means, coming up with excuses when such evidence is requested.
Do either of these things prove any definitive ties between Guccifer 2.0 and the DCLeaks.com site's leadership beyond Guccifer 2.0 providing uncontroversial Hamilton leaks? - No, of course not!
So... are either of these things proof that Guccifer 2.0 is linked to APT 28? - It doesn't seem so.
We can just see that during September, there was an apparent effort to create a perception of an association by someone (possibly 2 people) making specious claims, lacking verifiable evidence and only capable of producing evidence in a format that is very easy to fabricate..
Fortunately, in this instance, 'Dissent' was more savvy than some other journalists had been and instead of reporting this as a believable incident with credible hackers, the whole incident was reported as the bizarre & questionable performance that it was.
NOTE: Because of how unusual the whole databreaches.net incident seems, I have sent further inquiries to 'Dissent' and will update this article with any new & relevant information he can provide.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... hoto-death
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... es-6183732
http://www.vachss.com/downloads.html
http://www.space4peace.org/contact.htm
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... uce-gagnon
http://ctn5.org/shows/issue/issue-bruce-gagnon-7889
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... retiremen/
May 3, 2017
J. Edgar Hoover’s gambit to force his enemies into retirement came close to ending his career
Nixon administration mulled on what to do about mounting pressure to oust the aging Director
Written by Michael Best
Edited by JPat Brown
When J. Edgar Hoover forced William “Bill” Sullivan, the Bureau’s domestic intelligence chief, into retirement he set into motion a chain reaction which nearly forced him into retirement as well. While Hoover was no stranger to attempts to push him into retirement, his handling of Bill Sullivan appears to have been a bridge too far for the Bureau.
Memos, found in CIA’s archive, were passed through the White House, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and the offices of General Haig, Henry Kissinger and John Ehrlichman’s office detail concerns about Hoover’s dismissal of Sullivan was going to be handled in the press.
Sullivan’s dismissal by Hoover had hardly been cordial, or even what most would term as professional. Rather than be fired or asked to retire, Sullivan had come into the office seven days before the PFIAB memo was written to find that he was locked out of his office on Hoover’s orders. With the locks changed and his nameplate removed from his office door, Sullivan had no choice but to retire from the Bureau. At the time, Sullivan was the head of FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division and the third highest ranking person in the Bureau.
The move was controversial at the time, both within and without the Bureau - not only was Sullivan well respected (despite his participation in illegal activities including COINTELPRO and the FBI letter urging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide), but his forced departure was seen as a political move. Sullivan had been increasingly critical of J. Edgar Hoover and some of the FBI’s policies and activities, and had “a reputation as the only liberal Democrat ever to break into the top ranks of the bureau.”
PFIAB saw the coverage of the matter as a partisan issue - “liberal democrats”, the PFIAB warned, might seek to “discredit Mr. Hoover and embarrass the administration.” If so, this would “provoke a reaction” from Hoover’s right wing friends within both political parties. Despite concern that the effort was a result of the pressure from the New York Times editorial board, the outrage went well beyond that and brought “a variety of sources” to the Times, with the result being that they were very well informed. So despite PFIAB’s attempts to frame it as one, it wasn’t a partisan issue or a case of the media trying to undermine the Bureau - merely to report on it accurately.
The net result was a “hot potato” which the President needed to be made aware of. The political ramifications of the problem were such that no action was recommended or taken at the time, though the matter remain of considerable concern to the PFIAB and the National Security Council.
A month later, the matter was still on their mind and the concerns were shared throughout the White House.
Attempts to force Hoover into retirement ultimately proved fruitless, and his death a few months later rendered the issue moot. Had Hoover survived, it’s almost certain that he would’ve been forced into retirement soon after by the scandals of his time as FBI Director, his handling of Sullivan and the imminent Watergate scandal which would begin making headlines six weeks after Hoover’s death. A copy of the memo is embedded below.
DOCUMENT
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3025269
Proposed Texas bill to fine unregulated masturbation moves ahead
BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, April 6, 2017, 1:46 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... rd-murrow/
Dissent and Disloyalty: The FBI’s obsessive inquiry into Edward R. Murrow
by Grace Raih
May 03, 2017
In the white heat of the Red Scare, journalists were often at the center of the unceasing national probe over patriotism. Over 700 pages of files on Edward R. Murrow detail the FBI’s intricate special inquiry into the mythical American newsman.
Read More
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/p ... -1.3136589
Tony Alamo, former preacher convicted of sexually abusing young girls he considered his wives, dies in prison
Thursday, May 4, 2017, 11:02 AM
. - Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher whose apocalyptic ministry grew into a multimillion-dollar network of businesses and property before he was convicted in Arkansas of sexually abusing young girls he considered his wives, has died in prison. He was 82.
Once known for designing elaborately decorated jackets for celebrities including Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, Alamo died on Tuesday at a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The disgraced preacher was convicted in 2009 on charges that he took underage girls across state lines for sex, including a 9-year-old. The judge who sentenced him to the maximum 175 years in prison told him: "One day you will face a higher and a greater judge than me. May he have mercy on your soul."
"Consent is puberty," Alamo once said.
"Consent is puberty," Alamo once said. (DANNY JOHNSTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Alamo started preaching along the California streets in the 1960s, advocating a mixture of virulent anti-Catholicism and apocalyptic rhetoric. He claimed God authorized polygamy, professed that gays were the tools of Satan, and believed girls were fit for marriage even at a young age.
Jurors convict Ark. evangelist on 10 sex-abuse counts
"Consent is puberty," Alamo told The Associated Press in September 2008, during the same weekend state and federal agents raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in the tiny southwest Arkansas town of Fouke to investigate possible child abuse and pornography.
Witnesses in the ensuing trial said Alamo made all key decisions in the compound: who got married, what children were taught in school, who received clothes, who was allowed to eat. They said he began taking multiple wives in the early 1990s, including a 15-year-old girl in 1994, followed by increasingly younger girls.
Alamo was convicted after five women testified they were "married" to him in secret ceremonies at his compound when they were minors — including one when she was only 8 years old — and later taken to places outside Arkansas for sex.
"There's no telling how many little girls' lives he destroyed," Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis told the AP on Wednesday. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now."
FBI: Evangelist Tony Alamo arrested in child sex case
Former followers said Alamo grew increasingly unhinged after his wife, Susan, died from cancer in 1982. Devotees prayed for months for her resurrection, and her body was eventually placed in a crypt on the ministry's 300-acre compound in Dyer. Her body remained there until Alamo ordered his followers to flee in 1991, before federal marshals seized the property to settle a court judgment. Alamo returned his wife's remains to her family seven years later, after being threatened with jail.
Initially, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries attracted hippies and youngsters alienated from their parents when it started in the streets of Los Angeles in the 1960s. The self-proclaimed "Jesus Freaks" preached a wrathful version of Pentecostalism known for spirited worship and a belief in modern-day miracles.
In the 1970s and '80s, the ministry sold elaborately designed denim jackets to celebrities including Presley, Jackson and several country music stars. The iconic black leather jacket on Jackson's "Bad" album was an Alamo original later sold at auction to settle $7.9 million in federal tax claims.
At its height, Alamo's ministry claimed thousands of members nationwide and was perhaps most known for leaving fliers on car windshields with screeds against the Vatican, homosexuality and a perceived one-world government.
John Wesley Hall, a lawyer who had represented Alamo, said Wednesday that the ministry still produces the fliers.
"My staff still gets them in the mail," Hall said, noting that Alamo "denied that he ever did anything (wrong)."
In a 2008 interview with the AP, Alamo claimed to be unique among Christian preachers because he was born a Jew and had a "supernatural experience" through which he became a born-again Christian.
From his initial compound in northwest Arkansas, Alamo presided over several businesses — including gas stations, a hog farm, a grocery store and a restaurant — that funded his ministry. He was convicted of tax evasion and served four years in prison despite claiming he had no tax liability because he received no salary.
Alamo also was accused in 1991 of child abuse after an 11-year-old boy told police he was paddled 140 times by four men on orders from Alamo in 1988 at the church's compound in Saugus, California. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, saying too much time had passed. The same year he was charged with threatening to kidnap a federal judge in Arkansas. He was acquitted by a jury.
It was after he left prison in the 1990s that he started the compound in Fouke in southwestern Arkansas with about 100 followers.
Tony Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman on Sept. 20, 1934, to a Jewish family in Joplin, Missouri. He arrived in Los Angeles in the 1960s, claiming he was a music promoter with clients including the Beatles. He and his wife legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo after they married in Las Vegas in 1966.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... et-police/
Congress’ secret police
by Caitlin Russell
May 04, 2017
After the arrest and conviction of a woman for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing, one might be curious to see the incident report filed by the police. Unfortunately, the arresting agency, the United States Capitol Police, is a “legislative branch entity,” and therefore not subject to FOIA.
Read More
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/05/04/ste ... stigation/
Late night comedian Stephen Colbert had harsh words for FBI Director James Comey following controversial testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Colbert played clips of Wednesday’s committee hearing in which Comey defended his decision to notify Congress that the Hillary Clinton investigation had reopened.
Colbert also ribbed Comey for saying he was “mildly nauseous” for potentially upending the election.
“Maybe it’s morning sickness — after all, you did screw the whole country,” Colbert said.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientolog ... in/2322624
Documents detail FBI investigation of Scientology that never resulted in charges
Thomas C. TobinThomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 3, 2017 5:26pm
Guccifer 2.0 - DCLeaks - APT 28
By Adam Carter --- April 17th, 2017
The DCLeaks - APT 28 Attribution
DCLeaks was a site established last year, at the beginning of June (with the domain initially registered on April 19th). Initially, it began publishing leaks covering emails from members of the US government and military.
APT28 (also known as: Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sofacy, Sednit and STRONTIUM) is a name given to an "Active Persistent Threat" group discovered in October of 2014 and thought to have been operational for anything up to a decade prior to this. - The "APT28" designation is effectively a collective term for the group and all of the Internet infrastructure they make use of. APT28 is considered by various cyber-security firms to be linked to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
In the first quarter of 2016, a breach at the DNC was reported by CrowdStrike (a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC). In that report, CrowdStrike essentially blamed APT28 for the hack.
In August of 2016, ThreatConnect reported that, following their own investigations, It appeared that the DCLeaks.com domain was initially handled by a nameserver that only had 14 other domain names resolving to it and was a nameserver for a domain suspected as being a part of APT28 (service-yandex.ru), as well as phishing/scam domains set up by others not deemed part of APT28).
Other examples cited included things like DCLeaks using a free webmail service to initially register their domain (via the "@europe.com" domain, operated by 1&1) and it is noted that "@europe.com" was the same free webmail provider that was used by whoever registered a dodgy 'misdepartment' domain (which was attributed to a phishing attack considered to originate from APT28).
So it seemed there was at least some overlap on service providers and name servers historically (if the assumptions/suspicions of various domains being part of APT28 are correct).
Certainly the overlaps are noteworthy, it does seem to hint that there could easily be an association between them, but... even if domains suspected of being a part of APT28 have used the same service providers or name servers that DCLeaks started using at a later date - it's not proof of a direct link between them and relies to a degree on guilt-by-assocation.
However, whether you are or aren't convinced by the DCLeaks-APT28 attributions, there is another association in the chain that needs scrutiny.
http://g-2.space/dcl/
The DCLeaks 'Leadership' - Guccifer 2.0 Attribution
On 27 June, 12 days after its initial appearance, Guccifer2.0 shared a password with the press that gave access to an area on DCLeaks listing leaks (mundane emails from Sarah Hamilton, apparently from a phishing attack she fell victim to).
As The Smoking Gun (TSG) concedes in their reporting, it's clear the password given them by Guccifer 2.0 gave limited access to the site. However, when TSG later inquired about leaks in a different (and 'protected' section of the site). DCLeaks, independently, seemed quite happy to release a password to TSG on the condition they'd write a story about the leaks.
Examples of links to the leadership given by ThreatConnect follow:
Guccifer 2.0 has not publicly mentioned or promoted DCLeaks. Only in private communications with TSG does Guccifer 2.0 reveal prior knowledge of DCLeaks.
If you're communicating apparent controversy with a well known publisher AND know that you're going to be revealed as a "Russian hacker" due to fabricated evidence you've planted there is no reason to expect it to remain a "private communication" for long. Instead, it becomes an attribution that would be expected to become public knowledge sooner or later.
Guccifer 2.0 is the first known entity to have prior knowledge of and privileged access to exclusive content (Sarah Hamilton Emails) on the DCLeaks webpage before it was publicly available.
If Guccifer 2.0 was also the uploader of the content - that would make perfect sense and if Guccifer 2.0 is a covert effort to poison-the-well of whistle blowers and leak sites (an extension of its apparent purpose to discredit Wikileaks as its actions on June 15th reveal it to be) - it would explain how the emails could have been sourced (internally) for the sake of forging a perceived attribution with DCLeaks.
Guccifer 2.0 claimed that DCLeaks is a Wikileaks subproject where there is no public evidence of any formal or informal relationships between DCLeaks and Wikileaks.
This of course adds credence to what I suggest above: that this was an extension of the effort to discredit Wikileaks and create false attribution in an effort to discredit leakers and whistle-blowers, tainting everything with an association to its faux-"Russian hacker" persona.
So... we've got a password for a section of the site that Guccifer 2.0 could have been provided and could have been the source of the content for.
While this certainly shows he communicated with DCLeaks before his email on 27th of June and had a password to access a portion of the site - what was there that specifically could link him to the administration or leadership of the DCLeaks site to a greater degree than a leak contributor?
To really see how tenuous the link between Guccifer2 and DCLeaks is we have to take a detour through a separate hacking incident in Florida and this is where things start to get strange...
BadWolf/Badvolf, DCLeaks & Guccifer 2.0
If you haven't heard of BadWolf/BadVolf you won't know that BadWolf was someone linked to a site critical of Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office under Ric Bradshaw on the domain "PBSOTalk.com" (a site originally founded by Mark Dougan, Ric Bradshaw's former deputy).
Following a raid on Mark Dougan and covering BadWolf's involvement, Gawker, reported the following in March 2016:
The agents were apparently there to investigate the recent hacking of thousands of names and addresses of law enforcement officers and others living in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, which were published last month on a website founded by Dougan. A significant portion of the targeted individuals were FBI agents themselves. A few days after the first of these hacks, the local press reported that the sheriff’s office was launching an official investigation. One strange detail in those reports stuck out: The suspected hacker was apparently located in Russia, 5,000 miles from the beachfront county he targeted.
The man who claims to be responsible calls himself БадВолф, or BadWolf to his English-speaking friends and enemies. He lives in Moscow, where he works in IT for a local government agency (he won’t say which), and is alternately puckish and self-righteous when describing his strikes against American law enforcement. He says he lifted the Palm Beach names and addresses from a database maintained by the county property appraiser and published it as retaliation against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which he believes is a deeply corrupt institution. The Miami-Dade address dump, which was published weeks later, also appears to target the PBSO
So, it would seem, a Russian hacker, working in a local government agency, going by the name of BadWolf had hacked into databases and posted them to Dougan's site.
Fast forward to September 25th, 2016 - PBSOTalk.com has since been taken down following the FBI investigating and apparently resurrected as PBSOTalk.ru (however, the contact details are private and no longer associated to the original domain's registrant, see below).
ORIGINAL PBSOTALK.COM DOMAIN REGISTRANT:
Name: Alexey drobyshev
Company: Drobyshev Intl
Address: M.Kutuzova 7, #.207, Moscow, Moscow, 143080, Russian Federation
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 79019035319
Databreaches.net reports that a new leak claim is posted to PBSOTalk.ru, this time relating to the Florida Bar Association. However, it seems specious, lacks the data that it claims is being leaked, the method of proving access is odd and the Florida Bar Association disagree strongly with the notion they were hacked.
Following this, 'Dissent' of databreaches.net spoke with BadVolf and in that conversation, the evidence (in the form of MP4 videos, a screengrab of which is featured below) that he provides regarding the hack claims suggest he's the root administrator of DCLeaks, not only that but Guccifer 2.0 apparently appears during their conversation.
source: www.databreaches.net
As 'Dissent' explains in the article (emphasis mine):
Unsurprisingly, I asked for some proof. But when BadVolf attempted to provide me with copies of all the emails – including, he said, emails that had not yet appeared on WikiLeaks, he was unable to do so, and said he needed to contact Guccifer2.0, who, to my surprise, showed up in our chat to provide a new link where I was able to download everything. But there was nothing in what I downloaded that hadn’t already appeared on WikiLeaks. Despite repeated requests, I was not given any material that might have proved I was dealing with those who had had access to Clinton’s email server or Democrats.org
and later:
why couldn’t BadVolf provide me with the kind of proof requested to prove that he had access to DCLeaks? BadVolf’s explanation – that he was the database guy and not the web server guy, was not totally convincing to those who reviewed the mp4 files he provided.
This descends into madness with Guccifer 2.0 and BadVolf providing what they claim are login details from the DNC but these logins date from before the DNC hack was detected and passwords changed (so they were passwords that couldn't be verified!)
According to them, Hillary Clinton's passwords included "LeadTheSheeple2016" and Bill was using "Saxaphone1994%" as his password.
It also turns out that the BadVolf, in this instance, claimed to work for an Insurance company rather than work in a local government agency (as previously claimed before the FBI raid on Dougan, the domain being seized and the FBI investigating)
Conclusion: Conflation Confusion
So... we've got the fact Guccifer 2.0 had a password to the Sarah Hamilton leaks on DCLeaks (which he could have been provided and may have been responsible for uploading content to) and we have a bizarre theatrical performance using multimedia props that BadWolf/BadVolf (or a BadWolf imposter) and Guccifer 2.0 seem to have put on for the benefit of databreaches.net
Do BadWolf, Guccifer 2.0 and the MP4s prove DCLeaks-Guccifer2.0 collusion? - No, they demonstrate yet another example of trying to bamboozle reporters with easily fabricated materials and, as the databreaches article reports, fail to actually demonstrate a genuine breach of access through any independently verifiable means, coming up with excuses when such evidence is requested.
Do either of these things prove any definitive ties between Guccifer 2.0 and the DCLeaks.com site's leadership beyond Guccifer 2.0 providing uncontroversial Hamilton leaks? - No, of course not!
So... are either of these things proof that Guccifer 2.0 is linked to APT 28? - It doesn't seem so.
We can just see that during September, there was an apparent effort to create a perception of an association by someone (possibly 2 people) making specious claims, lacking verifiable evidence and only capable of producing evidence in a format that is very easy to fabricate..
Fortunately, in this instance, 'Dissent' was more savvy than some other journalists had been and instead of reporting this as a believable incident with credible hackers, the whole incident was reported as the bizarre & questionable performance that it was.
NOTE: Because of how unusual the whole databreaches.net incident seems, I have sent further inquiries to 'Dissent' and will update this article with any new & relevant information he can provide.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3164462
https://www.momsrising.org/
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... cyber-war/
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/1 ... tor-238356
FBI agents group endorses 911 cover up specialist Mike Rogers for FBI director
05/13/17
The FBI Agents Association on Saturday backed former lawmaker and FBI agent Mike Rogers to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey.
FBIAA President Thomas F. O’Connor said in a statement that Rogers, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "exemplifies the principles that should be possessed by the next FBI Director."
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/14/linds ... d-the-fbi/
Lindsey Graham: ‘I Think It’s Time For An FBI Agent To Lead The FBI’
1:43 PM 05/14/2017
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged President Donald Trump to nominate an FBI agent to lead the FBI on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
“I think it’s time for an FBI agent to lead the FBI,” Graham told host Chuck Todd. “When you talk about a new person to lead the FBI, how about an FBI agent who is above reproach?”
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140 ... rial.shtml
Former FBI agent Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
from the is-he-insane? dept
Rep. Mike Rogers apparently just can't help but spin wild and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Fresh off his latest attempt to argue that Ed Snowden is a Russian spy -- an argument debunked by just about everyone, including his Senatorial counterpart Dianne Feinstein -- it appears he's now decided to pick up the ridiculously insane thread kicked off (purposefully) last week by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, hinting that journalists who reported on Ed Snowden are somehow "accomplices" who can be prosecuted.
During a House Intelligence Committee in which many members (from both parties) angrily criticized the intelligence community, Rogers continued to do everything possible to defend them, including pushing the bogus argument that Glenn Greenwald "sold stolen goods" in questions to FBI director James Comey:
REP. ROGERS: You -- there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material -- is that a crime?
DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: Yes, it is.
REP. ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government -- would that be a crime?
DIR. COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.
REP. ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for -- fill in the blank -- and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?
DIR. COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.
REP. ROGERS: And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?
DIR. COMEY: I think that’s a harder question because it involves a news-gathering functions -- could have First Amendment implications. It’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.
REP. ROGERS: So entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?
DIR. COMEY: I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question in the abstract.
REP. ROGERS: It’s something we ought to think about, is it not?
DIR. COMEY: Certainly.
REP. ROGERS: And so if there are accomplices in purveying stolen information, shouldn’t we be concerned about that?
DIR. COMEY: We should be concerned about all the facts surrounding the theft of classified information and its promulgation.
REP. ROGERS: Hmm. And interesting that over the -- again, the Munich Conference, where we had individuals tell us that in fact there are individuals who are saying to be in possession of this information who are eager to sell this information to other news organizations, would that be a legitimate exercise on behalf of a reporter?
DIR. COMEY: That’s a question -- now you’re getting from the general to the particular. I don’t want to talk about the case in particular because it’s an active investigation of ours.
REP. ROGERS: It’s an active investigation for accomplices brokering in stolen information?
DIR. COMEY: We are looking at the totality of the circumstances around the theft and promulgation.
Glenn Greenwald is not named, but that's clearly who they are targeting. A few folks have brought up the ridiculous charges of him "selling" the Snowden leaks to news organizations, but that's clearly @#!!$#!%. Greenwald has been doing freelance journalism work for a while. Publications pay him in the same way they pay any freelancer. He's not selling any documents at all -- and in fact has shared many of the documents with multiple publications for their own reporting activities.
It's pretty clear that Rogers is continuing his desperate, despicable and downright McCarthy-like arguments in an attempt to create chilling effects and to protect his friends in the intelligence community. You'd think that someone who is supposed to uphold the Constitution would respect the freedom of the press, but Rogers seems to be actively trying to stifle it -- just like his staff did to me last year, when they lied about me and told reporters that they could sue me for defamation.
Rogers has shown time and time again that he's little more than a lumbering bully who will do pretty much anything to protect his friends in the intelligence community, even if that means trampling all over the Constitution. Rogers can push these claims as much as he wants. I think it's unlikely that the DOJ would go anywhere near charging a reporter with "selling stolen goods" in a case like this, because they know that argument would almost certainly fail. That means the only reason Rogers is doing this is to try to scare off people with bluster and threats. Thankfully, most of the people that's targeted at actually understand the law and the Constitution, and take such threats as clear suggestions that they're on the right track. It all makes you wonder, just what does Mike Rogers want to keep hidden so badly?
Dogs Shot by Police
https://www.facebook.com/DogsShotbyPolice/
https://signalscv.com/2017/05/12/fbi-ag ... be-ensues/
FBI agent shoots dog near Golden Valley, Bureau probe underway
By JIM HOLT AND AUSTIN DAVE - May 12, 2017, 8:10 pm
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-agent-pu ... 30316.html
FBI agent in Puerto Rico accused of kicking neighbor's dog
5/ 2, 2017
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico
An FBI agent in Puerto Rico has been accused of kicking his neighbor's Yorkshire terrier in the head.
Police said Tuesday that 46-year-old Timothy Boruff was charged with animal abuse and posted a $500 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court May 17.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... t-pet.html
Off-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while a grandmother was walking him in a park | Daily Mail Online
Daily Mail › uk › news › article-2888743
Dec 27, 2014 - Off-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while grandmother walked it in a park so he could protect his own pet. Carol Feldhaus was in a park in Glen Burnie, Maryland,
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-ameri ... ce-n757826
NEWS MAY 11 2017, 10:00 AM ET
Scientist Formerly Accused of Spying Sues Alleging FBI Agent Falsified Evidence
An FBI special agent knowingly made false statements and kept evidence from federal prosecutors who brought — but later dropped — charges against a Chinese-American physics professor accused of spying, a recent lawsuit alleges.
Xiaoxing Xi, 59, argues in papers filed in federal court Wednesday that lead case agent Andrew Haugen told prosecutors Xi's dealings with colleagues in China were "for a sinister and illicit purpose," even though Haugen allegedly knew they were "legitimate normal academic collaborations."
Image: US-CHINA-SPY-CHARGES
Sherry Chen (L), a US federal government worker, and Xiaoxing Xi, chair of the Physics Department at Temple University, speak about the dropped charges against them of spying for China, during a press conference in Washington, DC, September 15, 2015. Prosecutors dropped charges of spying for China against Xi last week and against Chen earlier this year. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
An indictment handed up in May 2015 by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania accused Xi of sharing information with counterparts in China about a pocket heater, which Xi bought in 2004 for use in his superconductor research, court papers said.
He was charged with four counts of wire fraud in what prosecutors said was an effort to help the Chinese become "world leaders of the superconductivity field."
But the government dropped its case in September 2015 after Xi and his attorney gave a presentation to investigators a month earlier, according to court papers.
RELATED: Feds Will Not File New Espionage Charges Against Physics Professor
According to Xi's lawsuit, the only thing the physics department's interim chair at Temple University in Philadelphia discussed in emails with those colleagues was technology he himself had invented and published — not the pocket heater.
And that, the suit contends, was a fact Haugen knew before Xi was ever indicted.
"It was obvious to anyone who looked carefully that Professor Xi had not sent any information about the technology that he was charged with unlawfully sharing," one of his attorneys, Jonathan Feinberg, told NBC News.
An excerpt of a lawsuit by Xiaoxing Xi alleging that an FBI special agent falsely informed federal prosecutors that Xi was a "technological spy for China."
The FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit citing pending litigation. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A naturalized citizen born in China, Xi is among several Chinese-American scientists who in recent years have had federal criminal indictments dismissed before heading to trial.
Last May, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, among others, called on the Justice Department to investigate whether race, ethnicity, or national origin played a role in bringing espionage charges against Asian Americans, including Xi and hydrologist Xiafen (Sherry) Chen.
RELATED: Petition Demands Apology for Chinese-American Scientists Previously Accused of Spying
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles said in a statement Wednesday that it supported Xi's lawsuit, calling his prosecution unjust.
"In reality, the federal government had sought to criminalize Professor Xi for routine academic research that was not secret or unlawful in any way," the statement reads.
Xi's arrest came in the early morning hours of May 21, 2015, while at home with his family, court papers said. Not fully dressed, Xi answered the door after hearing loud, urgent knocks. Awaiting him on the other side were armed federal agents, some with a battering ram, court documents said.
Xi's wife and two daughters, the youngest age 12 at the time, were held at gunpoint as a handcuffed Xi was led away, his lawsuit claims.
Agents at the FBI's Philadelphia field office fingerprinted Xi, took his mugshot, and made him give a DNA sample, court papers said. Xi was also interrogated for two hours, allegedly being told the reason for his arrest only after the questioning ended, his suit said.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which took custody of Xi, ordered him to strip naked and performed a visual body cavity search, according to court papers.
Xi was released after posting $100,000 in bond, though a judge required that he turn over his passport and restricted his travel to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, his lawsuit said.
He was told he faced up to 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted, according to court papers.
The four-count indictment alleged that Xi violated an agreement he had signed in 2006 with a company claiming ownership of the pocket heater he had bought two years earlier. Xi promised in that document not to "reproduce, sell, transfer or otherwise distribute" the device "to any third party," his lawsuit said.
That was a condition for Xi to lease and use the pocket heater in his research for a 12-month period, according to court documents.
The physical components of that particular device were not trade secrets or protected by federal law from being disclosed, the court filing said.
The wire fraud charges were based on emails in 2010 between Xi and colleagues in China. But, as Xi maintains, details of the pocket heater were never brought up in those electronic communications.
"They addressed completely different devices — in fact, devices that professor Xi had himself invented, which had nothing to do with the STI pocket heater," Feinberg said.
That was among the evidence Xi and his attorney presented to prosecutors, who ultimately dismissed the charges on Sept. 18, 2015, court filings said.
Xi's lawsuit accuses Haugen of making a number of false statements that led to what Xi calls a malicious prosecution. Among them, that Xi sent diagrams and photographs of the pocket heater to colleagues at universities in China, and that Xi bought the device with the intent of violating the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.
The lawsuit claims Xi's equal protection and due process rights were violated, and that he was subjected to unlawful search and seizure. He is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys' fees.
Xi has since returned to work at Temple University, Feinberg said. He added that Xi was never told what caused the government to be suspicious of his conduct in the first place.
"There's no question that these charges left a very, very distressing impression upon him," Feinberg said. "He is constantly watching his back, concerned that someone may misinterpret his normal academic collaborations."
Additional defendants could be tacked on to the lawsuit if it's discovered that other agents were involved, Feinberg said.
The FBI itself was not named in the complaint since the agency can not be sued under federal law, he noted.
But Feinberg added, "At some point, it is likely that we will bring claims against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. That's an issue that we'll be addressing in the weeks and months
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3162073
NYPD tech charged with attacking, hurling death threats at daughter
Saturday, May 13, 2017, 8:51 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3165148
Former FBI Director James Comey spotted at musical in first public outing since being fired
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, May 14, 2017, 6:09 PM
Former FBI Director James Comey made his first public appearance since getting fired by President Trump by attending a musical on Saturday.
Comey and his wife, Patrice, enjoyed the matinee performance of “Fun Home” — a musical about a lesbian cartoonist who explores her sexuality and struggles with the suicide of her gay father – at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. The coming-of-age musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.
Barbara Whitman, one of the show’s lead producers, told The New York Times that the Comeys purchased tickets some time ago.
The show had such an impact on the Comeys that “they were wiping away the tears as they came backstage to meet the cast,” Whitman told the Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/worl ... .html?_r=0
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Disturbi ... 8/Y/M.html
DISTURBING CLAIM – FBI INTERROGATED FORMER SENATOR FOR WANTING “28 PAGES” DECLASSIFIED
Published: May 9, 2016
While extremely disturbing, I can’t say the following is particularly surprising.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is criticizing the Obama administration as having tried to strong-arm a former senator who is pushing to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report dealing with Saudi Arabia.
He recounted how Rep. Gwen Graham (D-Fla.) and her father, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.), were detained by the FBI in 2011 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The message from the agents, according to the Grahams, was to quit pushing for declassification of the 28 pages.
The FBI “took a former senator, a former governor, grabbed him in an airport, hustled him into a room with armed force to try to intimidate him into taking different positions on issues of public policy and important national policy, and the fact that he wasn’t intimidated because he was calm doesn’t show that they weren’t trying to intimidate him,” Sherman said in an interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper.
This actually makes perfect sense. As I highlighted in last year’s post, The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack:
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis’ “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks.
Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush.
“The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.
Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which, if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government.
This is Your Government: Protecting the criminals from the people.
For related articles, see:
Seymour Hersh – Saudi Government Paid Pakistan to Hold Osama bin Laden to Prevent U.S. Interrogation
Video of the Day – 60 Minutes Explores the Saudi Links to 9/11 Attacks
The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack
Must Watch Video – Congressman Thomas Massie Calls for Release of Secret 9/11 Documents Upon Reading Them
Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/schumer-rai ... i-nominee/
May 14, 2017, 5:11 PM
Schumer raises possibility of stalling Trump's FBI nominee
WASHINGTON -- The Senate's top Democrat is raising the possibility his party may try to stall President Trump's FBI nominee until his administration agrees to have a special prosecutor investigate Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
https://www.cato.org/publications/comme ... lames-waco
Senator Schumer covers up murder by FBI agents at WACO
Fanning the Flames of Waco
September 8, 1999
On April 19, 1993, 26 children were killed at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Six years and one day later, 12 children were killed at Columbine High School. The Columbine murderers are dead, and the man who illegally supplied them a gun is facing a lengthy prison sentence. But those responsible for the deaths of the children at Waco remain at large.
If, as President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno claim, the federal government bears no responsibility for the deaths of the children at Waco, why has the federal government worked so hard, and with so much success until recently, to falsify the facts about what happened there?
The lies about how the fire started commenced while the building was still in flames. A Justice Department spokesman in Washington claimed that an FBI sniper using a rifle scope had seen a male Branch Davidian, wearing black Ninja-style clothes and a black hood, pour liquid on the floor behind a piano and then ignite it. The day after the fire, Jeffrey Jamar, the FBI’s special agent in charge at Waco, asserted that the agent saw a person “get down with cupped hands and then there was a flash of fire.”
At the criminal trial of the Branch Davidians in 1994, that story fell apart. FBI Special Agent Jack Morrison said that he could see, through a hole created by a tank, somebody bent or kneeling by an overturned piano. The man appeared to be washing his hands, although the sniper admitted on cross-examination that he could not see the man’s hands. The fire did not erupt while the man was in the sniper’s sight, though the sniper did see a fire shortly thereafter. However, pictures of the progress of the fire show that the area near the overturned piano (the front door) was not a starting point for any fire. No fire appears there until several minutes after the sniper’s observation. Photographs show no fire in that area while much of the rest of the building was in flames.
Attorney General Reno earned a congratulatory phone call from President Clinton the day after the fire because of her highly publicized acceptance of responsibility. She put the FBI in charge of investigating its own conduct at Waco. The resulting report was a sham and a cover-up. Although seven independent reviewers were appointed to examine the FBI report, the FBI withheld evidence from them, such as Branch Davidian leader David Koresh’s April 14 offer to surrender as soon as he completed his written interpretation of the Seven Seals from the Book of Revelation.
Today, Reno claims to be angry that the FBI has been caught lying about Waco for the last six years. This brings to mind Claude Rains’s line from Casablanca, “I’m shocked … shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”
The FBI lied to Janet Reno right from the start: they told her that CS chemical warfare agent is a mild irritant, even though much smaller doses than were used at Waco have killed children. On the day of the assault, the FBI flagrantly ignored her prior order to back off if there was any danger to the children. When she had initially rejected the FBI’s plan for a tank and chemical warfare assault on the Branch Davidians, the FBI told her that “Koresh was beating the babies.” In fact, FBI listening devices revealed no such thing.
Now Attorney General Reno’s response to new revelations about FBI lies is to order another FBI investigation of the FBI.
It is undisputed that while the FBI tanks were conducting the chemical warfare assault, the Branch Davidians spread kerosene in the building, intending to light it if the tanks entered the building. Starting a massive conflagration would have been consistent with Koresh’s apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible.
However, if federal agents bear no responsibility for the start of the fire and for the deaths of 76 people, why has the FBI covered up so much evidence for so long?
Recent revelations show that the FBI did fire pyrotechnic grenades — fully capable of starting a fire — during the attack on the Branch Davidian home. The FBI now claims that those grenades were launched six hours before the fire began. Yet if this “innocent” explanation is true, why did the FBI not tell the truth from the beginning?
Even if one takes the current FBI explanation at face value, it shows the federal government’s horrible disregard for the children. Although CS chemical warfare agent is banned from international warfare by a treaty that the United States has signed, the FBI used it against children and babies, knowing that those innocents would be unprotected by gas masks, since their faces were too small to fit them.
After the fire, the FBI bemoaned the failure of the Branch Davidians to take refuge in the underground tornado shelter, where the air remained cool and fresh. Yet the FBI now admits that the pyrotechnic grenades were launched at the very beginning of the assault as part of a systematic plan to keep anyone from fleeing to the shelter.
The federal Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military for civilian law enforcement. Yet the Dallas Morning News reports that the U.S. Army’s Delta Force was “present, up front and close” on April 19, 1993. That revelation undermines earlier claims that only three Delta Force soldiers were at Waco in an “advisory” capacity.
The government claims that the FBI never fired a single shot at Waco, yet an FBI aerial film appears to show the distinctive pattern of machine gun fire coming from government posts at the rear of the Branch Davidian compound — on the one side of the building that television cameras could not see. Could it be that Delta Force, and not the FBI, was doing the shooting — making claims that the FBI did not fire a single shot literally true?
Congressional leaders are beginning new hearings on Waco. However, the 1995 Waco hearings were a disaster, with Republicans looking for administration appointees to blame and paying little attention to the malfeasance of career federal agents. Meanwhile, Democrats such as then-Rep. Charles Schumer succeeded in diverting attention away from crimes committed by government employees and toward the statutory rapes that David Koresh had perpetrated earlier. To his credit, Schumer, now a senator, was the first major Democrat to call for a new review of Waco.
If another round of hearings is to have any chance for success, it will be essential to have a small committee, to allow congressional staff to question witnesses, and not to impose time limits on how long a given witness may be questioned.
