dhs bak homeland

SEE NOEM 2 HOMAN MASS DEPORT

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INTEL BRANCH FUCKERY OKLA FAIL NJ?

promoted to primary: migrant mom in solitary via geo gp, fusion ctr spy on occupy

see AGENCY DISMANTLE

mayor bass

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Charlie Kirk: “These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this.”}:

05/12/25

May 12, 2025, edition ofThe Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is a very easy one for my friend, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. Very easy. They went after American patriots for peacefully walking into the United States Capitol building, nonviolently, while being invited, while doors were opened, and they stayed within the lanes, the little rope lines. These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this, without a doubt. No one is above the law, is what we've always been saying. No one is above the law.

...

KIRK: And that's exactly what should happen. You see, the Democrats have a big problem with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. But if you assault ICE, you get consequences. If you storm an ICE facility, there will be consequences. Rob Menendez complained that they had put their hands on a member of Congress. Oh, I must have missed the memo that he was an untouchable. He thinks they should be invulnerable, that he is royalty. And by the way, his dad is literally a traitor. Bob Menendez sold our country out to Egypt for gold bars while on the Senate foreign intelligence committee, selling out American secrets for cash. And did — he also had multiple instances of near misses with the law. This guy was a disgusting person.

...

KIRK: Throw the book at them. Kash and Pam, you got all the details you need — charge these members of Congress. The facts are there. They stormed the facility. They assaulted our ICE officers. They think they are above the law. They tried to put President Trump in jail for 700 years for something he did not do. They are begging you to indict them and do it. Don't make a big show of it. Indite them. Charge them. The only way that we end the lawfare chapter in this country is reciprocity. They came after us, they assaulted ICE officers, and we will go after them.

===

Corey Lewandowski, the “chaotic presence” who was President Donald Trump’s campaign manager during the 2016 race, hoped to earn a spot at the Department of Homeland Security. But Trump himself vetoed the idea, the Atlantic reported Friday.

Lewandowski hoped to become chief of staff to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, according to two sources. He has still been able to work closely with her as a “supervisor of sorts.”

“Trump remains personally close to Lewandowski, whom he has kept as a friend and ally throughout a range of scandals. But the president is also aware that many of his trusted aides and confidants deeply dislike the 51-year-old,” write the Atlantic’s Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer.

Trump was apparently “concerned by the optics,” they write, of Lewandowski working as chief of staff for someone with whom he had an affair, although Lewandowski and Noem have denied these rumors.

Now, Lewandowski has been working as an adviser to Noem. “The situation has alarmed some in Trump’s circle, who view Lewandowski as a chaotic presence, even by MAGA standards. Lewandowski has a record of feuding with others who are close to the president and creating controversy,” Parker and Scherer write.

'Like Elon Musk and so many other patriots, Mr. Lewandowski volunteers his time as a special government employee (SGE) to help President Trump Make America Great Again,' a DHS spokesperson told Politico.

Lewandowski was charged with misdemeanor battery after accusations related to unwanted sexual advances. In 2022, he paid a $1,000 fine and agreed to eight hours of impulse control counseling and 50 hours of community service.

At the time, Trump’s spokesperson said he “will no longer be associated with Trump world,” while a spokesperson for Noem — who was then governor of South Dakota — said he “will not be advising the governor in regard to the campaign or official office.”

“He never actually left the team,” a source who worked at her office at the time told the Atlantic. “As well as continuing to advise her, he also continued to travel with her.”

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SEN CONFIRM RECESS?

AN 11 24

Gov. Kristi Noem's assent from admitted dog killer to national watchdog is spurring howls of rage and disbelief on social media.}:

President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Noem, the South Dakota Republican who boasted of shooting a pet dog to death, as secretary of Homeland Security on Tuesday stunned political spectators.

"Trump wants the dog-shooter to be his Secretary of Homeland Security," author Stephen King told his followers. "We're sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

News broke in April that Noem's memoir "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward" included an anecdote about shooting a 14-month-old dog named Cricket in a gravel pit because she "hated that dog."

ALSO READ:What Trump's win really means for America

"The puppy-killer will be in charge of homeland security," SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile wrote on X, "making critical decisions over people's lives."

Noem will head a sprawling agency that oversees U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Secret Service, two sources told CNN Tuesday.

"She was willing to shoot her own dog," responded USA Today columnist Michael J. Stern on X. "Imagine what she'll do to immigrants crossing the border."

The non-partisan advocacy group Veterans for Responsible Leadership argued Noem's decision to share the anecdote suggested she catered her message toward Trump loyalists alone.

"Noem never cared that we were disgusted with her dog murder," the group wrote. "We weren’t the audience."

Political analyst Russell Drew was one of many commentators to suggest Trump granted Noem the powerful position in gratitude for her support.

"With Kristi Noem head of Homeland Security, not only will people not be safe, but neither will their dogs!" wrote Drew. "Talk about being completely unqualified for a job."

"Noem, it will be recalled, scuttled her bid to become Trump’s vice presidential nominee when she published an account of how she gunned down the family pet," added John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. "But she remained absolutely loyal to Trump and has now been tapped to keep America 'safe.'”

CNN analyst Jeff Storobinsky resorted to dark humor, writing, "All dogs, please, this is not a drill, please seek shelter immediately."

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis joined in by sharing a cartoon that depicts Noem and Trump, both toting smoking guns, next to the corpses of a dog and Lady Justice.

It is entitled "MAGA Meet-Cute."'

---

no lnx many

Trump’s Pro-Abstinence HHS Appointee Fits an Unnerving ‘Pattern’

Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy·Contributing Writer

June 7, 2017

On Tuesday, the Trump administration quietly appointed Valerie J. Huber as chief of staff for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Huber most recently served as president and CEO of Ascend, an organization focused on promoting abstinence-only education in schools. She was previously the abstinence-education coordinator for the state of Ohio, where she oversaw abstinence programs for more than 100,000 students per year.

Valerie J. Huber

In a memo to HHS staffers by Acting Health Secretary Doug Wright, he called Ascend “a Washington DC-based professional association that champions youth to make healthy life and relationship decisions.”

But abstinence-only education — or what many on the far right call “sexual risk avoidance” — is seen by many health advocates as ineffective, and frequently leave out certain demographics of young people that are especially vulnerable, including LGBTQ teens and pregnant and parenting teens.

Why Experts Are Concerned

Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, the director of public policy for Advocates for Youth, says there is a pattern not only of Trump appointees being named to offices whose very mission they seem to oppose, but also one emerging among HHS appointees specifically who are united in their opposition to contraception.

“There is definitely in HHS and the Trump administration a focus on rolling back birth control coverage and access to contraception in general,” Thu-Thao Rhodes says. “And yet another pattern of this administration is that they don’t see contraception as a preventative service and integral to women’s health. There’s a pattern here of people being appointed to key positions by the administration who think this way.”

Echoes Leslie Kantor, PhD, MPH, and the Vice President of Education at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “At Planned Parenthood, we are very concerned about an increasing number of anti-women’s health, anti-sex education, anti-science appointments in the Trump administration.”