Even now, it is unclear who killed the children of Waco. More than ever, though, the recent unveiling of more FBI lies underscores the fact that the children died because of willful and knowing actions by our federal law enforcement professionals. Although the president shed crocodile tears over the 12 children at Columbine High School and now seeks partisan advantage by pushing for federal laws that could not possibly have prevented Columbine, he and his administration remain coldly indifferent to the 26 children at Waco. The day after the Waco fire, Clinton said, “I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves.” But the children didn’t kill themselves. If the president and his attorney general really care about those 26 children, they will appoint outside investigators — not the FBI — to bring out the truth about what really happened on April 19, 1993.
David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman are the authors of No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.
https://www.rt.com/usa/388341-bin-laden-son-revenge/
Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Published time: 14 May, 2017 15:55
Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Osama Bin Laden’s son is set to become the new leader of Al-Qaeda and wants to exact revenge for his father’s death, according to an ex-FBI agent, who led the investigation into the terrorist group following the 9/11 attacks.
In an interview to be aired on CBS on Sunday, former agent Ali Soufan claims that letters seized in the raid in which Bin Laden was killed in 2011 indicate that his son will follow in his footsteps.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol ... 91401.html
Osama Bin Laden Created by the US
. 'Bin Laden is a product of the U.S. spy agencies, according to an article in the Tribune de Genve by Richard Labviire, writer of the book Les dollars de la terreur, les etats Unis et les islamistes.
The first contact with Bin Laden was in 1979, when the new graduate from the Univ. of Jedah got in touch with the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. With the help of the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces intelligence services he began to organize in the early 1980s and network to raise money and to recruit fighters for the Afghan mujahidins that were fighting the Soviets. He did this from the city of Peshawar in Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan.
Part of these activities were financed with the production and sale of morphine, the base of heroin. This was the beginning of today Al Qaida (the base) network led by Bin Laden. Indeed the chickens are coming home to roost for the CIA and U.S. bosses.
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/07euro1.htm
LONDON [IANS]: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia."
Harrison said: "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan. "They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets," he said. "I warned them that we were creating a monster."
Harrison, who has written five books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, has had extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia. Harrison was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between 1974 and 1996.
Harrison who is now senior fellow with The Century Foundation recalled a conversation he had with the late Gen Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan. "Gen Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan's sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikstan and then Iran and Turkey," Harrison said. That design continues, he said. Gen.Mohammed Aziz who was involved in that Zia plan has been elevated now to a key position by Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Harrison said.
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. "The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence)."
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. "The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government)." The Taliban are now "making a living out of terrorism."
Harrison said the UN Security Council resolution number 1333 calls for an embargo on arms to the Taliban. "But it is a resolution without teeth because it does not provide sanctions for non-compliance," he said. "The US is not backing the Russians who want to give more teeth to the resolution."
Now it is Pakistan that "holds the key to the future of Afghanistan," Harrison said. The creation of the Taliban was central to Pakistan's "pan-Islamic vision," Harrison said. It came after "the CIA made the historic mistake of encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan," he said. The creation of the Taliban had been "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," he said. "Pakistan has been building up Afghan collaborators who will sustain Pakistan," he said. (IANS)
More On The Taliban And Other "Monsters" Of The CIA:
For more details on the CIA's role in creating the Taliban, and dozens of other terrorist organizations around the world, refer to the latest issue of COAT's magazine, Press for Conversion!.
This issue (#43) is on the theme: "A People's History of the CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire." It is available (full-text) at our web site <http://www.ncf.ca/coat/>
Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War
By: Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992
"In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II."
A specially equipped C-141 Starlifter transport carrying William Casey touched down at a military air base south of Islamabad in October 1984 for a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Helicopters lifted Casey to three secret training camps near the Afghan border, where he watched mujaheddin rebels fire heavy weapons and learn to make bombs with CIA-supplied plastic explosives and detonators.
During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory -- into the Soviet Union itself.
Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.
"We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union," Casey said, according to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting.
Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials.
Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire.
Eight years after Casey's visit to Pakistan, the Soviet Union is no more. Afghanistan has fallen to the heavily armed, fraticidal mujaheddin rebels.
The Afghans themselves did the fighting and dying -- and ultimately won their war against the Soviets -- and not all of them laud the CIA's role in their victory. But even some sharp critics of the CIA agree that in military terms, its secret 1985 escalation of covert support to the mujaheddin made a major difference in Afghanistan, the last battlefield of the long Cold War.
How the Reagan administration decided to go for victory in the Afghan war between 1984 and 1988 has been shrouded in secrecy and clouded by the sharply divergent political agendas of those involved. But with the triumph of the mujaheddin rebels over Afghanistan's leftist government in April and the demise of the Soviet Union, some intelligence officials involved have decided to reveal how the covert escalation was carried out.
The most prominent of these former intelligence officers is Yousaf, the Pakistani general who supervised the covert war between 1983 and 1987 and who last month published in Europe and Pakistan a detailed account of his role and that of the CIA, titled "The Bear Trap."
This article and another to follow are based on extensive interviews with Yousaf as well as with more than a dozen senior Western officials who confirmed Yousaf's disclosures and elaborated on them.
U.S. officials worried about what might happen if aspects of their stepped-up covert action were exposed -- or if the program succeeded too well and provoked the Soviets to react in hot anger. The escalation that began in 1985 "was directed at killing Russian military officers," one Western official said. "That caused a lot of nervousness."
One source of jitters was that Pakistani intelligence officers -- partly inspired by Casey -- began independently to train Afghans and funnel CIA supplies for scattered strikes against military installations, factories and storage depots within Soviet territory.
The attacks later alarmed U.S. officials in Washington, who saw military raids on Soviet territory as "an incredible escalation," according to Graham Fuller, then a senior U.S. intelligence official who counseled against any such raids. Fearing a large-scale Soviet response and the fallout of such attacks on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, the Reagan administration blocked the transfer to Pakistan of detailed satellite photographs of military targets inside the Soviet Union, other U.S. officials said.
To Yousaf, who managed the Koran-smuggling program and the guerrilla raids inside Soviet territory, the United States ultimately "chickened out" on the question of taking the secret Afghan war onto Soviet soil. Nonetheless, Yousaf recalled, Casey was "ruthless in his approach, and he had a built-in hatred for the Soviets."
An intelligence coup in 1984 and 1985 triggered the Reagan administration's decision to escalate the covert progam in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. The United States received highly specific, sensitive information about Kremlin politics and new Soviet war plans in Afghanistan. Already under pressure from Congress and conservative activists to expand its support to the mujaheddin, the Reagan administration moved in response to this intelligence to open up its high-technology arsenal to aid the Afghan rebels.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
The move to upgrade aid to the mujaheddin roughly coincided with the well-known decision in 1986 to provide the mujaheddin with sophisticated, U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Before the missiles arrived, however, those involved in the covert war wrestled with a wide-ranging and at times divisive debate over how far they should go in challenging the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Roots of the Rebellion In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first -- and for many years the only -- presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations, according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter document.
The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few considered possible at the time, these sources said.
The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA operations in Nicaragua and Angola.
Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded secrets.
In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II.
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were significant -- 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to Yousaf -- but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.
Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet commanders pursued them increasingly, to the point where some U.S. congressmen who traveled with the mujaheddin -- including Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.) and Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) -- believed that the war might turn against the rebels.
The new Soviet tactics reflected a perception in the Kremlin that the Red Army was in danger of becoming bogged down in Afghanistan and needed to take decisive steps to win the war, according to sensitive intelligence that reached the Reagan administration in 1984 and 1985, Western officials said. The intelligence came from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defense Ministry and indicated that Soviet hard-liners were pushing a plan to attempt to win the Afghan war within two years, sources said.
The new war plan was to be implemented by Gen. Mikhail Zaitsev, who was transferred from the prestigious command of Soviet forces in Germany to run the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the spring of 1985, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was battling hard-line rivals to take power in a Kremlin succession struggle. Cracking the Kremlin's Strategy
The intelligence about Soviet war plans in Afghanistan was highly specific, according to Western sources. The Soviets intended to deploy one-third of their total Spetsnaz forces in Afghanistan -- nearly 2,000 "highly trained and motivated" paratroops, according to Yousaf.
In addition, the Soviets intended to dispatch a stronger KGB presence to assist the special forces and regular troops, and they intended to deploy some of the Soviet Union's most sophisticated battlefield communications equipment, referred to by some as the "Omsk vans" -- mobile, integrated communications centers that would permit interception of mujaheddin battlefield communications and rapid, coordinated aerial attacks on rebel targets, such as the kind that were demoralizing the rebels by 1984.
At the Pentagon, U.S. military officers pored over the intelligence, considering plans to thwart the Soviet escalation, officials said. The answers they came up with, said a Western official, were to provide "secure communications [for the Afghan rebels], kill the gunships and the fighter cover, better routes for [mujaheddin] infiltration, and get to work on [Soviet] targets" in Afghanistan, including the Omsk vans, through the use of satellite reconnaissance and increased, specialized guerrilla training.
"There was a demand from my friends [in the CIA] to capture a vehicle intact with this sort of communications," recalled Yousaf, referring to the newly introduced mobile Soviet facilities. Unfortunately, despite much effort, Yousaf said, "we never succeeded in that."
"Spetsnaz was key," said Vincent Cannistraro, a CIA operations officer who was posted at the time as director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Not only did communications improve, but the Spetsnaz forces were willing to fight aggressively and at night. The problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means to win.
Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really, really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were "simply careful."
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
New Covert U.S. Aid The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied the mujaheddin across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads, the sources said.
CIA and Pentagon specialists offered detailed satellite photographs and ink maps of Soviet targets around Afghanistan. The CIA station chief in Islamabad ferried U.S. intercepts of Soviet battlefield communications.
Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site.
The new efforts focused on strategic targets such as the Termez Bridge between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. "We got the information like current speed of the water, current depth of the water, the width of the pillars, which would be the best way to demolish," Yousaf said. In Washington, CIA lawyers debated whether it was legal to blow up pylons on the Soviet side of the bridge as opposed to the Afghan side, in keeping with the decision not to support military action across the Soviet border, a Western official said.
Despite several attempts, Afghan rebels trained in the new program never brought the Termez Bridge down, though they did damage and destroy other targets, such as pipelines and depots, in the sensitive border area, Western and Pakistani sources said.
The most valuable intelligence provided by the Americans was the satellite reconnaissance, Yousaf said. Soon the wall of Yousaf's office was covered with detailed maps of Soviet targets in Afghanistan such as airfields, armories and military buildings. The maps came with CIA assessments of how best to approach the target, possible routes of withdrawal, and analysis of how Soviet troops might respond to an attack. "They would say there are the vehicles, and there is the [river bank], and there is the tank," Yousaf said.
CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for the mujaheddin in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage and heavy weapons, Yousaf and Western officials said.
The first antiaircraft systems used by the mujaheddin were the Swiss-made Oerlikon heavy gun and the British-made Blowpipe missile, according to Yousaf and Western sources. When these proved ineffective, the United States sent the Stinger. Pakistani officers traveled to the United States for training on the Stinger in June 1986 and then set up a secret mujaheddin Stinger training facility in Rawalpindi, complete with an electronic simulator made in the United States. The simulator allowed mujaheddin trainees to aim and fire at a large screen without actually shooting off expensive missiles, Yousaf said. The screen marked the missile's track and calculated whether the trainee would have hit his airborne target.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of such training and battlefield intelligence depended on the mujaheddin themselves; their performance and willingness to employ disciplined tactics varied greatly. Yousaf considered the aid highly valuable, although persistently marred by supplies of weapons such as the Blowpipe that failed miserably on the battlefield.
At the least, the escalation on the U.S. side initiated with Reagan's 1985 National Security Directive helped to change the character of the Afghan war, intensifying the struggle and raising the stakes for both sides. This change led U.S. officials to confront a difficult question that had legal, military, foreign policy and even moral implications: In taking the Afghan covert operation more directly to the Soviet enemy, how far should the United States be prepared to go?
http://yournewswire.com/fbi-jason-chaff ... -politics/
FBI Insider Reveals Why Jason Chaffetz Is Being Forced Out Of Politics
May 1, 2017
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because the Rothschild's threatened his children's lives, according to an FBI insider.
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because elite Democrats, working on behalf of the financial industrial complex also known as the Rothschild’s central banking scam, threatened his children’s lives, according to an FBI insider.
Chaffetz effectively ended his career as an uncompromised politician when he pushed through the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the FBI insider explains.
“You don’t go after the Fed. Nobody goes after the Federal Reserve and gets away with it.”
In March Chaffetz was credited with doing “the impossible” and pushing a bill through Congress ordering an audit of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/l ... story.html
Meet the Malibu lawyer who is upending California's political system, one town at a time
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3164462
https://www.momsrising.org/
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... cyber-war/
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/1 ... tor-238356
FBI agents group endorses 911 cover up specialist Mike Rogers for FBI director
05/13/17
The FBI Agents Association on Saturday backed former lawmaker and FBI agent Mike Rogers to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey.
FBIAA President Thomas F. O’Connor said in a statement that Rogers, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "exemplifies the principles that should be possessed by the next FBI Director."
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/14/linds ... d-the-fbi/
Lindsey Graham: ‘I Think It’s Time For An FBI Agent To Lead The FBI’
1:43 PM 05/14/2017
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged President Donald Trump to nominate an FBI agent to lead the FBI on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
“I think it’s time for an FBI agent to lead the FBI,” Graham told host Chuck Todd. “When you talk about a new person to lead the FBI, how about an FBI agent who is above reproach?”
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140 ... rial.shtml
Former FBI agent Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
from the is-he-insane? dept
Rep. Mike Rogers apparently just can't help but spin wild and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Fresh off his latest attempt to argue that Ed Snowden is a Russian spy -- an argument debunked by just about everyone, including his Senatorial counterpart Dianne Feinstein -- it appears he's now decided to pick up the ridiculously insane thread kicked off (purposefully) last week by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, hinting that journalists who reported on Ed Snowden are somehow "accomplices" who can be prosecuted.
During a House Intelligence Committee in which many members (from both parties) angrily criticized the intelligence community, Rogers continued to do everything possible to defend them, including pushing the bogus argument that Glenn Greenwald "sold stolen goods" in questions to FBI director James Comey:
REP. ROGERS: You -- there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material -- is that a crime?
DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: Yes, it is.
REP. ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government -- would that be a crime?
DIR. COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.
REP. ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for -- fill in the blank -- and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?
DIR. COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.
REP. ROGERS: And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?
DIR. COMEY: I think that’s a harder question because it involves a news-gathering functions -- could have First Amendment implications. It’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.
REP. ROGERS: So entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?
DIR. COMEY: I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question in the abstract.
REP. ROGERS: It’s something we ought to think about, is it not?
DIR. COMEY: Certainly.
REP. ROGERS: And so if there are accomplices in purveying stolen information, shouldn’t we be concerned about that?
DIR. COMEY: We should be concerned about all the facts surrounding the theft of classified information and its promulgation.
REP. ROGERS: Hmm. And interesting that over the -- again, the Munich Conference, where we had individuals tell us that in fact there are individuals who are saying to be in possession of this information who are eager to sell this information to other news organizations, would that be a legitimate exercise on behalf of a reporter?
DIR. COMEY: That’s a question -- now you’re getting from the general to the particular. I don’t want to talk about the case in particular because it’s an active investigation of ours.
REP. ROGERS: It’s an active investigation for accomplices brokering in stolen information?
DIR. COMEY: We are looking at the totality of the circumstances around the theft and promulgation.
Glenn Greenwald is not named, but that's clearly who they are targeting. A few folks have brought up the ridiculous charges of him "selling" the Snowden leaks to news organizations, but that's clearly @#!!$#!%. Greenwald has been doing freelance journalism work for a while. Publications pay him in the same way they pay any freelancer. He's not selling any documents at all -- and in fact has shared many of the documents with multiple publications for their own reporting activities.
It's pretty clear that Rogers is continuing his desperate, despicable and downright McCarthy-like arguments in an attempt to create chilling effects and to protect his friends in the intelligence community. You'd think that someone who is supposed to uphold the Constitution would respect the freedom of the press, but Rogers seems to be actively trying to stifle it -- just like his staff did to me last year, when they lied about me and told reporters that they could sue me for defamation.
Rogers has shown time and time again that he's little more than a lumbering bully who will do pretty much anything to protect his friends in the intelligence community, even if that means trampling all over the Constitution. Rogers can push these claims as much as he wants. I think it's unlikely that the DOJ would go anywhere near charging a reporter with "selling stolen goods" in a case like this, because they know that argument would almost certainly fail. That means the only reason Rogers is doing this is to try to scare off people with bluster and threats. Thankfully, most of the people that's targeted at actually understand the law and the Constitution, and take such threats as clear suggestions that they're on the right track. It all makes you wonder, just what does Mike Rogers want to keep hidden so badly?
Dogs Shot by Police
https://www.facebook.com/DogsShotbyPolice/
https://signalscv.com/2017/05/12/fbi-ag ... be-ensues/
FBI agent shoots dog near Golden Valley, Bureau probe underway
By JIM HOLT AND AUSTIN DAVE - May 12, 2017, 8:10 pm
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-agent-pu ... 30316.html
FBI agent in Puerto Rico accused of kicking neighbor's dog
5/ 2, 2017
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico
An FBI agent in Puerto Rico has been accused of kicking his neighbor's Yorkshire terrier in the head.
Police said Tuesday that 46-year-old Timothy Boruff was charged with animal abuse and posted a $500 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court May 17.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... t-pet.html
Off-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while a grandmother was walking him in a park | Daily Mail Online
Daily Mail › uk › news › article-2888743
Dec 27, 2014 - Off-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while grandmother walked it in a park so he could protect his own pet. Carol Feldhaus was in a park in Glen Burnie, Maryland,
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-ameri ... ce-n757826
NEWS MAY 11 2017, 10:00 AM ET
Scientist Formerly Accused of Spying Sues Alleging FBI Agent Falsified Evidence
An FBI special agent knowingly made false statements and kept evidence from federal prosecutors who brought — but later dropped — charges against a Chinese-American physics professor accused of spying, a recent lawsuit alleges.
Xiaoxing Xi, 59, argues in papers filed in federal court Wednesday that lead case agent Andrew Haugen told prosecutors Xi's dealings with colleagues in China were "for a sinister and illicit purpose," even though Haugen allegedly knew they were "legitimate normal academic collaborations."
Image: US-CHINA-SPY-CHARGES
Sherry Chen (L), a US federal government worker, and Xiaoxing Xi, chair of the Physics Department at Temple University, speak about the dropped charges against them of spying for China, during a press conference in Washington, DC, September 15, 2015. Prosecutors dropped charges of spying for China against Xi last week and against Chen earlier this year. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
An indictment handed up in May 2015 by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania accused Xi of sharing information with counterparts in China about a pocket heater, which Xi bought in 2004 for use in his superconductor research, court papers said.
He was charged with four counts of wire fraud in what prosecutors said was an effort to help the Chinese become "world leaders of the superconductivity field."
But the government dropped its case in September 2015 after Xi and his attorney gave a presentation to investigators a month earlier, according to court papers.
RELATED: Feds Will Not File New Espionage Charges Against Physics Professor
According to Xi's lawsuit, the only thing the physics department's interim chair at Temple University in Philadelphia discussed in emails with those colleagues was technology he himself had invented and published — not the pocket heater.
And that, the suit contends, was a fact Haugen knew before Xi was ever indicted.
"It was obvious to anyone who looked carefully that Professor Xi had not sent any information about the technology that he was charged with unlawfully sharing," one of his attorneys, Jonathan Feinberg, told NBC News.
An excerpt of a lawsuit by Xiaoxing Xi alleging that an FBI special agent falsely informed federal prosecutors that Xi was a "technological spy for China."
The FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit citing pending litigation. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A naturalized citizen born in China, Xi is among several Chinese-American scientists who in recent years have had federal criminal indictments dismissed before heading to trial.
Last May, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, among others, called on the Justice Department to investigate whether race, ethnicity, or national origin played a role in bringing espionage charges against Asian Americans, including Xi and hydrologist Xiafen (Sherry) Chen.
RELATED: Petition Demands Apology for Chinese-American Scientists Previously Accused of Spying
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles said in a statement Wednesday that it supported Xi's lawsuit, calling his prosecution unjust.
"In reality, the federal government had sought to criminalize Professor Xi for routine academic research that was not secret or unlawful in any way," the statement reads.
Xi's arrest came in the early morning hours of May 21, 2015, while at home with his family, court papers said. Not fully dressed, Xi answered the door after hearing loud, urgent knocks. Awaiting him on the other side were armed federal agents, some with a battering ram, court documents said.
Xi's wife and two daughters, the youngest age 12 at the time, were held at gunpoint as a handcuffed Xi was led away, his lawsuit claims.
Agents at the FBI's Philadelphia field office fingerprinted Xi, took his mugshot, and made him give a DNA sample, court papers said. Xi was also interrogated for two hours, allegedly being told the reason for his arrest only after the questioning ended, his suit said.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which took custody of Xi, ordered him to strip naked and performed a visual body cavity search, according to court papers.
Xi was released after posting $100,000 in bond, though a judge required that he turn over his passport and restricted his travel to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, his lawsuit said.
He was told he faced up to 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted, according to court papers.
The four-count indictment alleged that Xi violated an agreement he had signed in 2006 with a company claiming ownership of the pocket heater he had bought two years earlier. Xi promised in that document not to "reproduce, sell, transfer or otherwise distribute" the device "to any third party," his lawsuit said.
That was a condition for Xi to lease and use the pocket heater in his research for a 12-month period, according to court documents.
The physical components of that particular device were not trade secrets or protected by federal law from being disclosed, the court filing said.
The wire fraud charges were based on emails in 2010 between Xi and colleagues in China. But, as Xi maintains, details of the pocket heater were never brought up in those electronic communications.
"They addressed completely different devices — in fact, devices that professor Xi had himself invented, which had nothing to do with the STI pocket heater," Feinberg said.
That was among the evidence Xi and his attorney presented to prosecutors, who ultimately dismissed the charges on Sept. 18, 2015, court filings said.
Xi's lawsuit accuses Haugen of making a number of false statements that led to what Xi calls a malicious prosecution. Among them, that Xi sent diagrams and photographs of the pocket heater to colleagues at universities in China, and that Xi bought the device with the intent of violating the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.
The lawsuit claims Xi's equal protection and due process rights were violated, and that he was subjected to unlawful search and seizure. He is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys' fees.
Xi has since returned to work at Temple University, Feinberg said. He added that Xi was never told what caused the government to be suspicious of his conduct in the first place.
"There's no question that these charges left a very, very distressing impression upon him," Feinberg said. "He is constantly watching his back, concerned that someone may misinterpret his normal academic collaborations."
Additional defendants could be tacked on to the lawsuit if it's discovered that other agents were involved, Feinberg said.
The FBI itself was not named in the complaint since the agency can not be sued under federal law, he noted.
But Feinberg added, "At some point, it is likely that we will bring claims against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. That's an issue that we'll be addressing in the weeks and months
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3162073
NYPD tech charged with attacking, hurling death threats at daughter
Saturday, May 13, 2017, 8:51 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3165148
Former FBI Director James Comey spotted at musical in first public outing since being fired
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, May 14, 2017, 6:09 PM
Former FBI Director James Comey made his first public appearance since getting fired by President Trump by attending a musical on Saturday.
Comey and his wife, Patrice, enjoyed the matinee performance of “Fun Home” — a musical about a lesbian cartoonist who explores her sexuality and struggles with the suicide of her gay father – at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. The coming-of-age musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.
Barbara Whitman, one of the show’s lead producers, told The New York Times that the Comeys purchased tickets some time ago.
The show had such an impact on the Comeys that “they were wiping away the tears as they came backstage to meet the cast,” Whitman told the Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/worl ... .html?_r=0
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Disturbi ... 8/Y/M.html
DISTURBING CLAIM – FBI INTERROGATED FORMER SENATOR FOR WANTING “28 PAGES” DECLASSIFIED
Published: May 9, 2016
While extremely disturbing, I can’t say the following is particularly surprising.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is criticizing the Obama administration as having tried to strong-arm a former senator who is pushing to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report dealing with Saudi Arabia.
He recounted how Rep. Gwen Graham (D-Fla.) and her father, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.), were detained by the FBI in 2011 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The message from the agents, according to the Grahams, was to quit pushing for declassification of the 28 pages.
The FBI “took a former senator, a former governor, grabbed him in an airport, hustled him into a room with armed force to try to intimidate him into taking different positions on issues of public policy and important national policy, and the fact that he wasn’t intimidated because he was calm doesn’t show that they weren’t trying to intimidate him,” Sherman said in an interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper.
This actually makes perfect sense. As I highlighted in last year’s post, The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack:
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis’ “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks.
Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush.
“The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.
Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which, if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government.
This is Your Government: Protecting the criminals from the people.
For related articles, see:
Seymour Hersh – Saudi Government Paid Pakistan to Hold Osama bin Laden to Prevent U.S. Interrogation
Video of the Day – 60 Minutes Explores the Saudi Links to 9/11 Attacks
The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack
Must Watch Video – Congressman Thomas Massie Calls for Release of Secret 9/11 Documents Upon Reading Them
Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/schumer-rai ... i-nominee/
May 14, 2017, 5:11 PM
Schumer raises possibility of stalling Trump's FBI nominee
WASHINGTON -- The Senate's top Democrat is raising the possibility his party may try to stall President Trump's FBI nominee until his administration agrees to have a special prosecutor investigate Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
https://www.cato.org/publications/comme ... lames-waco
Senator Schumer covers up murder by FBI agents at WACO
Fanning the Flames of Waco
September 8, 1999
On April 19, 1993, 26 children were killed at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Six years and one day later, 12 children were killed at Columbine High School. The Columbine murderers are dead, and the man who illegally supplied them a gun is facing a lengthy prison sentence. But those responsible for the deaths of the children at Waco remain at large.
If, as President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno claim, the federal government bears no responsibility for the deaths of the children at Waco, why has the federal government worked so hard, and with so much success until recently, to falsify the facts about what happened there?
The lies about how the fire started commenced while the building was still in flames. A Justice Department spokesman in Washington claimed that an FBI sniper using a rifle scope had seen a male Branch Davidian, wearing black Ninja-style clothes and a black hood, pour liquid on the floor behind a piano and then ignite it. The day after the fire, Jeffrey Jamar, the FBI’s special agent in charge at Waco, asserted that the agent saw a person “get down with cupped hands and then there was a flash of fire.”
At the criminal trial of the Branch Davidians in 1994, that story fell apart. FBI Special Agent Jack Morrison said that he could see, through a hole created by a tank, somebody bent or kneeling by an overturned piano. The man appeared to be washing his hands, although the sniper admitted on cross-examination that he could not see the man’s hands. The fire did not erupt while the man was in the sniper’s sight, though the sniper did see a fire shortly thereafter. However, pictures of the progress of the fire show that the area near the overturned piano (the front door) was not a starting point for any fire. No fire appears there until several minutes after the sniper’s observation. Photographs show no fire in that area while much of the rest of the building was in flames.
Attorney General Reno earned a congratulatory phone call from President Clinton the day after the fire because of her highly publicized acceptance of responsibility. She put the FBI in charge of investigating its own conduct at Waco. The resulting report was a sham and a cover-up. Although seven independent reviewers were appointed to examine the FBI report, the FBI withheld evidence from them, such as Branch Davidian leader David Koresh’s April 14 offer to surrender as soon as he completed his written interpretation of the Seven Seals from the Book of Revelation.
Today, Reno claims to be angry that the FBI has been caught lying about Waco for the last six years. This brings to mind Claude Rains’s line from Casablanca, “I’m shocked … shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”
The FBI lied to Janet Reno right from the start: they told her that CS chemical warfare agent is a mild irritant, even though much smaller doses than were used at Waco have killed children. On the day of the assault, the FBI flagrantly ignored her prior order to back off if there was any danger to the children. When she had initially rejected the FBI’s plan for a tank and chemical warfare assault on the Branch Davidians, the FBI told her that “Koresh was beating the babies.” In fact, FBI listening devices revealed no such thing.
Now Attorney General Reno’s response to new revelations about FBI lies is to order another FBI investigation of the FBI.
It is undisputed that while the FBI tanks were conducting the chemical warfare assault, the Branch Davidians spread kerosene in the building, intending to light it if the tanks entered the building. Starting a massive conflagration would have been consistent with Koresh’s apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible.
However, if federal agents bear no responsibility for the start of the fire and for the deaths of 76 people, why has the FBI covered up so much evidence for so long?
Recent revelations show that the FBI did fire pyrotechnic grenades — fully capable of starting a fire — during the attack on the Branch Davidian home. The FBI now claims that those grenades were launched six hours before the fire began. Yet if this “innocent” explanation is true, why did the FBI not tell the truth from the beginning?
Even if one takes the current FBI explanation at face value, it shows the federal government’s horrible disregard for the children. Although CS chemical warfare agent is banned from international warfare by a treaty that the United States has signed, the FBI used it against children and babies, knowing that those innocents would be unprotected by gas masks, since their faces were too small to fit them.
After the fire, the FBI bemoaned the failure of the Branch Davidians to take refuge in the underground tornado shelter, where the air remained cool and fresh. Yet the FBI now admits that the pyrotechnic grenades were launched at the very beginning of the assault as part of a systematic plan to keep anyone from fleeing to the shelter.
The federal Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military for civilian law enforcement. Yet the Dallas Morning News reports that the U.S. Army’s Delta Force was “present, up front and close” on April 19, 1993. That revelation undermines earlier claims that only three Delta Force soldiers were at Waco in an “advisory” capacity.
The government claims that the FBI never fired a single shot at Waco, yet an FBI aerial film appears to show the distinctive pattern of machine gun fire coming from government posts at the rear of the Branch Davidian compound — on the one side of the building that television cameras could not see. Could it be that Delta Force, and not the FBI, was doing the shooting — making claims that the FBI did not fire a single shot literally true?
Congressional leaders are beginning new hearings on Waco. However, the 1995 Waco hearings were a disaster, with Republicans looking for administration appointees to blame and paying little attention to the malfeasance of career federal agents. Meanwhile, Democrats such as then-Rep. Charles Schumer succeeded in diverting attention away from crimes committed by government employees and toward the statutory rapes that David Koresh had perpetrated earlier. To his credit, Schumer, now a senator, was the first major Democrat to call for a new review of Waco.
If another round of hearings is to have any chance for success, it will be essential to have a small committee, to allow congressional staff to question witnesses, and not to impose time limits on how long a given witness may be questioned.
Even now, it is unclear who killed the children of Waco. More than ever, though, the recent unveiling of more FBI lies underscores the fact that the children died because of willful and knowing actions by our federal law enforcement professionals. Although the president shed crocodile tears over the 12 children at Columbine High School and now seeks partisan advantage by pushing for federal laws that could not possibly have prevented Columbine, he and his administration remain coldly indifferent to the 26 children at Waco. The day after the Waco fire, Clinton said, “I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves.” But the children didn’t kill themselves. If the president and his attorney general really care about those 26 children, they will appoint outside investigators — not the FBI — to bring out the truth about what really happened on April 19, 1993.
David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman are the authors of No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.
https://www.rt.com/usa/388341-bin-laden-son-revenge/
Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Published time: 14 May, 2017 15:55
Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Osama Bin Laden’s son is set to become the new leader of Al-Qaeda and wants to exact revenge for his father’s death, according to an ex-FBI agent, who led the investigation into the terrorist group following the 9/11 attacks.
In an interview to be aired on CBS on Sunday, former agent Ali Soufan claims that letters seized in the raid in which Bin Laden was killed in 2011 indicate that his son will follow in his footsteps.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol ... 91401.html
Osama Bin Laden Created by the US
. 'Bin Laden is a product of the U.S. spy agencies, according to an article in the Tribune de Genve by Richard Labviire, writer of the book Les dollars de la terreur, les etats Unis et les islamistes.
The first contact with Bin Laden was in 1979, when the new graduate from the Univ. of Jedah got in touch with the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. With the help of the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces intelligence services he began to organize in the early 1980s and network to raise money and to recruit fighters for the Afghan mujahidins that were fighting the Soviets. He did this from the city of Peshawar in Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan.
Part of these activities were financed with the production and sale of morphine, the base of heroin. This was the beginning of today Al Qaida (the base) network led by Bin Laden. Indeed the chickens are coming home to roost for the CIA and U.S. bosses.
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/07euro1.htm
LONDON [IANS]: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia."
Harrison said: "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan. "They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets," he said. "I warned them that we were creating a monster."
Harrison, who has written five books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, has had extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia. Harrison was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between 1974 and 1996.
Harrison who is now senior fellow with The Century Foundation recalled a conversation he had with the late Gen Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan. "Gen Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan's sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikstan and then Iran and Turkey," Harrison said. That design continues, he said. Gen.Mohammed Aziz who was involved in that Zia plan has been elevated now to a key position by Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Harrison said.
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. "The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence)."
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. "The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government)." The Taliban are now "making a living out of terrorism."
Harrison said the UN Security Council resolution number 1333 calls for an embargo on arms to the Taliban. "But it is a resolution without teeth because it does not provide sanctions for non-compliance," he said. "The US is not backing the Russians who want to give more teeth to the resolution."
Now it is Pakistan that "holds the key to the future of Afghanistan," Harrison said. The creation of the Taliban was central to Pakistan's "pan-Islamic vision," Harrison said. It came after "the CIA made the historic mistake of encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan," he said. The creation of the Taliban had been "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," he said. "Pakistan has been building up Afghan collaborators who will sustain Pakistan," he said. (IANS)
More On The Taliban And Other "Monsters" Of The CIA:
For more details on the CIA's role in creating the Taliban, and dozens of other terrorist organizations around the world, refer to the latest issue of COAT's magazine, Press for Conversion!.
This issue (#43) is on the theme: "A People's History of the CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire." It is available (full-text) at our web site <http://www.ncf.ca/coat/>
Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War
By: Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992
"In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II."
A specially equipped C-141 Starlifter transport carrying William Casey touched down at a military air base south of Islamabad in October 1984 for a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Helicopters lifted Casey to three secret training camps near the Afghan border, where he watched mujaheddin rebels fire heavy weapons and learn to make bombs with CIA-supplied plastic explosives and detonators.
During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory -- into the Soviet Union itself.
Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.
"We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union," Casey said, according to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting.
Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials.
Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire.
Eight years after Casey's visit to Pakistan, the Soviet Union is no more. Afghanistan has fallen to the heavily armed, fraticidal mujaheddin rebels.
The Afghans themselves did the fighting and dying -- and ultimately won their war against the Soviets -- and not all of them laud the CIA's role in their victory. But even some sharp critics of the CIA agree that in military terms, its secret 1985 escalation of covert support to the mujaheddin made a major difference in Afghanistan, the last battlefield of the long Cold War.
How the Reagan administration decided to go for victory in the Afghan war between 1984 and 1988 has been shrouded in secrecy and clouded by the sharply divergent political agendas of those involved. But with the triumph of the mujaheddin rebels over Afghanistan's leftist government in April and the demise of the Soviet Union, some intelligence officials involved have decided to reveal how the covert escalation was carried out.
The most prominent of these former intelligence officers is Yousaf, the Pakistani general who supervised the covert war between 1983 and 1987 and who last month published in Europe and Pakistan a detailed account of his role and that of the CIA, titled "The Bear Trap."
This article and another to follow are based on extensive interviews with Yousaf as well as with more than a dozen senior Western officials who confirmed Yousaf's disclosures and elaborated on them.
U.S. officials worried about what might happen if aspects of their stepped-up covert action were exposed -- or if the program succeeded too well and provoked the Soviets to react in hot anger. The escalation that began in 1985 "was directed at killing Russian military officers," one Western official said. "That caused a lot of nervousness."
One source of jitters was that Pakistani intelligence officers -- partly inspired by Casey -- began independently to train Afghans and funnel CIA supplies for scattered strikes against military installations, factories and storage depots within Soviet territory.
The attacks later alarmed U.S. officials in Washington, who saw military raids on Soviet territory as "an incredible escalation," according to Graham Fuller, then a senior U.S. intelligence official who counseled against any such raids. Fearing a large-scale Soviet response and the fallout of such attacks on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, the Reagan administration blocked the transfer to Pakistan of detailed satellite photographs of military targets inside the Soviet Union, other U.S. officials said.
To Yousaf, who managed the Koran-smuggling program and the guerrilla raids inside Soviet territory, the United States ultimately "chickened out" on the question of taking the secret Afghan war onto Soviet soil. Nonetheless, Yousaf recalled, Casey was "ruthless in his approach, and he had a built-in hatred for the Soviets."
An intelligence coup in 1984 and 1985 triggered the Reagan administration's decision to escalate the covert progam in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. The United States received highly specific, sensitive information about Kremlin politics and new Soviet war plans in Afghanistan. Already under pressure from Congress and conservative activists to expand its support to the mujaheddin, the Reagan administration moved in response to this intelligence to open up its high-technology arsenal to aid the Afghan rebels.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
The move to upgrade aid to the mujaheddin roughly coincided with the well-known decision in 1986 to provide the mujaheddin with sophisticated, U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Before the missiles arrived, however, those involved in the covert war wrestled with a wide-ranging and at times divisive debate over how far they should go in challenging the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Roots of the Rebellion In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first -- and for many years the only -- presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations, according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter document.
The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few considered possible at the time, these sources said.
The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA operations in Nicaragua and Angola.
Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded secrets.
In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II.
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were significant -- 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to Yousaf -- but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.
Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet commanders pursued them increasingly, to the point where some U.S. congressmen who traveled with the mujaheddin -- including Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.) and Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) -- believed that the war might turn against the rebels.
The new Soviet tactics reflected a perception in the Kremlin that the Red Army was in danger of becoming bogged down in Afghanistan and needed to take decisive steps to win the war, according to sensitive intelligence that reached the Reagan administration in 1984 and 1985, Western officials said. The intelligence came from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defense Ministry and indicated that Soviet hard-liners were pushing a plan to attempt to win the Afghan war within two years, sources said.
The new war plan was to be implemented by Gen. Mikhail Zaitsev, who was transferred from the prestigious command of Soviet forces in Germany to run the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the spring of 1985, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was battling hard-line rivals to take power in a Kremlin succession struggle. Cracking the Kremlin's Strategy
The intelligence about Soviet war plans in Afghanistan was highly specific, according to Western sources. The Soviets intended to deploy one-third of their total Spetsnaz forces in Afghanistan -- nearly 2,000 "highly trained and motivated" paratroops, according to Yousaf.
In addition, the Soviets intended to dispatch a stronger KGB presence to assist the special forces and regular troops, and they intended to deploy some of the Soviet Union's most sophisticated battlefield communications equipment, referred to by some as the "Omsk vans" -- mobile, integrated communications centers that would permit interception of mujaheddin battlefield communications and rapid, coordinated aerial attacks on rebel targets, such as the kind that were demoralizing the rebels by 1984.
At the Pentagon, U.S. military officers pored over the intelligence, considering plans to thwart the Soviet escalation, officials said. The answers they came up with, said a Western official, were to provide "secure communications [for the Afghan rebels], kill the gunships and the fighter cover, better routes for [mujaheddin] infiltration, and get to work on [Soviet] targets" in Afghanistan, including the Omsk vans, through the use of satellite reconnaissance and increased, specialized guerrilla training.
"There was a demand from my friends [in the CIA] to capture a vehicle intact with this sort of communications," recalled Yousaf, referring to the newly introduced mobile Soviet facilities. Unfortunately, despite much effort, Yousaf said, "we never succeeded in that."
"Spetsnaz was key," said Vincent Cannistraro, a CIA operations officer who was posted at the time as director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Not only did communications improve, but the Spetsnaz forces were willing to fight aggressively and at night. The problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means to win.
Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really, really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were "simply careful."
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
New Covert U.S. Aid The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied the mujaheddin across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads, the sources said.
CIA and Pentagon specialists offered detailed satellite photographs and ink maps of Soviet targets around Afghanistan. The CIA station chief in Islamabad ferried U.S. intercepts of Soviet battlefield communications.
Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site.
The new efforts focused on strategic targets such as the Termez Bridge between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. "We got the information like current speed of the water, current depth of the water, the width of the pillars, which would be the best way to demolish," Yousaf said. In Washington, CIA lawyers debated whether it was legal to blow up pylons on the Soviet side of the bridge as opposed to the Afghan side, in keeping with the decision not to support military action across the Soviet border, a Western official said.
Despite several attempts, Afghan rebels trained in the new program never brought the Termez Bridge down, though they did damage and destroy other targets, such as pipelines and depots, in the sensitive border area, Western and Pakistani sources said.
The most valuable intelligence provided by the Americans was the satellite reconnaissance, Yousaf said. Soon the wall of Yousaf's office was covered with detailed maps of Soviet targets in Afghanistan such as airfields, armories and military buildings. The maps came with CIA assessments of how best to approach the target, possible routes of withdrawal, and analysis of how Soviet troops might respond to an attack. "They would say there are the vehicles, and there is the [river bank], and there is the tank," Yousaf said.
CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for the mujaheddin in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage and heavy weapons, Yousaf and Western officials said.
The first antiaircraft systems used by the mujaheddin were the Swiss-made Oerlikon heavy gun and the British-made Blowpipe missile, according to Yousaf and Western sources. When these proved ineffective, the United States sent the Stinger. Pakistani officers traveled to the United States for training on the Stinger in June 1986 and then set up a secret mujaheddin Stinger training facility in Rawalpindi, complete with an electronic simulator made in the United States. The simulator allowed mujaheddin trainees to aim and fire at a large screen without actually shooting off expensive missiles, Yousaf said. The screen marked the missile's track and calculated whether the trainee would have hit his airborne target.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of such training and battlefield intelligence depended on the mujaheddin themselves; their performance and willingness to employ disciplined tactics varied greatly. Yousaf considered the aid highly valuable, although persistently marred by supplies of weapons such as the Blowpipe that failed miserably on the battlefield.
At the least, the escalation on the U.S. side initiated with Reagan's 1985 National Security Directive helped to change the character of the Afghan war, intensifying the struggle and raising the stakes for both sides. This change led U.S. officials to confront a difficult question that had legal, military, foreign policy and even moral implications: In taking the Afghan covert operation more directly to the Soviet enemy, how far should the United States be prepared to go?
http://yournewswire.com/fbi-jason-chaff ... -politics/
FBI Insider Reveals Why Jason Chaffetz Is Being Forced Out Of Politics
May 1, 2017
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because the Rothschild's threatened his children's lives, according to an FBI insider.
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because elite Democrats, working on behalf of the financial industrial complex also known as the Rothschild’s central banking scam, threatened his children’s lives, according to an FBI insider.
Chaffetz effectively ended his career as an uncompromised politician when he pushed through the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the FBI insider explains.
“You don’t go after the Fed. Nobody goes after the Federal Reserve and gets away with it.”
In March Chaffetz was credited with doing “the impossible” and pushing a bill through Congress ordering an audit of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/l ... story.html
Meet the Malibu lawyer who is upending California's political system, one town at a time
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/ ... story.html
FBI director Robert Mueller emphasizes integrity at Tabor commencement
MAY 29, 2017
MARION — Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III urged a tent full of high school graduates in this seaside town Monday afternoon to go out into the world with integrity because without that nothing matters.
Mueller, 72, whose granddaughter was one of 137 students who graduated from Tabor Academy, was recently appointed by the Justice Department as a special counsel to oversee the investigation into President Trump’s campaign and possible collusion with Russian officials.
in his 15-minute speech. Instead he encouraged the teenagers, and everyone present for the ceremony, to lead lives of character.
“We must never, ever sacrifice our integrity,” Mueller said as he concluded.
Tabor Academy, a private college preparatory school in Marion with annual tuition of $43,000 for day students and $59,000 for boarding students.
http://www.accuracy.org/release/911-whi ... -cover-up/
9/11 Whistleblower Rowley on Mueller’s History of “Cover-up”
May 18, 2017
Rowley, a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She just appeared on The Real News report “Special Counsel Investigating Trump Campaign Has Deep Ties to the Deep State,” about Mueller being appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
While Mueller has been widely described as being of impeccable character by much of official Washington, Rowley said today: “The truth is that Robert Mueller (and James Comey as deputy attorney general — see my New York Times op-ed on day of Comey’s confirmation hearing) presided over a cover-up …”
In her interview, Rowley noted: “The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee … [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn’t say anything terribly embarrassing. …
“When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.”
Rowley also noted that Mueller presided over “the ‘post 9-11 round-up’ of innocent immigrants, the anthrax investigation fiasco, as well as going along with a form of martial law (made possible via secret OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] memos written by John Yoo etc. predicated upon Yoo’s theories of absolute ‘imperial presidency’ or ‘war presidency’ powers that the Bush administration was making [Attorney General John] Ashcroft sign off on).”
“While not the worst of the bunch, neither Comey nor Mueller deserve their Jimmy Stewart ‘G-man’ reputations for absolute integrity but have merely been, along the lines of George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet, capable and flexible politicized sycophants to power, that enmeshed them in numerous wrongful abuses of power along with presiding over plain official incompetence. It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/3 ... ole-238943
Trump to meet with two FBI director candidates Tuesday, Spicer says
05/30/2017 02:57 PM EDT
President Donald Trump will meet Tuesday afternoon with two candidates to be the next director of the FBI, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.
Christopher Wray, a former assistant attorney general from 2003 to 2005, will meet Tuesday with Trump as will John Pistole, a former TSA administrator and deputy director of the FBI who served under Robert Mueller, who was appointed earlier this month to lead an independent investigation into possible ties between the Russian government and individuals with ties to Trump and his 2016 campaign.
“The president will be meeting with two additional candidates this afternoon, both Chris Wray and John Pistole,” Spicer said at Tuesday’s press briefing. “When the president feels as though he's met with the right candidate, he'll let us know. But he'll meet with candidates today and continue to do so until he finds the right leader.”
Pistole, who left government work in 2014, is the president of Anderson University, a Christian university in Indiana. Wray is a partner at the law firm King & Spalding, where he chairs its special matters and government investigations practice group.
http://pppfocus.com/2017/05/30/chaffetz ... testimony/
CHAFFETZ: COMEY WANTED TO SPEAK WITH MUELLER BEFORE PUBLIC TESTIMONY
May 30, 2017
chaffetz-comey-wanted-to-speak-with-mueller-before-public-testimony
After Comey’s abrupt removal and the disclosure of the former director’s memos sparked questions about possible obstruction of justice, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to oversee the FBI’s Russian Federation investigation.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the House oversight committee asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over more documents about former director James Comey’s interactions with the White House and Justice Department, including materials dating back almost four years to the Obama administration.
Mr Chaffetz’s letter comes a month before he is scheduled to leave office after abruptly announcing his resignation earlier this year.
Chaffetz further requests that the FBI identify all responsive documents, regardless of whether the document is within the scope of the special counsel’s investigation. A House Oversight memo stated that their investigation includes information that is outside of the scope of the new Special Counsel’s investigation.
“In this case, the focus of the Committee’s investigation is the independence of the FBI, including conversations between the President and Comey and the process by which Comey was removed from his role as director”, he continued.
Chaffetz responded to FBI Thursday, saying his committee has a “Constitutionally-based prerogative to conduct investigations” and does not want to interfere with the Special Counsel’s probe.
“I think it’s also important, even though I’m departing Congress at the end of June, that the House of Representatives continue on because they have to provide oversight, not only on this matter, but also on the special counsel”, Chaffetz told CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer“.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, first requested the Comey documents on May 16.
“2. All memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating to any communication between James B. Comey and the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, since September 4, 2013”. He is now visiting the Middle East but Special Counsel Mueller is now officially on the job investigating the charge of Russian intervention in the 2016 USA election.Schiff also echoed Brennan’s assertion that individuals in Trump’s inner circle may have aided Russian government officials without even realizing it.
“We are still awaiting official responses from both the Justice Department and White House, ” the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement late Wednesday.
FBI director Robert Mueller emphasizes integrity at Tabor commencement
MAY 29, 2017
MARION — Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III urged a tent full of high school graduates in this seaside town Monday afternoon to go out into the world with integrity because without that nothing matters.
Mueller, 72, whose granddaughter was one of 137 students who graduated from Tabor Academy, was recently appointed by the Justice Department as a special counsel to oversee the investigation into President Trump’s campaign and possible collusion with Russian officials.
in his 15-minute speech. Instead he encouraged the teenagers, and everyone present for the ceremony, to lead lives of character.
“We must never, ever sacrifice our integrity,” Mueller said as he concluded.
Tabor Academy, a private college preparatory school in Marion with annual tuition of $43,000 for day students and $59,000 for boarding students.
http://www.accuracy.org/release/911-whi ... -cover-up/
9/11 Whistleblower Rowley on Mueller’s History of “Cover-up”
May 18, 2017
Rowley, a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She just appeared on The Real News report “Special Counsel Investigating Trump Campaign Has Deep Ties to the Deep State,” about Mueller being appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
While Mueller has been widely described as being of impeccable character by much of official Washington, Rowley said today: “The truth is that Robert Mueller (and James Comey as deputy attorney general — see my New York Times op-ed on day of Comey’s confirmation hearing) presided over a cover-up …”
In her interview, Rowley noted: “The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee … [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn’t say anything terribly embarrassing. …
“When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.”
Rowley also noted that Mueller presided over “the ‘post 9-11 round-up’ of innocent immigrants, the anthrax investigation fiasco, as well as going along with a form of martial law (made possible via secret OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] memos written by John Yoo etc. predicated upon Yoo’s theories of absolute ‘imperial presidency’ or ‘war presidency’ powers that the Bush administration was making [Attorney General John] Ashcroft sign off on).”
“While not the worst of the bunch, neither Comey nor Mueller deserve their Jimmy Stewart ‘G-man’ reputations for absolute integrity but have merely been, along the lines of George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet, capable and flexible politicized sycophants to power, that enmeshed them in numerous wrongful abuses of power along with presiding over plain official incompetence. It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/3 ... ole-238943
Trump to meet with two FBI director candidates Tuesday, Spicer says
05/30/2017 02:57 PM EDT
President Donald Trump will meet Tuesday afternoon with two candidates to be the next director of the FBI, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.
Christopher Wray, a former assistant attorney general from 2003 to 2005, will meet Tuesday with Trump as will John Pistole, a former TSA administrator and deputy director of the FBI who served under Robert Mueller, who was appointed earlier this month to lead an independent investigation into possible ties between the Russian government and individuals with ties to Trump and his 2016 campaign.
“The president will be meeting with two additional candidates this afternoon, both Chris Wray and John Pistole,” Spicer said at Tuesday’s press briefing. “When the president feels as though he's met with the right candidate, he'll let us know. But he'll meet with candidates today and continue to do so until he finds the right leader.”
Pistole, who left government work in 2014, is the president of Anderson University, a Christian university in Indiana. Wray is a partner at the law firm King & Spalding, where he chairs its special matters and government investigations practice group.
http://pppfocus.com/2017/05/30/chaffetz ... testimony/
CHAFFETZ: COMEY WANTED TO SPEAK WITH MUELLER BEFORE PUBLIC TESTIMONY
May 30, 2017
chaffetz-comey-wanted-to-speak-with-mueller-before-public-testimony
After Comey’s abrupt removal and the disclosure of the former director’s memos sparked questions about possible obstruction of justice, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to oversee the FBI’s Russian Federation investigation.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the House oversight committee asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over more documents about former director James Comey’s interactions with the White House and Justice Department, including materials dating back almost four years to the Obama administration.
Mr Chaffetz’s letter comes a month before he is scheduled to leave office after abruptly announcing his resignation earlier this year.
Chaffetz further requests that the FBI identify all responsive documents, regardless of whether the document is within the scope of the special counsel’s investigation. A House Oversight memo stated that their investigation includes information that is outside of the scope of the new Special Counsel’s investigation.
“In this case, the focus of the Committee’s investigation is the independence of the FBI, including conversations between the President and Comey and the process by which Comey was removed from his role as director”, he continued.
Chaffetz responded to FBI Thursday, saying his committee has a “Constitutionally-based prerogative to conduct investigations” and does not want to interfere with the Special Counsel’s probe.
“I think it’s also important, even though I’m departing Congress at the end of June, that the House of Representatives continue on because they have to provide oversight, not only on this matter, but also on the special counsel”, Chaffetz told CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer“.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, first requested the Comey documents on May 16.
“2. All memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating to any communication between James B. Comey and the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, since September 4, 2013”. He is now visiting the Middle East but Special Counsel Mueller is now officially on the job investigating the charge of Russian intervention in the 2016 USA election.Schiff also echoed Brennan’s assertion that individuals in Trump’s inner circle may have aided Russian government officials without even realizing it.
“We are still awaiting official responses from both the Justice Department and White House, ” the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement late Wednesday.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
OpEdNews
4/12/2015
CODE RED: Jonathan Simon's Hail-Mary for Democracy
By Joan Brunwasser
Join CODE RED Kickstarter Campaign before April 20th deadline!
My guest today is Jonathan Simon, co-founder and currently Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance.
JB: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Jonathan. You wrote Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and the new American Century, and more recently the post 2014 edition. Why did you write this book?
JS: Why did Doug Flutie throw his "Hail-Mary" pass? Because the clock was running out and the end zone was a mile away.
I have been witness to and participant in more than a decade of strenuous but essentially fruitless efforts to challenge the passivity with which America has collectively accepted an "upgrade" that gave us a concealed, computerized, privatized vote counting process--a Trojan Horse which the forensic evidence we have painstakingly gathered links inextricably to a bewildering political sea change tantamount to a rolling coup. It became clear to me that a massive boost of public awareness would be essential as a foundation for the kind of determined and dramatic action needed to restore observable vote counting to our wounded democracy. CODE RED is my hail-mary pass to bring about that awareness.
I also state my purpose explicitly in CODE RED, if I may quote myself:
"My goal in writing this book has been to bring the issue of vote counting, and the perils it presents in the New American Century, into the public discourse. I hope also that reading CODE RED will help those who have been keeping to themselves their suspicions, concerns, or outrage about our faith-based, man-behind-the-curtain electoral system to recognize that they are neither crazy nor alone."
Some may view CODE RED as primarily a fact-laden reference book, but to me it is rather a kind of suspense or even horror story with factual backup--a Blair Witch Project of contemporary American politics. I hope no one finishes it unshaken or finds it possible to remain passive and quiet.
JB: Anyone who is still unaware of the dire situation need only consult the recent Harvard study that places the U.S. 46th in the world for election integrity. Can you explain briefly what's happened with exit polls, traditionally a good indication when something is amiss electorally?
JS: If the United States were pretty much any other country on Earth, the chronic disparities between exit polls and vote counts--which we have come to call the "Red Shift" because they are virtually always in the same direction, favoring Republican candidates--would have resulted in charges of wholesale fraud, serious investigations, and probably even electoral re-dos. In America, however--in no small part because we just take it as an article of faith that we must be first in the world when it comes to election integrity--the Red Shift is simply taken in stride: the pundits conclude that the pollsters must have, yet again, "oversampled Democrats," or that Republican (but not Democratic) voters must just be lying to the exit pollsters. Although unsupported by evidence, these conclusions are comforting to a nation that, collectively, would rather not ask serious questions about how its votes are being counted.
In E2014 the Red Shift was especially egregious: 19 out of 21 exit-polled US Senate elections were red-shifted; 20 out of 21 gubernatorial elections were red-shifted; and in the US House, which is exit-polled with an aggregate national sample, the Red Shift was 3.7%, the equivalent of nearly 3 million votes, more than enough to determine control of the House. This caps a pattern in which six out of seven biennial elections since the computers took over in 2002 have exhibited the Red Shift--in other words, a whole era of suspect elections with cumulative political effect.
To which we may add that none of the thousands of contests for state legislative office is ever exit polled, and capture of those legislatures has enabled Republicans (who now hold 68 out of the 100 state legislative chambers, more than at any time since the Hoover presidency) to lock in their gains indefinitely via such tactics as gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, gutting of campaign finance regulations, and control of other aspects of election administration. Those critical infrastructural elections can be electronically rigged with essentially zero risk--not even a Red Shift to be explained away.
But it has become clear enough that, in America at least, exit polls and the chronic Red Shift disparities are simply written off. The burden of proof for election theft appears to be set higher than any statistics, no matter how telling, will ever be able to meet. Since we are strictly denied access to all such "smoking gun" materials as memory cards, computer code, and actual voter-marked ballots, "proving" fraud has become a terminally frustrating effort. But is that what we have to do before America decides to take a serious look at its vote counting process?
I think not. If you took all of the analyses in CODE RED--every calculation of the Red Shift, every flipped vote, every suspect result, all evidence of fraud, and the whole big picture of resulting political incongruity--and tossed it all in the trashcan, if you said it was all a conspiracy theorist's mirage, what we'd still have sitting on the table in front of us is an unobservable vote counting process. A process in which votes become 1s and 0s in the pitch dark of cyberspace--literally trillions of 1s and 0s, a tiny portion of which can be moved around in that darkness to alter outcomes and change what will one day be our history and world history. Without an observable count of the votes, elections are fatally compromised as the legitimate foundation of democracy, and this basic truth requires no exit polls, no Red Shift, no forensics, direct or indirect, to establish.
JB: If there is no way to measure, now that the once tried and true exit polls have been discarded, how do we know what the electorate actually looks like, locally and nationally? Could it be that our nation really is as red as the elections appear to indicate and complaints and concerns are not justified?
JS: That's just it. We, following the media, naturally assume that elections are the gold standard when it comes to deducing the political leanings of a state, a region, or the nation. So right now America is "red," more Republican than at any time since Herbert Hoover was president, and not just more Republican but far more radically reactionary (Hoover and Nixon would both be far too "liberal" to be nominated). Unlikely states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio have become right-wing bastions where it would seem, judging by election results, that the people hate unions, love corporations, don't give a hoot about exploding income inequality, and believe climate change is a liberal hoax. Well, at least their representatives do. But if our manifestly corruptible elections have been corrupted, and if we mock the exit polls, what is left to go on? How can we gauge where America is really at?
This is not exactly a mystery without any clues. Congressional approval rating, for example, plummeted once the new Congress installed by the E2010 Tea Party rout took office and began to show its colors. It has been hovering in single digits (e.g., 8% approve, 89% disapprove of the job Congress is doing) for several years now, and is very obviously a function of voter disapproval of the Republican-controlled House, which has succeeded in gridlocking Washington by doing everything possible to ensure that the Obama presidency fails (Obama's approval rating, by contrast, has remained roughly 40 points higher than that of Congress).
Apart from a seething discontent with a Republican Congress consistently expressed in polls, we have a direct electoral gauge of where the voters are at: in E2014 voters across a wide swath of states overwhelmingly approved a parade of ballot propositions that Republican candidates made it a core theme of their campaigns to oppose. From minimum wage increases to environmental protection and weapons control, these "liberal" measures passed by margins far too large to reverse with a rig that could pass the smell test, while the Republican candidates that inveighed against them somehow won reelection (often narrowly) in the same states and by the same voters. So in E2014 we saw a pervasive red shift from the exit polls, which we are agreeing to discard, but also a glaring red-flag mismatch between "candidate" and "issue" elections, and another glaring red flag: with a Congressional Approval of 8% (and, for the first time ever, a plurality of voters indicating that they did not believe their own representative deserved re-election), a grand total of TWO out of 222 GOP US House incumbents were voted out of office!
Where are the people of America? Why do they seem to now be voting consistently against their own interests? The answer from the punditry is that Democratic voters are not voting. But who then approved by overwhelming margins all those ballot propositions, even in "red" states? There is a great deal of corroboratory evidence that America goes into the voting booth blue-purple and comes out of the pitch dark of cyberspace "red."
Image
CODE RED book cover
(image by courtesy of Jonathan Simon) DMCA
JB: What would you say to someone on the Right who's convinced it's the Left that's cheating?
JS: That was just about the last Q&A I added to CODE RED--in response to several right-wingers who said that CODE RED was just a partisan cherry-pick! Well what I'm interested in, trying with everything I have to bring about, is an observable vote counting process--that's it! Not Democratic victories, except as a byproduct of that legitimate process. I'm not interested in looking backwards, overturning even the smelliest computerized elections or unseating any office-holders. I am after an election system and an observable vote counting process that all Americans can trust, and if it elects Scott Walkers and Mitch McConnells and right-wing majorities in the US House and 68 out of 100 state legislatures, so be it!
As for the evidence, however, any objective analyst of whatever partisanship will encounter the same data that my colleagues and I have encountered for the past dozen years, and it will still point in one direction. The red shift is a numerical fact, not a figment of our biases. The same goes for the glaring red-flag pattern found in Cumulative Voteshare Analysis (CVA), where Republican (and, in primaries, Establishment Republican) voteshare increases with increasing precinct size--demographically inexplicable but fitting perfectly a rigging algorithm that targets larger precincts for vote theft because taking X votes from a 20X vote precinct can pass the smell test but taking those same X votes from a 2X vote precinct cannot. Nor are we making up the political pedigree of the voting equipment corporations--it's sometimes a bit obscure but it's in the record. There's a boatload of evidence and a strong prevailing wind in its sails.
To my readers on the Right who believe the Left has been doing the rigging or would be if given the opportunity, I say simply this: with computerized counting neither of us has any reason to trust the other side--particularly in the current political environment, so rich in anger and poor in trust. Under these conditions especially, aren't we both entitled to an observable counting of the votes? Please, let's count the votes in public and let the chips fall where they may.
JB: I agree, the system looks pretty rotten from here. But getting from here to observable vote counting: well, it's daunting, hard to know where to begin. What's the take-away of your book? And what would you like us concerned citizens to do?
JS: Let's begin with this: in a vacuum, designing any serious electoral system from scratch, observable vote counting would be a no-brainer. You wouldn't trust a system where you handed your ballots to a man, dressed in a magician's costume, who took them behind a curtain, claimed he'd counted them and shredded them, and then came out and told you who won. So I assume you also wouldn't trust, or build, a system where the votes were counted in a place just as dark and hidden as the magic room behind the curtain. You wouldn't, that is, entrust your democracy--independent of any concrete evidence of actual fraud--to computers programmed and maintained by private (and partisan) corporations and insulated against virtually all scrutiny by proprietary protections. Add to that vacuum our growing recognition that cyber-security is an oxymoron; add to that all the evidence we have gathered and analyzed pointing squarely and insistently in the direction of actual computerized manipulation of votecounts; and add to that the enormous political and historical consequence of all these suspect elections: well, it should be Case Closed.
But we are not in a vacuum and powerful real-world inertias are at play. The computers took over vote counting in a flash when the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002, at a time before computers had begun to show their dark side, before folks were getting their money and identities stolen and receiving those urgent CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD! notices. They were billed as quicker and more convenient and cheaper, and collectively America was content with getting its democracy on the cheap. So now computers are the duh! no brainer! when it comes to counting votes and, as you say, changing that and restoring observable vote counting is a daunting challenge and it is hard to know where to begin.
We have found out the hard way that we can't begin with the political or journalistic establishments seeing the light and making this change of their own accord. By definition any officeholder voting on such reform has been elected--the electoral system has worked for him or her so, from their standpoint, if it ain't broke, why fix it? And this certainly holds for the Democrats, as it has not yet occurred to the latter-day minority that the political pendulum may be in the grip of an invisible hand such that they are almost certainly destined to be a permanent minority. For a variety of practical and psychological reasons hardly anyone with a seat at or near the power table, including the media itself, has shown any willingness to make an issue over the way votes are counted, and that is unlikely to change absent a change in the public itself.
CODE RED is all about bringing that change to be. There are specific ways of pressuring legislators and election administrators which I present in the book. But the overarching call to action is simply that we all start communicating--writing, texting, emailing, or just talking to others about this issue, about CODE RED, about what we are facing and about what we can do.
Because I hold the conviction that CODE RED itself can be a difference-maker--perhaps the difference-maker--in our quest, I am doing all I can to bring it to a broad readership, starting with a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for advertising and promotion. The link to this campaign is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18 ... dy-lets-st. Meeting our funding goal, the deadline for which is April 20th, would be a big step along the communication path I've been talking about. A viral CODE RED would be a very powerful tool.
CODE RED supplies the facts and analyses needed to become informed, to have something constructive and persuasive to say--it is then up to all of us to go to work building the foundation of public awareness and determination that will be needed to force a chronically uninterested political system to respond. We need to show that we take our democracy seriously, that we are available to count votes, observe the counting of votes, audit the counting of votes--even more, that we demand to be so deputized, to fulfill this duty to our democracy. And ultimately, if the political system remains unresponsive, we must back that demand with civil action, exercise our freedom of assembly, and take a stand to reclaim our right to fair, open, and honest elections.
JB: Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
JS: Just this: the situation we're in is grave; the evidence shows that we are in the midst of a rolling coup and that, for all the illusion of business as usual, our democracy itself is in the ICU on life support. Yet, as I conclude in CODE RED, "the basic counting of votes, in an observable way that ensures the legitimacy of our elections, . . . is an easy assignment. We need only to break a spell that has been cast on us--a spell of convenience, passivity, helplessness. We need only remember that democracy is not something that we watch, it is something that we do."
JB: Good luck on your kickstarter campaign, Jonathan. CODE RED is an important, if not a fun, read. And it sure beats sticking our heads in the sand. Thanks so much for talking with me.
***
CODE RED Kickstarter Campaign
4/12/2015
CODE RED: Jonathan Simon's Hail-Mary for Democracy
By Joan Brunwasser
Join CODE RED Kickstarter Campaign before April 20th deadline!
My guest today is Jonathan Simon, co-founder and currently Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance.
JB: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Jonathan. You wrote Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and the new American Century, and more recently the post 2014 edition. Why did you write this book?
JS: Why did Doug Flutie throw his "Hail-Mary" pass? Because the clock was running out and the end zone was a mile away.
I have been witness to and participant in more than a decade of strenuous but essentially fruitless efforts to challenge the passivity with which America has collectively accepted an "upgrade" that gave us a concealed, computerized, privatized vote counting process--a Trojan Horse which the forensic evidence we have painstakingly gathered links inextricably to a bewildering political sea change tantamount to a rolling coup. It became clear to me that a massive boost of public awareness would be essential as a foundation for the kind of determined and dramatic action needed to restore observable vote counting to our wounded democracy. CODE RED is my hail-mary pass to bring about that awareness.
I also state my purpose explicitly in CODE RED, if I may quote myself:
"My goal in writing this book has been to bring the issue of vote counting, and the perils it presents in the New American Century, into the public discourse. I hope also that reading CODE RED will help those who have been keeping to themselves their suspicions, concerns, or outrage about our faith-based, man-behind-the-curtain electoral system to recognize that they are neither crazy nor alone."
Some may view CODE RED as primarily a fact-laden reference book, but to me it is rather a kind of suspense or even horror story with factual backup--a Blair Witch Project of contemporary American politics. I hope no one finishes it unshaken or finds it possible to remain passive and quiet.
JB: Anyone who is still unaware of the dire situation need only consult the recent Harvard study that places the U.S. 46th in the world for election integrity. Can you explain briefly what's happened with exit polls, traditionally a good indication when something is amiss electorally?
JS: If the United States were pretty much any other country on Earth, the chronic disparities between exit polls and vote counts--which we have come to call the "Red Shift" because they are virtually always in the same direction, favoring Republican candidates--would have resulted in charges of wholesale fraud, serious investigations, and probably even electoral re-dos. In America, however--in no small part because we just take it as an article of faith that we must be first in the world when it comes to election integrity--the Red Shift is simply taken in stride: the pundits conclude that the pollsters must have, yet again, "oversampled Democrats," or that Republican (but not Democratic) voters must just be lying to the exit pollsters. Although unsupported by evidence, these conclusions are comforting to a nation that, collectively, would rather not ask serious questions about how its votes are being counted.
In E2014 the Red Shift was especially egregious: 19 out of 21 exit-polled US Senate elections were red-shifted; 20 out of 21 gubernatorial elections were red-shifted; and in the US House, which is exit-polled with an aggregate national sample, the Red Shift was 3.7%, the equivalent of nearly 3 million votes, more than enough to determine control of the House. This caps a pattern in which six out of seven biennial elections since the computers took over in 2002 have exhibited the Red Shift--in other words, a whole era of suspect elections with cumulative political effect.
To which we may add that none of the thousands of contests for state legislative office is ever exit polled, and capture of those legislatures has enabled Republicans (who now hold 68 out of the 100 state legislative chambers, more than at any time since the Hoover presidency) to lock in their gains indefinitely via such tactics as gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, gutting of campaign finance regulations, and control of other aspects of election administration. Those critical infrastructural elections can be electronically rigged with essentially zero risk--not even a Red Shift to be explained away.
But it has become clear enough that, in America at least, exit polls and the chronic Red Shift disparities are simply written off. The burden of proof for election theft appears to be set higher than any statistics, no matter how telling, will ever be able to meet. Since we are strictly denied access to all such "smoking gun" materials as memory cards, computer code, and actual voter-marked ballots, "proving" fraud has become a terminally frustrating effort. But is that what we have to do before America decides to take a serious look at its vote counting process?
I think not. If you took all of the analyses in CODE RED--every calculation of the Red Shift, every flipped vote, every suspect result, all evidence of fraud, and the whole big picture of resulting political incongruity--and tossed it all in the trashcan, if you said it was all a conspiracy theorist's mirage, what we'd still have sitting on the table in front of us is an unobservable vote counting process. A process in which votes become 1s and 0s in the pitch dark of cyberspace--literally trillions of 1s and 0s, a tiny portion of which can be moved around in that darkness to alter outcomes and change what will one day be our history and world history. Without an observable count of the votes, elections are fatally compromised as the legitimate foundation of democracy, and this basic truth requires no exit polls, no Red Shift, no forensics, direct or indirect, to establish.
JB: If there is no way to measure, now that the once tried and true exit polls have been discarded, how do we know what the electorate actually looks like, locally and nationally? Could it be that our nation really is as red as the elections appear to indicate and complaints and concerns are not justified?
JS: That's just it. We, following the media, naturally assume that elections are the gold standard when it comes to deducing the political leanings of a state, a region, or the nation. So right now America is "red," more Republican than at any time since Herbert Hoover was president, and not just more Republican but far more radically reactionary (Hoover and Nixon would both be far too "liberal" to be nominated). Unlikely states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio have become right-wing bastions where it would seem, judging by election results, that the people hate unions, love corporations, don't give a hoot about exploding income inequality, and believe climate change is a liberal hoax. Well, at least their representatives do. But if our manifestly corruptible elections have been corrupted, and if we mock the exit polls, what is left to go on? How can we gauge where America is really at?
This is not exactly a mystery without any clues. Congressional approval rating, for example, plummeted once the new Congress installed by the E2010 Tea Party rout took office and began to show its colors. It has been hovering in single digits (e.g., 8% approve, 89% disapprove of the job Congress is doing) for several years now, and is very obviously a function of voter disapproval of the Republican-controlled House, which has succeeded in gridlocking Washington by doing everything possible to ensure that the Obama presidency fails (Obama's approval rating, by contrast, has remained roughly 40 points higher than that of Congress).
Apart from a seething discontent with a Republican Congress consistently expressed in polls, we have a direct electoral gauge of where the voters are at: in E2014 voters across a wide swath of states overwhelmingly approved a parade of ballot propositions that Republican candidates made it a core theme of their campaigns to oppose. From minimum wage increases to environmental protection and weapons control, these "liberal" measures passed by margins far too large to reverse with a rig that could pass the smell test, while the Republican candidates that inveighed against them somehow won reelection (often narrowly) in the same states and by the same voters. So in E2014 we saw a pervasive red shift from the exit polls, which we are agreeing to discard, but also a glaring red-flag mismatch between "candidate" and "issue" elections, and another glaring red flag: with a Congressional Approval of 8% (and, for the first time ever, a plurality of voters indicating that they did not believe their own representative deserved re-election), a grand total of TWO out of 222 GOP US House incumbents were voted out of office!
Where are the people of America? Why do they seem to now be voting consistently against their own interests? The answer from the punditry is that Democratic voters are not voting. But who then approved by overwhelming margins all those ballot propositions, even in "red" states? There is a great deal of corroboratory evidence that America goes into the voting booth blue-purple and comes out of the pitch dark of cyberspace "red."
Image
CODE RED book cover
(image by courtesy of Jonathan Simon) DMCA
JB: What would you say to someone on the Right who's convinced it's the Left that's cheating?
JS: That was just about the last Q&A I added to CODE RED--in response to several right-wingers who said that CODE RED was just a partisan cherry-pick! Well what I'm interested in, trying with everything I have to bring about, is an observable vote counting process--that's it! Not Democratic victories, except as a byproduct of that legitimate process. I'm not interested in looking backwards, overturning even the smelliest computerized elections or unseating any office-holders. I am after an election system and an observable vote counting process that all Americans can trust, and if it elects Scott Walkers and Mitch McConnells and right-wing majorities in the US House and 68 out of 100 state legislatures, so be it!
As for the evidence, however, any objective analyst of whatever partisanship will encounter the same data that my colleagues and I have encountered for the past dozen years, and it will still point in one direction. The red shift is a numerical fact, not a figment of our biases. The same goes for the glaring red-flag pattern found in Cumulative Voteshare Analysis (CVA), where Republican (and, in primaries, Establishment Republican) voteshare increases with increasing precinct size--demographically inexplicable but fitting perfectly a rigging algorithm that targets larger precincts for vote theft because taking X votes from a 20X vote precinct can pass the smell test but taking those same X votes from a 2X vote precinct cannot. Nor are we making up the political pedigree of the voting equipment corporations--it's sometimes a bit obscure but it's in the record. There's a boatload of evidence and a strong prevailing wind in its sails.