Last month, Teresa Manning was tapped as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS, the role that oversees the administration of Title X, the national family planning program. In a 2003 interview, Manning stated on the record that she believes that contraception doesn’t work. Manning has also criticized the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for recommending that prescribers offer advance prescriptions of the morning-after pill and has called emergency contraception “medically irresponsible” and “anti-family.”

Charmaine Yoest, Trump’s appointee to serve as assistant secretary of public affairs for HHS, is opposed to intrauterine devices (IUDs) as a form of birth control and has falsely said that they have “life-ending properties.” As noted in a memo circulated to Senate Democrats from the staff of the minority members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this week, “IUDs do not work after implantation and therefore cannot end pregnancies. Additionally, recent data from the Guttmacher Institute found that unplanned pregnancies are at a 30-year low, largely a result of an increase in the use of long-acting reversible contraceptives like IUDs. The [Affordable Care Act] has been critical in increasing access to IUDs by removing cost barriers for women seeking contraceptive services.”

HHS Secretary Tom Pricehas also spoken on the record about his opposition to the contraception mandate of the ACA, telling a reporter in 2012 that “there’s not one woman” who does not have access to birth control — and thus does not need it guaranteed as part of her insurance coverage at no cost. Price is also vehemently outspoken on his opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood and his support of seeing the organization dropped as not just a Medicaid provider, but also a Title X provider. Planned Parenthood serves more than 40 percent of Title X patients, including teens, despite making up just 13 percent of all Title X health centers.

And Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s appointee to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has repeatedly insisted in his own words that the contraception mandate of the ACA harms women’s health.

“These appointments have an enormous impact on the lives and future success of young people in our nation,” Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, tells Yahoo Beauty in a statement. “We hope these officials will exercise their responsibilities in a way that builds on past successes in reducing teen and unplanned pregnancy, rather than going backwards.”

Bipartisan Support for Comprehensive Sex Ed

According to the Guttmacher Institute, research “suggests that strategies that promote abstinence-only outside of marriage while withholding information about contraceptives do not stop or even delay sex. Moreover, abstinence-only programs can actually place young people at increased risk of pregnancy and STIs.”

“The point of sex education is that you want to get to young people before they become sexually active. You don’t want them to get critical information after the fact,” Kantor says. “Good sex ed lays the groundwork throughout childhood and the teen years so that when you’re in the situation when you’re in a relationship and navigating and negotiating having sex for the first time, you are well prepared and have all the information you need to protect yourself.”

Adds Kantor, “There was a very, very important change in the country in2010 when for the first time, rather than pouring money into abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, money started to be appropriated for evidence-based approaches — approaches found to help young people change their behavior either by delaying sex or by using condoms and contraception when having sex. We don’t want to see things roll backwards to the bad old days of abstinence-only-until-marriage education.”

January 2017 polling by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 85 percent of American adults — including 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans — favor maintaining federal funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and the Personal Responsibility Education Program, both of which utilize evidence-based, comprehensive sex education curricula.

Furthermore, the National Campaign’s polling found that 79 percent of Americans — including 81 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans — believe that teens should receive more information about abstinence and birth control and sexually transmitted infection protection.

Operation Whistle Pig[

In 2017, Jeffrey Rambo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent working for the National Targeting Center, investigated Watkins, other journalistsincluding Martha Mendoza, and NGOs while on an assignment to combat forced labor in the Congo. The operation was called "Whistle Pig" and in addition to its own database trawling^[46] it got the CBP’s Counter Network Division to provide information about Watkins' mother and brother and links to their public profiles, as well as details of Watkin's domestic and international travel. Rambo met Watkins under the fictitious name Jack Bentley, but Watkins obtained his real name from a credit card receipt. Watkins perceived Rambo's approach as a threat.^[47]

In 2021, Watkins said: “I’m deeply troubled at the lengths CBP and DHS personnel apparently went to try and identify journalistic sources and dig into my personal life.”^[48] A few days later, CBP launched an investigation.^[49]

wiki 7 22

The National Targeting Center (NTC) is a division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It is based in Sterling, Virginia.^[1] The NTC observes air traffic and trade activities,^[2] gathers and vets intelligence, and is empowered to send e-mails requesting that U.S. citizens be detained and questioned.^[3]

The National Targeting Center includes several divisions, including: NTC-Cargo, NTC-Passenger, Counter-Network, and National Targeting Center – Investigations (NTC-I). The latter was established in 2013.^[4]

The NTC was initially established in 2001; its original name was Office of Border Security.^[5]

In 2017, the NTC approached journalists "as part of a broader effort to get reporters to write about forced labor around the world as a national security issue." The journalists included Ali Watkins and Martha Mendoza.^[6]

In 2021, CBP launched an investigation of the NTC's targeting of journalists, members of Congress, and others.^[7]

long series

https://theintercept.com/**2021/07**/07/intercepted-line-3-pipeline-minnesota/

WATER PROTECTORS ARE traveling in growing numbers to stand with the Anishinaabe-led movement to stop the construction of Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline. This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Alleen Brown takes us to northern Minnesota, a flashpoint in the fight to halt the expansion of the fossil fuel industry as the climate crisis deepens. Direct actions and other protests against Line 3 are just heating up and more than 500 people have already been arrested or issued citations. Opponents of the Line 3 pipeline are urging the Biden administration to intervene to stop construction, but his administration recently moved to defend the pipeline. Water protectors are being greeted by an intensifying police response and what scholars are calling a :{c:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{orporate counterinsurgency:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}: campaign led by the pipeline company, Enbridge.

Ali Gharib: I’m Ali Gharib and I’m a senior editor with The Intercept.

Big Wind:Anybody leaving this property, they get pulled over.

Tara Houska:They’re watching our every move.

Sarah LittleRedFeather:They’ve already invaded our space, then when you come to our private home, you know, taking a bath, taking a shower.

Ali Gharib: Today we’re bringing you a story where the stakes could not be higher. It’s about the climate crisis, about the people fighting against global disaster — and how fossil fuel companies are fighting back.

This is a story about corporate counterinsurgency, but it’s about so much more. This fight is unfolding in northern Minnesota right now. An Indigenous-led movement, whose members call themselves water protectors, are trying to preserve not only their people’s rights but also our whole planet. The water protectors are fighting against Enbridge, a Canadian oil company, which is seeking to lay a pipeline called Line 3 through Minnesota.

The path cuts through lands where a handful of local tribes have treaty rights,and it cuts across natural resources like rivers and waterways — raising fears about spills and environmental damage.

This spring, we sent our reporter Alleen Brown to Minnesota to investigate the struggle over the pipeline. She’s got years of experience doing investigative work about pipeline fights, about the climate crisis, and about corporate efforts to fight back against protest movements.

When Alleen got to Minnesota things were just heating up — literally: with the waterways and ground thawing, Enbrige would soon be able to start construction on the pipeline. Water protectors were beginning to gather in earnest too.

Things recently began to come to a head. Water protectors hoped the Biden administration would stop Line 3 construction, but instead the administration went to court and argued against the Red Lake Nation to defend the pipeline’s federal permit.

Now water protectors are increasingly turning to protests and direct action — hoping to build their own groundswell to get the authorities and the oil company to reverse course on the pipeline. But they’re fighting an uphill battle. Local police are coordinating regularly with Enbridge to address the pipeline resistance.

The spring escalation has already led to hundreds of arrests of people involved in protest actions. More recently, authorities have sought to evict one protest encampment and barricade another’s driveway.

Alleen reported on how the tactics being undertaken by Enbridge and the police resembled a corporate counterinsurgency — an analog to the multi-faceted wartime approach taken to overcome an enemy. In Minnesota, it’s not just an academic question: the state’s permit for Line 3 barred the company from engaging in a counterinsurgency.

Here’s Alleen’s reporting from on the ground in the north country

Big Wind and the sheriff

[Water protectors chanting.]

Alleen Brown: The morning sun is still low on a dirt road in northern Minnesota as a small crowd faces Aitkin County sheriff’s deputies. The crowd drums and chants messages of support for the seven people on the other side of the police line, who sit linked together from one side of the road to the other, locked to concrete-filled barrels.

The chained demonstrators are stopping construction personnel from entering a pump station for Enbridge’s Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline that has become the latest flashpoint in the fight to halt the expansion of the fossil fuel industry as the climate crisis deepens.

Big Wind:Hey, I just want to introduce myself—

Alleen Brown: Big Wind is a Northern Arapaho 28-year-old from the Wind River reservation in Wyoming. They greet me from behind a mask.

Big Wind: My name is Big Wind. I use they/them pronouns. And I am the communications coordinator for Giniw.

I was at Namewag yesterday and there was a Department of Homeland Security helicopter that flew really, really, really, really low, like just right above the tree, right above the treeline.

Alleen Brown: Big Wind describes what members of the Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movement, also known as water protectors, have recently encountered from police along that route.

Big Wind: At first you could hear it. It was like choppers and you could feel it in the ground. And it was circling camp. It circled camp twice. And you could tell it was, it was intentional and it was to intimidate us and to surveil us.

Alleen Brown: Big Wind says it was a Department of Homeland Security helicopter, just as a masked police officer approaches us.

Big Wind: And this is consistent with the continuation. We see the police taking on a more escalated response to the actions that have been happening here.

Sheriff Dan Guida: Can you describe that escalated response? Because I’m the police. Yeah, and I, I, I argue with you that we haven’t taken an escalated response. We’ve had a very even keeled response.

Alleen Brown: That’s Sheriff Dan Guida, of Aitkin County. Sheriff Guida is here in response to Enbridge’s complaints about the road blockade. He’s waiting for a trailer full of equipment that officers will use to remove the locked-down demonstrators.

Big Wind: OK. I’m not going to sit here and argue with you because —

Sheriff Guida: I’m asking you what’s the, what’s the escalated response. Did you see?

Big Wind: They’re asking me a question. We’re in an interview and you just interrupted that. That’s what I’m saying.

Sheriff Guida:This is a public space.

Big Wind:I was, I was literally talking about how there was a helicopter flying over — a DHS helicopter — and you just interrupted my conversation.

Sheriff Guida: We have no helicopters. We haven’t been in any helicopters.

Big Wind: OK.

Sheriff Guida: The stories you tell need to be true.

Big Wind:[Scoffs.] We have, we have footage that shows that there was a Department of Homeland Security helicopter flying over —

Sheriff Guida: I thought you didn’t want to argue. I thought you didn’t want to argue.

Big Wind: Well now— what you’re doing to me.

Sheriff Guida: Take a look at badges around here and find me from the Department of Homeland Security. They’re not here. There’s nobody here from the Department of Homeland Security. That’s federal. We don’t do that.

Alleen Brown: Sheriff Guida is proud of his recent record: Despite an influx of activists as the winter cold eased, his deputies had avoided making any arrests the prior week.

Sheriff Guida: I don’t call that an escalated response. I call it exceptional public safety. Don’t tell lies about cops.

Alleen Brown: The sheriff and I step aside to talk further. I ask him about the special Enbridge-funded account that the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission set up to reimburse law enforcement expenses.

For water protectors, the funding from Enbridge positions the police as biased toward the company — or at worst privatized operatives for Enbridge. Sheriff Guida assures me there is nothing wrong with the pipeline company’s payments for police services.

Alleen Brown [in interview]:There’s been a lot of criticism around this escrow account that’s been set up.

Sheriff Guida:Yeah, you know and some people were saying that today, you know, take your cops. Enbridge doesn’t pay for us. It’s a reimbursement for expenses that are related to this line that we wouldn’t normally have.

Alleen Brown: He points toward a government appointed account manager who approves every Enbridge transaction.

Alleen Brown [in interview]:Enbridge is reimbursing a lot of stuff but I know—

Sheriff Guida:Enbridge is not reimbursing. Don’t get confused. That PUC account is all managed by the state of Minnesota.

Alleen Brown: He adds:

Sheriff Guida:I don’t think that we have any connections with Enbridge but there’s a good separation.

Alleen Brown: A few days latter, the sheriff left me a voicemail:

Sheriff Guida:[VOICEMAIL] Hi Alleen, this is Dan Guida. Hey, I was in a meeting this morning and I asked specifically about helicopters and I found out that a county in the western side of the state did have a helicopter coming from, I don’t know if it was immigration or who, but they had helicopter come in and buzz the camp over there. It was not in our county, as I said. But I do have to apologize, because there was a helicopter that buzzed the camp.

Alleen Brown: Big Wind’s camp, Namewag, is in a neighboring county, and turns out Guida was unaware that another sheriff did call in Customs and Border Protection. In short, Big Wind wasn’t lying, and Guida’s understanding of what was happening in the battle between the pipeline company and the water protectors was incomplete.

For water protectors, the escalating Enbridge-funded policing and the denials to press are part of a pattern: law enforcement working hand-in-hand with pipeline companies to police their opposition — then refuting that a collaboration exists. From Standing Rock to Jordan Cove, private and public resources are put in service of what water protectors say amount to a counterinsurgency against their efforts to save the planet from the fossil fuel industry.

Counterinsurgency typically refers to a strategy used by the military to defeat armed resistance. It involves not just threats of violence but also psychological, political, economic, and intelligence tactics.

In Minnesota, the label is more than just semantic. The state permit for the Line 3 pipeline includes an unusual condition: “The Permittee, the permittee’s contractors and assigns will not participate in counterinsurgency tactics or misinformation campaigns to interfere with the rights of the public to legally exercise their Constitutional rights.”

Tara Houska: They were told not to do what is a counter-insurgency — so exact term they’ve they’ve used. I don’t understand how surveilling, harassing, and targeting people on a daily basis is not counterinsurgency. You are specifically targeting Indigenous people, people of color, anyone that’s associated with like, are you a water protector? You know what I mean? Like those things have happened multiple times. And this spans back years.