To my readers on the Right who believe the Left has been doing the rigging or would be if given the opportunity, I say simply this: with computerized counting neither of us has any reason to trust the other side--particularly in the current political environment, so rich in anger and poor in trust. Under these conditions especially, aren't we both entitled to an observable counting of the votes? Please, let's count the votes in public and let the chips fall where they may.
JB: I agree, the system looks pretty rotten from here. But getting from here to observable vote counting: well, it's daunting, hard to know where to begin. What's the take-away of your book? And what would you like us concerned citizens to do?
JS: Let's begin with this: in a vacuum, designing any serious electoral system from scratch, observable vote counting would be a no-brainer. You wouldn't trust a system where you handed your ballots to a man, dressed in a magician's costume, who took them behind a curtain, claimed he'd counted them and shredded them, and then came out and told you who won. So I assume you also wouldn't trust, or build, a system where the votes were counted in a place just as dark and hidden as the magic room behind the curtain. You wouldn't, that is, entrust your democracy--independent of any concrete evidence of actual fraud--to computers programmed and maintained by private (and partisan) corporations and insulated against virtually all scrutiny by proprietary protections. Add to that vacuum our growing recognition that cyber-security is an oxymoron; add to that all the evidence we have gathered and analyzed pointing squarely and insistently in the direction of actual computerized manipulation of votecounts; and add to that the enormous political and historical consequence of all these suspect elections: well, it should be Case Closed.
But we are not in a vacuum and powerful real-world inertias are at play. The computers took over vote counting in a flash when the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002, at a time before computers had begun to show their dark side, before folks were getting their money and identities stolen and receiving those urgent CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD! notices. They were billed as quicker and more convenient and cheaper, and collectively America was content with getting its democracy on the cheap. So now computers are the duh! no brainer! when it comes to counting votes and, as you say, changing that and restoring observable vote counting is a daunting challenge and it is hard to know where to begin.
We have found out the hard way that we can't begin with the political or journalistic establishments seeing the light and making this change of their own accord. By definition any officeholder voting on such reform has been elected--the electoral system has worked for him or her so, from their standpoint, if it ain't broke, why fix it? And this certainly holds for the Democrats, as it has not yet occurred to the latter-day minority that the political pendulum may be in the grip of an invisible hand such that they are almost certainly destined to be a permanent minority. For a variety of practical and psychological reasons hardly anyone with a seat at or near the power table, including the media itself, has shown any willingness to make an issue over the way votes are counted, and that is unlikely to change absent a change in the public itself.
CODE RED is all about bringing that change to be. There are specific ways of pressuring legislators and election administrators which I present in the book. But the overarching call to action is simply that we all start communicating--writing, texting, emailing, or just talking to others about this issue, about CODE RED, about what we are facing and about what we can do.
Because I hold the conviction that CODE RED itself can be a difference-maker--perhaps the difference-maker--in our quest, I am doing all I can to bring it to a broad readership, starting with a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for advertising and promotion. The link to this campaign is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18 ... dy-lets-st. Meeting our funding goal, the deadline for which is April 20th, would be a big step along the communication path I've been talking about. A viral CODE RED would be a very powerful tool.
CODE RED supplies the facts and analyses needed to become informed, to have something constructive and persuasive to say--it is then up to all of us to go to work building the foundation of public awareness and determination that will be needed to force a chronically uninterested political system to respond. We need to show that we take our democracy seriously, that we are available to count votes, observe the counting of votes, audit the counting of votes--even more, that we demand to be so deputized, to fulfill this duty to our democracy. And ultimately, if the political system remains unresponsive, we must back that demand with civil action, exercise our freedom of assembly, and take a stand to reclaim our right to fair, open, and honest elections.
JB: Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
JS: Just this: the situation we're in is grave; the evidence shows that we are in the midst of a rolling coup and that, for all the illusion of business as usual, our democracy itself is in the ICU on life support. Yet, as I conclude in CODE RED, "the basic counting of votes, in an observable way that ensures the legitimacy of our elections, . . . is an easy assignment. We need only to break a spell that has been cast on us--a spell of convenience, passivity, helplessness. We need only remember that democracy is not something that we watch, it is something that we do."
JB: Good luck on your kickstarter campaign, Jonathan. CODE RED is an important, if not a fun, read. And it sure beats sticking our heads in the sand. Thanks so much for talking with me.
***
CODE RED Kickstarter Campaign
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
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This is in addition to 47 already known about and eruption would melt more ice in region affected by climate change
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German Bombshell Bestseller Exposing CIA Media Control Blocked in US
Americans are being prevented from reading an important book by a hero who made a huge difference
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Udo Ulfkotte is near and dear to our hearts, because we wrote about him in October of 2014, (Top German Editor: CIA Bribing Journalists) a few weeks after our founding, and these articles were some of our first to go viral, getting hundreds of thousands of views, despite the fact that we were practically unknown.
His book caused a sensation in Germany, was a best-seller despite being completely ignored by the same media he was implicating, and was a major factor in turning German public opinion against the Ukraine war.
Ulfkotte’s book was extraordinary because it named names in the German establishment, a sure-fire path to massive libel lawsuits. We were the first English language publication to write about Ulfkotte, and he gave us an exclusive interview shortly after we ran the above article.
We were in touch with Ulfkotte after writing about him, and followed his story. He told us at the time that he wasn’t afraid of any lawsuits, because he was near death due to complications from gas poisoning he suffered while reporting on the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s (ironically it was German manufactured gas), another story suppressed in Germany.
Link du jour
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Chokehold: policing black men and women in America
US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. And it starts with the chokehold
The author of the acclaimed Chokehold: Policing Black Men writes on how the system treats African Americans with contempt: ‘If police patrolled white areas as they do poor black neighborhoods, there would be a revolution’
by Paul Butler
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Watchdog Group Wants to Know How FBI Let Comey Walk Out Door With Sensitive Docs
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TechTarget
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Put to the vote: German nursery where children make the decisions
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IWF LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION FELLOW ALUMNAE LAUREN ANDERSON FEATURED BY FORBES
August 11, 2017 by admin in LF and IWF Member News
IWF Leadership Foundation Fellow Alumnae Lauren Anderson was featured in Forbes’ Mentoring Moments podcast as one of the first women to ever be on a SWAT team. Read part of the profile below:
“Have you ever been in a situation where your gut is saying, ‘Do it your way,’ but a person with more power or a bigger title is telling you to do it their way? Tune into this episode of Mentoring Moments podcast and find out how Lauren Anderson, former FBI executive stood her ground and handled that dilemma when three men were pointing guns at her!
“Anderson is a fearless ‘first’— She was one of the first women on a SWAT team and the first woman to run the FBI’s office at the American Embassy in Paris in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She led the FBI’s International Terrorism Investigations and Operations for the New York Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, where her teams disrupted numerous terrorist plots. After 29 years at the FBI, Anderson retired in 2012. She continues to redefine power through her work as an international geopolitical consultant, including helping women and youth around the world find their power. The shortlist
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3405533
The Latest: Witnesses say Kenya police assault journalists
http://www.meepi.org/files/mt021501.htm
Maine librarians resist federal
Internet "filtering" law
By MEG HASKELL
Staff Writer
School and public libraries in Maine stand to lose Internet access funding unless they comply with a new federal law requiring them to "filter" the information patrons may access. The Maine Library Association is the first plaintiff in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the law's constitutionality on the grounds that it violates First Amendment rights. The American Library Association is preparing to file a separate suit.
The new Child Internet Protection Act requires all school and public libraries using funds made available through the federal universal access program (sometimes called the federal e-rate) to implement a filtering technology and establish a policy that specifies which materials will be unavailable through their computers. Libraries that refuse to do so will be ineligible for public funding. Essentially every school and public library in Maine relies on this public funding - or soon will - and will be affected by the change in law.
The filtering law is part of a sweeping appropriations bill signed in the last days of the Clinton administration, sponsored by Sen. John McCain [R-Arizona]. A December press release from McCain's office quotes the senator: "While schools and libraries across the country increasingly use the Internet as a learning tool, we need to ensure that pervasive obscene and violent material is screened out and that our children are protected. Parents can protect their children from Internet smut at home, but have no control over computers at school. This legislation allows local communities to decide what technology they want to use and what to filter out so that our children's minds aren't polluted. Parents have the right to know that their children are safe from computer smut when they are at school, or the public library." All four members of Maine's congressional delegation voted in favor of the bill package.
Melora Ranney, director of the public library in Winthrop and co-chair of the intellectual freedom committee of the Maine Library Association, said the law violates the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights, which specifically upholds uncensored access.
Ranney said library patrons have differing needs and should be given respect and privacy to access the information they want. "Looking at a computer should be no different than looking at a book, without someone looking over your shoulder or blocking pages they don't think you should see," she said. Filtering affects all patrons, not only children, and "assumes guilt" on the part of everyone. Furthermore, Ranney said the bill is vague in its language defining obscenity, and filtering softwares are incapable of reliably screening pornographic sites, and some screen out unrelated sites.
"This is a bunch of excuses to control libraries," Ranney said. "These are the same people who are trying to control access to information about gay people, sex education, Harry Potter [for references to witchcraft]. They use the whole obscenity/pornography issue to try and control everything we do."
The federal involvement creates local control issues as well. "This is an affront to our communities," Ranney said. "This is the federal government telling people, 'Your library isn't good enough, your librarians aren't doing a good job, your library trustees can't be trusted to make good decisions.' "
President of the Maine Association of School Libraries Susan Nelson said, "It's pretty upsetting to be portrayed as the bad guys. I can't think of another group that cares more for children than librarians." Nelson said several elementary schools do use Internet filtering and that there is no talk that she is aware of from schools intending to withdraw from the funding program in protest. "It won't be our choice anyway," she said. "School departments are just taking this as a given and trying to decide which software to use."
Filtering software can run several thousand dollars; Nelson said less expensive tools come with strings attached, like advertising or permission to track student data. Decisions on how to provide Internet access are best made on a community by community basis, "rather than slamming the hammer down" on all libraries, she said.
In its recent statement on "Internet Access and Filters," the Maine Library Association took this position: "The Maine Library Association respects the responsibility of all parents/legal guardians to guide their own children's use of the library, its resources and services. The Association recommends that libraries teach responsible and effective use of the Internet through handouts, online guides, training sessions, and Web pages highlighting library recommended sources. In addition, the Association encourages the management of this resource in ways that protect the privacy of Internet users."
For the past six years, public and school libraries in Maine have been Internet-connected courtesy of the Maine School Library Network, with funding that grew out of a telecommunications overcharge in the early 1990s. That funding is coming to an end, and beginning in July, Maine libraries will be almost wholly dependent on federal e-rate support.
The text of the Child Internet Protection Act may be read online at: http://www.cdt.org/legislation/106th/
speech/001218cipa.pdf
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3404681
Brawls erupt as torch-wielding white supremacists march through University of Virginia campus
BY JESSICA CHIA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, August 12, 2017, 1:22 AM
http://kentuckytoday.com/stories/waste- ... owers,8538
Whistleblowers play key role in rooting out waste, fraud, abuse
Posted Saturday, August 12, 2017 3:57 pm
The real question is whether the new policy will do anything to address the waste, fraud, and mismanagement which has resulted in what can best be described as the wasteful expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars at a time when Kentucky is facing a fiscal crisis.”
One could only hope Chief Justice John D. Minton was sincere when he said “transparency and accountability are bedrock principles in maintaining trust in state government.”
More than 30 years after the Kentucky legislature enacted the state’s open records laws, the Kentucky Supreme Court has finally acknowledged that it is not above the law.
The policy overturns years of hiding behind a cloak of secrecy when it came to the operation of the Administrative Office of the Courts. Although Minton should be lauded for the new policy, the real question is whether the new policy will do anything to address the waste, fraud, and mismanagement which has resulted in what can best be described as the wasteful expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars at a time when Kentucky is facing a fiscal crisis.
So, what was the catalyst for the Kentucky Supreme Court’s enlightened policy of transparency? Could it just be that the revelations set forth in the recent whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employee Scott Brown was ground zero for exposing years of waste, fraud, and mismanagement which lead to the policy change? In the words of former President Barrack Obama, “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal [state and local] employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.”
For those of you who don’t know Scott Brown, Scott had been employed at the Administrative Office of Courts for more than seventeen years. Although Scott had an untarnished record as an employee, once he started reporting waste, fraud, and mismanagement to his supervisors in 2014, those who supervised him decided he had to go. Finally, after more than two years of numerous reports of wrongdoing to his supervisors, a plot was hatched to destroy Scott’s reputation as an excuse to get rid of this troublesome whistleblower. The only sin that his supervisors could uncover against Scott was that he purchased a used vehicle from the Administrative Office of Courts in the same manner as many other employees pursuant to a policy that had been approved by the Director of AOC. Scott’s vehicle purchase was reported to the Attorney General’s office for a criminal investigation and was immediately reported to the press to ensure that Scott would suffer the scorn of his colleagues and the public.
Scott’s treatment and the attempts to destroy his reputation is not unlike the treatment of many whistleblowers. What most do not understand is that the information most whistleblowers report regarding waste, fraud, and mismanagement involves matters which are known to those above them. Also, what most do not understand is that unlike the whistleblower, those set out to destroy the credibility and reputation of a whistleblower have unlimited power and resources necessary to crush the whistleblower. In this case, once Scott filed his lawsuit against the Administrative Office of Courts, a $100,000 legal contract was issued to hire an attorney to fight the charges raised by Scott in his lawsuit. How does this lead to the so-called transparency and accountability announced by Chief Justice Minton? The simple answer is that it doesn’t.
As for Scott and his family, and as a direct result of Scott’s reports of waste, fraud, and mismanagement, Scott has now been terminated from his employment with the Administrative Office of Courts. As a direct result of Scott’s reports of waste, fraud, and mismanagement, Scott and his family will likely suffer the fate of other whistleblowers who have come before him. All that Scott and his family have worked for will be lost and they will likely face financial ruin. What Scott has discovered since he was fired is that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find suitable employment which will allow him to support his family. In the words of President Obama, instead of being rewarded “for acts of courage and patriotism,” Scott and his family will struggle for years to come and will face an uncertain future which could eventually result in the loss of everything Scott and his family have saved for their retirement.
So, the real question is what can be done to protect whistleblowers like Scott who have the courage to report waste, fraud, and mismanagement? Maybe, just maybe, at least in Scott’s case, it is time for the Kentucky legislature to hold hearings and investigate the spending practices of the Administrative Office of Courts. In the end, what needs to be understood is that money budgeted for the operation of government is not a slush fund for those who oversee the public dollars. The millions of dollars budgeted for the Administrative Office of the Courts should be protected and spent as intended, and those dollars should not be squandered on decorating the Administrative Office of Courts, or for any other project which does not in some way contribute to the efficient operation of Kentucky courts.
It is time to reign in government. It is time to protect whistleblowers. It is time to end the practice of spending public funds to silence whistleblowers. It is time for public officials to be held responsible and reign in wasteful and fraudulent spending.
For those of you who have joined me on my figurative mountaintop before, please help me as I shout to the world, or at least the Kentucky legislature, that it is time to investigate the matters Scott reported regarding waste,
Why forensic scientists are desperate to open a human body farm in the UK
Harley Tamplin for Metro.co.ukSaturday 12 Aug 2017 5:01 pm
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/12/why-foren ... 4pbnsAfhqw
Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet
This is in addition to 47 already known about and eruption would melt more ice in region affected by climate change
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... ked-in-us/
German Bombshell Bestseller Exposing CIA Media Control Blocked in US
Americans are being prevented from reading an important book by a hero who made a huge difference
By Charles Bausman | Russia – Insider | August 10, 2017
Udo Ulfkotte is near and dear to our hearts, because we wrote about him in October of 2014, (Top German Editor: CIA Bribing Journalists) a few weeks after our founding, and these articles were some of our first to go viral, getting hundreds of thousands of views, despite the fact that we were practically unknown.
His book caused a sensation in Germany, was a best-seller despite being completely ignored by the same media he was implicating, and was a major factor in turning German public opinion against the Ukraine war.
Ulfkotte’s book was extraordinary because it named names in the German establishment, a sure-fire path to massive libel lawsuits. We were the first English language publication to write about Ulfkotte, and he gave us an exclusive interview shortly after we ran the above article.
We were in touch with Ulfkotte after writing about him, and followed his story. He told us at the time that he wasn’t afraid of any lawsuits, because he was near death due to complications from gas poisoning he suffered while reporting on the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s (ironically it was German manufactured gas), another story suppressed in Germany.
Link du jour
http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/invite-cynthia/
https://anticorruptionsociety.com/is-ou ... rporation/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/former-mue ... uy/5603773
http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... california
http://www.thesullenbell.com/2017/08/10 ... hink-obey/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ce-america
Chokehold: policing black men and women in America
US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. And it starts with the chokehold
The author of the acclaimed Chokehold: Policing Black Men writes on how the system treats African Americans with contempt: ‘If police patrolled white areas as they do poor black neighborhoods, there would be a revolution’
by Paul Butler
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/watchdo ... tive-docs/
Watchdog Group Wants to Know How FBI Let Comey Walk Out Door With Sensitive Docs
by Rachel Stockman | 3:49 pm, August 11th, 2017
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/ne ... rivacy-Act
FBI's Next Generation Identification system exempt from Privacy Act
TechTarget
News roundup: The FBI Next Generation Identification biometrics database is exempt from the Privacy Act. Plus, Salesforce fired two top staffers ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... stein-haus
Put to the vote: German nursery where children make the decisions
Dolli Einstein Haus in Pinneberg is run on a democratic basis, with votes on everything from food to nappy changes
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismcdaniel/ ... .ejLEMjLnY
A Trump Employee Said He Knew Of Misconduct At The Company. Then He Claimed His Family Was Assaulted
A mother and her young son said they were terrorized by Trump security in 1995, after a family member announced plans to reveal “financial improprieties.”
Posted on August 12, 2017, at 8:00 a.m.
http://thelocalne.ws/2017/08/11/rowley- ... mni-group/
Rowley Police Chief Named President of Big-Deal FBI Alumni Group
By John P. Muldoon - August 11, 2017020
https://www.ktbs.com/news/former-avoyel ... a89a9.html
Former Avoyelles Correctional Center warden, wife indicted on fraud charges
http://iwforum.org/iwf-leadership-found ... ed-forbes/
IWF LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION FELLOW ALUMNAE LAUREN ANDERSON FEATURED BY FORBES
August 11, 2017 by admin in LF and IWF Member News
IWF Leadership Foundation Fellow Alumnae Lauren Anderson was featured in Forbes’ Mentoring Moments podcast as one of the first women to ever be on a SWAT team. Read part of the profile below:
“Have you ever been in a situation where your gut is saying, ‘Do it your way,’ but a person with more power or a bigger title is telling you to do it their way? Tune into this episode of Mentoring Moments podcast and find out how Lauren Anderson, former FBI executive stood her ground and handled that dilemma when three men were pointing guns at her!
“Anderson is a fearless ‘first’— She was one of the first women on a SWAT team and the first woman to run the FBI’s office at the American Embassy in Paris in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She led the FBI’s International Terrorism Investigations and Operations for the New York Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, where her teams disrupted numerous terrorist plots. After 29 years at the FBI, Anderson retired in 2012. She continues to redefine power through her work as an international geopolitical consultant, including helping women and youth around the world find their power. The shortlist
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3405533
The Latest: Witnesses say Kenya police assault journalists
http://www.meepi.org/files/mt021501.htm
Maine librarians resist federal
Internet "filtering" law
By MEG HASKELL
Staff Writer
School and public libraries in Maine stand to lose Internet access funding unless they comply with a new federal law requiring them to "filter" the information patrons may access. The Maine Library Association is the first plaintiff in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the law's constitutionality on the grounds that it violates First Amendment rights. The American Library Association is preparing to file a separate suit.
The new Child Internet Protection Act requires all school and public libraries using funds made available through the federal universal access program (sometimes called the federal e-rate) to implement a filtering technology and establish a policy that specifies which materials will be unavailable through their computers. Libraries that refuse to do so will be ineligible for public funding. Essentially every school and public library in Maine relies on this public funding - or soon will - and will be affected by the change in law.
The filtering law is part of a sweeping appropriations bill signed in the last days of the Clinton administration, sponsored by Sen. John McCain [R-Arizona]. A December press release from McCain's office quotes the senator: "While schools and libraries across the country increasingly use the Internet as a learning tool, we need to ensure that pervasive obscene and violent material is screened out and that our children are protected. Parents can protect their children from Internet smut at home, but have no control over computers at school. This legislation allows local communities to decide what technology they want to use and what to filter out so that our children's minds aren't polluted. Parents have the right to know that their children are safe from computer smut when they are at school, or the public library." All four members of Maine's congressional delegation voted in favor of the bill package.
Melora Ranney, director of the public library in Winthrop and co-chair of the intellectual freedom committee of the Maine Library Association, said the law violates the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights, which specifically upholds uncensored access.
Ranney said library patrons have differing needs and should be given respect and privacy to access the information they want. "Looking at a computer should be no different than looking at a book, without someone looking over your shoulder or blocking pages they don't think you should see," she said. Filtering affects all patrons, not only children, and "assumes guilt" on the part of everyone. Furthermore, Ranney said the bill is vague in its language defining obscenity, and filtering softwares are incapable of reliably screening pornographic sites, and some screen out unrelated sites.
"This is a bunch of excuses to control libraries," Ranney said. "These are the same people who are trying to control access to information about gay people, sex education, Harry Potter [for references to witchcraft]. They use the whole obscenity/pornography issue to try and control everything we do."
The federal involvement creates local control issues as well. "This is an affront to our communities," Ranney said. "This is the federal government telling people, 'Your library isn't good enough, your librarians aren't doing a good job, your library trustees can't be trusted to make good decisions.' "
President of the Maine Association of School Libraries Susan Nelson said, "It's pretty upsetting to be portrayed as the bad guys. I can't think of another group that cares more for children than librarians." Nelson said several elementary schools do use Internet filtering and that there is no talk that she is aware of from schools intending to withdraw from the funding program in protest. "It won't be our choice anyway," she said. "School departments are just taking this as a given and trying to decide which software to use."
Filtering software can run several thousand dollars; Nelson said less expensive tools come with strings attached, like advertising or permission to track student data. Decisions on how to provide Internet access are best made on a community by community basis, "rather than slamming the hammer down" on all libraries, she said.
In its recent statement on "Internet Access and Filters," the Maine Library Association took this position: "The Maine Library Association respects the responsibility of all parents/legal guardians to guide their own children's use of the library, its resources and services. The Association recommends that libraries teach responsible and effective use of the Internet through handouts, online guides, training sessions, and Web pages highlighting library recommended sources. In addition, the Association encourages the management of this resource in ways that protect the privacy of Internet users."
For the past six years, public and school libraries in Maine have been Internet-connected courtesy of the Maine School Library Network, with funding that grew out of a telecommunications overcharge in the early 1990s. That funding is coming to an end, and beginning in July, Maine libraries will be almost wholly dependent on federal e-rate support.
The text of the Child Internet Protection Act may be read online at: http://www.cdt.org/legislation/106th/
speech/001218cipa.pdf
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3404681
Brawls erupt as torch-wielding white supremacists march through University of Virginia campus
BY JESSICA CHIA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, August 12, 2017, 1:22 AM
http://kentuckytoday.com/stories/waste- ... owers,8538
Whistleblowers play key role in rooting out waste, fraud, abuse
Posted Saturday, August 12, 2017 3:57 pm
The real question is whether the new policy will do anything to address the waste, fraud, and mismanagement which has resulted in what can best be described as the wasteful expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars at a time when Kentucky is facing a fiscal crisis.”
One could only hope Chief Justice John D. Minton was sincere when he said “transparency and accountability are bedrock principles in maintaining trust in state government.”
More than 30 years after the Kentucky legislature enacted the state’s open records laws, the Kentucky Supreme Court has finally acknowledged that it is not above the law.
The policy overturns years of hiding behind a cloak of secrecy when it came to the operation of the Administrative Office of the Courts. Although Minton should be lauded for the new policy, the real question is whether the new policy will do anything to address the waste, fraud, and mismanagement which has resulted in what can best be described as the wasteful expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars at a time when Kentucky is facing a fiscal crisis.
So, what was the catalyst for the Kentucky Supreme Court’s enlightened policy of transparency? Could it just be that the revelations set forth in the recent whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employee Scott Brown was ground zero for exposing years of waste, fraud, and mismanagement which lead to the policy change? In the words of former President Barrack Obama, “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal [state and local] employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.”
For those of you who don’t know Scott Brown, Scott had been employed at the Administrative Office of Courts for more than seventeen years. Although Scott had an untarnished record as an employee, once he started reporting waste, fraud, and mismanagement to his supervisors in 2014, those who supervised him decided he had to go. Finally, after more than two years of numerous reports of wrongdoing to his supervisors, a plot was hatched to destroy Scott’s reputation as an excuse to get rid of this troublesome whistleblower. The only sin that his supervisors could uncover against Scott was that he purchased a used vehicle from the Administrative Office of Courts in the same manner as many other employees pursuant to a policy that had been approved by the Director of AOC. Scott’s vehicle purchase was reported to the Attorney General’s office for a criminal investigation and was immediately reported to the press to ensure that Scott would suffer the scorn of his colleagues and the public.
Scott’s treatment and the attempts to destroy his reputation is not unlike the treatment of many whistleblowers. What most do not understand is that the information most whistleblowers report regarding waste, fraud, and mismanagement involves matters which are known to those above them. Also, what most do not understand is that unlike the whistleblower, those set out to destroy the credibility and reputation of a whistleblower have unlimited power and resources necessary to crush the whistleblower. In this case, once Scott filed his lawsuit against the Administrative Office of Courts, a $100,000 legal contract was issued to hire an attorney to fight the charges raised by Scott in his lawsuit. How does this lead to the so-called transparency and accountability announced by Chief Justice Minton? The simple answer is that it doesn’t.
As for Scott and his family, and as a direct result of Scott’s reports of waste, fraud, and mismanagement, Scott has now been terminated from his employment with the Administrative Office of Courts. As a direct result of Scott’s reports of waste, fraud, and mismanagement, Scott and his family will likely suffer the fate of other whistleblowers who have come before him. All that Scott and his family have worked for will be lost and they will likely face financial ruin. What Scott has discovered since he was fired is that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find suitable employment which will allow him to support his family. In the words of President Obama, instead of being rewarded “for acts of courage and patriotism,” Scott and his family will struggle for years to come and will face an uncertain future which could eventually result in the loss of everything Scott and his family have saved for their retirement.
So, the real question is what can be done to protect whistleblowers like Scott who have the courage to report waste, fraud, and mismanagement? Maybe, just maybe, at least in Scott’s case, it is time for the Kentucky legislature to hold hearings and investigate the spending practices of the Administrative Office of Courts. In the end, what needs to be understood is that money budgeted for the operation of government is not a slush fund for those who oversee the public dollars. The millions of dollars budgeted for the Administrative Office of the Courts should be protected and spent as intended, and those dollars should not be squandered on decorating the Administrative Office of Courts, or for any other project which does not in some way contribute to the efficient operation of Kentucky courts.
It is time to reign in government. It is time to protect whistleblowers. It is time to end the practice of spending public funds to silence whistleblowers. It is time for public officials to be held responsible and reign in wasteful and fraudulent spending.
For those of you who have joined me on my figurative mountaintop before, please help me as I shout to the world, or at least the Kentucky legislature, that it is time to investigate the matters Scott reported regarding waste,
Why forensic scientists are desperate to open a human body farm in the UK
Harley Tamplin for Metro.co.ukSaturday 12 Aug 2017 5:01 pm
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/12/why-foren ... 4pbnsAfhqw
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/09/05/ ... ojections/
Strongest Central Atlantic Hurricane on Record — Dangerous 185 MPH Irma Defies Intensity Projections
As of the 8 PM advisory from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Hurricane Irma was located 85 miles east of Antigua moving west at 15 mph. The storm hosted maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and a minimum central pressure of 916 mb.
This is an intensity considerably stronger than that previously projected or even expected as an outlier possibility for today. One that has heightened concern over an already powerful storm. A storm that is drawing extra energy from an atmosphere and ocean warmed by climate change.
Though moving west at this time, Irma is expected to turn toward the west-northwest. On its present and predicted path, the NHC expects severe hurricane conditions including hurricane force winds, very tall and destructive breaking waves, and life-threatening 7-11 foot storm surges to start impacting the extreme northern Leeward Islands by late Tuesday afternoon and early evening.
A Worrisome Set of Forecasts
The storm is expected to continue on a west and then west-northwest track bringing it close to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and over the Turks and Caicos and southeastern Bahamas by Thursday. After which time, the storm is expected to skirt the northern coast of Cuba before turning toward the Florida Keys on Saturday.
(National Hurricane Center’s official path brings Irma to the Florida Keys by Sunday. Image source: NHC.)
The current official National Hurricane Center forecast has the storm maintaining major hurricane status all along its projected path. Category 5 intensity is expected to be maintained for much of the next three days after which time the NHC projects Irma to weaken a bit — remaining in the very dangerous, strong category 4, range.
Meanwhile, various models, including GFS and SHIPS produce a very severe Category 5 storm featuring intensities from 895 to 910 mb in the vicinity of U.S. southeast by Saturday through Monday. This storm is, therefore, very dangerous and is likely to stay that way for some time — barring a close interaction with the mountains of Puerto Rico or Hispaniola or a prolonged landfall over Cuba.
(The present GFS model run shows a nightmare scenario for the Carolinas with an 890 mb hurricane on approach by Monday. It’s worth noting that the official NHC projected track is more to the south with a weaker — but still very dangerous — category 4 storm in the region of Florida by late Saturday. Image source: Tropical Tidbits.)
Strongest Central Atlantic Storm on Record
The storm’s present intensity is now among the strongest storms ever to form in the Atlantic, Gulf or Caribbean. An earlier report from Weather Underground found that Irma, at 180 mph maximum sustained winds, was already the 5th strongest Atlantic storm as measured by wind speed. Irma has since strengthened to 185 mph — tying it with Wilma, Gilbert and the Labor Day Hurricane as second strongest Atlantic storm as measured by maximum winds. The strongest was Allen at 190 mph.
It’s worth noting that the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico are included in Atlantic hurricane listings. However, most of the top intensity storms have formed in these typically warmer seas. Irma, on the other hand, has reached such extreme strength over the typically cooler waters of the Central Tropical Atlantic. Though these waters, as with everything else that has been altered by human-caused climate change, are today warmer than they were in the past. As a result, the storm is now the strongest hurricane ever to form in that open water region.
NHC official forecast projections keep the storm quite strong as it moves into the warmer Carribean, though eventually weakening to CAT 4, as it moves west. Meanwhile, some models (GFS and SHIPS) show potential for an even more intense storm as Irma approaches Florida, the Gulf or the SE U.S. (strong CAT 5 that may dip into the 890 mb range).
Evacuation Orders Posted as Storm Defies Intensity Models
Officials appear to be very worried. Already evacuation orders and closings have been listed for Florida as interests across the Southeast take notice. This caution is wise. Irma has the potential to produce worse impacts than Harvey. So all interests should remain vigilant.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170 ... onal.shtml
Tue, Sep 5th 2017 11:52am
Court Finds FBI's 'Malware' Deployment To Be Perfectly Constitutional
from the well...-the-darkweb-is-like-an-unlit-highway... dept
The US court system has hosted a large number of lively discussions about the tactics used by the FBI in its Playpen child porn investigation. A lot of new ground was broken by the FBI, not all of it good. First, the agency kept a darkweb child porn site running for two weeks after it seized it. It did this to facilitate the distribution of malware designed to uncover information about the computers (and users) accessing the site.
Adding to the mess was the malware itself. The FBI's Network Investigative Technique (NIT) was deployed across the US (and across the globe) via a single warrant signed by a magistrate judge in Virginia. Plenty of courts have declared the FBI's warrant invalid, as the search performed violated Rule 41's jurisdictional limitations. (Those limitations no longer exist, so chalk up a win for the DOJ.) Many have also called the NIT's extraction of IP addresses and device-identifying info a search. But very few judges have seen fit to suppress the evidence obtained, either finding no privacy expectations in IP addresses or granting the FBI "good faith."
At the appellate level, only two Playpen cases have been heard, but both courts returned decisions in favor of the government. The process continues in full force at the lower levels, where the DOJ is still working its way through the dozens of cases springing from its NIT deployment.
In Texas, a federal judge has decided [PDF] against suppressing evidence obtained with the FBI's NIT. But Judge Xavier Rodriguez does so while using a descriptive term the government vehemently disagrees with. [h/t Brad Heath]
In December 2014, the Government became aware of a website named Playpen that contained child pornography. One of the servers for that website was in North Carolina. Ultimately the Government seized that server pursuant to a warrant, relocated the server to Virginia, and assumed the role of administrator. When the Government was unable to identify the identity of the approximate 150,000 members of the website, the Government obtained a warrant on February 20, 2015 to deploy Network Investigative Technique (NIT) malware. The warrant authorized the search for persons located in the Eastern District of Virginia. The malware, however, reached all computers accessing the website, including Defendant Halgren’s computer in San Antonio, Texas.
Through the malware the Government discovered that a user named “Platch” accessed the site, and the Government discovered the IP address associated with “Platch.” Defendant Halgren was the user associated with the IP address.
The FBI has argued its NIT isn't malware, even though it seems to fit the description. It's a payload designed to reveal IP addresses and device info without the target's permission or awareness. If deployed by anyone else other than the government, the government would take issue with the exploit's operation and delivery method.
Thus ends the things the government won't like in this opinion. The judge goes a route few others have, treating the malware like a tracking device. By casting it as something it really isn't, the judge is able to sustain the warrant's viability. If the NIT is a tracking device, no jurisdictional violations occurred. The tracking device simply "traveled" out of the jurisdiction and that can't possibly be the government's fault.
Magistrate Judges have authority “within the district in which sessions are held by the court that appointed the magistrate judge . . . and elsewhere as authorized by law.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(a). Former Rule 41 that was in effect in 2015 authorized a Magistrate Judge “to issue a warrant to search for and seize a person or property located within the district.” The Former Rule 41 provided “exceptions to this jurisdictional limitation for property moved outside of the jurisdiction, for domestic and international terrorism, for the installation of a tracking device, and for property located outside of a federal district. None of these exceptions [in 2015] expressly allow[ed] a magistrate judge in one jurisdiction to authorize the search of a computer in a different jurisdiction.”
But see United States v. Darby, 190 F. Supp. 3d 520, 536 (E.D. Va. 2016) (“Rule 41(b)(4) allows a magistrate judge to issue a warrant for a tracking device to be installed in the magistrate's district. Once installed, the tracking device may continue to operate even if the object tracked moves outside the district. This is exactly analogous to what the NIT Warrant authorized. Users of Playpen digitally touched down in the Eastern District of Virginia when they logged into the site. When they logged in, the government placed code on their home computers. Then their home computers, which may have been outside of the district, sent information to the government about their location. The magistrate judge did not violate Rule 41(b) in issuing the NIT Warrant.”)
Even if the court would have found the warrant invalid (which it didn't), it still would have allowed the FBI to keep the evidence because the Fourth Amendment doesn't cover IP addresses
https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/09 ... ation-fbi/
Time for a Full Investigation... of the FBI
PJ Media-Sep 3, 2017
In one instance, the FBI refused to turn over documents regarding the Hillary Clinton emails because of -- wait for it -- "lack of public interest.".
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3472076
Utah cop who dragged and arrested nurse fired from paramedic job
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 12:09 AM
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/05/de ... -genitals/
Denver nurses suspended for opening body bag to admire man’s genitals
Five nurses at Denver Health Medical Center were suspended for three weeks
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... s-arrested
California officers accused of 'sadistic and terrorizing acts' against prisoners
Four sheriff’s deputies accused of strangling prisoner and encouraging inmates to throw feces as activists say abuse remains widespread
Link du jour
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/04/ph ... er-4-2017/
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/05/danger-news-bubbles/
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 | TAYLOR CUNNINGHAM AND JENNIFER KO
THE DANGER OF NEWS BUBBLES
Donald Trump is a danger to the United States, to decency and the rule of law. He is a racist, the most incompetent president in history and will probably be impeached.
Donald Trump is the only man who can make America great again and he is well along on the path to do so — if only the traitorous media would allow him to do his job instead of making up fake news.
While these two narratives about the president of the United States and the direction of the country could not be more contradictory, tens of millions of Americans believe each of them — and that’s a huge problem. It shows that the country may be more ideologically divided today than at any time since the Civil War.