Alleen Brown: Tara Houska is a 37-year-old Anishinaabe water protector from Minnesota and a veteran of the fight at Standing Rock.

Tara Houska: I’ve seen a lot of drone activity over the last few years, and it’s been more and more recently.

Alleen Brown:Water protectors say Enbridge has violated its permit conditions. They point to the escrow account created for Enbridge to pay law enforcement for pipeline policing, intensifying surveillance, and a years-long divide-and-conquer effort by the company aimed at local communities. I interviewed dozens of people, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and academic literature — all suggesting Enbridge and the police’s efforts bear hallmarks of corporate counterinsurgency.

Minnesota Pipeline Fight

Alleen Brown:The fight against the Enbridge pipeline is part of a larger struggle with enormous stakes. The Mayor of Thief River Falls, Brian Holmer, says the pipeline has boosted his business, Micheal’s Meats. The mayor has repeatedly spoken publicly about the benefits of the project, through the group Minnesotans for Line 3.

Mayor Brian Holmer: Over the past about three months has increased our sales probably about 30 percent overall. And just this last week when the pipeliners shut down due to the road restrictions and some of the environmental impacts and stuff it dramatically decreased.

So we’re kind of back to normalcy now a little bit. But Line 3 has been really, really good for the community. Some of the brighter points we’ve heard and I hear it on a daily basis, and I hear it on a daily basis, and I’ve never heard myself be called sir so much because of the politeness of, uh, the pipeliners around. They’re fun to be around, very friendly. I think the community up here overall really embraced them.

Alleen Brown:Enbridge, a Canadian energy firm, is expanding and rerouting its old, corroded Line 3. Branded a “replacement” project, the new pipeline would double the old Line 3’s capacity to carry tar sands oil from the Canadian province of Alberta to a hub in Wisconsin. From there, it would be transported on to refineries from the Gulf Coast to eastern Canada.

The processes to transform sticky Alberta sludge into usable fuel make tar sands oil one of the most intensive fossil fuels in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. The risks are compounded when tar sands travel. Oil pipeline spills are endemic, and Enbridge has a particularly nasty record.

Most of the U.S. portion of the route, approximately 338 miles, is in Minnesota. There, the conflict over Line 3 centers on both the larger climate considerations and local concerns, particularly of the Anishinaabe peoples. Though the struggle against Line 3 has lasted the better part of a decade, the efforts were invigorated by a mounting Indigenous-led resistance to pipelines that bisect treaty lands across North America.

NPR:A fight over the route of a new pipeline is gaining momentum while it plays out in court—

PBS:—a protest in North Dakota against a major oil pipeline continues to grow. Over one hundred Native American tribes have joined the fight against the project.

DN!:It’s slated to carry half a million barrels of crude a day from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa, and into Illinois.

Alleen Brown:Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota gave rise to what became known as the water protector movement in 2016 and was promptly met with a private-public crackdown at the edge of the Standing Rock Reservation.

The firm behind the Dakota Access Pipeline hired private security contractors who, in leaked documents we obtained, characterized the Standing Rock movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component.” They also said water protectors “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model.”

The security firm, Tigerswan, ran a counterinsurgency modeled on what the U.S. military did in Iraq and Afghanistan that is infiltrating the anti-pipeline movement, conducting surveillance, and spreading propaganda, while also routinely coordinating with local law enforcement.

When Enbridge brought the pipeline fight to Indigenous lands in Minnesota, the public officials responsible for issuing a permit knew what had just happened next door in North Dakota. Three years ago, Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner John Tuma, a Republican, spoke at a public hearing during the permitting process for Line 3.

John Tuma: We’re saying to them — make it very clear — we are not to get involved in trying to interfere with the rights of people legally, legally exercising their rights under Minnesota constitution and that all their contracts and assigns shall not interfere by entering into what I would consider counterinsurgency tactics or misinformation campaigns, similar to what occurred in North Dakota.

Alleen Brown:He added.

John Tuma: What’s critical for me to know as we go forward: that kind of activities — this insurgency type stuff, the Pinkerton style type stuff— doesn’t happen here in Minnesota. This is, this is the United States of America. Our citizens of Minnesota have a right to protest.

Alleen Brown: The anti-counterinsurgency language was inserted into the permit but with no definitions to accompany it. This vagueness has meant less accountability.

Tuma declined a request for comment, but the Public Utilities Commission’s executive secretary Will Seuffert confirmed that the commission never defined the term counterinsurgency.

As for accountability, he says the state’s designated Public Safety Liaison for the pipeline monitors for such tactics and raises concerns if they occur. The Department of Public Safety has not replied to my request for comment.

By Any Other Name

To better understand these methods, scholars are examining U.S. counterinsurgency strategies abroad and resistance to extractive industries around the globe.

Simon Granovsky-Larsen: I think it’s important to start with an understanding that counterinsurgency, whether it’s state-led or facilitated by a private company, is essentially about social control over a given territory or area.

Alleen Brown: Simon Granovsky-Larsen, of the University of Regina in Canada, recently co-wrote a paper offering a rubric for identifying corporate counterinsurgencies around the world.

Simon Granovsky-Larsen: Often we think of counterinsurgency as particularly a form of warfare or a form of military campaign and it is, but there’s more to it than the security side. Counterinsurgency is about controlling a population so that they don’t oppose the implementation of the objectives that those carrying out the counter-insurgency have.

In the hands of private companies, the purpose of it is a little bit more narrow because here we’re talking about private companies that are trying to get control over a territory for, for the sole purpose of implementing an economic project that they have in mind, whether this is a natural resource extractionor, or something else.

Alleen Brown: Minnesota’s multi-agency coalition managing pipeline resistance, known as the Northern Lights Task Force, doesn’t seem to be making a big effort to avoid counterinsurgency strategies. Instead, Minnesota public safety officials have, in private, embraced the approach taken at Standing Rock.

MPR News: More than 4,000 workers are expected in northern Minnesota over the next couple of weeks to help build the contentious Line 3 oil pipeline replacement. At the same time activists are escalating their efforts to block it while law enforcement officials are trying to keep the peace.

Alleen Brown: In December 2020, shortly after Minnesota approved the Line 3 construction permit, Nicholas Radke, the intelligence coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety distributed aStanding Rock After-Action Reportfrom the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services. Through a public records request we obtained an email Radke wrote to a handful of local officials along the pipeline route and to Enbridge’s security lead for Line 3. He writes, “The AAR is the best document I’ve read in 10 years of working for the state. I’d recommend reading it word for word.”

Radke hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

In the document, many of the indelible public images of the Standing Rock movement — dogs being sicced on demonstrators or water hoses blasting people in sub-freezing temperatures — are relegated to a timeline in the appendices. The main body of the report characterized the police response to Standing Rock as an “extraordinary” demonstration of “professionalism, restraint, and courage,” celebrating that no one had died. The report praised law enforcement’s aerial and social media surveillance efforts but lamented that, unlike the security company, police hadn’t done better at developing their own informants, in part, because “Non-Native Americans were often excluded from sources of information.”

Public-Private Collaboration

Every Tuesday, members of the Stop Line 3 movement gather in front of Enbridge’s Park Rapids, Minnesota, headquarters. On one Tuesday this spring, music plays over a portable speaker while one of the group’s leaders, Winona LaDuke, a one time vice presidential candidate, trys out salsa moves.

Enbridge hasn’t used the building much since construction began, but the firm left its signs up to keep water protectors there. And water protectors don’t mind. The event drums up support, measured in cars that pass and honk.

Across the street, the attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard waits to pick up dinner at a Mexican restaurant before meeting up with the actor and activist Jane Fonda. Fonda is here to draw media attention to the anti-pipeline movement. Verheyden-Hilliard has represented Fonda in cases related to her other activism. She came along to gather information for a potential lawsuit.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard:We’re looking at Enbridge, we’re looking at the sheriff’s offices, and we’re looking at the public safety escrow trust because we believe that these three things have created a really extraordinary mechanism that fully financially incentivizes a level of repression to silence and shut down the organizing here and the water protectors activities.

Alleen Brown: Examples of police cooperation with the energy firm weren’t hard to find. The escrow account is the most obvious form of collaboration. In North Dakota, public agencies spent millions of dollars responding to pipeline protests. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission created the Enbridge-funded account so that, this time, the pipeline company would foot the bill.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: There’s been set up a structure where the sheriff’s offices are being financially incentivized to repress and target peaceful water protectors with constant harassment, with baseless pullovers, with targeting operations, with 24 seven surveillance, because they are billing the public safety escrow trust, which is a limitless funds account paid for by Enbridge.

Alleen Brown: There is a publicly appointed account manager who occasionally rejects sheriff’s office invoices that overreach, but so far Enbridge has reimbursed more than $1 million in expenses, for things like crowd control training, overtime pay, and so-called “personal protective equipment,” like riot suits and tear gas masks.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard:And what that’s doing is essentially privatizing the public police forces to work in service to the pecuniary interests of the private corporation. And, more specifically, it means that the corporation gets to use the public police forces to crack down on their political opponents.

Alleen Brown: Police and Enbridge officials were communicating regularly in the year leading up to the final construction permit’s approval. As construction got underway, officials began “meeting daily with Enbridge,” at the Northern Lights Task Force’s Duluth, Minnesota, operation center. In at least one county, the corporate-police meetings happened “several times daily,” according to public records.

By the time Verheyden-Hilliard arrived in Minnesota, the fruits of all that preparation were apparent.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: I had been talking to people for the past week who were relaying these stories of these constant baseless pullovers for things where the police were saying that your license plates are dusty.

Alleen Brown: And even earlier that day, as she drove in front of Fonda’s vehicle toward a press conference, a state patrol officer turned on her lights.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: And I got pulled over by the police in a classic baseless harassing stop.

[Footage of Verheyden-Hilliard getting pulled over.]

Officer:The reason I pulled you over today is in Minnesota, I don’t know if you’re aware, but before you make a corner you have to blinker a good 100 feet before you go. You can’t just like turn your blinker on and go. So I just wanted to make sure you’re aware of that rule. I saw that you have California plates, so. Do you have your driver’s license with you?

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard [in recording]:Yes, ma’am, but you were following us when we left the park area.

Officer:Yeah.

Alleen Brown: After issuing a warning for not flashing a signal within 100 feet of a turn, the state patrol officer followed Verheyden-Hilliard’s car for 12 miles. The warning isn’t what the attorney worries about.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard:Again and again, what they’re doing is they’re not generally issuing citations — they’re seizing the identity information. So we believe that this is an illegal surveillance operation to try and target and collect identity on people.

Alleen Brown: When I ask Guida, the Aitkin County sheriff, about the stops, he says that his officers only pull people over when they’re breaking the law. But when I press him about whether the stops are being used to collect identity information, he acknowledges that’s standard procedure.

Sheriff Guida: Absolutely, there’s intelligence that comes from every traffic stop. Everything is documented in the state of Minnesota. The county every time we stop a car the driver gets documented, the license plate gets documented. You know, that’s data that we collect. We’ve collected that forever and that’s what we do.

Surveillance

Big Wind:We’re here in Namewag. This camp was created by indigenous matriarchs in the summer of 2018.

Alleen Brown: Namewag, located in Hubbard County, Minnesota, is one of a handful anti-pipeline camps strung along the oil superhighway’s route. Run by the anti-pipeline Giniw Collective. Big Wind says Namewag focuses on direct actions, like locking down to equipment or holding sit-ins at construction sites.

Big Wind: We believe, you know, you know, that land defense and food sovereignty and treaty rights are all working in tandem with each other and so we’re rooted in those things.

Tara Houska: This place is about life and balance, and that means building community with the land and building community with each other.

Alleen Brown: That’s Tara Houska again, the water protector from Minnesota.

Tara Houska:And we do a lot of direct action in this space.

Alleen Brown: Direct actions and other protests against Line 3 have seen more than 500 people arrested or issued citations.

When I arrived this spring, members of the camp were tense. Another water protector had just been pulled over right outside of camp for having expired tags.

Big Wind: So right before you guys were coming here one of our camp members got pulled over right out here, as they were leaving the property. And it was like an hour stoppage.

Alleen Brown: Big Wind again.

Big Wind: Usually that’s like a ticket, right? But they went to jail, they arrested them. And now they’re being held in Hubbard County Jail.

Alleen Brown: Since nonviolent direct action can run afoul of the law, the camp became a target for surveillance. The police stops ramped up with the spring temperatures.

Big Wind: I honestly don’t think that there’s a car here that hasn’t been pulled over. We’ve all been pulled over.

Alleen Brown: The stops have left people on edge, which they figure is part of the point.

Big Wind: When you’re in that constant state of flux, when you’re in that constant state of crisis, I think they don’t want you to be making the right decisions. They want to figure out, “oh, you didn’t turn your, you know, your lights on” or “you didn’t blinker a hundred feet ahead of the stop sign,” you know. They’re trying to figure out all these situations. They want to catch you off your guard.

Alleen Brown: In 2019, Enbridge purchased a plot of land right next to Namewag. Since then, drones have regularly appeared over the protest camp. Reporters at Gizmodo were able to confirm that some of the drones spotted along the Line 3 route, including above water protectors’ homes belong to Customs and Border Protection, but others remain unidentified. Drones also appeared above the solar energy business, 8th Fire Solar, which was co-founded by the activist LaDuke. Sarah LittleRedFeather, who used to live on the property, says surveillance has escalated since July of last year.

Sarah LittleRed Feather: We counted six in one night. And I actually got one on video where it came under 400 feet and went over the 8th Fire’s Solar garage and at the level of my place and flew over. And I have them on video doing that. And just, you know, hovering around our, our land, you know, just hovering and just standing still and just doing that. And I’m like, what are you guys doing? What do you want?

Alleen Brown: Around that time, as Enbridge had done at Namewag, the company quietly purchased the strip of land next door to the solar business.