There are many reasons for this growing chasm. First and foremost, Americans themselves are the culprits. They now have more information at their fingertips than at any other time in history. But instead of using this wealth of knowledge to educate themselves, Americans have increasingly chosen to get their information from sources that confirm, instead of challenge, their own biases.
Another factor is that the political landscape has been getting more partisan on both sides as gerrymandered districts have robbed voters of a choice, and moderates have been swept out of office.
The media also shoulders part of the blame. Seeking to turn a profit, outlets on both sides have made a buck by turning more shallow and more partisan.
To find out how these two dominant political camps perceive their country and its leader, WhoWhatWhy launched a one-week experiment.
Two of our reporters consumed news the way millions of their compatriots are doing it: One of them only followed conservative news sources such as Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars and talk radio. The other watched MSNBC and read progressive news outlets like The Nation and the Huffington Post.
It should be noted that WhoWhatWhy does not believe that the outlets our reporters monitored are fundamentally equivalent. We simply chose outlets that conservatives and liberals get their news from. While some programs on Fox News cover what is happening in the country in accordance with journalistic standards, the network’s flagship shows do not. They are propaganda tools and do little to conceal that fact. In addition, Breitbart has devolved into a self-proclaimed platform for the alt-right movement and outlets like Infowars are not news programs at all. Liberal outlets have their own deficiencies, but there is no equivalence.
Both of our reporters stayed off their own social media networks so that they would not be exposed to alternative narratives.
What they found was as expected as it was disturbing.
For-profit media outlets on both sides are doing little to conceal their biases. Websites give their readers the news with a spin that confirms preconceived notions instead of challenging them. On TV, a lot of the coverage of cable news networks consists of talking heads providing “commentary” that does little to inform viewers, and is more about shaping opinions.
Trump’s remarks on the violence in Charlottesville, as well as his comments on North Korea, stand out as examples of the different ways in which the president is being covered.
While progressive outlets blasted Trump for not going far enough in condemning white nationalism and for saying that “many sides” were responsible for the violence, conservative outlets reserved the bulk of their criticism for the media.
Specifically, Fox News et al. said that there was nothing Trump could have said that would have satisfied the liberal press, and highlighted the role that anti-fascist (Antifa) protesters played in Charlottesville.
While outlets like Fox News were critical of the neo-Nazis marching in Virginia, they also extensively covered Antifa attacks on conservatives and Confederate monuments.
Left-leaning outlets, on the other hand, pulled no punches, with commentators suggesting that Charlottesville showed Trump is unfit for office. These outlets also pointed out that many Republicans joined the chorus of those criticizing the president for not condemning white supremacists more strongly.
“I think biased journalism does Americans a disservice, because instead of providing clarity to a voting public it further clouds our understanding of current events and issues amidst competing versions of facts. In that sense partisan coverage obstructs democracy.”
Trump’s tough talk directed at North Korea was even more illustrative. While conservative outlets hailed the president as a strong leader who ended the Obama-era policy of “appeasement and weakness,” the liberal media suggested that the “fire and fury” comment made the world less safe.
But the difference is not just in how major issues are being covered —but also in what is being covered.
While the rest of the media focuses on Russian interference and potential ties to people close to Trump, outlets like Fox News disregard most of that part of the story, dwelling instead on the “illegal leaks” on which the revelations are based.
A major theme of conservative media is also whether there is a plot to remove Trump from office. Alex Jones of Infowars went a step further and said there is a plot to assassinate the president.
So what does it all mean? Does it matter that two neighbors living in any American city can perceive the world completely differently because of the news they consume? Is the divisiveness promoted by the for-profit media sustainable? If not, how will it end?
We don’t know the answers to these questions but we know they are important. The experiment was certainly an eye-opening experience for our two young reporters.
“I learned a lot about my own media biases during this assignment,” Taylor Cunningham said at the end of the project. “Outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Free Beacon Press lie outside what I would generally consider to be trustworthy sources; so much so that at times I was genuinely confused by — even frustrated with — what I was reading. It didn’t resemble the reality I feel to be true, and so read as a string of misinformation.”
Jennifer Ko noted that the assignment was easier for her because the sources she was asked to cover are the same ones or similar to those she usually consumes.
“It wasn’t until the moment I read the news summary of the other side that I realized how biased certain news platforms could be,” Ko said.
Cunningham also noted that, during the Charlottesville crisis, she was “craving” the news outlets she usually consumes.
“I hadn’t considered them to be a source of comfort for me until I was without them,” Cunningham said. “They support a version of the truth I generally hold as given, particularly in the midst of social turmoil. And so I had trouble with the conservative coverage I was consuming and the inadequacies of story after story packed with pro-Trump rhetoric.”
Ko stated that she was surprised to find out “how respective reporters could write about the same topic, but with different views. A liberal Democrat would be shocked and upset when reading rightists news articles, and vice-versa.”
However, the experiment also taught Cunningham about liberal news bias. She realized that they spent too much time on “anti-Trump talk in light of an event that reaches deeper into the American psyche than party identification.”
She added that bias on both sides should frustrate Americans.
“I think biased journalism does Americans a disservice, because instead of providing clarity to a voting public it further clouds our understanding of current events and issues amidst competing versions of facts,” Cunningham said. “In that sense partisan coverage obstructs democracy.”
The experiment showed both of our reporters the need for an unbiased media. But it is also up to consumers to choose outlets that not just confirm their biases but challenge what they believe.
“Exposure to different media outlets or points of views offers a more complex representation of a complex nation with incredible diversity,” Cunningham said. “Furthermore treating journalism, especially sensationalized stories, with skepticism by cross-checking between media outlets is helpful for separating fact from opinion.”
Ko agreed.
“Some people deliberately choose not to read news outlets of the ‘opposite’ perception,” she said. “However, to understand more, I think it is highly recommended that they at least try to look at the other side and how varied some things can be.”
FBI Octopus
http://www.readingeagle.com/news/articl ... wyomissing
Suicide bombers focus of retired FBI agent's presentation in ...
Reading Eagle-
There are ways people can increase their chances of surviving an attack by a suicide bomber, said Rodney S. Loose, a retired FBI special ...
https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/ju ... e-justice/
PATCON, Oklahoma City, and Jesse Trentadue’s Lonely Crusade for Justice
By Will Grigg - April 19, 2017
“His name used to be Don Jarrett,” long-time federal asset John Matthews told FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk during a July 9 phone call. Matthews was concerned that he would have to testify in a lawsuit filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue seeking the release of long-concealed video tapes from the `1995 Oklahoma City bombing.Trentadue believes that the suppressed tapes would help identify “John Doe II,” a dark-haired, heavy-set man seen by dozens of people in the company of Timothy McVeigh on the day of the bombing.
“John Doe II” remains at large, and the FBI is perversely determined to protect him. For reasons that will be explained anon, Trentadue is convinced that learning his identity is necessary in order to obtain a measure of justice on behalf of his late brother Kenneth, who was killed while in federal custody shortly after the bombing.
Did the FBI tamper with a witness in OKC bombing evidence case? | fox13now.com
Fox 13 Now › 2014/11/13 › did-the-fbi-t...
Nov 13, 2014 - Trentadue has accused the FBI of intimidating Matthews into refusing to testify, claiming FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk told him he didn't have to without a subpoena. A report submitted to the ...
Judge orders inquiry of FBI witness tampering accusation | News OK
NewsOK.com › article › feed
Apr 30, 2015 - Trentadue brought the lawsuit that triggered the trial because he believes the FBI has video ... The report found Quirk should have notified the Justice Department about the calls and been clearer about ...
Judge: More details needed to determine if FBI tampered with witness in Oklahoma City bombing case | KFOR.com
KFOR.com › 2014/11/13 › judge-more-...
Nov 13, 2014 - Trentadue accused the FBI of intimidating Matthews into refusing to testify, claiming FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk spoke with him before the trial. A report from the Justice Department shows ...
FBI denies witness tampering accusation - Washington Times
Washington Times › news › nov › fbi-de...
Nov 10, 2014 - The FBI did not pressure a former government operative into backing out of testifying in a lawsuit claiming ... The lawsuit was filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes there is video ...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... dy-reveals
Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals
Exclusive: Tests show billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles, with 83% of samples found to be polluted
http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... torms.html
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Paying for Big Storms
Hurricane Katrina cost our country, our people, over $100 billion. Hurricane Sandy cost $75 billion. Hurricane Harvey will also be in that range, and may become the most expensive storm in American history. Each one of those storms cost the US more than any storm before.
Between 1980 and 2012 there were 5 storms a year that did $1 billion in damage in the US. From 2013 to 2016, the average was a bit more than 10. Through 8 months this year, there have already been 10. Ten of the 11 costliest Atlantic hurricanes have occurred since 2004. Smaller storms are also becoming much more frequent. Compared to the average for 1900-1960, there were 20% more “heavy precipitation events” in the 1980s, 35% more in the 1990s, and 40% more in the 2000s.
Lives, livelihoods, possessions and homes have been lost. One million housing units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, 650,000 by Sandy, and at least 100,000 by Harvey. Harvey destroyed about a half a million cars. Most of these losses are not covered by insurance. Standard homeowners policies do not cover damage from rain or flood waters.
You don’t have to be listening very carefully or paying much attention to know that something is changing. Climate scientists have been saying for years that warming will probably mean more and bigger storms. The “probably” is important: they are not as sure as about the fact of warming itself, but the evidence points strongly in that direction. In the case of Harvey, warming has raised sea levels (meaning higher storm surges) and raised air temperature (meaning more water in the air and more rain).
Harvey washed away whole neighborhoods. It is also pushing aside the curtain on the politics of storms. As the costs of big storms have risen sharply, Republicans have been trying to cut federal funds for disaster relief. After Katrina and Sandy, Republicans in Congress were reluctant to send aid to New Orleans and New York. In both cases, they insisted that any new funds for relief be offset by cuts in programs they don’t like, such as Amtrak funding and Medicare. Texas Senators and Representatives opposed legislation to provide relief after Hurricane Sandy, as did current White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, then a Representative from South Carolina, and Paul Ryan, delaying relief funding for months.
Republican leaders in the House have now proposed a budget that cuts FEMA disaster funds by $876 million. This amount is instead intended to begin building Trump’s wall. Trump’s own budget blueprint calls for cuts of $667 million, mostly from the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, which spends money now to reduce future expenditures. His budget eliminates the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides affordable flood insurance that private insurers won’t offer.
Trump’s proposed budget makes big cuts to research about the climate changes which are connected to these increasingly big and expensive storms. Budget director Mulvaney said, “We’re not spending money on that any more. We consider that to be a waste of your money.”
In their broad attack on all kinds of “regulations”, the Trump administration just eliminated an Obama-era regulation that required federally funded housing rebuilt after disasters to be able to withstand these critical flood events. For an additional 1% in building costs, many times that would be saved in the future.
At the state level, Republican ideology also makes disaster recovery more difficult for the most vulnerable Americans. A new law passed by Texas Republicans makes it easier for insurance companies to avoid paying off on their policies and harder for homeowners to get paid.
Those are the facts. Not fake: everything above can be found in hundreds of places. Not really news: mostly old stories or back page reports.
Only an ideologically immovable force like the current Republican Party could ignore the mounting crises caused by our changing weather systems. In their rigid insistence that big government is America’s biggest problem, Republicans consistently ignore the human costs of the crises, where only big government can provide solutions. In their refusal to acknowledge the basic facts of our changing weather systems, Republicans in Congress and the White House put Americans at risk of losing everything.
Right now, Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz, who didn’t want to pay for the damage done by Sandy, are rushing to promise money for Texans. Let’s see whether they also acknowledge that increasing weather crises are the greatest danger to American life.
Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook WI
Strongest Central Atlantic Hurricane on Record — Dangerous 185 MPH Irma Defies Intensity Projections
As of the 8 PM advisory from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Hurricane Irma was located 85 miles east of Antigua moving west at 15 mph. The storm hosted maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and a minimum central pressure of 916 mb.
This is an intensity considerably stronger than that previously projected or even expected as an outlier possibility for today. One that has heightened concern over an already powerful storm. A storm that is drawing extra energy from an atmosphere and ocean warmed by climate change.
Though moving west at this time, Irma is expected to turn toward the west-northwest. On its present and predicted path, the NHC expects severe hurricane conditions including hurricane force winds, very tall and destructive breaking waves, and life-threatening 7-11 foot storm surges to start impacting the extreme northern Leeward Islands by late Tuesday afternoon and early evening.
A Worrisome Set of Forecasts
The storm is expected to continue on a west and then west-northwest track bringing it close to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and over the Turks and Caicos and southeastern Bahamas by Thursday. After which time, the storm is expected to skirt the northern coast of Cuba before turning toward the Florida Keys on Saturday.
(National Hurricane Center’s official path brings Irma to the Florida Keys by Sunday. Image source: NHC.)
The current official National Hurricane Center forecast has the storm maintaining major hurricane status all along its projected path. Category 5 intensity is expected to be maintained for much of the next three days after which time the NHC projects Irma to weaken a bit — remaining in the very dangerous, strong category 4, range.
Meanwhile, various models, including GFS and SHIPS produce a very severe Category 5 storm featuring intensities from 895 to 910 mb in the vicinity of U.S. southeast by Saturday through Monday. This storm is, therefore, very dangerous and is likely to stay that way for some time — barring a close interaction with the mountains of Puerto Rico or Hispaniola or a prolonged landfall over Cuba.
(The present GFS model run shows a nightmare scenario for the Carolinas with an 890 mb hurricane on approach by Monday. It’s worth noting that the official NHC projected track is more to the south with a weaker — but still very dangerous — category 4 storm in the region of Florida by late Saturday. Image source: Tropical Tidbits.)
Strongest Central Atlantic Storm on Record
The storm’s present intensity is now among the strongest storms ever to form in the Atlantic, Gulf or Caribbean. An earlier report from Weather Underground found that Irma, at 180 mph maximum sustained winds, was already the 5th strongest Atlantic storm as measured by wind speed. Irma has since strengthened to 185 mph — tying it with Wilma, Gilbert and the Labor Day Hurricane as second strongest Atlantic storm as measured by maximum winds. The strongest was Allen at 190 mph.
It’s worth noting that the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico are included in Atlantic hurricane listings. However, most of the top intensity storms have formed in these typically warmer seas. Irma, on the other hand, has reached such extreme strength over the typically cooler waters of the Central Tropical Atlantic. Though these waters, as with everything else that has been altered by human-caused climate change, are today warmer than they were in the past. As a result, the storm is now the strongest hurricane ever to form in that open water region.
NHC official forecast projections keep the storm quite strong as it moves into the warmer Carribean, though eventually weakening to CAT 4, as it moves west. Meanwhile, some models (GFS and SHIPS) show potential for an even more intense storm as Irma approaches Florida, the Gulf or the SE U.S. (strong CAT 5 that may dip into the 890 mb range).
Evacuation Orders Posted as Storm Defies Intensity Models
Officials appear to be very worried. Already evacuation orders and closings have been listed for Florida as interests across the Southeast take notice. This caution is wise. Irma has the potential to produce worse impacts than Harvey. So all interests should remain vigilant.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170 ... onal.shtml
Tue, Sep 5th 2017 11:52am
Court Finds FBI's 'Malware' Deployment To Be Perfectly Constitutional
from the well...-the-darkweb-is-like-an-unlit-highway... dept
The US court system has hosted a large number of lively discussions about the tactics used by the FBI in its Playpen child porn investigation. A lot of new ground was broken by the FBI, not all of it good. First, the agency kept a darkweb child porn site running for two weeks after it seized it. It did this to facilitate the distribution of malware designed to uncover information about the computers (and users) accessing the site.
Adding to the mess was the malware itself. The FBI's Network Investigative Technique (NIT) was deployed across the US (and across the globe) via a single warrant signed by a magistrate judge in Virginia. Plenty of courts have declared the FBI's warrant invalid, as the search performed violated Rule 41's jurisdictional limitations. (Those limitations no longer exist, so chalk up a win for the DOJ.) Many have also called the NIT's extraction of IP addresses and device-identifying info a search. But very few judges have seen fit to suppress the evidence obtained, either finding no privacy expectations in IP addresses or granting the FBI "good faith."
At the appellate level, only two Playpen cases have been heard, but both courts returned decisions in favor of the government. The process continues in full force at the lower levels, where the DOJ is still working its way through the dozens of cases springing from its NIT deployment.
In Texas, a federal judge has decided [PDF] against suppressing evidence obtained with the FBI's NIT. But Judge Xavier Rodriguez does so while using a descriptive term the government vehemently disagrees with. [h/t Brad Heath]
In December 2014, the Government became aware of a website named Playpen that contained child pornography. One of the servers for that website was in North Carolina. Ultimately the Government seized that server pursuant to a warrant, relocated the server to Virginia, and assumed the role of administrator. When the Government was unable to identify the identity of the approximate 150,000 members of the website, the Government obtained a warrant on February 20, 2015 to deploy Network Investigative Technique (NIT) malware. The warrant authorized the search for persons located in the Eastern District of Virginia. The malware, however, reached all computers accessing the website, including Defendant Halgren’s computer in San Antonio, Texas.
Through the malware the Government discovered that a user named “Platch” accessed the site, and the Government discovered the IP address associated with “Platch.” Defendant Halgren was the user associated with the IP address.
The FBI has argued its NIT isn't malware, even though it seems to fit the description. It's a payload designed to reveal IP addresses and device info without the target's permission or awareness. If deployed by anyone else other than the government, the government would take issue with the exploit's operation and delivery method.
Thus ends the things the government won't like in this opinion. The judge goes a route few others have, treating the malware like a tracking device. By casting it as something it really isn't, the judge is able to sustain the warrant's viability. If the NIT is a tracking device, no jurisdictional violations occurred. The tracking device simply "traveled" out of the jurisdiction and that can't possibly be the government's fault.
Magistrate Judges have authority “within the district in which sessions are held by the court that appointed the magistrate judge . . . and elsewhere as authorized by law.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(a). Former Rule 41 that was in effect in 2015 authorized a Magistrate Judge “to issue a warrant to search for and seize a person or property located within the district.” The Former Rule 41 provided “exceptions to this jurisdictional limitation for property moved outside of the jurisdiction, for domestic and international terrorism, for the installation of a tracking device, and for property located outside of a federal district. None of these exceptions [in 2015] expressly allow[ed] a magistrate judge in one jurisdiction to authorize the search of a computer in a different jurisdiction.”
But see United States v. Darby, 190 F. Supp. 3d 520, 536 (E.D. Va. 2016) (“Rule 41(b)(4) allows a magistrate judge to issue a warrant for a tracking device to be installed in the magistrate's district. Once installed, the tracking device may continue to operate even if the object tracked moves outside the district. This is exactly analogous to what the NIT Warrant authorized. Users of Playpen digitally touched down in the Eastern District of Virginia when they logged into the site. When they logged in, the government placed code on their home computers. Then their home computers, which may have been outside of the district, sent information to the government about their location. The magistrate judge did not violate Rule 41(b) in issuing the NIT Warrant.”)
Even if the court would have found the warrant invalid (which it didn't), it still would have allowed the FBI to keep the evidence because the Fourth Amendment doesn't cover IP addresses
https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/09 ... ation-fbi/
Time for a Full Investigation... of the FBI
PJ Media-Sep 3, 2017
In one instance, the FBI refused to turn over documents regarding the Hillary Clinton emails because of -- wait for it -- "lack of public interest.".
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3472076
Utah cop who dragged and arrested nurse fired from paramedic job
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 12:09 AM
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/05/de ... -genitals/
Denver nurses suspended for opening body bag to admire man’s genitals
Five nurses at Denver Health Medical Center were suspended for three weeks
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... s-arrested
California officers accused of 'sadistic and terrorizing acts' against prisoners
Four sheriff’s deputies accused of strangling prisoner and encouraging inmates to throw feces as activists say abuse remains widespread
Link du jour
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/04/ph ... er-4-2017/
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/05/danger-news-bubbles/
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 | TAYLOR CUNNINGHAM AND JENNIFER KO
THE DANGER OF NEWS BUBBLES
Donald Trump is a danger to the United States, to decency and the rule of law. He is a racist, the most incompetent president in history and will probably be impeached.
Donald Trump is the only man who can make America great again and he is well along on the path to do so — if only the traitorous media would allow him to do his job instead of making up fake news.
While these two narratives about the president of the United States and the direction of the country could not be more contradictory, tens of millions of Americans believe each of them — and that’s a huge problem. It shows that the country may be more ideologically divided today than at any time since the Civil War.
There are many reasons for this growing chasm. First and foremost, Americans themselves are the culprits. They now have more information at their fingertips than at any other time in history. But instead of using this wealth of knowledge to educate themselves, Americans have increasingly chosen to get their information from sources that confirm, instead of challenge, their own biases.
Another factor is that the political landscape has been getting more partisan on both sides as gerrymandered districts have robbed voters of a choice, and moderates have been swept out of office.
The media also shoulders part of the blame. Seeking to turn a profit, outlets on both sides have made a buck by turning more shallow and more partisan.
To find out how these two dominant political camps perceive their country and its leader, WhoWhatWhy launched a one-week experiment.
Two of our reporters consumed news the way millions of their compatriots are doing it: One of them only followed conservative news sources such as Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars and talk radio. The other watched MSNBC and read progressive news outlets like The Nation and the Huffington Post.
It should be noted that WhoWhatWhy does not believe that the outlets our reporters monitored are fundamentally equivalent. We simply chose outlets that conservatives and liberals get their news from. While some programs on Fox News cover what is happening in the country in accordance with journalistic standards, the network’s flagship shows do not. They are propaganda tools and do little to conceal that fact. In addition, Breitbart has devolved into a self-proclaimed platform for the alt-right movement and outlets like Infowars are not news programs at all. Liberal outlets have their own deficiencies, but there is no equivalence.
Both of our reporters stayed off their own social media networks so that they would not be exposed to alternative narratives.
What they found was as expected as it was disturbing.
For-profit media outlets on both sides are doing little to conceal their biases. Websites give their readers the news with a spin that confirms preconceived notions instead of challenging them. On TV, a lot of the coverage of cable news networks consists of talking heads providing “commentary” that does little to inform viewers, and is more about shaping opinions.
Trump’s remarks on the violence in Charlottesville, as well as his comments on North Korea, stand out as examples of the different ways in which the president is being covered.
While progressive outlets blasted Trump for not going far enough in condemning white nationalism and for saying that “many sides” were responsible for the violence, conservative outlets reserved the bulk of their criticism for the media.
Specifically, Fox News et al. said that there was nothing Trump could have said that would have satisfied the liberal press, and highlighted the role that anti-fascist (Antifa) protesters played in Charlottesville.
While outlets like Fox News were critical of the neo-Nazis marching in Virginia, they also extensively covered Antifa attacks on conservatives and Confederate monuments.
Left-leaning outlets, on the other hand, pulled no punches, with commentators suggesting that Charlottesville showed Trump is unfit for office. These outlets also pointed out that many Republicans joined the chorus of those criticizing the president for not condemning white supremacists more strongly.
“I think biased journalism does Americans a disservice, because instead of providing clarity to a voting public it further clouds our understanding of current events and issues amidst competing versions of facts. In that sense partisan coverage obstructs democracy.”
Trump’s tough talk directed at North Korea was even more illustrative. While conservative outlets hailed the president as a strong leader who ended the Obama-era policy of “appeasement and weakness,” the liberal media suggested that the “fire and fury” comment made the world less safe.
But the difference is not just in how major issues are being covered —but also in what is being covered.
While the rest of the media focuses on Russian interference and potential ties to people close to Trump, outlets like Fox News disregard most of that part of the story, dwelling instead on the “illegal leaks” on which the revelations are based.
A major theme of conservative media is also whether there is a plot to remove Trump from office. Alex Jones of Infowars went a step further and said there is a plot to assassinate the president.
So what does it all mean? Does it matter that two neighbors living in any American city can perceive the world completely differently because of the news they consume? Is the divisiveness promoted by the for-profit media sustainable? If not, how will it end?
We don’t know the answers to these questions but we know they are important. The experiment was certainly an eye-opening experience for our two young reporters.
“I learned a lot about my own media biases during this assignment,” Taylor Cunningham said at the end of the project. “Outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Free Beacon Press lie outside what I would generally consider to be trustworthy sources; so much so that at times I was genuinely confused by — even frustrated with — what I was reading. It didn’t resemble the reality I feel to be true, and so read as a string of misinformation.”
Jennifer Ko noted that the assignment was easier for her because the sources she was asked to cover are the same ones or similar to those she usually consumes.
“It wasn’t until the moment I read the news summary of the other side that I realized how biased certain news platforms could be,” Ko said.
Cunningham also noted that, during the Charlottesville crisis, she was “craving” the news outlets she usually consumes.
“I hadn’t considered them to be a source of comfort for me until I was without them,” Cunningham said. “They support a version of the truth I generally hold as given, particularly in the midst of social turmoil. And so I had trouble with the conservative coverage I was consuming and the inadequacies of story after story packed with pro-Trump rhetoric.”
Ko stated that she was surprised to find out “how respective reporters could write about the same topic, but with different views. A liberal Democrat would be shocked and upset when reading rightists news articles, and vice-versa.”
However, the experiment also taught Cunningham about liberal news bias. She realized that they spent too much time on “anti-Trump talk in light of an event that reaches deeper into the American psyche than party identification.”
She added that bias on both sides should frustrate Americans.
“I think biased journalism does Americans a disservice, because instead of providing clarity to a voting public it further clouds our understanding of current events and issues amidst competing versions of facts,” Cunningham said. “In that sense partisan coverage obstructs democracy.”
The experiment showed both of our reporters the need for an unbiased media. But it is also up to consumers to choose outlets that not just confirm their biases but challenge what they believe.
“Exposure to different media outlets or points of views offers a more complex representation of a complex nation with incredible diversity,” Cunningham said. “Furthermore treating journalism, especially sensationalized stories, with skepticism by cross-checking between media outlets is helpful for separating fact from opinion.”
Ko agreed.
“Some people deliberately choose not to read news outlets of the ‘opposite’ perception,” she said. “However, to understand more, I think it is highly recommended that they at least try to look at the other side and how varied some things can be.”
FBI Octopus
http://www.readingeagle.com/news/articl ... wyomissing
Suicide bombers focus of retired FBI agent's presentation in ...
Reading Eagle-
There are ways people can increase their chances of surviving an attack by a suicide bomber, said Rodney S. Loose, a retired FBI special ...
https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/ju ... e-justice/
PATCON, Oklahoma City, and Jesse Trentadue’s Lonely Crusade for Justice
By Will Grigg - April 19, 2017
“His name used to be Don Jarrett,” long-time federal asset John Matthews told FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk during a July 9 phone call. Matthews was concerned that he would have to testify in a lawsuit filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue seeking the release of long-concealed video tapes from the `1995 Oklahoma City bombing.Trentadue believes that the suppressed tapes would help identify “John Doe II,” a dark-haired, heavy-set man seen by dozens of people in the company of Timothy McVeigh on the day of the bombing.
“John Doe II” remains at large, and the FBI is perversely determined to protect him. For reasons that will be explained anon, Trentadue is convinced that learning his identity is necessary in order to obtain a measure of justice on behalf of his late brother Kenneth, who was killed while in federal custody shortly after the bombing.
Did the FBI tamper with a witness in OKC bombing evidence case? | fox13now.com
Fox 13 Now › 2014/11/13 › did-the-fbi-t...
Nov 13, 2014 - Trentadue has accused the FBI of intimidating Matthews into refusing to testify, claiming FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk told him he didn't have to without a subpoena. A report submitted to the ...
Judge orders inquiry of FBI witness tampering accusation | News OK
NewsOK.com › article › feed
Apr 30, 2015 - Trentadue brought the lawsuit that triggered the trial because he believes the FBI has video ... The report found Quirk should have notified the Justice Department about the calls and been clearer about ...
Judge: More details needed to determine if FBI tampered with witness in Oklahoma City bombing case | KFOR.com
KFOR.com › 2014/11/13 › judge-more-...
Nov 13, 2014 - Trentadue accused the FBI of intimidating Matthews into refusing to testify, claiming FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk spoke with him before the trial. A report from the Justice Department shows ...
FBI denies witness tampering accusation - Washington Times
Washington Times › news › nov › fbi-de...
Nov 10, 2014 - The FBI did not pressure a former government operative into backing out of testifying in a lawsuit claiming ... The lawsuit was filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes there is video ...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... dy-reveals
Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals
Exclusive: Tests show billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles, with 83% of samples found to be polluted
http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... torms.html
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Paying for Big Storms
Hurricane Katrina cost our country, our people, over $100 billion. Hurricane Sandy cost $75 billion. Hurricane Harvey will also be in that range, and may become the most expensive storm in American history. Each one of those storms cost the US more than any storm before.
Between 1980 and 2012 there were 5 storms a year that did $1 billion in damage in the US. From 2013 to 2016, the average was a bit more than 10. Through 8 months this year, there have already been 10. Ten of the 11 costliest Atlantic hurricanes have occurred since 2004. Smaller storms are also becoming much more frequent. Compared to the average for 1900-1960, there were 20% more “heavy precipitation events” in the 1980s, 35% more in the 1990s, and 40% more in the 2000s.
Lives, livelihoods, possessions and homes have been lost. One million housing units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, 650,000 by Sandy, and at least 100,000 by Harvey. Harvey destroyed about a half a million cars. Most of these losses are not covered by insurance. Standard homeowners policies do not cover damage from rain or flood waters.
You don’t have to be listening very carefully or paying much attention to know that something is changing. Climate scientists have been saying for years that warming will probably mean more and bigger storms. The “probably” is important: they are not as sure as about the fact of warming itself, but the evidence points strongly in that direction. In the case of Harvey, warming has raised sea levels (meaning higher storm surges) and raised air temperature (meaning more water in the air and more rain).
Harvey washed away whole neighborhoods. It is also pushing aside the curtain on the politics of storms. As the costs of big storms have risen sharply, Republicans have been trying to cut federal funds for disaster relief. After Katrina and Sandy, Republicans in Congress were reluctant to send aid to New Orleans and New York. In both cases, they insisted that any new funds for relief be offset by cuts in programs they don’t like, such as Amtrak funding and Medicare. Texas Senators and Representatives opposed legislation to provide relief after Hurricane Sandy, as did current White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, then a Representative from South Carolina, and Paul Ryan, delaying relief funding for months.
Republican leaders in the House have now proposed a budget that cuts FEMA disaster funds by $876 million. This amount is instead intended to begin building Trump’s wall. Trump’s own budget blueprint calls for cuts of $667 million, mostly from the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, which spends money now to reduce future expenditures. His budget eliminates the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides affordable flood insurance that private insurers won’t offer.
Trump’s proposed budget makes big cuts to research about the climate changes which are connected to these increasingly big and expensive storms. Budget director Mulvaney said, “We’re not spending money on that any more. We consider that to be a waste of your money.”
In their broad attack on all kinds of “regulations”, the Trump administration just eliminated an Obama-era regulation that required federally funded housing rebuilt after disasters to be able to withstand these critical flood events. For an additional 1% in building costs, many times that would be saved in the future.
At the state level, Republican ideology also makes disaster recovery more difficult for the most vulnerable Americans. A new law passed by Texas Republicans makes it easier for insurance companies to avoid paying off on their policies and harder for homeowners to get paid.
Those are the facts. Not fake: everything above can be found in hundreds of places. Not really news: mostly old stories or back page reports.
Only an ideologically immovable force like the current Republican Party could ignore the mounting crises caused by our changing weather systems. In their rigid insistence that big government is America’s biggest problem, Republicans consistently ignore the human costs of the crises, where only big government can provide solutions. In their refusal to acknowledge the basic facts of our changing weather systems, Republicans in Congress and the White House put Americans at risk of losing everything.
Right now, Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz, who didn’t want to pay for the damage done by Sandy, are rushing to promise money for Texans. Let’s see whether they also acknowledge that increasing weather crises are the greatest danger to American life.
Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook WI
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
http://fox2now.com/2017/09/06/fbi-in-st ... its-ranks/
FBI in St. Louis recruiting more women to join its ranks
POSTED 7:49 PM, SEPTEMBER 6, 2017,
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... een-rowley
Coleen Rowley Portrait by Robert Shetterly
c Robert Shetterly/Americans Who Tell The Truth
Coleen Rowley
FBI agent, Whistleblower : b. 1954
"What if you lived in a country where, after the Administration negligently failed to prevent a major terrorist attack, they deliberately exploited everyone's fears and utilized shock doctrine to do INSANELY stupid and dangerous things: things like launching costly pre-emptive wars, subverting law, and destroying the checks and balances of the Constitution and common standards of decency by re-instituting torture? Well, We DO live in that country."
FBI agent Sibel Edmonds - Official Web Site - www.JustaCitizen.org
https://www.justacitizen.com
sibel edmonds from www.justacitizen.com
Join Sibel Edmonds at her Website. The Lone Gladio. Assassinations. Drug running. False flag ops. A shadow paramilitary global network. Synthetic wars. CIA-NATO: A darker truth. Operation Gladio Plan B: Murder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds
Wikipedia
Sibel Edmonds
Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a former translator who worked as a contractor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Edmonds gained public attention following her firing from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March 2002. She had accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals, alleged serious security breaches and cover-ups and that intelligence had been deliberately suppressed, endangering national security. [1][2][3] Her later claims gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.[4]
Sibel Deniz Edmonds
Sibel edmonds on RT.png
Born 1970 (age 46–47)
Nationality Turkish-American Iranian-American
Known for American Whistleblower
She is the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism.[5] In 2016 as editor-in-chief Sibel expanded and founded NewsBud independent news media with associates, partnered with BFP.[6]
Sibel Edmonds published a memoir in March 2012, titled Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story.[7]
Contents
Early life and education Edit
The daughter of an Iranian Azerbaijani father and Turkish mother,[8] Edmonds lived in Iran and then Turkey before coming to the United States as a student[9] in 1988. Fluent in Azerbaijani, Turkish, Persian and English,[9][10][11] Edmonds earned her bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology from George Washington University[9] and her master's in public policy and international commerce from George Mason University.[10]
FBI employment Edit
Edmonds worked for the FBI for six months from late September 2001 until March 2002. Edmonds was hired, as a contractor, to work as an interpreter in the translations unit of the FBI in Washington on 13[12] September, 15 September or 20 September 2001. Among her main roles was to translate covertly recorded conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets.[1]
Edmonds filed complaints about the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility and the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. In response, she claims that managers retaliated[13] against her, and she was fired on 22 March 2002. In June 2002, the Associated Press and Washington Post reported that the FBI claimed Edmonds was dismissed because her actions were disruptive and breached security and that she performed poorly at her job.[14] A 2005 internal investigation by the FBI Office of the Inspector General found that many of Edmonds's allegations of misconduct "had some basis in fact" and that "her allegations were at least a contributing factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services," but were unable to substantiate all of her allegations, nor did they make a statement regarding her dismissal being improper.[15]
Edmonds's allegations of impropriety at the FBI later came to the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held unclassified hearings on the matter on 17 June 2002, and 9 July 2002. During the hearings, the FBI provided various unclassified documents and statements relating to the case, which led to Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley sending letters, dated 19 June 2002, 13 August 2002, and 28 October 2002 – to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, Attorney General Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller, respectively – asking for explanations and calling for an independent audit of the FBI's translation unit. These documents were published on the Senators' web sites.[16][17][18]
Post-FBI Edit
In April 2004, Edmonds claimed she had provided information to the panel investigating the September 11 attacks in February that year. Although she started work shortly after 9/11 and worked for just over six months, she claimed knowledge of information circulating within the FBI during spring and summer of 2001. The session was closed and over three hours long, she said. Reportedly, she told the commission that the FBI knew of a planned attack months away and the terrorists were in place. She stated, "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."[12] On the 26th, a deposition of Edmonds was quashed under the state secrets privilege.[19]
On 13 May 2004, Ashcroft submitted statements to justify the use of the State secrets privilege against the planned deposition by Edmonds,[20] and the same day, the FBI retroactively classified as Top Secret all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds's own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by the Project on Government Oversight.[21]
On 23 June 2004, the retroactive reclassification was challenged in a suit filed by the Project on Government Oversight, citing fear that the group might be retroactively punished for having published the letters on its website. The Justice Department tried to get the suit dismissed, and the Justice Department explicitly approved their release to the Project on Government Oversight.[22] The reclassification did, however, keep Edmonds from testifying in the class action suit as well as her own whistleblower suit.[23][24] The latter decision was appealed, and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a summary of the audit report, claiming "that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. Rather than investigate Edmonds's allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract."[25]
In August 2004, Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), which exists to assist national security whistleblowers through advocacy and reform.[26][27][28] Edmonds is also the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism[5] featuring contributions, collaborations, and interviews with journalists like James Corbett of The Corbett Report.