Co-Opting Communities

Minnesotans for Line 3 Ad: Line 3 is making a positive impact in Minnesota. It’s creating thousands of jobs, boosting the economy and increasing safety. Minnesotans strongly support Line 3 and with construction over half way complete, it’s time to finish strong.

Alleen Brown: Across from 8th Fire Solar, the neighbor had posted a sign in their yard, reading “Minnesotans for Line 3.” The blue signs, which dot the pipeline’s path, are the physical manifestation of another aspect of Enbridge’s campaign: Its work to recruit the support of local communities. The online presence of “Minnesotans for Line 3” is as robust as its yard signs. The group spent around $20,000 on Facebook ads in March and April alone, circulating testimony from motel, restaurant, and construction supply store owners about how friendly pipeline workers are and how much they’ve boosted business.

Dale in Minnesotans for Line 3 ad:Hi I’m Dale Thompson [in audible]. I’m a big supporter of Line 3. The pipeline needs to be taken care of. It’s far safer and I support it tremendously.

James in Minnesotans for Line 3 ad:My name is James Bianci. I live in Hermantown, Minnesota. I’m a teacher, a high school teacher. I believe that Line 3 should go through because I think that it’s good for the community. I think it’s good for jobs all around northern Minnesota.

Alleen Brown: Minnesotans for Line 3 describes itself as a “grassroots organization of people who understand how important it is to have reliable energy to power our economy,” but a disclosure form unearthed by DeSmog lists Enbridge as a sponsor of a Minnesotans for Line 3 TV ad. The Minnesotans for Line 3 website makes no direct reference to a relationship between Enbridge and the group. Pipeline opponents say that the group is an astroturf organization, a grassroots group hiding the fact that it is sponsored by a corporation to advance the corporation’s agenda.

Another record lists Minnesotans for Line 3’s ad buyer as Velocity Public Affairs, a PR firm that used to openly promote its work for Enbridge on its web site. In 2019, Velocity trademarked the name “Respect Minnesota.” Water protectors view Respect Minnesota as another astroturf effort.

Respect Minnesota’s outreach coordinator, Kathy Ross, told me the organization is union-driven, and added that they’ve publicly stated that Enbridge as well as some of its subcontractors support Respect Minnesota.

And Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner added, “Enbridge is just one of the businesses, unions, community organizations, and thousands of individuals from around the state who have taken the Respect Minnesota pledge.” She told me that questions about Minnesotans for Line 3 should be directed to that group, but the organization did not answer my questions about its connections to Enbridge.

Shanai Matteson understands the attractiveness for locals of a vague appeal like “respect” and support for the pipeline.

Shanai Matteson: Aitken County is a small rural county and jobs in industries of extraction are very attractive to many of the people who live here because there isn’t a lot of other economic opportunity.

Alleen Brown: Matteson moved to Honor the Earth’s Welcome Water Protectors camp in Aitkin County last summer, but she’s also from the area. The nearby land where Matteson’s grandmother was born is now part of the pipeline route.

Shanai Matteson: That was the spot where my grandmother was born. That was where their settlement was. And so my grandmother and I are both opposed to the pipeline. They’re obviously OK with it.

Alleen Brown: Matteson is referring to her cousin’s family, who now own the land.

Shanai Matteson: That story about our way of life as extraction is so deep.

Alleen Brown: Matteson’s grandfather worked as a miner and her cousin is a retired member of a construction union. Matteson thinks Enbridge has used Minnesota’s historic economic dependence on extractive industries and its conflict-avoidant culture to advance the pipeline project.

Buying Indigenous Support

Alleen Brown: An Enbridge proposal leaked to Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper demonstrates how much tribal buy-in is worth to the pipeline. The company proposed a package worth more than $25 million to the Red Lake Nation to drop its lawsuit and publicly communicate its opposition to “unlawful protesting.”

When I visited the Red Lake pipeline resistance camp, the Red Lake River was still frozen. The camp was a handful of cold-weather tents, including a donated Mongolian style yurt, on a hill overlooking the spot where the pipeline’s easement intersects with the river. It’s outside of the reservation, next to a highway on treaty land.

Enbridge attempted to win them over, Tribal Secretary Sam Strong:

Sam Strong: The letter was just disregarded.

Alleen Brown: Enbridge continued to push, hiring Red Lake tribal members to promote the pipeline and trying to buy local support. Strong again:

Sam Strong: That divide and conquer strategy is the same strategy that the federal government used to terminate Native people.

Alleen Brown: Red Lake wasn’t the only tribe approached by Enbridge — and other efforts were more successful. The Fond du Lac band, whose reservation is bisected by Line 3, opposed the pipeline before accepting its own version of the proposal made to Red Lake. The details of the deal have not been made public but a letter sent to tribal members in January, shared with Indian Country Today, indicates that the $400 monthly payments all tribal members receive from tribal enterprises are now coming from Enbridge.

On the cusp of summer, Enbridge began preparing to drill under more than 20 rivers and waterways. Water protectors are urging the Biden administration to intervene. In the meantime, they are traveling in growing numbers to stand with the Anishinaabe-led movement — and being greeted by an intensifying police response.

So far, Enbridge and law enforcement have only shown flashes of the kinds of spectacular displays of repression seen at Standing Rock. In June, water protectors gathered for the largest yet direct action against Line 3 at a pipeline pump station.

Again, a Customs and Border Protection helicopter showed up, sending a cloud of dust and debris flying over the protest. Authorities denied it was intentional. But the helicopter’s low flight path, in an area where water protectors were locked to construction equipment, appeared to violate Federal Aviation Administration rules.

CBP says the agency can’t comment on the flight, which is under investigation, but that a key mission of the agency’s Air and Marine Operations is to support law enforcement partners.

The pipeline fights in the upper Midwest represent only one point in a global spectrum of corporate efforts to suppress water and land defense movements. In places like Guatemala, the confrontations can grow much more deadly, says Granovsky-Larsen, the corporate counterinsurgency scholar.

I ask him and his co-author Larissa Santos, of the University of São Paulo in Brazil, whether they think Enbridge’s response to the Stop Line 3 movement fits the definition of corporate counterinsurgency.

Larissa Santos: It aligns very much with what we understand as corporate counterinsurgency.

Alleen Brown: She’s less convinced, though, that the actions of Enbridge and the Northern Lights Task Force violate the spirit of the Public Utilities Commission permit. She proposes an idea I hadn’t considered — that the permit language itself is part of the strategy, sending a message meant to pre-empt concerns that counterinsurgency tactics will be used..

Larissa Santos: It won’t be the same that happened to Standing Rock. We want to have an agreement. We went to have dialogue with the population to avoid the use of, of confrontation, you know. So, I see these also as an information strategy from, from above to pacify resistance.

Alleen Brown:Enbridge, for its part, avoided my questions about whether it was in the midst of a counterinsurgency. Spokesperson Kellner underlined that it was the Public Utilities Commission that set up the escrow account and that local law enforcement is in charge of public safety. She touted the corporation’s relationship with tribes, pointing out that Fond du Lac had led a cultural resources survey along the entire Line 3 route. Kellner said, “We understand there are differing opinions about the energy we all use. As a company, we recognize the rights of individuals and groups to express their views legally and peacefully.”

I pose one last question to Granovsky-Larsen that had been nagging at me as I reported the story.

Alleen Brown [in interview]:Is it possible to build a tar sands oil pipeline in an era of climate crisis without counterinsurgency tactics? And if we reject counterinsurgency tactics are we rejecting projects like this?

Simon Granovsky-Larsen: I don’t see any scenario where tar sands extraction and transport could gain the necessary legitimacy where a company wouldn’t feel the need to either implement counter-insurgent tactics or, or a harsher form of repression.

Alleen Brown: We’re facing a climate crisis that threatens everything we know. There are very serious consequences to whether or not these extractive industries are successful in advancing their agendas as they use public resources. I think looking at the way that taxpayer funded resources are used by these companies to advance these kinds of things is kind of a central way that we can consider where the pressure points are, you know the police don’t have to accept money from Enbridge, and if they didn’t what would this all look like?

Ali Gharib: And that does it for this episode of Intercepted. What a story. This episode was reported by Alleen Brown and edited by me, Ali Gharib. It was produced by Laura Flynn. Special thanks to W. Paul Smith and Akil Harris for their research support and Holly DeMuth. Find Alleen’s full story and all of her reporting about climate change, pipelines, and resistance at The Intercept.

You can follow us on Twitter @Intercepted and on Instagram @InterceptedPodcast. Intercepted is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our lead producer is Jack D’Isidoro. Betsy Reed is the editor in chief of The Intercept. Rick Kwan mixed our show. As always, our theme music was composed by DJ Spooky.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/customs-and-border-protection/ lawyer mex

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Taylor Levy couldn't understand why she'd been held for hours by Customs and Border Protection officials when crossing back into El Paso, Texas, after getting dinner with friends in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in January 2019. And she didn't know why she was being questioned by an agent who'd introduced himself as a counterterrorism specialist.

Levy was part of the legal team representing the father of a girl who'd died the previous month in the custody of the Border Patrol, which is part of CBP. “There was so much hate for immigration lawyers at that time," she recalled. “I thought that somebody had put in an anonymous tip that I was a terrorist."

The truth was more troubling. Newly released records show that Levy was swept up as part of a broader than previously known push by the administration of President Donald Trump to use the federal government's expansive powers at the border to stop and question journalists, lawyers and activists.

The records reveal that Levy and attorney Héctor Ruiz were interrogated by members of CBP's secretive Tactical Terrorism Response Team. The lawyers were suspected of “providing assistance" to the migrant caravan that was then the focus of significant attention by the administration and right-wing media. Officials speculated in later reports that immigration lawyers were seeking to profit by moving migrants through Mexico, and that “Antifa" may have been involved.

The records were provided to ProPublica by the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a public interest law firm and advocacy group that received them after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about the stops of Levy and Ruiz at the border in El Paso.

Following revelations two years ago by NBC 7 San Diego that some journalists and others were targeted for questioning when crossing from Tijuana, Mexico, the Trump administration maintained that the incidents were limited to San Diego and a handful of U.S. citizens. But the new documents prove the operation went further — and raise questions about how many others were targeted.

While the records are heavily redacted, they provide a window into exactly how the targeting worked. They also show that the push was based in part on claims that were simply wrong — for example, that Levy met with members of the caravan in Mexico while they were traveling towards the border.

“This whole thing is COINTELPRO for dummies," said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, referring to a notorious domestic spying program from decades ago. Tajsar is representing some of the San Diego activists who were stopped. An “intel-gathering apparatus was shared and deployed through a number of different agencies and resulted in a dragnet that ensnared a whole bunch of people."

Responding to questions from ProPublica, a CBP spokesperson said in a statement: “In response to incidents in November 2018 and January 2019, which included assaults against Border Patrol Agents, CBP identified individuals who may have information relating to the instigators and/or organizers of these attacks. Efforts to gather this type of information are a standard law enforcement practice." The statement does not address the targeting of Levy and Ruiz or what role investigators suspected two lawyers in El Paso of playing in attacks on federal agents that were in San Diego.

The administration of President Joe Biden is continuing to fight several lawsuits filed against the Trump administration over the operation. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general promised to investigate the allegations in 2019, as the CBP spokesperson noted to ProPublica, but it has not published its findings. The current head of U.S. Border Patrol is a career agent who was in charge of the San Diego sector when agents there were helping lead the surveillance effort.

Neither Levy nor Ruiz were told why they were being questioned. What they were asked about didn't give them many clues. Both were questioned about their activities in Mexico — specifically, if they had been to Tijuana recently. They were questioned about their jobs and educational backgrounds; Ruiz was asked about the funding of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, where they work as an attorney.

Both lawyers also recall being asked about their beliefs. Levy remembers an agent asking her why she worked for a Catholic aid organization if she didn't believe in God, while Ruiz told ProPublica they were asked about their opinions of the Trump administration and the economy. Government notes of their interviews provided as part of the suit don't reference those questions, but they do cite comments from both Levy and Ruiz criticizing Trump's border policies.

Ruiz ultimately agreed to a phone search, despite their concerns about agents reading privileged attorney-client communications, which is exactly what the agents did. The records note the use of WhatsApp to communicate with people described as “foreign national" — Ruiz's clients.

Ruiz didn't tell anyone about their late-night interrogation for weeks after it happened. When they learned the same thing had happened to Levy, and when the NBC 7 story appeared two months later showing that similar episodes in San Diego had been part of a deliberate targeting effort, the El Paso lawyers sought to find out if they had been on the same watchlist. So Ruiz's then-colleague Allegra Love filed a Freedom of Information Act request followed by a lawsuit.

This spring, they finally got a complete-enough set of documents to piece the truth together.

In late November 2018, writing up an interview with a migrant who'd traveled with the “caravan," San Diego-area border agents identified Levy and Ruiz as two of “three attorneys/legal assistants that most likely traveled to meet with the caravan." The redacted notes leave it unclear whether the migrant identified the two by name, or whether agents made the connection on their own. Either way, by the time that email was forwarded to San Diego's Border Intelligence Center, the two were identified as “ASSOCIATED TO THE MIGRANT CARAVAN DEC 2018."

In fact, Levy had not only never met with people in the caravan, colleagues recall she'd vocally criticized the caravan at the time. Ruiz had conducted some legal workshops for caravan migrants weeks before their arrival in Tijuana, when they'd been staying in a soccer stadium in Mexico City. Ruiz and Love told ProPublica they had encouraged migrants with tenuous asylum claims not to attempt to come to the U.S. and didn't have any further involvement with the group.

According to emails obtained in the lawsuit, agents were instructed to flag Levy and Ruiz (as well as three others whose information is redacted) in the system for screening people coming through U.S. ports of entry.