In September 2005, Edmonds claimed in Vanity Fair that a price was set for Dennis Hastert to withdraw support for the Armenian Genocide resolution. That the "... Turkish Consulate ... claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000."[29][30]
In September 2006, a documentary about Edmonds's case called Kill the Messenger (Une Femme à Abattre) premiered in France.[31] The film discusses the Edmonds case and offers interviews with various involved individuals. In the film, Edmonds, former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, and others say that Israel was a significant actor in the illicit activities Edmonds discovered.
Edmonds gave testimony in August 2009 and gave information that had twice previously been gagged under state secrets privilege.[32][33]
On 1 February 2011, Edmonds published a story on her own website, adding details of events she described as taking place in April 2001. The account is of another translator's description of meetings with an Iranian informant months before 9/11, and FBI agents' reaction to it:
Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States. They are here in the U.S., living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this.
It was believed the agents reported this information internally at the FBI, but it is unclear that it ever went beyond that, in fact, both the agents remarked, and the translator told Edmonds, that the intelligence was not specific enough to take action upon.[34]
Classified Woman Edit
In 2012, she published an autobiography called Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir. Reviewing the book for The American Conservative, Philip Giraldi said that some details of the book could be challenged due to passage of time. However, he felt the central thesis of government incompetence and corruption was correct.[35]
Operation Gladio B Edit
According to Edmonds, "Operation Gladio B" is an FBI codename adopted in 1997 for ongoing relations between US intelligence, the Pentagon, and Al Qaeda.[36] The name refers to the original Operation Gladio, in which US intelligence had established groups (stay-behind forces) in Europe in preparation for a Soviet invasion.
According to Edmonds, Gladio B identified, among other things, regular meetings between senior US intelligence and current leader of Al Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan between 1997 and 2001, with al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen being transported by NATO aircraft to Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations. She added that in 1997, NATO asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to release from prison Islamist militants affiliated with Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were flown by U.S. intelligence orders to Turkey for training and use in operations by the Pentagon. Additionally, she reported that an Al-Qaeda leader had been training some of the 9-11 hijackers at a base in Turkey. These and related allegations were seemingly confirmed by Sunday Times journalists in 2008 who spoke to Pentagon and MI6 sources.[37] However, according to Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed,[38] the journalists were prevented from publishing many of these allegations when the second half of their four-part series was dropped, possibly due to pressure from the U.S. State Department. She suggests that the objectives of Gladio B are "projecting U.S. power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking." Former FBI special agent Dennis Saccher states Edmonds's story "should have been front page news" because it is "a scandal bigger than Watergate".[38]
NewsBud Edit
Sibel Edmonds, along with others, formed NewsBud,[39] a nonpartisan journalism team supported by Kickstarter donations (setting a new fund raising records for news media, $150,000 each for the 1st & 2nd of 4 phases) by a growing community seeking alternative online news, investigative reports, analysis, original stories, video-podcasts, editorials, and discussion forums.[40] Sibel Edmonds's primarily solo Boiling Frogs Post featuring articles and videos is being merged and absorbed into NewsBud - so BFP content is becoming NewsBud content and NewsBud content occasionally appears as a BFP heading or website.[5]
Bibliography Edit
Sibel D. Edmonds: Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir. (2012) ISBN 0-615-60222-3
Sibel D. Edmonds: The Lone Gladio (Volume 1) (2014) ISBN 0-692-21329-5
See also Edit
Able Danger
Anthony Shaffer
Operation Cyclone
Transparency International
Ptech
David Kelly
Downing Street memo
Stanley Hilton
American Turkish Council
Brewster Jennings & Associates
References Edit
^ a b Calvert, Jonathan; Lauria, Joe (6 January 2008). "For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
^ "FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft". The Sunday Times. 20 January 2008.
^ Calvert, Jonathan; Lauria, Joe (27 January 2008). "Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe". The Sunday Times.
^ Larry Siems (29 March 2006). "2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award". PEN American Center. Archived from the original on 20 February 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
^ a b c About Boiling Frogs Post. URL accessed 20 April 2010.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "About NewsBud". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ "The Sibel Edmonds Story | A Memoir". Classified Woman. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
^ "Sibel Edmonds". KKC.
^ a b c Rose, David (15 August 2005). "An Inconvenient Patriot". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 9 December 2016. "But as a naturalized Turkish-American, she saw the job as her patriotic duty."
^ a b "National Security Whistleblowers Coalition – About Us". Retrieved 15 October 2008.
^ Kill The Messenger (2006) documentary, CANAL+ / Zadig Productions, 2006, from 4m47s to 4m55s
^ a b BUNCOMBE, ANDREW. "'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes'". Independent. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
^ US Court of Appeals Reply Brief of the Plaintiff-Appellant, SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
"provides direct support for Ms. Edmonds allegation that the FBI fired her for disclosing serious security breaches within the agency"
^ "FBI Told to Give Papers to Whistleblower". highbeam.com.
^ "A Review of the FBI's Actions in Connection With Allegations Raised By Contract Linguist Sibel Edmonds". U.S. Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General.
^ "Government is Abusing "States Secrets Privilege" to Cover Up National Security Blunders, ACLU Says". ACLU. 12 January 2005. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "Grassley Seeks Overhaul of FBI's Translation Unit". 28 October 2002. Archived from the original on 15 October 2006. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "August 13, 2002 letter from Senators Leahy & Grassley to Attorney General John Ashcroft". 13 August 2002. Archived from the original on 20 November 2002. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ Strohm, Chris (30 April 2004). "Quashed Testimony". Government Executive. Archived from the original on 3 August 2004.
^ "Statement of John Ashcroft filed in Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp." (PDF). 13 May 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "POGO v. John Ashcroft".
^ Smith, R. Jeffrey (23 February 2005). "Access to Memos Is Affirmed". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
^ "FBI translator suit dismissed over security issues". CNN. 6 July 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "FBI Whistleblower Suit Thrown Out". FOX News. 6 July 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "A Review of the FBI's Actions in Connection With Allegations Raised By Contract Linguist Sibel Edmonds, Special Report, January 2005 (Unclassified Summary)" (PDF). Office of the Inspector General, Office of Oversight and Review. July 2004. pp. 10–11, 31. Retrieved 19 June 2007. We found that many of Edmonds's core allegations relating to the co-worker were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. … With respect to an allegation that focused on the co-worker's performance, which Edmonds believed to be an indication of a security problem, the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds's allegations. … With regard to some of Edmonds's allegations, the OIG did not find evidence to support her allegation or the inferences that she drew from certain facts. However, Edmonds's assertions regarding the co-worker, when viewed as a whole, raised substantial questions and were supported by various pieces of evidence. … Rather than investigate Edmonds's allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract. We concluded that the FBI could not show, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would have terminated Edmonds's services absent her disclosures. … We believe that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. HTML version also available.
^ National Security Whistleblowers Coalition purpose message. URL accessed 20 April 2010.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "Newsbud’s Warning on the Fake News Bucket List - Watch out for the Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "Newsbud’s Warning on the Fake News Bucket List - Watch out for the Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing". YouTube. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ "An Inconvenient Patriot". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "Hastert Should also be Investigated On Turkish Bribery Accusations". The Californian Courier. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "Kill The Messenger Une Femme à Abattre". justacitizen.com. Retrieved 5 September 2006.
^ "BEFORE THE OHIO ELECTIONS COMMISSION DEPOSITION" (PDF). bradblog.com. Retrieved 12 June 2015. HTML version.
^ "Formerly-'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Details Congressional Blackmail, Bribery, Espionage, Corruption in Remarkable Videotaped Deposition". Huffington Post. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "boilingfrog.com, a site founded and published by Sibel Edmonds". Boilingfrogspost.com. 1 February 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
^ "Sibel Edmonds’s Secrets". American Conservative. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "An Introduction to "Gladio B"". The Corbett Report.
^ "For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets". The Sunday Times. 6 January 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
^ a b Mosaddeq Ahmed, Nafeez (17 May 2013). "Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to al-Qaeda chief spiked?". Ceasefire Magazine.
^ "NewsBud - Where Media Integrity Matters". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
^ "NEWSBUD- Where Media Integrity Matters: Join Our Campaign for a 100% People Funded Media". Boiling Frogs Post. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
External links Edit
Sibel Edmonds's sites:
Official website
NewsBud
Boiling Frogs Post
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
Other sites:
Inspector General Report
ACLU: "Sibel Edmonds: A Patriot Silenced, Unjustly Fired but Fighting Back to Help Keep America Safe"
The Corbett Report
Does FBI plan to send in their violence expert Agent Spicocchi to investigate Utah police officer mistreatment of nurse ?
Head of Utah Crime Family asks for help.
2 stories
1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03783.html
FBI Official Gets Six Years
Thursday, March 13, 2008
In a courtroom crowded with his friends from law enforcement, a former FBI official was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison for torturing his girlfriend at knifepoint and gunpoint during a six-hour ordeal in her Crystal City high-rise apartment.
Carl L. Spicocchi, 55, a 19-year FBI veteran who had run the Toledo office and was on temporary assignment in Washington, pleaded guilty in Arlington County Circuit Court last year to two felony counts of abduction and using a firearm in the Aug. 23 attack.
"This obviously was a horrific crime," Circuit Court Judge James F. Almand said. "It requires a substantial sentence and a substantial amount of time."
Almand sentenced Spicocchi to 10 years in prison, suspending four of them.
Spicocchi, who is married, believed his girlfriend was dating another man and attacked her in a jealous rage, according to court records. But the girlfriend, who said she was too fearful of Spicocchi to appear in court yesterday, said in a statement that she was not unfaithful.
"He thought she was cheating on him, but she wasn't," said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Lisa Bergman. The attack "came completely out of the blue," Bergman said.
In the statement, read by Bergman, the woman gave this account: When she came home that day, she found Spicocchi hiding in a closet, armed with a gun and a 10-inch knife. He stripped her and wrapped her in tape, then dragged her around the apartment by her hair. He forced the gun into her mouth and held the knife to her throat. He beat her repeatedly. He told her that he would cut open her veins and that, because of his training, he knew how long it would take the blood to drain from her body.
"He said I had met my match," she said in the statement.
He told her that he planned to kill her and that she would soon join her father, who had died 10 months earlier. He said that he would write a check for $100,000 from her account and flee to South America after she was dead and that he had a plane ticket for a 6 a.m. flight.
2
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8656 ... rrest.html
District attorney asks FBI to also investigate controversial U. nurse arrest
By Pat Reavy @DNewsCrimeTeam
Published: Sept. 7, 2017 2:30 p.m.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bra ... y-learning
Learning takes brain acrobatics
When neural areas more easily switch communication partners, learning improves
BY LAURA SANDERS 11:00AM, SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... photograph
New AI can guess whether you're gay or straight from a photograph
An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions
https://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary ... mey-doing/
Hillary Regrets Not Going After Ex-FBI Director During Election ...
Mediaite
Hillary Clinton had some harsh criticism for recently ousted FBI Director James Comey in her new book, What Happened. Comey became a central figure during ...
http://www.kxlf.com/story/36316780/spy-court-fast-facts
Spy Court Fast Facts
Posted: Sep 07, 2017 8:40 PM EDT
Updated: Sep 07, 2017 8:40 PM EDT
CNN Library
(CNN) -- Here's a look at what you need to know about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Facts:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was created in 1978.
It exists to oversee and authorize activities carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).
About the Court:
Before the Patriot Act, foreign intelligence had to be a primary purpose of the investigation. Now, foreign intelligence has to be a significant purpose.
The court meets in a high security room, on the sixth floor of the Justice Department.
All proceedings of the court are secret.
The court has two parts: a lower court and a Court of Review.
The lower court has a rotating panel of 11 Federal District Court judges. At least three of the judges must live within 20 miles of the District of Columbia.
Currently the judges are:
Rosemary Collyer
James Boasberg
Rudolph Contreras
Anne Conway
Raymond Dearie
Claire Eagan
Martin Feldman
James Jones
Robert Kugler
Michael Mosman
Thomas Russell
F. Dennis Saylor
The judges are:
William Bryson (Presiding), Federal Circuit
Jose Cabranes (Second Circuit)
Richard Tallman (Ninth Circuit)
The Chief Justice of the United States appoints all of the judges.
Timeline:
October 26, 2001 - President George W. Bush signs into law the USA Patriot Act, after the attacks of September 11th.
May 17, 2002 - FISC turns down the Justice Department's request to allow intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors more freedom to work together on cases. According to the New York Times, this is the first time in its 24-year history that the court turned down a request from the Justice Department.
May 17, 2002 - The court identifies 75 cases in which the FBI and Justice Department submitted false information in order to gain approval for surveillance. All of the cases occurred during the administration of Bill Clinton.
August 22, 2002 - The Justice Department appeals the ruling handed down by the lower court in May.
September 9, 2002 - The Court of Review meets for the first time in its history. The judges hear arguments from Solicitor General Theodore Olson that the USA Patriot Act of 2001 has expanded the scope of FISA and allows for greater cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. No other opinions are heard, as per the rules of the court.
September 10, 2002 - The Senate Judiciary Committee calls on the Court of Review to make public all transcripts from the September 9 hearing, as well as the Court's decision. Senator Patrick Leahy, head of the Judiciary Committee, says, "We need to know how this law (the Patriot Act) is being interpreted and applied.''
November 2, 2002 - The Court of Review overturns a key court ruling which had placed limits on the government's use of wiretaps targeting suspected spies and terrorists.
February 12, 2003 - The ACLU, along with a coalition of other civil liberties groups, asks the Supreme Court to overturn new, more lenient standards for wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations. It would have been the first time for the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of such wiretaps, known as FISAS for the act they are named after - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
March 25, 2003 - The Supreme Court turns down the request by the ACLU without comment.
December 15, 2005 - The New York Times reports that President Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans and others in the US (on international calls) without obtaining warrants through FISC. The newspaper reports that as many as 500 people in the US are being monitored at any one time, and between 5,000 and 7,000 people overseas are being wiretapped.
December 16, 2005 - In his live weekly radio address, President Bush acknowledges that he has authorized wiretaps without warrants but defends the action as "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."
December 19, 2005 - At a news conference, President Bush defends the warrant-less wiretapping by saying, "This program is carefully reviewed approximately every 45 days to ensure it is being used properly. Leaders in the United States Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this program. And it has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our civil liberties. This program has targeted those with known links to al-Qaida. I've reauthorized this program more than 30 times since September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill our American citizens."
December 19, 2005 - Lower court judge James Robertson resigns, via letter to Chief Justice John Roberts. According to the Washington Post, the resignation is in protest of President Bush's actions concerning the warrant-less wiretaps.
August 17, 2006 - Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, of US District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division, strikes down the NSA warrant-less wiretapping program, saying that it violates free speech and privacy rights.
January 17, 2007 - The Bush administration announces that it will allow the court to oversee its domestic surveillance program and will seek the court's permission before eavesdropping. This reverses the position held by the administration since the secret wiretapping program was revealed in 2005.
August 5, 2007 - President Bush signs into law the Protect America of 2007 which updates the Foreign Surveillance Act of 1978, but only for a period of six months. The new law gives the attorney general or the director of national intelligence the authority to approve surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas, bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
April 30, 2008 - The Justice Department announces that FISC approved 2,370 warrants in 2007, a 9% increase over 2006.
April 2011 - The Justice Department announces that FISC approved all of the 1,511 surveillance applications put before it in 2010. Five cases were withdrawn by the government.
June 5, 2013 - British newspaper The Guardian publishes a top secret FISA court order requiring Verizon to turn over millions of its customers' telephone records to the National Security Agency. According to the report, the order was requested by the FBI and gives the NSA blanket access to the phone records of millions of Americans.
January 17, 2014 - President Barack Obama calls on Congress to authorize establishment of a new panel of outside advocates to participate in "significant cases" before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that handles intelligence collection issues.
June 2, 2015 - The president signs the USA Freedom Act, which includes a number of FISA court reforms. FISA court decisions will be declassified, as per the law, and an expert panel will be established to advise the court on civil liberties, technology and other matters. Under the new rules, investigative agencies must get FISA court authorization to access metadata from telecommunications companies.
June 29, 2015 - The court rules that the NSA can resume bulk collection of phone data and continue to do so for six months. The USA Freedom Act allows the NSA to collect phone records for a limited six-month transitional period.
April 12, 2017 - The Washington Post reports that the FBI and the Justice Department obtained a warrant from a FISA judge to monitor President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser, Carter Page, as part of their investigation into
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/07/doj-a ... superiors/
DOJ And FBI Staffers May Be Delaying Info On Trump Dossier ...
The Daily Caller-
WASHINGTON — Subpoenas sent to the Justice Department and FBI from the House Intelligence Committee requesting documents related to ...
FBI Octopus
http://www.ketv.com/article/gov-rickett ... t/12193213
Gov. Ricketts announces new Nebraska State Patrol superintendent
KETV Omaha-
Other committee members included retired FBI executive Weysan Dun, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska Deborah Gilg and Hall County Public ...
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/ne ... 642934001/
In another development Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to affirm the nomination of former FBI agent Russell Coleman as U.S. attorney in Louisville.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... -explainer
Why Is the FBI Really Going After the Researcher Who Stopped WannaCry?
MARCY WHEELER
Sep 7 2017, 9:30am
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3478274
Trump lawyer's wife arrested after allegedly having sex with inmate
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, September 7, 2017, 5:24 PM
https://lawnewz.com/high-profile/breaki ... breitbart/
The FBI Has 1475 Page File on Conservative Site Breitbart
LawNewz-
Of those 1,475 total documents, only twenty-three are currently publicly available for inspection. And each of those 23 publicly available ...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... -happening
John le Carré on Trump: ‘Something seriously bad is happening’
Author draws parallels between Donald Trump and rise of 1930s fascism, in rare public appearance at Royal Festival Hall
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3478690
Texas cop arrested for faking death resigns from job
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, September 7, 2017, 9:08 PM
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... -story.htm
Deputy accused in Alameda County jail abuse scandal strangled an inmate until he fell unconscious, prosecutors say
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3477046
Shailene Woodley says she was strip-searched after Dakota Access Pipeline protest arrest
Shailene Woodley learned that the hard way in October 2016 when she was arrested for criminal trespassing during a Dakota Access Pipeline protest, she told Marie Claire U.K. during a recent interview.
"When you're in a jail cell and they shut that door, you realize no one can save you. If there's a fire and they decide not to open the door, you'll die," she said. "You're a caged animal."
Behind bars at the Morton County Jail in N.D., the "Divergent" star saw no special treatment, according to her account.
Shailene Woodley faces January trial in pipeline protest
"I was strip-searched. Like get naked, turn over, spread your butt cheeks, bend over," Woodley, 25, told the magazine. "They were looking for drugs in my a--."
Despite her horrific experience, all too familiar to hundreds of thousands of average Americans, the unapologetically political actress has no regrets.
"This world isn't something to take for granted," she told Marie Claire U.K.
"The only way to address climate change and these radical, detrimental policies is for us, as citizens, to shift our lifestyles. People are too comfortable. We're complacent in many ways. We need to be willing to get uncomfortable."
Stars celebrate Dakota Access Pipeline victory
Woodley's determined to continue evolving and working toward bettering this world. So much so that she told the New York Times she's considering a potential run for office in the future.
"There was a point last year when I was working for Bernie Sanders where I thought, 'Huh, maybe I'll run for Congress in a couple years,'" she said. "And you know what? I'm not going to rule it out. Who knows? Life is big, and I'm young."
As for her arrest, the actress-turned-activist pleaded guilty to a single count of disorderly conduct. She'll serve a year of unsupervised probation, according to TMZ.
Her arrest was livestreamed on Facebook. It showed her and 26 other protestors being rounded up for attending the event, which police said turned into a riot, near Saint Anthony, N.
Thursday, September 7, 2017, 9:24 AM
https://www.click2houston.com/news/atf- ... ing-harvey
ATF hunting for guns stolen during Harvey
Posted: 5:34 PM, September 06, 2017
Updated: 5:37 PM, September 06, 2017
HOUSTON - As Harvey was ravaging the Houston area, thieves were using the storm as cover to make off with dozens of guns.
Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported that at the height of Hurricane Harvey, six gun stores were burglarized.
"It's just unacceptable for people to take advantage of a natural disaster like this," said Fred Milanowski, special agent-in-charge of the ATF's Houston division.
Milanowski said guns were stolen in four of the six burglaries. He said a total of 109 guns were stolen during a less than 48-hour period. However, Milanowski said this is a relatively low number when compared to the 30 gun stores burglarized and more than 1,000 weapons stolen in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Link du jour
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org
http://www.thesullenbell.com
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3477571
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3477403
http://www.latimes.com/visuals/video/94518851-132.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Does the LAPD treat celebrity burglaries differently from the average home break-in?
FBI in St. Louis recruiting more women to join its ranks
POSTED 7:49 PM, SEPTEMBER 6, 2017,
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... een-rowley
Coleen Rowley Portrait by Robert Shetterly
c Robert Shetterly/Americans Who Tell The Truth
Coleen Rowley
FBI agent, Whistleblower : b. 1954
"What if you lived in a country where, after the Administration negligently failed to prevent a major terrorist attack, they deliberately exploited everyone's fears and utilized shock doctrine to do INSANELY stupid and dangerous things: things like launching costly pre-emptive wars, subverting law, and destroying the checks and balances of the Constitution and common standards of decency by re-instituting torture? Well, We DO live in that country."
FBI agent Sibel Edmonds - Official Web Site - www.JustaCitizen.org
https://www.justacitizen.com
sibel edmonds from www.justacitizen.com
Join Sibel Edmonds at her Website. The Lone Gladio. Assassinations. Drug running. False flag ops. A shadow paramilitary global network. Synthetic wars. CIA-NATO: A darker truth. Operation Gladio Plan B: Murder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds
Wikipedia
Sibel Edmonds
Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a former translator who worked as a contractor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Edmonds gained public attention following her firing from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March 2002. She had accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals, alleged serious security breaches and cover-ups and that intelligence had been deliberately suppressed, endangering national security. [1][2][3] Her later claims gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.[4]
Sibel Deniz Edmonds
Sibel edmonds on RT.png
Born 1970 (age 46–47)
Nationality Turkish-American Iranian-American
Known for American Whistleblower
She is the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism.[5] In 2016 as editor-in-chief Sibel expanded and founded NewsBud independent news media with associates, partnered with BFP.[6]
Sibel Edmonds published a memoir in March 2012, titled Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story.[7]
Contents
Early life and education Edit
The daughter of an Iranian Azerbaijani father and Turkish mother,[8] Edmonds lived in Iran and then Turkey before coming to the United States as a student[9] in 1988. Fluent in Azerbaijani, Turkish, Persian and English,[9][10][11] Edmonds earned her bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology from George Washington University[9] and her master's in public policy and international commerce from George Mason University.[10]
FBI employment Edit
Edmonds worked for the FBI for six months from late September 2001 until March 2002. Edmonds was hired, as a contractor, to work as an interpreter in the translations unit of the FBI in Washington on 13[12] September, 15 September or 20 September 2001. Among her main roles was to translate covertly recorded conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets.[1]
Edmonds filed complaints about the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility and the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. In response, she claims that managers retaliated[13] against her, and she was fired on 22 March 2002. In June 2002, the Associated Press and Washington Post reported that the FBI claimed Edmonds was dismissed because her actions were disruptive and breached security and that she performed poorly at her job.[14] A 2005 internal investigation by the FBI Office of the Inspector General found that many of Edmonds's allegations of misconduct "had some basis in fact" and that "her allegations were at least a contributing factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services," but were unable to substantiate all of her allegations, nor did they make a statement regarding her dismissal being improper.[15]
Edmonds's allegations of impropriety at the FBI later came to the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held unclassified hearings on the matter on 17 June 2002, and 9 July 2002. During the hearings, the FBI provided various unclassified documents and statements relating to the case, which led to Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley sending letters, dated 19 June 2002, 13 August 2002, and 28 October 2002 – to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, Attorney General Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller, respectively – asking for explanations and calling for an independent audit of the FBI's translation unit. These documents were published on the Senators' web sites.[16][17][18]
Post-FBI Edit
In April 2004, Edmonds claimed she had provided information to the panel investigating the September 11 attacks in February that year. Although she started work shortly after 9/11 and worked for just over six months, she claimed knowledge of information circulating within the FBI during spring and summer of 2001. The session was closed and over three hours long, she said. Reportedly, she told the commission that the FBI knew of a planned attack months away and the terrorists were in place. She stated, "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."[12] On the 26th, a deposition of Edmonds was quashed under the state secrets privilege.[19]
On 13 May 2004, Ashcroft submitted statements to justify the use of the State secrets privilege against the planned deposition by Edmonds,[20] and the same day, the FBI retroactively classified as Top Secret all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds's own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by the Project on Government Oversight.[21]
On 23 June 2004, the retroactive reclassification was challenged in a suit filed by the Project on Government Oversight, citing fear that the group might be retroactively punished for having published the letters on its website. The Justice Department tried to get the suit dismissed, and the Justice Department explicitly approved their release to the Project on Government Oversight.[22] The reclassification did, however, keep Edmonds from testifying in the class action suit as well as her own whistleblower suit.[23][24] The latter decision was appealed, and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a summary of the audit report, claiming "that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. Rather than investigate Edmonds's allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract."[25]
In August 2004, Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), which exists to assist national security whistleblowers through advocacy and reform.[26][27][28] Edmonds is also the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism[5] featuring contributions, collaborations, and interviews with journalists like James Corbett of The Corbett Report.
In September 2005, Edmonds claimed in Vanity Fair that a price was set for Dennis Hastert to withdraw support for the Armenian Genocide resolution. That the "... Turkish Consulate ... claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000."[29][30]
In September 2006, a documentary about Edmonds's case called Kill the Messenger (Une Femme à Abattre) premiered in France.[31] The film discusses the Edmonds case and offers interviews with various involved individuals. In the film, Edmonds, former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, and others say that Israel was a significant actor in the illicit activities Edmonds discovered.
Edmonds gave testimony in August 2009 and gave information that had twice previously been gagged under state secrets privilege.[32][33]
On 1 February 2011, Edmonds published a story on her own website, adding details of events she described as taking place in April 2001. The account is of another translator's description of meetings with an Iranian informant months before 9/11, and FBI agents' reaction to it:
Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States. They are here in the U.S., living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this.
It was believed the agents reported this information internally at the FBI, but it is unclear that it ever went beyond that, in fact, both the agents remarked, and the translator told Edmonds, that the intelligence was not specific enough to take action upon.[34]
Classified Woman Edit
In 2012, she published an autobiography called Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir. Reviewing the book for The American Conservative, Philip Giraldi said that some details of the book could be challenged due to passage of time. However, he felt the central thesis of government incompetence and corruption was correct.[35]
Operation Gladio B Edit
According to Edmonds, "Operation Gladio B" is an FBI codename adopted in 1997 for ongoing relations between US intelligence, the Pentagon, and Al Qaeda.[36] The name refers to the original Operation Gladio, in which US intelligence had established groups (stay-behind forces) in Europe in preparation for a Soviet invasion.
According to Edmonds, Gladio B identified, among other things, regular meetings between senior US intelligence and current leader of Al Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan between 1997 and 2001, with al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen being transported by NATO aircraft to Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations. She added that in 1997, NATO asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to release from prison Islamist militants affiliated with Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were flown by U.S. intelligence orders to Turkey for training and use in operations by the Pentagon. Additionally, she reported that an Al-Qaeda leader had been training some of the 9-11 hijackers at a base in Turkey. These and related allegations were seemingly confirmed by Sunday Times journalists in 2008 who spoke to Pentagon and MI6 sources.[37] However, according to Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed,[38] the journalists were prevented from publishing many of these allegations when the second half of their four-part series was dropped, possibly due to pressure from the U.S. State Department. She suggests that the objectives of Gladio B are "projecting U.S. power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking." Former FBI special agent Dennis Saccher states Edmonds's story "should have been front page news" because it is "a scandal bigger than Watergate".[38]
NewsBud Edit
Sibel Edmonds, along with others, formed NewsBud,[39] a nonpartisan journalism team supported by Kickstarter donations (setting a new fund raising records for news media, $150,000 each for the 1st & 2nd of 4 phases) by a growing community seeking alternative online news, investigative reports, analysis, original stories, video-podcasts, editorials, and discussion forums.[40] Sibel Edmonds's primarily solo Boiling Frogs Post featuring articles and videos is being merged and absorbed into NewsBud - so BFP content is becoming NewsBud content and NewsBud content occasionally appears as a BFP heading or website.[5]
Bibliography Edit
Sibel D. Edmonds: Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir. (2012) ISBN 0-615-60222-3
Sibel D. Edmonds: The Lone Gladio (Volume 1) (2014) ISBN 0-692-21329-5
See also Edit
Able Danger
Anthony Shaffer
Operation Cyclone
Transparency International
Ptech
David Kelly
Downing Street memo
Stanley Hilton
American Turkish Council
Brewster Jennings & Associates
References Edit
^ a b Calvert, Jonathan; Lauria, Joe (6 January 2008). "For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
^ "FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft". The Sunday Times. 20 January 2008.
^ Calvert, Jonathan; Lauria, Joe (27 January 2008). "Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe". The Sunday Times.
^ Larry Siems (29 March 2006). "2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award". PEN American Center. Archived from the original on 20 February 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
^ a b c About Boiling Frogs Post. URL accessed 20 April 2010.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "About NewsBud". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ "The Sibel Edmonds Story | A Memoir". Classified Woman. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
^ "Sibel Edmonds". KKC.
^ a b c Rose, David (15 August 2005). "An Inconvenient Patriot". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 9 December 2016. "But as a naturalized Turkish-American, she saw the job as her patriotic duty."
^ a b "National Security Whistleblowers Coalition – About Us". Retrieved 15 October 2008.
^ Kill The Messenger (2006) documentary, CANAL+ / Zadig Productions, 2006, from 4m47s to 4m55s
^ a b BUNCOMBE, ANDREW. "'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes'". Independent. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
^ US Court of Appeals Reply Brief of the Plaintiff-Appellant, SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
"provides direct support for Ms. Edmonds allegation that the FBI fired her for disclosing serious security breaches within the agency"
^ "FBI Told to Give Papers to Whistleblower". highbeam.com.
^ "A Review of the FBI's Actions in Connection With Allegations Raised By Contract Linguist Sibel Edmonds". U.S. Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General.
^ "Government is Abusing "States Secrets Privilege" to Cover Up National Security Blunders, ACLU Says". ACLU. 12 January 2005. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "Grassley Seeks Overhaul of FBI's Translation Unit". 28 October 2002. Archived from the original on 15 October 2006. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "August 13, 2002 letter from Senators Leahy & Grassley to Attorney General John Ashcroft". 13 August 2002. Archived from the original on 20 November 2002. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ Strohm, Chris (30 April 2004). "Quashed Testimony". Government Executive. Archived from the original on 3 August 2004.
^ "Statement of John Ashcroft filed in Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp." (PDF). 13 May 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "POGO v. John Ashcroft".
^ Smith, R. Jeffrey (23 February 2005). "Access to Memos Is Affirmed". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
^ "FBI translator suit dismissed over security issues". CNN. 6 July 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "FBI Whistleblower Suit Thrown Out". FOX News. 6 July 2004. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
^ "A Review of the FBI's Actions in Connection With Allegations Raised By Contract Linguist Sibel Edmonds, Special Report, January 2005 (Unclassified Summary)" (PDF). Office of the Inspector General, Office of Oversight and Review. July 2004. pp. 10–11, 31. Retrieved 19 June 2007. We found that many of Edmonds's core allegations relating to the co-worker were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. … With respect to an allegation that focused on the co-worker's performance, which Edmonds believed to be an indication of a security problem, the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds's allegations. … With regard to some of Edmonds's allegations, the OIG did not find evidence to support her allegation or the inferences that she drew from certain facts. However, Edmonds's assertions regarding the co-worker, when viewed as a whole, raised substantial questions and were supported by various pieces of evidence. … Rather than investigate Edmonds's allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract. We concluded that the FBI could not show, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would have terminated Edmonds's services absent her disclosures. … We believe that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. HTML version also available.
^ National Security Whistleblowers Coalition purpose message. URL accessed 20 April 2010.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "Newsbud’s Warning on the Fake News Bucket List - Watch out for the Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ Edmonds, Sibel. "Newsbud’s Warning on the Fake News Bucket List - Watch out for the Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing". YouTube. NewsBud. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
^ "An Inconvenient Patriot". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "Hastert Should also be Investigated On Turkish Bribery Accusations". The Californian Courier. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "Kill The Messenger Une Femme à Abattre". justacitizen.com. Retrieved 5 September 2006.
^ "BEFORE THE OHIO ELECTIONS COMMISSION DEPOSITION" (PDF). bradblog.com. Retrieved 12 June 2015. HTML version.
^ "Formerly-'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Details Congressional Blackmail, Bribery, Espionage, Corruption in Remarkable Videotaped Deposition". Huffington Post. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "boilingfrog.com, a site founded and published by Sibel Edmonds". Boilingfrogspost.com. 1 February 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
^ "Sibel Edmonds’s Secrets". American Conservative. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
^ "An Introduction to "Gladio B"". The Corbett Report.
^ "For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets". The Sunday Times. 6 January 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
^ a b Mosaddeq Ahmed, Nafeez (17 May 2013). "Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to al-Qaeda chief spiked?". Ceasefire Magazine.
^ "NewsBud - Where Media Integrity Matters". NewsBud. NewsBud. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
^ "NEWSBUD- Where Media Integrity Matters: Join Our Campaign for a 100% People Funded Media". Boiling Frogs Post. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
External links Edit
Sibel Edmonds's sites:
Official website
NewsBud
Boiling Frogs Post
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
Other sites:
Inspector General Report
ACLU: "Sibel Edmonds: A Patriot Silenced, Unjustly Fired but Fighting Back to Help Keep America Safe"
The Corbett Report
Does FBI plan to send in their violence expert Agent Spicocchi to investigate Utah police officer mistreatment of nurse ?
Head of Utah Crime Family asks for help.
2 stories
1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03783.html
FBI Official Gets Six Years
Thursday, March 13, 2008
In a courtroom crowded with his friends from law enforcement, a former FBI official was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison for torturing his girlfriend at knifepoint and gunpoint during a six-hour ordeal in her Crystal City high-rise apartment.
Carl L. Spicocchi, 55, a 19-year FBI veteran who had run the Toledo office and was on temporary assignment in Washington, pleaded guilty in Arlington County Circuit Court last year to two felony counts of abduction and using a firearm in the Aug. 23 attack.
"This obviously was a horrific crime," Circuit Court Judge James F. Almand said. "It requires a substantial sentence and a substantial amount of time."
Almand sentenced Spicocchi to 10 years in prison, suspending four of them.
Spicocchi, who is married, believed his girlfriend was dating another man and attacked her in a jealous rage, according to court records. But the girlfriend, who said she was too fearful of Spicocchi to appear in court yesterday, said in a statement that she was not unfaithful.
"He thought she was cheating on him, but she wasn't," said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Lisa Bergman. The attack "came completely out of the blue," Bergman said.
In the statement, read by Bergman, the woman gave this account: When she came home that day, she found Spicocchi hiding in a closet, armed with a gun and a 10-inch knife. He stripped her and wrapped her in tape, then dragged her around the apartment by her hair. He forced the gun into her mouth and held the knife to her throat. He beat her repeatedly. He told her that he would cut open her veins and that, because of his training, he knew how long it would take the blood to drain from her body.
"He said I had met my match," she said in the statement.
He told her that he planned to kill her and that she would soon join her father, who had died 10 months earlier. He said that he would write a check for $100,000 from her account and flee to South America after she was dead and that he had a plane ticket for a 6 a.m. flight.
2
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8656 ... rrest.html
District attorney asks FBI to also investigate controversial U. nurse arrest
By Pat Reavy @DNewsCrimeTeam
Published: Sept. 7, 2017 2:30 p.m.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bra ... y-learning
Learning takes brain acrobatics
When neural areas more easily switch communication partners, learning improves
BY LAURA SANDERS 11:00AM, SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... photograph
New AI can guess whether you're gay or straight from a photograph
An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions
https://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary ... mey-doing/
Hillary Regrets Not Going After Ex-FBI Director During Election ...
Mediaite
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http://www.kxlf.com/story/36316780/spy-court-fast-facts
Spy Court Fast Facts
Posted: Sep 07, 2017 8:40 PM EDT
Updated: Sep 07, 2017 8:40 PM EDT
CNN Library
(CNN) -- Here's a look at what you need to know about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Facts:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was created in 1978.
It exists to oversee and authorize activities carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).
About the Court:
Before the Patriot Act, foreign intelligence had to be a primary purpose of the investigation. Now, foreign intelligence has to be a significant purpose.
The court meets in a high security room, on the sixth floor of the Justice Department.
All proceedings of the court are secret.
The court has two parts: a lower court and a Court of Review.
The lower court has a rotating panel of 11 Federal District Court judges. At least three of the judges must live within 20 miles of the District of Columbia.
Currently the judges are:
Rosemary Collyer
James Boasberg
Rudolph Contreras
Anne Conway
Raymond Dearie
Claire Eagan
Martin Feldman
James Jones
Robert Kugler
Michael Mosman
Thomas Russell
F. Dennis Saylor
The judges are:
William Bryson (Presiding), Federal Circuit
Jose Cabranes (Second Circuit)
Richard Tallman (Ninth Circuit)
The Chief Justice of the United States appoints all of the judges.
Timeline:
October 26, 2001 - President George W. Bush signs into law the USA Patriot Act, after the attacks of September 11th.
May 17, 2002 - FISC turns down the Justice Department's request to allow intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors more freedom to work together on cases. According to the New York Times, this is the first time in its 24-year history that the court turned down a request from the Justice Department.
May 17, 2002 - The court identifies 75 cases in which the FBI and Justice Department submitted false information in order to gain approval for surveillance. All of the cases occurred during the administration of Bill Clinton.
August 22, 2002 - The Justice Department appeals the ruling handed down by the lower court in May.
September 9, 2002 - The Court of Review meets for the first time in its history. The judges hear arguments from Solicitor General Theodore Olson that the USA Patriot Act of 2001 has expanded the scope of FISA and allows for greater cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. No other opinions are heard, as per the rules of the court.
September 10, 2002 - The Senate Judiciary Committee calls on the Court of Review to make public all transcripts from the September 9 hearing, as well as the Court's decision. Senator Patrick Leahy, head of the Judiciary Committee, says, "We need to know how this law (the Patriot Act) is being interpreted and applied.''
November 2, 2002 - The Court of Review overturns a key court ruling which had placed limits on the government's use of wiretaps targeting suspected spies and terrorists.
February 12, 2003 - The ACLU, along with a coalition of other civil liberties groups, asks the Supreme Court to overturn new, more lenient standards for wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations. It would have been the first time for the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of such wiretaps, known as FISAS for the act they are named after - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
March 25, 2003 - The Supreme Court turns down the request by the ACLU without comment.
December 15, 2005 - The New York Times reports that President Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans and others in the US (on international calls) without obtaining warrants through FISC. The newspaper reports that as many as 500 people in the US are being monitored at any one time, and between 5,000 and 7,000 people overseas are being wiretapped.
December 16, 2005 - In his live weekly radio address, President Bush acknowledges that he has authorized wiretaps without warrants but defends the action as "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."
December 19, 2005 - At a news conference, President Bush defends the warrant-less wiretapping by saying, "This program is carefully reviewed approximately every 45 days to ensure it is being used properly. Leaders in the United States Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this program. And it has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our civil liberties. This program has targeted those with known links to al-Qaida. I've reauthorized this program more than 30 times since September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill our American citizens."
December 19, 2005 - Lower court judge James Robertson resigns, via letter to Chief Justice John Roberts. According to the Washington Post, the resignation is in protest of President Bush's actions concerning the warrant-less wiretaps.
August 17, 2006 - Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, of US District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division, strikes down the NSA warrant-less wiretapping program, saying that it violates free speech and privacy rights.
January 17, 2007 - The Bush administration announces that it will allow the court to oversee its domestic surveillance program and will seek the court's permission before eavesdropping. This reverses the position held by the administration since the secret wiretapping program was revealed in 2005.
August 5, 2007 - President Bush signs into law the Protect America of 2007 which updates the Foreign Surveillance Act of 1978, but only for a period of six months. The new law gives the attorney general or the director of national intelligence the authority to approve surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas, bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
April 30, 2008 - The Justice Department announces that FISC approved 2,370 warrants in 2007, a 9% increase over 2006.
April 2011 - The Justice Department announces that FISC approved all of the 1,511 surveillance applications put before it in 2010. Five cases were withdrawn by the government.
June 5, 2013 - British newspaper The Guardian publishes a top secret FISA court order requiring Verizon to turn over millions of its customers' telephone records to the National Security Agency. According to the report, the order was requested by the FBI and gives the NSA blanket access to the phone records of millions of Americans.
January 17, 2014 - President Barack Obama calls on Congress to authorize establishment of a new panel of outside advocates to participate in "significant cases" before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that handles intelligence collection issues.
June 2, 2015 - The president signs the USA Freedom Act, which includes a number of FISA court reforms. FISA court decisions will be declassified, as per the law, and an expert panel will be established to advise the court on civil liberties, technology and other matters. Under the new rules, investigative agencies must get FISA court authorization to access metadata from telecommunications companies.
June 29, 2015 - The court rules that the NSA can resume bulk collection of phone data and continue to do so for six months. The USA Freedom Act allows the NSA to collect phone records for a limited six-month transitional period.
April 12, 2017 - The Washington Post reports that the FBI and the Justice Department obtained a warrant from a FISA judge to monitor President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser, Carter Page, as part of their investigation into
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In another development Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to affirm the nomination of former FBI agent Russell Coleman as U.S. attorney in Louisville.
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Texas cop arrested for faking death resigns from job
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Shailene Woodley says she was strip-searched after Dakota Access Pipeline protest arrest
Shailene Woodley learned that the hard way in October 2016 when she was arrested for criminal trespassing during a Dakota Access Pipeline protest, she told Marie Claire U.K. during a recent interview.
"When you're in a jail cell and they shut that door, you realize no one can save you. If there's a fire and they decide not to open the door, you'll die," she said. "You're a caged animal."
Behind bars at the Morton County Jail in N.D., the "Divergent" star saw no special treatment, according to her account.
Shailene Woodley faces January trial in pipeline protest
"I was strip-searched. Like get naked, turn over, spread your butt cheeks, bend over," Woodley, 25, told the magazine. "They were looking for drugs in my a--."
Despite her horrific experience, all too familiar to hundreds of thousands of average Americans, the unapologetically political actress has no regrets.
"This world isn't something to take for granted," she told Marie Claire U.K.
"The only way to address climate change and these radical, detrimental policies is for us, as citizens, to shift our lifestyles. People are too comfortable. We're complacent in many ways. We need to be willing to get uncomfortable."
Stars celebrate Dakota Access Pipeline victory
Woodley's determined to continue evolving and working toward bettering this world. So much so that she told the New York Times she's considering a potential run for office in the future.
"There was a point last year when I was working for Bernie Sanders where I thought, 'Huh, maybe I'll run for Congress in a couple years,'" she said. "And you know what? I'm not going to rule it out. Who knows? Life is big, and I'm young."
As for her arrest, the actress-turned-activist pleaded guilty to a single count of disorderly conduct. She'll serve a year of unsupervised probation, according to TMZ.
Her arrest was livestreamed on Facebook. It showed her and 26 other protestors being rounded up for attending the event, which police said turned into a riot, near Saint Anthony, N.
Thursday, September 7, 2017, 9:24 AM
https://www.click2houston.com/news/atf- ... ing-harvey
ATF hunting for guns stolen during Harvey
Posted: 5:34 PM, September 06, 2017
Updated: 5:37 PM, September 06, 2017
HOUSTON - As Harvey was ravaging the Houston area, thieves were using the storm as cover to make off with dozens of guns.
Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported that at the height of Hurricane Harvey, six gun stores were burglarized.
"It's just unacceptable for people to take advantage of a natural disaster like this," said Fred Milanowski, special agent-in-charge of the ATF's Houston division.
Milanowski said guns were stolen in four of the six burglaries. He said a total of 109 guns were stolen during a less than 48-hour period. However, Milanowski said this is a relatively low number when compared to the 30 gun stores burglarized and more than 1,000 weapons stolen in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Link du jour
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Does the LAPD treat celebrity burglaries differently from the average home break-in?
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director James Comey elected Donald Trump President
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/0 ... _23221457/
George Clooney Blasts Trump And The Myth Of The 'Hollywood Elite'
"This idea that I'm somehow the 'Hollywood elite' and this guy who takes a s**t in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable."
25/09/2017 2:58 PM AEST | Updated 25/09/2017 2:58 PM AEST
soup du jour
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http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/dale- ... -1.3520130
NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. joined the chorus of athletes and other personalities criticizing Donald Trump’s stance on the national anthem protest.
The driver, 42, tweeted, “All Americans R granted rights 2 peaceful protests.”
Then he added, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable — JFK.”
Earnhardt became further enmeshed in the debate when he responded to another tweet cautioning him on making visible comments. As The Hill points out, Earnhardt acknowledged that it was a complex issue, saying, “some team owners spoke on this.”
Last week, Trump politicized the national anthem protest debate by calling out people like quarterback Colin Kaepernick and others who’ve knelt during the anthem.
Trump even suggested the players who engage in the protest be “fired.”
In response to Trump’s pointed comment, NFL players around the league kneeled or simply did not come out of the tunnel for the national anthem. Others linked arms in solidarity.
In Ear
Link du jour
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2 ... newsletter
http://www.newsweek.com/facebook-warned ... ion-670324
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Paramedic accused of taking selfies with incapacitated patients gets 6 months in jail
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BY ANN GIVENS ROBERT LEWIS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, September 25, 2017, 4:00 AM
https://www.vera.org/publications/for-t ... lent-crime
Publication July 2017
Measuring Public Safety
Responsibly Interpreting Statistics on Violent Crime
RESOURCES
1. Measuring Public Safety
PDF
For The Record Measuring Public Safety Square
Overview
For the Record Evidence Brief Series
With a few hyper-localized exceptions that require targeted attention, violent crime rates are lower today than they have been at any point over the past four decades. However, this era of public safety has been misrepresented by some media reports and public commentary concluding that violent crime increases in a few cities equal a sweeping national problem. This brief examines those erroneous conclusions about current crime trends—using both existing and original research—and describes how to avoid common pitfalls when interpreting statistics on violent crime.
Authors
Bruce Frederick - Senior Research Fellow, Research
Bruce Frederick
Action Area
Scoping the Problem
Key Takeaway
Violent crime remains near its lowest point in decades and fears of a new violent crime wave are unfounded. Crime rates fluctuate over time and it is important that any discussion of statistics on violent crime takes account of these natural variations.
Publication Highlights
One or two annual increases is not sufficient to call a change a new trend: it is normal for crime rates to fluctuate from year to year.
Recent increases in crime rates have been concentrated mostly among gun-related homicides in a few neighborhoods in a few major cities, where violent crime rates were already persistently high.
The conditions and events that contribute to violent crime vary from place to place and require locally tailored crime prevention and law enforcement strategies.
Key Facts
Previous
An analysis of 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities found that three cities—Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC—accounted for 1/2 of the aggregate increase in homicide counts from 2014 to 2015.
Among 10 cities highlighted by the New York Times for large increases in homicide counts in the first half of 2015, only 4 experienced continued increases in 2016.
An analysis of 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities found that three cities—Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC—accounted for 1/2
of the aggregate increase in homicide counts from 2014 to 2015.
Among 10 cities highlighted by the New York Times for large increases in homicide counts in the first half of 2015, only4 experienced continued increases in 2016.
Next
Related
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Chicago cops will be reprimanded for kneeling next to activist in viral Instagram photo
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George Clooney Blasts Trump And The Myth Of The 'Hollywood Elite'
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soup du jour
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NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. joined the chorus of athletes and other personalities criticizing Donald Trump’s stance on the national anthem protest.
The driver, 42, tweeted, “All Americans R granted rights 2 peaceful protests.”
Then he added, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable — JFK.”
Earnhardt became further enmeshed in the debate when he responded to another tweet cautioning him on making visible comments. As The Hill points out, Earnhardt acknowledged that it was a complex issue, saying, “some team owners spoke on this.”
Last week, Trump politicized the national anthem protest debate by calling out people like quarterback Colin Kaepernick and others who’ve knelt during the anthem.
Trump even suggested the players who engage in the protest be “fired.”
In response to Trump’s pointed comment, NFL players around the league kneeled or simply did not come out of the tunnel for the national anthem. Others linked arms in solidarity.
In Ear
Link du jour
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BY TOM PORTER ON 9/25/17 AT 10:02 AM
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Paramedic accused of taking selfies with incapacitated patients gets 6 months in jail
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Push to solve gun cases fuels rapid growth of New York's DNA database
BY ANN GIVENS ROBERT LEWIS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, September 25, 2017, 4:00 AM
https://www.vera.org/publications/for-t ... lent-crime
Publication July 2017
Measuring Public Safety
Responsibly Interpreting Statistics on Violent Crime
RESOURCES
1. Measuring Public Safety
For The Record Measuring Public Safety Square
Overview
For the Record Evidence Brief Series
With a few hyper-localized exceptions that require targeted attention, violent crime rates are lower today than they have been at any point over the past four decades. However, this era of public safety has been misrepresented by some media reports and public commentary concluding that violent crime increases in a few cities equal a sweeping national problem. This brief examines those erroneous conclusions about current crime trends—using both existing and original research—and describes how to avoid common pitfalls when interpreting statistics on violent crime.
Authors
Bruce Frederick - Senior Research Fellow, Research
Bruce Frederick
Action Area
Scoping the Problem
Key Takeaway
Violent crime remains near its lowest point in decades and fears of a new violent crime wave are unfounded. Crime rates fluctuate over time and it is important that any discussion of statistics on violent crime takes account of these natural variations.
Publication Highlights
One or two annual increases is not sufficient to call a change a new trend: it is normal for crime rates to fluctuate from year to year.
Recent increases in crime rates have been concentrated mostly among gun-related homicides in a few neighborhoods in a few major cities, where violent crime rates were already persistently high.
The conditions and events that contribute to violent crime vary from place to place and require locally tailored crime prevention and law enforcement strategies.
Key Facts
Previous
An analysis of 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities found that three cities—Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC—accounted for 1/2 of the aggregate increase in homicide counts from 2014 to 2015.
Among 10 cities highlighted by the New York Times for large increases in homicide counts in the first half of 2015, only 4 experienced continued increases in 2016.
An analysis of 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities found that three cities—Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC—accounted for 1/2
of the aggregate increase in homicide counts from 2014 to 2015.
Among 10 cities highlighted by the New York Times for large increases in homicide counts in the first half of 2015, only4 experienced continued increases in 2016.
Next
Related
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Ex-Memphis cop arrested outside White House with nine firearms in his car says the CIA implanted a chip in his head
BY JESSICA CHIA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 12:39 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3521565
Chicago cops will be reprimanded for kneeling next to activist in viral Instagram photo
BY JESSICA CHIA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 2:16 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/c ... -1.3520796
Conservative Catholics accuse Pope Francis of spreading heresy in first since 1333
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, September 25, 2017, 6:27 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3520265
SEE IT: Police arrest more than 180 protesters, some in wheelchairs, during GOP health care bill hearing
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, September 25, 2017, 10:03 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3522552
Fourteen women accuse ex-priest of sexually abusing them at Queens Catholic school in 1980s
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 12:37 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3522203
Firefighter relieved of duty after posting 'players who kneel should be shot in the head' on Facebook
BY CAITLYN HITT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 10:39 AM
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
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Scaramucci says Trump is not worried’ about Russia probe
BY ERIN DURKIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, December 31, 2017, 2:22 PM
Scaramucci says Trump is not worried’ about Russia probe
BY ERIN DURKIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, December 31, 2017, 2:22 PM
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Judge says L.A. County sheriff's officials must reveal if they know which deputies have skull tattoos
By MAYA LAU and NICOLE SANTA CRUZ
OCT 25, 2018 | 6:15 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... story.html
South Carolina deputies fired after driving van in Hurricane Florence floodwaters, killing two mental health patients
By JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 25, 2018 | 12:15 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... zil-piece/
Brazil’s military dictatorship leaves a paper trail in the CIA archives
by Lucas Smolcic Larson
October 24, 2018
While Brazilian presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro’s overt embrace of authoritarianism may seem aberrant to many foreign observers, it differs only in degree from decades of United States influence in Latin America. Declassified Central Intelligence Agency and State Department records from the midst of the Brazilian military dictatorship reveal an official US policy of support for the very brutality Bolsonaro intends to revive.
Read More
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FBI’s own guide to searching for records requested through FOIA confirms why you should always appeal FBI FOIA searches
by JPat Brown
October 24, 2018
A presentation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Records Management Division uncovered by Paul Galante as part of our Ronald Reagan FBI file crowdsource outline the process used by FOIA officers to search for records.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... 3/fbi-aim/
October 23, 2018
FBI’s file on Accuracy In Media is just a bunch of kvetching
AIM alternated between defending Bureau’s actions during COINTELPRO to trying to get the FBI to admit to a 9/11 cover-up
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
Accuracy In Media isn’t an organization that MuckRock is particularly fond of, but its Federal Bureau of Investigation file is full of some of our favorite things: debates over what an FBI file actually says and complaints about FOIA denials.
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/10/24/ ... nd-county/
Updated October 24
INCREASE FONT SIZE
Cumberland County corrections officer arrested on drug-dealing charge
Davis Glazener of South Portland is charged with cocaine trafficking, but there was no evidence yet suggesting it was connected with his work at the Cumberland County Jail, according to the sheriff's office.
STAFF REPORT
Share
A corrections officer at the Cumberland County Jail has been arrested and charged with dealing cocaine.
Davis Glazener, 22, of South Po
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
Off-duty cop busted for drunken driving, hitting parked car
By ROCCO PARASCAN and GRAHAM RAYMAN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 25, 2018 | 11:40 AM
https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2 ... s-mistake/
The Left Is Warming Up To The FBI. That’s A Mistake.
1
Terry Albury was a decorated FBI agent with a spotless career and only a few years from being eligible for retirement benefits. Yet as the only African American agent in the Minneapolis field office, he was increasingly unable to overlook systemic racism in the bureau. He was especially disturbed by what he believed was a widespread animus within the bureau against Muslims, particularly the local Somali American community. More chillingly, after serving as an FBI interrogator in Iraq he said he had not only observed anti-Muslim attitudes by U.S. personnel there but also believed the FBI was complicit in torture.
So he did what many public employees who are unable to be complicit in injustice have done: leak information to the media. And for this act of conscience, he was sentenced last week to four years in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act.
One might think Albury would be a hero among progressives. Yet his sentencing comes at an odd time when some in the anti-Trump “resistance” have begun to embrace the security state. The FBI, once the bête noire of progressives who saw it as a threat to civil liberties, now boasts more support among Democrats than Republicans.
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A cocaine sting nets Miami police officers alleged to have worked for drug dealers and hitmen
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NYPD underwear sergeant 'laughs off' reports of her attack on colleague — source
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA and THOMAS TRACY
OCT 23, 2018 | 10:30 AM
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/ron-de ... al-debate/
Ron DeSantis blames FBI for Parkland shooting during Florida gubernatorial debate
SARAH K. BURRIS
https://atlantablackstar.com/2018/10/21 ... documents/
FBI Agent Who Outed Bureau’s Racial Profiling Sentenced to 4 Years for Leaking Classified Documents
By Tia Berger -
October 21, 2018
0
594
The prosecution claimed Albury stole more than 50 classified documents and shared national defense information to a reporter from the online news outlet Intercept. One of the documents classified as “secret” included information on how to the FBI assesses confidential informants and a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country.”
Albury told the court he leaked the documents because he felt the FBI policies were an act of racial profiling which he regarded as “suspicion” and “disrespect.” His attorneys said Albury acted out of “conscience” and was troubled by the racism within the bureau.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... 5259aa0361
USA Gymnastics president had ‘troubling’ contact with FBI during Larry Nassar investigation
By Matt Bonesteel
October 19
Steve Penny, the former president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, discussed
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/20/fbi- ... rter-page/
FBI ACKNOWLEDGES USING MULTIPLE INFORMANTS IN INVESTIGATION OF TRUMP CAMPAIGN AIDE
11:57 AM 10/20/2018 | US
Chuck Ross | Reporter
4111
* The U.S. government revealed Friday that it used multiple informants to obtain information against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
* In court filings, government officials also revealed confidential human sources were paid for their work.
* The FBI relied heavily on an uncorroborated dossier to obtain warrants to spy on Page.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/fbi-interv ... d/24033356
FBI interview of convicted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev released
On Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 3:24 PM, Ed <[email protected]> wrote:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm ... tnam-wrong
That sensational New York Times story about LBJ saving ...
www.dallasnews.com
On Saturday, Oct. 6, presidential historian Michael Beschloss was on Twitter early and often, tweeting and retweeting a front-page New York Times story about his new book, Presidents of War.
On Thursday, October 25, 2018, 12:04 PM, Defending Rights & Dissent <[email protected]> wrote:
10/25/18
We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen
Bernie Sanders, The New York Times
Libel law is having a moment
Jonathan Peters, Columbia Journalism Review
Army Parrots Racist Right’s Talking Points on Antifa
Kelly Weill, Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider
Max Blumenthal, Jeb Sprague, The Grey Zone
How the courts perpetuate broken-windows policy.
Clio Chang, The Nation
10/24/18
Tech Companies Are Profiting Off ICE Deportations, Report Shows
Erin Corbett, Fortune
Arrest Over Police-Trap Warning Spurs Federal Suit
Christine Stuart, Courthouse News Service
The Little Rock Drug Raid Story Is A Fourth Amendment Story. But It's Also A First Amendment One.
Cathy Gellis, TechDirt
House members demand answers about Khashoggi from top spy chief
Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post
10/23/18
Written by DRAD Staff: The left is warming up to the FBI. That’s a mistake.
Chip Gibbons, Washington Post
Amazon Pushes ICE to Buy Its Face Recognition Surveillance Tech
Jake Laperruque, Andrea Peterson, The Daily Beast
Facebook Erases Hundreds of Alternative Media Pages in Mass Purge
Staff, The Real News Network
When Will Obama Aides Come Clean About U.S.-Saudi War Crimes?
Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Leaked Memo Advises Silence on Fish & Wildlife Info Requests
Martin Macias Jr., Courthouse News Service
National Park Service Considers Charging Protesters Occupying National Mall
Lauren Gilger, Steve Goldstein, NPR
10/22/18
Whistleblower Who Challenged FBI’s Profiling And Informant Recruitment Practices Is Sentenced To Four Years In Prison
Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof
Professor Was Improperly Punished for Israel Boycott Actions, Says Academic Group Cited in Punishment
Zaid Jilani, The Intercept
Khashoggi’s Murder and Saudi War Crimes in Yemen Were Facilitated by US
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout
‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration
Erica L. Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear, New York Times
First Criminal Case Filed Over Russian Interference in 2018 Midterms
Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News Service
Follow Us
Donate!
Contact Us
Defending Rights & Dissent 1325 G St. NW Suite 557 Washington, District of Columbia 20005 202.522.7408 [email protected]
Judge says L.A. County sheriff's officials must reveal if they know which deputies have skull tattoos
By MAYA LAU and NICOLE SANTA CRUZ
OCT 25, 2018 | 6:15 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... story.html
South Carolina deputies fired after driving van in Hurricane Florence floodwaters, killing two mental health patients
By JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 25, 2018 | 12:15 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... zil-piece/
Brazil’s military dictatorship leaves a paper trail in the CIA archives
by Lucas Smolcic Larson
October 24, 2018
While Brazilian presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro’s overt embrace of authoritarianism may seem aberrant to many foreign observers, it differs only in degree from decades of United States influence in Latin America. Declassified Central Intelligence Agency and State Department records from the midst of the Brazilian military dictatorship reveal an official US policy of support for the very brutality Bolsonaro intends to revive.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... i-process/
FBI’s own guide to searching for records requested through FOIA confirms why you should always appeal FBI FOIA searches
by JPat Brown
October 24, 2018
A presentation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Records Management Division uncovered by Paul Galante as part of our Ronald Reagan FBI file crowdsource outline the process used by FOIA officers to search for records.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... 3/fbi-aim/
October 23, 2018
FBI’s file on Accuracy In Media is just a bunch of kvetching
AIM alternated between defending Bureau’s actions during COINTELPRO to trying to get the FBI to admit to a 9/11 cover-up
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
Accuracy In Media isn’t an organization that MuckRock is particularly fond of, but its Federal Bureau of Investigation file is full of some of our favorite things: debates over what an FBI file actually says and complaints about FOIA denials.
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/10/24/ ... nd-county/
Updated October 24
INCREASE FONT SIZE
Cumberland County corrections officer arrested on drug-dealing charge
Davis Glazener of South Portland is charged with cocaine trafficking, but there was no evidence yet suggesting it was connected with his work at the Cumberland County Jail, according to the sheriff's office.
STAFF REPORT
Share
A corrections officer at the Cumberland County Jail has been arrested and charged with dealing cocaine.
Davis Glazener, 22, of South Po
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
Off-duty cop busted for drunken driving, hitting parked car
By ROCCO PARASCAN and GRAHAM RAYMAN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 25, 2018 | 11:40 AM
https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2 ... s-mistake/
The Left Is Warming Up To The FBI. That’s A Mistake.
1
Terry Albury was a decorated FBI agent with a spotless career and only a few years from being eligible for retirement benefits. Yet as the only African American agent in the Minneapolis field office, he was increasingly unable to overlook systemic racism in the bureau. He was especially disturbed by what he believed was a widespread animus within the bureau against Muslims, particularly the local Somali American community. More chillingly, after serving as an FBI interrogator in Iraq he said he had not only observed anti-Muslim attitudes by U.S. personnel there but also believed the FBI was complicit in torture.
So he did what many public employees who are unable to be complicit in injustice have done: leak information to the media. And for this act of conscience, he was sentenced last week to four years in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act.
One might think Albury would be a hero among progressives. Yet his sentencing comes at an odd time when some in the anti-Trump “resistance” have begun to embrace the security state. The FBI, once the bête noire of progressives who saw it as a threat to civil liberties, now boasts more support among Democrats than Republicans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... ac2a21e33e
A cocaine sting nets Miami police officers alleged to have worked for drug dealers and hitmen
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... story.html
NYPD underwear sergeant 'laughs off' reports of her attack on colleague — source
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA and THOMAS TRACY
OCT 23, 2018 | 10:30 AM
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/ron-de ... al-debate/
Ron DeSantis blames FBI for Parkland shooting during Florida gubernatorial debate
SARAH K. BURRIS
https://atlantablackstar.com/2018/10/21 ... documents/
FBI Agent Who Outed Bureau’s Racial Profiling Sentenced to 4 Years for Leaking Classified Documents
By Tia Berger -
October 21, 2018
0
594
The prosecution claimed Albury stole more than 50 classified documents and shared national defense information to a reporter from the online news outlet Intercept. One of the documents classified as “secret” included information on how to the FBI assesses confidential informants and a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country.”
Albury told the court he leaked the documents because he felt the FBI policies were an act of racial profiling which he regarded as “suspicion” and “disrespect.” His attorneys said Albury acted out of “conscience” and was troubled by the racism within the bureau.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... 5259aa0361
USA Gymnastics president had ‘troubling’ contact with FBI during Larry Nassar investigation
By Matt Bonesteel
October 19
Steve Penny, the former president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, discussed
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/20/fbi- ... rter-page/
FBI ACKNOWLEDGES USING MULTIPLE INFORMANTS IN INVESTIGATION OF TRUMP CAMPAIGN AIDE
11:57 AM 10/20/2018 | US
Chuck Ross | Reporter
4111
* The U.S. government revealed Friday that it used multiple informants to obtain information against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
* In court filings, government officials also revealed confidential human sources were paid for their work.
* The FBI relied heavily on an uncorroborated dossier to obtain warrants to spy on Page.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/fbi-interv ... d/24033356
FBI interview of convicted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev released
On Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 3:24 PM, Ed <[email protected]> wrote:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm ... tnam-wrong
That sensational New York Times story about LBJ saving ...
www.dallasnews.com
On Saturday, Oct. 6, presidential historian Michael Beschloss was on Twitter early and often, tweeting and retweeting a front-page New York Times story about his new book, Presidents of War.
On Thursday, October 25, 2018, 12:04 PM, Defending Rights & Dissent <[email protected]> wrote:
10/25/18
We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen
Bernie Sanders, The New York Times
Libel law is having a moment
Jonathan Peters, Columbia Journalism Review
Army Parrots Racist Right’s Talking Points on Antifa
Kelly Weill, Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider
Max Blumenthal, Jeb Sprague, The Grey Zone
How the courts perpetuate broken-windows policy.
Clio Chang, The Nation
10/24/18
Tech Companies Are Profiting Off ICE Deportations, Report Shows
Erin Corbett, Fortune
Arrest Over Police-Trap Warning Spurs Federal Suit
Christine Stuart, Courthouse News Service
The Little Rock Drug Raid Story Is A Fourth Amendment Story. But It's Also A First Amendment One.
Cathy Gellis, TechDirt
House members demand answers about Khashoggi from top spy chief
Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post
10/23/18
Written by DRAD Staff: The left is warming up to the FBI. That’s a mistake.
Chip Gibbons, Washington Post
Amazon Pushes ICE to Buy Its Face Recognition Surveillance Tech
Jake Laperruque, Andrea Peterson, The Daily Beast
Facebook Erases Hundreds of Alternative Media Pages in Mass Purge
Staff, The Real News Network
When Will Obama Aides Come Clean About U.S.-Saudi War Crimes?
Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Leaked Memo Advises Silence on Fish & Wildlife Info Requests
Martin Macias Jr., Courthouse News Service
National Park Service Considers Charging Protesters Occupying National Mall
Lauren Gilger, Steve Goldstein, NPR
10/22/18
Whistleblower Who Challenged FBI’s Profiling And Informant Recruitment Practices Is Sentenced To Four Years In Prison
Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof
Professor Was Improperly Punished for Israel Boycott Actions, Says Academic Group Cited in Punishment
Zaid Jilani, The Intercept
Khashoggi’s Murder and Saudi War Crimes in Yemen Were Facilitated by US
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout
‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration
Erica L. Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear, New York Times
First Criminal Case Filed Over Russian Interference in 2018 Midterms
Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News Service
Follow Us
Donate!
Contact Us
Defending Rights & Dissent 1325 G St. NW Suite 557 Washington, District of Columbia 20005 202.522.7408 [email protected]
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
Did I leave rhis out?
https://www.propublica.org/article/elkh ... cuffed-man
Two Indiana Police Officers to be Charged After Video Shows Them Beating Handcuffed Man
“A little overboard,” is how the police chief had previously described the officers’ actions. The decision to charge them came only after ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network demanded to see the video.
by Christian Sheckler, South Bend Tribune, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica Nov. 2, 10 p.m. EDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/po ... wo-n930456
Police can't find white woman charged after harassing two black women in viral video
"All of her neighbors are fortunately nosy neighbors and I’m sure will call us the second she shows back up," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Brad Koch told NBC News.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi ... ce-n923871
Washington considers lowering bar for prosecuting police over use of deadly force
An initiative on the ballot Tuesday seeks to remove the state's malice requirement, which makes it uniquely difficult for prosecutors to bring criminal charges.
CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communi ... 18710.html
n 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage.
“When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence official.
From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries, and was left unrepaired — despite warnings about what was happening — until more than two dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence and national security officials.
The disaster ensnared every corner of the national security bureaucracy — from multiple intelligence agencies, congressional intelligence committees and independent contractors to internal government watchdogs — forcing a slow-moving, complex government machine to grapple with the deadly dangers of emerging technologies.
In a world where dependence on advanced technology may be a necessary evil for modern espionage, particularly in hostile regions where American officials can’t operate freely, such technical failures are an ever present danger and will only become more acute with time.
“When these types of compromises happen, it’s so dark and bad,” said one former official. “They can burrow in. It never really ends.”
A former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the compromise said it had global implications for the CIA. “You start thinking twice about people, from China to Russia to Iran to North Korea,” said the former official. The CIA was worried about its network “totally unwinding worldwide.”
Yahoo News’ reporting on this global communications failure is based on conversations with eleven former U.S. intelligence and government officials directly familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. Multiple former intelligence officials said that the damage from the potential global compromise was serious — even catastrophic — and will persist for years.
More than just a question of a single failure, the fiasco illustrates a breakdown that was never properly addressed. The government’s inability to address the communication system’s insecurities until after sources were rolled up in China was disastrous. “We’re still dealing with the fallout,” said one former national security official. “Dozens of people around the world were killed because of this.”
*****
One of the largest intelligence failures of the past decade started in Iran in 2009, when the Obama administration announced the discovery of a secret Iranian underground enrichment facility — part of Iran’s headlong drive for nuclear weapons. Angered about the breach, the Iranians went on a mole hunt, looking for foreign spies, said one former senior intelligence official.
The mole hunt wasn’t hard, in large part, because the communications system the CIA was using to communicate with agents was flawed. Former U.S. officials said the internet-based platform, which was first used in war zones in the Middle East, was not built to withstand the sophisticated counterintelligence efforts of a state actor like China or Iran. “It was never meant to be used long term for people to talk to sources,” said one former official. “The issue was that it was working well for too long, with too many people. But it was an elementary system.”
“Everyone was using it far beyond its intention,” said another former official.
The risks posed by the system appeared to have been overlooked in part because of it was easy to use, said the former intelligence officials. There is no foolproof way to communicate — especially with expediency and urgency — with sources in hostile environments like Iran and China, noted the former officials. But a sense of confidence in the system kept it in operation far longer than was safe or advisable, said former officials. The CIA’s directorate of science and technology, which is responsible for the secure communications system, “says, ‘our s***’s impregnable,’ but it’s obviously not,” said one former official.
By 2010, however, it appears that Iran had begun to identify CIA agents. And by 2011, Iranian authorities dismantled a CIA spy network in that country, said seven former U.S. intelligence officials. (Indeed, in May 2011, Iranian intelligence officials announced publicly that they had broken up a ring of 30 CIA spies; U.S. officials later confirmed the breach to ABC News, which also reported on a potential compromise to the communications system.)
Iran executed some of the CIA informants and imprisoned others in an intelligence setback that one of the former officials described as “incredibly damaging.” The CIA successfully exfiltrated some of its Iranian sources, said former officials.
The Iranian compromise led to significantly fewer CIA agents being killed than in China, according to former officials. Still, the events there hampered the CIA’s capacity to collect intelligence in Iran at a critical time, just as Tehran was forging ahead with its nuclear program.
U.S. authorities believe Iran probably unwound the CIA’s asset network analytically — meaning they deduced what Washington knew about Tehran’s own operations, then identified Iranians who held that information, and eventually zeroed in on possible sources. This hunt for CIA sources eventually bore fruit — including the identification of the covert communications system.
A 2011 Iranian television broadcast that touted the government’s destruction of the CIA network said U.S. intelligence operatives had created websites for fake companies to recruit agents in Iran by promising them jobs, visas and education abroad. Iranians who initially thought they were responding to legitimate opportunities would end up meeting with CIA officers in places like Dubai or Istanbul for recruitme
Israel silent as Iran hit by another computer virus
Nov 02, 2018 12:59 am
Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet – report
Mossad currently 'fighting a real shadow war' -- TV report
https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report ... n-stuxnet/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran ... SKCN1N20CN
https://www.mpacorn.com/articles/former ... er-series/
Former FBI director, famed photog and ‘Hawkeye’ in speaker series
Big names coming to Thousand Oaks
| November 02, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opi ... fecc22df77
‘If you don’t get at that rot, you just get more officers like Josh Hastings’
The Little Rock police shooting of 15-year-old Bobby Moore revealed a horror show of misconduct, cover-up and cascading institutional failure at the department.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
LAPD surveillance caught assistant chief in sex act with subordinate officer just before his sudden retirement, sources say
By CINDY CHANG and RICHARD WINTON
NOV 02, 2018 | 9:45 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
Off-duty NYPD cop busted for driving wrong way in Queens
By ESHA RAY
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2018 | 1:00 PM
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/02/dod ... cker-rule/
WALL STREET MOVES TO GUT POST-CRISIS FINANCIAL RULES
Susan Antilla
November 2 2018, 1:05 p.m.
https://www.propublica.org/article/elkh ... cuffed-man
Two Indiana Police Officers to be Charged After Video Shows Them Beating Handcuffed Man
“A little overboard,” is how the police chief had previously described the officers’ actions. The decision to charge them came only after ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network demanded to see the video.
by Christian Sheckler, South Bend Tribune, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica Nov. 2, 10 p.m. EDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/po ... wo-n930456
Police can't find white woman charged after harassing two black women in viral video
"All of her neighbors are fortunately nosy neighbors and I’m sure will call us the second she shows back up," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Brad Koch told NBC News.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi ... ce-n923871
Washington considers lowering bar for prosecuting police over use of deadly force
An initiative on the ballot Tuesday seeks to remove the state's malice requirement, which makes it uniquely difficult for prosecutors to bring criminal charges.
CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cias-communi ... 18710.html
n 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage.
“When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence official.
From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries, and was left unrepaired — despite warnings about what was happening — until more than two dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence and national security officials.
The disaster ensnared every corner of the national security bureaucracy — from multiple intelligence agencies, congressional intelligence committees and independent contractors to internal government watchdogs — forcing a slow-moving, complex government machine to grapple with the deadly dangers of emerging technologies.
In a world where dependence on advanced technology may be a necessary evil for modern espionage, particularly in hostile regions where American officials can’t operate freely, such technical failures are an ever present danger and will only become more acute with time.
“When these types of compromises happen, it’s so dark and bad,” said one former official. “They can burrow in. It never really ends.”
A former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the compromise said it had global implications for the CIA. “You start thinking twice about people, from China to Russia to Iran to North Korea,” said the former official. The CIA was worried about its network “totally unwinding worldwide.”
Yahoo News’ reporting on this global communications failure is based on conversations with eleven former U.S. intelligence and government officials directly familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. Multiple former intelligence officials said that the damage from the potential global compromise was serious — even catastrophic — and will persist for years.
More than just a question of a single failure, the fiasco illustrates a breakdown that was never properly addressed. The government’s inability to address the communication system’s insecurities until after sources were rolled up in China was disastrous. “We’re still dealing with the fallout,” said one former national security official. “Dozens of people around the world were killed because of this.”
*****
One of the largest intelligence failures of the past decade started in Iran in 2009, when the Obama administration announced the discovery of a secret Iranian underground enrichment facility — part of Iran’s headlong drive for nuclear weapons. Angered about the breach, the Iranians went on a mole hunt, looking for foreign spies, said one former senior intelligence official.
The mole hunt wasn’t hard, in large part, because the communications system the CIA was using to communicate with agents was flawed. Former U.S. officials said the internet-based platform, which was first used in war zones in the Middle East, was not built to withstand the sophisticated counterintelligence efforts of a state actor like China or Iran. “It was never meant to be used long term for people to talk to sources,” said one former official. “The issue was that it was working well for too long, with too many people. But it was an elementary system.”
“Everyone was using it far beyond its intention,” said another former official.
The risks posed by the system appeared to have been overlooked in part because of it was easy to use, said the former intelligence officials. There is no foolproof way to communicate — especially with expediency and urgency — with sources in hostile environments like Iran and China, noted the former officials. But a sense of confidence in the system kept it in operation far longer than was safe or advisable, said former officials. The CIA’s directorate of science and technology, which is responsible for the secure communications system, “says, ‘our s***’s impregnable,’ but it’s obviously not,” said one former official.
By 2010, however, it appears that Iran had begun to identify CIA agents. And by 2011, Iranian authorities dismantled a CIA spy network in that country, said seven former U.S. intelligence officials. (Indeed, in May 2011, Iranian intelligence officials announced publicly that they had broken up a ring of 30 CIA spies; U.S. officials later confirmed the breach to ABC News, which also reported on a potential compromise to the communications system.)
Iran executed some of the CIA informants and imprisoned others in an intelligence setback that one of the former officials described as “incredibly damaging.” The CIA successfully exfiltrated some of its Iranian sources, said former officials.
The Iranian compromise led to significantly fewer CIA agents being killed than in China, according to former officials. Still, the events there hampered the CIA’s capacity to collect intelligence in Iran at a critical time, just as Tehran was forging ahead with its nuclear program.
U.S. authorities believe Iran probably unwound the CIA’s asset network analytically — meaning they deduced what Washington knew about Tehran’s own operations, then identified Iranians who held that information, and eventually zeroed in on possible sources. This hunt for CIA sources eventually bore fruit — including the identification of the covert communications system.
A 2011 Iranian television broadcast that touted the government’s destruction of the CIA network said U.S. intelligence operatives had created websites for fake companies to recruit agents in Iran by promising them jobs, visas and education abroad. Iranians who initially thought they were responding to legitimate opportunities would end up meeting with CIA officers in places like Dubai or Istanbul for recruitme
Israel silent as Iran hit by another computer virus
Nov 02, 2018 12:59 am
Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet – report
Mossad currently 'fighting a real shadow war' -- TV report
https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report ... n-stuxnet/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran ... SKCN1N20CN
https://www.mpacorn.com/articles/former ... er-series/
Former FBI director, famed photog and ‘Hawkeye’ in speaker series
Big names coming to Thousand Oaks
| November 02, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opi ... fecc22df77
‘If you don’t get at that rot, you just get more officers like Josh Hastings’
The Little Rock police shooting of 15-year-old Bobby Moore revealed a horror show of misconduct, cover-up and cascading institutional failure at the department.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
LAPD surveillance caught assistant chief in sex act with subordinate officer just before his sudden retirement, sources say
By CINDY CHANG and RICHARD WINTON
NOV 02, 2018 | 9:45 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
Off-duty NYPD cop busted for driving wrong way in Queens
By ESHA RAY
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2018 | 1:00 PM
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/02/dod ... cker-rule/
WALL STREET MOVES TO GUT POST-CRISIS FINANCIAL RULES
Susan Antilla
November 2 2018, 1:05 p.m.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/148934
The Inheritance Poisoned Fruit of JFK’s Assassination
by Christopher Fulton; Michelle Fulton TrineDay Trine Day
History , True Crime Pub Date 22 Nov 2018
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... story.html
Phillips: May not have heard Notre Dame students took a knee Saturday, but you need to know the religious reason why
By CARRON J. PHILLIPS
NOV 14, 2018 | 7:00 AM
Part of the reason the students were kneeling is due to a recent police brutality incident that took place in the state involving white officers and a man named Mario Guerrero Ledesma.
Last week, Pro Publica reported on a video that showed officers in Elkhart, Indiana beating Ledesma inside the station, leaving him bleeding for six minutes.
But despite the reasoning behind the students’ decision to kneel, far too many times over the past few years we’ve seen students punished for participating in the peaceful protest.
Last year, two black high school football players were kicked off their team for kneeling and raising their fists during the anthem in Texas. The same thing happened to Gyree Durante, who wound up being kicked off his Division III football team at Albright College in Pennsylvania for taking a knee.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Fresno officer fatally shoots former police captain who was armed with knife
By JAMES QUEALLY
NOV 12, 2018 | 5:10 PM
http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/PPR75/PPR75dex.HTML
People's Police Report #75 - September 2018
Table of Contents (under construction-October 2018)
25th Aniversary issue!
(See covers of all 75 issues)
(Note: you can also see a pdf version of the newsletter with graphics)
• Sketchy PPB Officer Chases Car Leading to Deadly Crash
• OR Shootings Hit Annual Average of 25 by July • Police and "Union" vs. Houseless People
• Review Committee Shunned, Seeks Change
• Oversight Report Drops Force Data
• Portland Police Collaborate with ICE, No Matter What the Feds Claim
• Prominence of ICE Puts Terror Task Force in the News
• Compliance Officer Generously Says DOJ Agreement Almost Done
• Training Council Streamlines Processes, Comments on Race & Force
• Police Crack Down on Antifascist Rallies
• Chief Gets Press, Meets Copwatch Again, Starts Strategic Plan
• Sheriff Improves Some Mental Health Issues; Other Actions Raise Concerns
• Quick Flashes PPR 75
• PPR's 25th Anniversary
• PPB Cop Uses 'N' Word / Profiling Updates
• Supremes Uphold Cell Phone Privacy
• Rapping Back #75 -- Analysis of Police "Union" Web Postings
People's Police Report Index Page
Return to Copwatch home page
Back to top
http://ticklethewire.com/2018/11/13/bor ... 10-people/
Border Patrol Agents in South Texas Murdered, Raped & Assaulted At Least 10 People
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/jem ... 385672.php
'They basically saw a black man with a gun': Police kill armed guard while responding to call
Alex Horton and Wesley Lowery, The Washington PostPublished 3:15 pm PST, Monday, November 12, 2018
*
http://michaelwithey.com/
BREAKING NEWS: DOMINGO/VIERNES MURDER CASE REOPENED
FBI SUED FOR DOCUMENTS RELATED TO ITS INFORMANT SENT TO SCENE OF MURDERS. LEARN MORE HERE >>
https://jfkdallasconference.com
Welcome to the 6th Annual JFK Assassination Conference
11/16 — 11/18 Registration THE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE Nov. [15!] +16-17-18
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... n-seattle/
Filmmaker, author sue FBI, seeking records about infamous 1981 Seattle murders
Originally published November 12, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated November 12, 2018 at 10:05 am
Withey, who has written a book on the murders, said he later discovered through his own work and FBI records that Forsythe, now deceased, was an FBI informant, with a specific identification number.
He said one of the lingering questions is how Forsythe happened to be at the scene of the murders and whether it was tied to work for the FBI.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018 ... inal-minds
Criminal profiling doesn’t work. TV shows should maybe stop celebrating it.
Psychologists cannot, it turns out, catch criminals with the power of their minds.
By Dylan Matthews@[email protected] Nov 12, 2018, 1:30pm EST
https://www.nationofchange.org/2018/11/ ... ed-inmate/
Former prison Major convicted of beating handcuffed inmate
“Corrections officers are given great authority and power in our system because public safety depends on them doing their jobs well.”
Andrew Emett / NationofChange / News Report - November 12, 2018
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
EXCLUSIVE: 50 New York state prisoners died due to inadequate medical care over the past five years, death reports reveal
By REUVEN BLAU
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 12, 2018 | 6:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/featured/ny- ... story.html
Florida cop arrested for allegedly attempting to fly under the influence
11/13/2018
Trump's pick to lead Park Service will be grilled on whether protesters should pay for security costs
Marissa J. Lang, Washington Post
Voters Want Criminal Justice Reform. Are Politicians Listening?
Celinda Lake and Daniel Gotoff, The Marshall Project
Next HASC Chair Sees Need for Greater DoD Transparency
Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News
ICE Is Imprisoning a Record 44,000 People
Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
Nearly 34,000 Orange County inmates' calls to attorneys recorded, not the 1,079 originally reported
Todd Harmonson, The Orange County Register
Contact Us
Defending Rights & Dissent 1325 G St. NW Suite 557 Washington, District of Columbia 20005 202.522.7408 [email protected]
The Inheritance Poisoned Fruit of JFK’s Assassination
by Christopher Fulton; Michelle Fulton TrineDay Trine Day
History , True Crime Pub Date 22 Nov 2018
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... story.html
Phillips: May not have heard Notre Dame students took a knee Saturday, but you need to know the religious reason why
By CARRON J. PHILLIPS
NOV 14, 2018 | 7:00 AM
Part of the reason the students were kneeling is due to a recent police brutality incident that took place in the state involving white officers and a man named Mario Guerrero Ledesma.
Last week, Pro Publica reported on a video that showed officers in Elkhart, Indiana beating Ledesma inside the station, leaving him bleeding for six minutes.
But despite the reasoning behind the students’ decision to kneel, far too many times over the past few years we’ve seen students punished for participating in the peaceful protest.
Last year, two black high school football players were kicked off their team for kneeling and raising their fists during the anthem in Texas. The same thing happened to Gyree Durante, who wound up being kicked off his Division III football team at Albright College in Pennsylvania for taking a knee.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html
Fresno officer fatally shoots former police captain who was armed with knife
By JAMES QUEALLY
NOV 12, 2018 | 5:10 PM
http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/PPR75/PPR75dex.HTML
People's Police Report #75 - September 2018
Table of Contents (under construction-October 2018)
25th Aniversary issue!
(See covers of all 75 issues)
(Note: you can also see a pdf version of the newsletter with graphics)
• Sketchy PPB Officer Chases Car Leading to Deadly Crash
• OR Shootings Hit Annual Average of 25 by July • Police and "Union" vs. Houseless People
• Review Committee Shunned, Seeks Change
• Oversight Report Drops Force Data
• Portland Police Collaborate with ICE, No Matter What the Feds Claim
• Prominence of ICE Puts Terror Task Force in the News
• Compliance Officer Generously Says DOJ Agreement Almost Done
• Training Council Streamlines Processes, Comments on Race & Force
• Police Crack Down on Antifascist Rallies
• Chief Gets Press, Meets Copwatch Again, Starts Strategic Plan
• Sheriff Improves Some Mental Health Issues; Other Actions Raise Concerns
• Quick Flashes PPR 75
• PPR's 25th Anniversary
• PPB Cop Uses 'N' Word / Profiling Updates
• Supremes Uphold Cell Phone Privacy
• Rapping Back #75 -- Analysis of Police "Union" Web Postings
People's Police Report Index Page
Return to Copwatch home page
Back to top
http://ticklethewire.com/2018/11/13/bor ... 10-people/
Border Patrol Agents in South Texas Murdered, Raped & Assaulted At Least 10 People
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/jem ... 385672.php
'They basically saw a black man with a gun': Police kill armed guard while responding to call
Alex Horton and Wesley Lowery, The Washington PostPublished 3:15 pm PST, Monday, November 12, 2018
*
http://michaelwithey.com/
BREAKING NEWS: DOMINGO/VIERNES MURDER CASE REOPENED
FBI SUED FOR DOCUMENTS RELATED TO ITS INFORMANT SENT TO SCENE OF MURDERS. LEARN MORE HERE >>
https://jfkdallasconference.com
Welcome to the 6th Annual JFK Assassination Conference
11/16 — 11/18 Registration THE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE Nov. [15!] +16-17-18
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... n-seattle/
Filmmaker, author sue FBI, seeking records about infamous 1981 Seattle murders
Originally published November 12, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated November 12, 2018 at 10:05 am
Withey, who has written a book on the murders, said he later discovered through his own work and FBI records that Forsythe, now deceased, was an FBI informant, with a specific identification number.
He said one of the lingering questions is how Forsythe happened to be at the scene of the murders and whether it was tied to work for the FBI.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018 ... inal-minds
Criminal profiling doesn’t work. TV shows should maybe stop celebrating it.
Psychologists cannot, it turns out, catch criminals with the power of their minds.
By Dylan Matthews@[email protected] Nov 12, 2018, 1:30pm EST
https://www.nationofchange.org/2018/11/ ... ed-inmate/
Former prison Major convicted of beating handcuffed inmate
“Corrections officers are given great authority and power in our system because public safety depends on them doing their jobs well.”
Andrew Emett / NationofChange / News Report - November 12, 2018
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
EXCLUSIVE: 50 New York state prisoners died due to inadequate medical care over the past five years, death reports reveal
By REUVEN BLAU
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 12, 2018 | 6:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/featured/ny- ... story.html
Florida cop arrested for allegedly attempting to fly under the influence
11/13/2018
Trump's pick to lead Park Service will be grilled on whether protesters should pay for security costs
Marissa J. Lang, Washington Post
Voters Want Criminal Justice Reform. Are Politicians Listening?
Celinda Lake and Daniel Gotoff, The Marshall Project
Next HASC Chair Sees Need for Greater DoD Transparency
Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News
ICE Is Imprisoning a Record 44,000 People
Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
Nearly 34,000 Orange County inmates' calls to attorneys recorded, not the 1,079 originally reported
Todd Harmonson, The Orange County Register
Contact Us
Defending Rights & Dissent 1325 G St. NW Suite 557 Washington, District of Columbia 20005 202.522.7408 [email protected]
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
https://capa-us.org/events/
Upcoming and Recent Political Assassination Research Events
Note: A listing below does not mean that CAPA helped organize an event or endorses any views presented
2018
November 15, 2018
CAPA EVENT
“THE LAST WITNESSES – REVEALING THE TRUTH”
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
https://nypost.com/2018/11/18/new-book- ... ked-death/
New book says Manhattan DA dumped probe of columnist’s JFK-linked death
By Susan Edelman
November 18, 2018 | 7:18pm
https://www.opednews.com/articles/How-t ... 9-717.html
How the Warren Commission Covered Up JFK's Murder
By Bill Simpich Permalink
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-in ... type=eBook
The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination
by Christopher Fulton, Michelle Fulton, Dick Russell
http://digital.vpr.net/post/richmond-wo ... y#stream/0
Richmond Woman Maintains Unique Film Archive Focused On Black Panther Party
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7 ... ction=true
Elliott's Reviews > The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... -sues-bpd/
November 16, 2018
Massachusetts groups demands information on Boston Police Department’s “gang” database
Coalition hopes to bring transparency into the police department’s tracking methods
Written by Jessie Gomez
Edited by JPat Brown
Fourteen organizations have
https://www.propublica.org/datastore/da ... -gang-data
Chicago Police Department Data on Gang Members
Source
Chicago Police Department
Date Released
March 2018
Size
7.27 MB
Rows
128,000
Related Content
Chicago’s gang database is full of errors -- and records we have prove it
This dataset contains descriptive information on individuals that the Chicago Police Department has classified as gang memb
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agwe ... g-2017.pdf
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Assemblymember Shirley Weber’s Assembly Bill 90 (Chapter 695, Statutes of 2017), the Fair and Accurate Gang Database Act of 2017, requires the California Department of Justice (DOJ) to assume the management of the CalGang database, effective January 1, 2018. CalGang, a shared gang intelligence database, is designed to enhance officer safety and improve the efficiency of criminal investigations by providing an accurate, timely, and electronically-generated base of statewide gang-related intelligence information.
Over the years, various legislative bills designed to refine the oversight responsibilities and notification requirements for sha
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... e-records/
November 15, 2018
Law enforcement agencies among Massachusetts Public Records Law’s biggest offenders
How amenable are Bay State police departments to releasing the records? Your results may vary.
Written by Jessie Gomez
Edited by JPat Brown
The recently revamped Massachusetts public records law is still hailed as one of the worst in the country. Agencies have ten days to respond to public records request, but some agencies, especially law enforcement agencies, have trouble abiding by the law.
Getting public records is
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/ ... 397412.php
Federal agent plea deal in child porn case is rejected
Guillermo Contreras Nov. 15, 2018 Updated: Nov. 16, 2018 7:36 a.m.
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/s ... ied/300899
When FBI Killed Naipaul A Decade Before He Died
David Headley was one of the weakest links, but Indian authorities failed to sniff him out. That’s an important lesson in how to avoid another 26/11.
*
https://www.the-dispatch.com/news/20181 ... e-no-merit
State: Corbett, FBI agent Martens self-defense claims have no merit
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/thi ... AJeRqR8KK/
Third autopsy claims foul play in Valdosta gym mat death case involving
sons of FBI agent
http://www.barrowjournal.com/archives/1 ... iakou.html
Terrell: A pardon for John Kiriakou?
Posted by Administrator in Column Archives
Friday, November 16 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Off-duty NYPD cop busted for DWI, hit and run: police
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
| NEW YOERK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 16, 2018 | 10:00 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ding-page/
Data Driven: Explore how cops are collecting and sharing our travel patterns using automated license plate readers
by Beryl Lipton, Dave Maass
November 15, 2018
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. Today we are releasing records obtained from 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5 -billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017.
Read More
Upcoming and Recent Political Assassination Research Events
Note: A listing below does not mean that CAPA helped organize an event or endorses any views presented
2018
November 15, 2018
CAPA EVENT
“THE LAST WITNESSES – REVEALING THE TRUTH”
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
https://nypost.com/2018/11/18/new-book- ... ked-death/
New book says Manhattan DA dumped probe of columnist’s JFK-linked death
By Susan Edelman
November 18, 2018 | 7:18pm
https://www.opednews.com/articles/How-t ... 9-717.html
How the Warren Commission Covered Up JFK's Murder
By Bill Simpich Permalink
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-in ... type=eBook
The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination
by Christopher Fulton, Michelle Fulton, Dick Russell
http://digital.vpr.net/post/richmond-wo ... y#stream/0
Richmond Woman Maintains Unique Film Archive Focused On Black Panther Party
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7 ... ction=true
Elliott's Reviews > The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... -sues-bpd/
November 16, 2018
Massachusetts groups demands information on Boston Police Department’s “gang” database
Coalition hopes to bring transparency into the police department’s tracking methods
Written by Jessie Gomez
Edited by JPat Brown
Fourteen organizations have
https://www.propublica.org/datastore/da ... -gang-data
Chicago Police Department Data on Gang Members
Source
Chicago Police Department
Date Released
March 2018
Size
7.27 MB
Rows
128,000
Related Content
Chicago’s gang database is full of errors -- and records we have prove it
This dataset contains descriptive information on individuals that the Chicago Police Department has classified as gang memb
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agwe ... g-2017.pdf
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Assemblymember Shirley Weber’s Assembly Bill 90 (Chapter 695, Statutes of 2017), the Fair and Accurate Gang Database Act of 2017, requires the California Department of Justice (DOJ) to assume the management of the CalGang database, effective January 1, 2018. CalGang, a shared gang intelligence database, is designed to enhance officer safety and improve the efficiency of criminal investigations by providing an accurate, timely, and electronically-generated base of statewide gang-related intelligence information.
Over the years, various legislative bills designed to refine the oversight responsibilities and notification requirements for sha
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... e-records/
November 15, 2018
Law enforcement agencies among Massachusetts Public Records Law’s biggest offenders
How amenable are Bay State police departments to releasing the records? Your results may vary.
Written by Jessie Gomez
Edited by JPat Brown
The recently revamped Massachusetts public records law is still hailed as one of the worst in the country. Agencies have ten days to respond to public records request, but some agencies, especially law enforcement agencies, have trouble abiding by the law.
Getting public records is
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/ ... 397412.php
Federal agent plea deal in child porn case is rejected
Guillermo Contreras Nov. 15, 2018 Updated: Nov. 16, 2018 7:36 a.m.
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/s ... ied/300899
When FBI Killed Naipaul A Decade Before He Died
David Headley was one of the weakest links, but Indian authorities failed to sniff him out. That’s an important lesson in how to avoid another 26/11.
*
https://www.the-dispatch.com/news/20181 ... e-no-merit
State: Corbett, FBI agent Martens self-defense claims have no merit
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/thi ... AJeRqR8KK/
Third autopsy claims foul play in Valdosta gym mat death case involving
sons of FBI agent
http://www.barrowjournal.com/archives/1 ... iakou.html
Terrell: A pardon for John Kiriakou?
Posted by Administrator in Column Archives
Friday, November 16 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Off-duty NYPD cop busted for DWI, hit and run: police
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
| NEW YOERK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 16, 2018 | 10:00 PM
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ding-page/
Data Driven: Explore how cops are collecting and sharing our travel patterns using automated license plate readers
by Beryl Lipton, Dave Maass
November 15, 2018
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. Today we are releasing records obtained from 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5 -billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017.
Read More
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/10/ ... hen-hired/
Jail knew officer facing drug charges had a history when hired
The Cumberland County case brings to light nebulous hiring standards among Maine jails in vetting corrections applicants.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... 085a57332c
FBI says the Proud Boys are not an extremist group after all
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson calls for probe into video showing cops yanking baby from woman on the floor
By ESHA RAY and REUVEN BLAU
DEC 09, 2018 | 3:30 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Bloody confrontation between three Westchester correction officers leaves one dead, two wounded
By ELIZABETH KEOGH and THOMAS TRACY
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 08, 2018 | 2:15 PM
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... rt-hearing
Charges against Boston officer disappear after private court hearing
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva tells hundreds of top staff to hand in résumés and temporarily remove rank insignia
By MAYA LAU
DEC 07, 2018 | 9:10 PM
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Former Fullerton police chief and a captain are charged with battery after attacking paramedics during concert
By ANDREA CASTILLO
DEC 07, 2018 | 9:25 PM
Checkpoint
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ab2d08e75c
Air Force failed 6 times to keep guns from Texas church shooter before he killed 26, report finds
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD officer fired 27 times in wild Bronx shootout, striking suspect and two innocent bystanders: sources
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA , WES PARNELL and JOHN
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ampon-ban/
Deny, delay, release: Virginia DOC finally issues tampon ban memo
by Tom Nash
December 05, 2018
The Virginia Department of Corrections came under national scrutiny in September when visitors learned they would not be allowed to wear tampons or menstrual cups, citing them as an apparent contraband risk. A FOIA request for a more thorough explanation of the tampon ban - through policy documents and a log of contraband incidents alluded to in the Times - revealed a two-month wait of rejection, denial and, finally, the single-page document behind the ban.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... gan-troll/
While escaping from prison, Timothy Leary took time to troll Ronald Reagan
by JPat Brown
December 04, 2018
While Timothy Leary’s 1970 escape from a minimum security prison in California with the aid of The Weathermen is the stuff of countercultural legend, recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation files reveal a lesser-known detail of the incident: Leary’s ruthless trolling of then Governor Ronald Reagan.
Read More
https://www.decaturdaily.com/news/morga ... a1542.html
Morgan sheriff’s subpoena of FBI rejected; lawyer says IRS probing food money
* By Eric Fleischauer Metro Editor Dec 6, 2018 Updated 23 hrs ago
https://www.delmarvapublicradio.net/pos ... y-40-years
Bad FBI Rape Evidence Invalid, Elmer Daniels Released After Nearly 40 Years
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2 ... tleblower/
Whistleblower Advocates, Attorneys Condemn FBI Raid On Clinton Foundation Whistleblower
Posted by: Richard Pollock in In The News December 6, 2018 0
https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/na ... 2f6ca.html
Baltimore police officer admitted misconduct, expanding scope of corruption probe
* By Justin Fenton The Baltimore Sun (TNS) Dec 6, 2018 Updated 9 hrs ago
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... foundation
Feds received whistleblower evidence in 2017 alleging Clinton Foundation wrongdoing
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/06/18 04:30 PM EST
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-email ... 32390.html
FBI Email Thread Likely to Raise Tough Questions for Comey
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
December 6, 2018 Updated: December 6, 2018
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/ ... -621905034
DEA agent facing bribery, conspiracy charges has ties to Jacksonville
He was hired to keep drugs out of Florida, now a DEA agent is accused of working with drug dealers to bring them in.
https://ktxs.com/news/abilene/another-a ... t-the-city
Another Abilene police officer files a lawsuit against the city
by John Ru
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ate-222726
The Congressman Who Created His Own Deep State. Really.
When he feared communists were infiltrating America, Larry McDonald
extreme measures — building his own intelligence-gathering arm.
By ZACH DORFMAN
December 02, 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny-new ... story.html
Border agent claimed he killed four sex workers in Texas to 'clean up' streets, prosecutor says
By NANCY DILLON
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 05, 2018 | 7:45 PM
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Controversial L.A. police and fire retirement plan more expensive than promised to voters, report says
By JACK DOLAN
DEC 05, 2018 | 4:00 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... s-stabbing
Anti-fascists were stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally. Then police tried to charge them
Revealed: California has not prosecuted anyone for the stabbings, but sought hundreds of charges against counter-protesters
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Judge presses city lawyer over NYPD's response to protesters seeking records on alleged surveillance tactics
By SHAYNA JACOBS
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
by John RupoloThursday, December 6th 2018
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime ... 1812060126
Uniontown man sues state police; claims troopers lied during malicious prosecution
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/67376332 ... in-4-years
Baltimore's New Police Commissioner Would Be City's 5th In 4 Years
December 6, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/us/alaba ... index.html
Dad of man killed by police in Alabama mall gets apology but few answers
By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
Updated 1:21 PM ET, Thu December 6, 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD sergeant faces DWI charges after crashing into cyclist in Manhattan: cops
By JOHN ANNESE
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 06, 2018 | 7:50 PM
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... liam-gross
The ACLU vs. Boston police: What to know about the ‘paper warriors’ Facebook flareup
"When we do these things, there's repercussions."
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/05/ ... -election/
Saudi-backed lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s D.C. hotel just after election
The bookings were for an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington if they went to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed.
BY DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD AND JONATHAN O'CONNELLTHE WASHINGTON POST
Jail knew officer facing drug charges had a history when hired
The Cumberland County case brings to light nebulous hiring standards among Maine jails in vetting corrections applicants.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... 085a57332c
FBI says the Proud Boys are not an extremist group after all
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson calls for probe into video showing cops yanking baby from woman on the floor
By ESHA RAY and REUVEN BLAU
DEC 09, 2018 | 3:30 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Bloody confrontation between three Westchester correction officers leaves one dead, two wounded
By ELIZABETH KEOGH and THOMAS TRACY
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 08, 2018 | 2:15 PM
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... rt-hearing
Charges against Boston officer disappear after private court hearing
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva tells hundreds of top staff to hand in résumés and temporarily remove rank insignia
By MAYA LAU
DEC 07, 2018 | 9:10 PM
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Former Fullerton police chief and a captain are charged with battery after attacking paramedics during concert
By ANDREA CASTILLO
DEC 07, 2018 | 9:25 PM
Checkpoint
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ab2d08e75c
Air Force failed 6 times to keep guns from Texas church shooter before he killed 26, report finds
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD officer fired 27 times in wild Bronx shootout, striking suspect and two innocent bystanders: sources
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA , WES PARNELL and JOHN
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ampon-ban/
Deny, delay, release: Virginia DOC finally issues tampon ban memo
by Tom Nash
December 05, 2018
The Virginia Department of Corrections came under national scrutiny in September when visitors learned they would not be allowed to wear tampons or menstrual cups, citing them as an apparent contraband risk. A FOIA request for a more thorough explanation of the tampon ban - through policy documents and a log of contraband incidents alluded to in the Times - revealed a two-month wait of rejection, denial and, finally, the single-page document behind the ban.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... gan-troll/
While escaping from prison, Timothy Leary took time to troll Ronald Reagan
by JPat Brown
December 04, 2018
While Timothy Leary’s 1970 escape from a minimum security prison in California with the aid of The Weathermen is the stuff of countercultural legend, recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation files reveal a lesser-known detail of the incident: Leary’s ruthless trolling of then Governor Ronald Reagan.
Read More
https://www.decaturdaily.com/news/morga ... a1542.html
Morgan sheriff’s subpoena of FBI rejected; lawyer says IRS probing food money
* By Eric Fleischauer Metro Editor Dec 6, 2018 Updated 23 hrs ago
https://www.delmarvapublicradio.net/pos ... y-40-years
Bad FBI Rape Evidence Invalid, Elmer Daniels Released After Nearly 40 Years
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2 ... tleblower/
Whistleblower Advocates, Attorneys Condemn FBI Raid On Clinton Foundation Whistleblower
Posted by: Richard Pollock in In The News December 6, 2018 0
https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/na ... 2f6ca.html
Baltimore police officer admitted misconduct, expanding scope of corruption probe
* By Justin Fenton The Baltimore Sun (TNS) Dec 6, 2018 Updated 9 hrs ago
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... foundation
Feds received whistleblower evidence in 2017 alleging Clinton Foundation wrongdoing
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/06/18 04:30 PM EST
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-email ... 32390.html
FBI Email Thread Likely to Raise Tough Questions for Comey
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
December 6, 2018 Updated: December 6, 2018
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/ ... -621905034
DEA agent facing bribery, conspiracy charges has ties to Jacksonville
He was hired to keep drugs out of Florida, now a DEA agent is accused of working with drug dealers to bring them in.
https://ktxs.com/news/abilene/another-a ... t-the-city
Another Abilene police officer files a lawsuit against the city
by John Ru
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ate-222726
The Congressman Who Created His Own Deep State. Really.
When he feared communists were infiltrating America, Larry McDonald
extreme measures — building his own intelligence-gathering arm.
By ZACH DORFMAN
December 02, 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny-new ... story.html
Border agent claimed he killed four sex workers in Texas to 'clean up' streets, prosecutor says
By NANCY DILLON
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 05, 2018 | 7:45 PM
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Controversial L.A. police and fire retirement plan more expensive than promised to voters, report says
By JACK DOLAN
DEC 05, 2018 | 4:00 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... s-stabbing
Anti-fascists were stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally. Then police tried to charge them
Revealed: California has not prosecuted anyone for the stabbings, but sought hundreds of charges against counter-protesters
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Judge presses city lawyer over NYPD's response to protesters seeking records on alleged surveillance tactics
By SHAYNA JACOBS
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
by John RupoloThursday, December 6th 2018
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime ... 1812060126
Uniontown man sues state police; claims troopers lied during malicious prosecution
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/67376332 ... in-4-years
Baltimore's New Police Commissioner Would Be City's 5th In 4 Years
December 6, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/us/alaba ... index.html
Dad of man killed by police in Alabama mall gets apology but few answers
By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
Updated 1:21 PM ET, Thu December 6, 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD sergeant faces DWI charges after crashing into cyclist in Manhattan: cops
By JOHN ANNESE
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 06, 2018 | 7:50 PM
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/ ... liam-gross
The ACLU vs. Boston police: What to know about the ‘paper warriors’ Facebook flareup
"When we do these things, there's repercussions."
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/05/ ... -election/
Saudi-backed lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s D.C. hotel just after election
The bookings were for an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington if they went to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed.
BY DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD AND JONATHAN O'CONNELLTHE WASHINGTON POST
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: FBI Director Comey elected Trump,FBI Director Mueller will keep Trump President
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ ... story.html
Navy SEAL to plead not guilty to murdering ISIS teen, other war crimes
By ELLA TORRES
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JAN 04, 2019 | 10:40 AM
http://ticklethewire.com/2019/01/04/sin ... apo-trial/
Sinaloa Cartel Paid $1M a Month to Bribe Mexican Officials, Ex-Trafficker Testifies in El Chapo Trial
‘El Chapo’ Guzman
By Steve Neavling Ticklethewire.com
How much did it cost
https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKa ... cIQmgoAkOG
FBI Formed New Media-Leaks Unit, Internal Documents Show
* By: Ken KlippensteinJan 2, 2019comments
The FBI last year established a new unit to counter “media leak threats,” according to internal documents obtained by TYT under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
http://www.madcowprod.com/2018/12/31/th ... po-guzman/
ARCOS / NEWS
DECEMBER 31, 2018
THE SECRET TRIAL OF ‘EL CHAPO’ GUZMAN
The government’s star witness in the trial of El Chapo Guzman was trying to buy information from a man who was instrumental in the purchase of the DC-9 — dubbed “Cocaine One” for its resemblance...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... age-voice/
The FBI investigated The Village Voice and RCFP for espionage in 1976
by Emma Best
January 02, 2019
Documents obtained by MuckRock reveal both what triggered the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s espionage investigation of The Village Voice, and what caused it to expand to include the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... t-feature/
The community’s needs above all: Lessons from the Providence External Review Authority’s struggle for police accountability
by Lucas Smolcic Larson
January 03, 2019
Driven by movements for police accountability, civilian oversight agencies have become commonplace across the county. But often politically weak and under-resourced, they fail to live up to the aspirations of the activists that fight for them. In Providence, Rhode Island, a civilian oversight agency works to reestablish its legitimacy.
Read More
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD sergeant busted for dealing heroin, feds say
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA , JOHN ANNESE and STEPHEN REX BROWN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|
JAN 03, 2019 | 5:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Black off-duty cop beaten by brothers in blue
awarded $5 million settlement from NYC
Navy SEAL to plead not guilty to murdering ISIS teen, other war crimes
By ELLA TORRES
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JAN 04, 2019 | 10:40 AM
http://ticklethewire.com/2019/01/04/sin ... apo-trial/
Sinaloa Cartel Paid $1M a Month to Bribe Mexican Officials, Ex-Trafficker Testifies in El Chapo Trial
‘El Chapo’ Guzman
By Steve Neavling Ticklethewire.com
How much did it cost
https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKa ... cIQmgoAkOG
FBI Formed New Media-Leaks Unit, Internal Documents Show
* By: Ken KlippensteinJan 2, 2019comments
The FBI last year established a new unit to counter “media leak threats,” according to internal documents obtained by TYT under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
http://www.madcowprod.com/2018/12/31/th ... po-guzman/
ARCOS / NEWS
DECEMBER 31, 2018
THE SECRET TRIAL OF ‘EL CHAPO’ GUZMAN
The government’s star witness in the trial of El Chapo Guzman was trying to buy information from a man who was instrumental in the purchase of the DC-9 — dubbed “Cocaine One” for its resemblance...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... age-voice/
The FBI investigated The Village Voice and RCFP for espionage in 1976
by Emma Best
January 02, 2019
Documents obtained by MuckRock reveal both what triggered the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s espionage investigation of The Village Voice, and what caused it to expand to include the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Read More
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... t-feature/
The community’s needs above all: Lessons from the Providence External Review Authority’s struggle for police accountability
by Lucas Smolcic Larson
January 03, 2019
Driven by movements for police accountability, civilian oversight agencies have become commonplace across the county. But often politically weak and under-resourced, they fail to live up to the aspirations of the activists that fight for them. In Providence, Rhode Island, a civilian oversight agency works to reestablish its legitimacy.
Read More
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD sergeant busted for dealing heroin, feds say
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA , JOHN ANNESE and STEPHEN REX BROWN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|
JAN 03, 2019 | 5:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Black off-duty cop beaten by brothers in blue
awarded $5 million settlement from NYC