When Ruiz came back to El Paso after a night out in Ciudad Juarez in December, and when Levy returned from that January dinner, the port officer checking their passports saw an alert that they should be interrogated by a member of CBP's Tactical Terrorism Response Team.

The team's stated mission is to stop suspected foreign terrorists from entering the country. But the government has expanded powers at the border that allow it to stop and question civilians entering the U.S. Records produced in an ongoing ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about the unit have shown that its members frequently question American citizens. (CBP did not respond to questions about the role of the terrorism teams.)

What exactly the interrogations of Levy and Ruiz were trying to uncover still isn't clear. Levy and Ruiz both got the impression that they were being accused of “coaching" asylum-seekers to lie to border agents. The newly disclosed records don't include anything about that, at least not in the unredacted text, but they do say that Ruiz “admitted to facilitating the migrant caravan by providing legal guidance free of charge and educate the migrant's with the Asylum process."

The accusation that telling asylum-seekers about how U.S. law works is “facilitating" their entry reflected a broader suspicion that asylum-seekers were trying to subvert U.S. law rather than accessing a legal right. One Border Patrol email from the San Diego side of the targeting operation, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by NBC 7 and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and shared with ProPublica, referred to crossing the border to claim asylum as exploiting “a loophole."

A Border Patrol intelligence report from El Paso, written several months after Levy and Ruiz were interrogated and included in the newly released documents, cast further aspersions on asylum lawyers. The report states, “Mass migration from South America into the United States is said to be coordinated at some level by non profit organizations who wish to line their pockets with proceeds deriving from migrants transportation feesup to the U.S Mexico border, and ultimately proceeds deriving from the migrants paying for their asylum case lawyers once they have arrived to the United States." It goes on to associate this effort with “other groups such as Antifa."

The report also asserts, inaccurately, that Levy and Ruiz were “seen in Tijuana assisting with the migrant caravan."

Now that the lawyers know more about why they were stopped — and by whom — they are all the more concerned it could happen again. Levy has since moved to California but told ProPublica she fears retaliation for this article.

Ruiz still crosses the border multiple times a week for work. “I'm still super fearful," they told ProPublica. “I don't know if this is the day they're going to detain me again." The caravans and Trump are both gone, but “I'm still doing this work. And I don't know what sort of false accusations they can throw going forward."

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Government official confirms stunning report about Trump administration 'violations'

President Donald J. Trump listens as Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar addresses his remarks during the Honesty and Transparency in Healthcare Prices meeting Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)

Meaghan Ellis December 31, 2020

A career employee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is confirming details about many of the Trump administration's violations, behaviors, and practices.

A new report published by Politico highlights the days following the departure of Tom Novotny, who previously served as the Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Refugee Health. Joshua Prasad, who served as a public health adviser under Novotny, penned a letter about his Sept. 13, 2017 meeting where he claims he was "pushed to resign or be fired himself, and then swiftly marched out of the building by security."

The timing of Prasad's firing raised red flags. The termination is said to have gone into effect on Sept. 15, 2017 just one day before "Prasad's protections as a career civil servant would have kicked in, which would have made it nearly impossible for the Trump administration to swiftly fire him."

When Prasad was used as an example for other employees within the department, it left a wave that reportedly "lingered with them for months — especially because Prasad was instructed not to talk to anyone, even longtime teammates that saw him escorted out the door," according to the publication.

"Science and Medicine, in my opinion, has been a particularly important team in [our office] in recent years," Prasad wrote in a subsequent resignation letter, obtained by POLITICO, in which he pleaded with the office's acting leader to preserve his colleagues' efforts to protect LGBTQ health, improve tobacco control and gather data on racial disparities, among other public health priorities. "I hope that you and your new teams will find a way to keep the ideas, leadership and passions provided by our team alive."

Kimberly Konkel, a career HHS official also weighed in on the editorial as she confirmed that she witnessed many of the violations detailed in the piece.

"I am a witness to these behaviors/practices. I was asked to pray twice by the same Trump official," Konkel tweeted. "Once in a cafeteria with our team & once in a 1:1 at the start our first meeting. I was then removed from my position.

She added, "This is what I'm referring to: 'Other violations of what career HHS employees saw as good government popped up nearly every week. Trump appointees asked career staff to join them in prayer before meetings, said two officials.'"

Many former HHS officials noted the many changes within the federal agency that took place seemingly overnight after Trump's Inauguration in 2017.

"They ran all of HHS like it was a political campaign and not an executive agency," said one former official who recalled the stark changes that appeared to happen "overnight after Inauguration Day in 2017.

The former official also noted the change in television networks. Instead of a rotation between networks as had been standard during the previous administration, the Trump administration trained all televisions on Fox News. "In the Obama administration, the TVs rotated between Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN," the former official added. "But things changed very rapidly under Trump, with Fox News being put on all the TVs. … It's like they only wanted the TVs to repeat the news they wanted to hear."

The series of events that unfolded following Novotny's departure set the tone for the Trump administration's chaotic coronavirus pandemic response. The firings that took place in September of 2017 were merely a prelude to Trump's pressuring and undermining of scientists amid the pandemic.

"Years before Trump's deputies pressured scientists to rush the president's preferred malaria drugs as Covid-19 treatments without evidence of their effectiveness, Trump's deputies pressured health officials to kill a variety of health programs — from Obamacare ads to teen pregnancy prevention — driven by their own beliefs rather than data showing that the programs didn't work."

The Trump administration's impact continues to ravage the United States. As of Thursday, Dec. 31, there have been more than 20 million coronavirus cases reported across the country. America's COVID-related death toll has now surpassed 350,000.

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federal judge rules Trump's DHS secretary was illegally appointed — so his anti-immigrant moves are invalid

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homeland Security Wants to Erase Its History of Misconduct

Alice Speri

U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to destroy thousands of complaint records it claims have no historical value.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/dhs-officials-told-to-maintain-a-sympathetic-stance-regarding-kyle-rittenhouse-report

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Internal documents reportedly suggest federal law enforcement officials with the Department of Homeland Security were directed to maintain a publicly sympathetic stance regarding Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old facing murder charges for the fatal shootings of protesters in Kenosha, Wisc.

In preparation for questions from the media regarding the highly publicized shootings, DHS officials were advised to focus on focus on Rittenhouse's initial efforts, according to NBC News. The document, which included multiple talking points regarding the case, advised officials to suggest Rittenhouse "took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners."

A different set of talking points distributed to officials also discussed the media's depiction of the group, Patriot Prayer. While the media is said to have labeled the group as "racist" following their clash with protesters amid civil unrest in Portland, Ore., DHS officials were reportedly told to dismiss the claims.

It remains unclear whether or not the directives came from the White House but President Donald Trump has shown support for Rittenhouse and law enforcement.

Now, multiple former Homeland Security officials have expressed concern about the handling of internal affairs at the government agency. Peter Boogaard, who served as a spokesperson for Homeland Security under the Obama administration, condemned the reports.

"It is as unprecedented as it is wrong," Boogaard said.

Elizabeth Neumann, who served as DHS's assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy in the Trump administration, also pointed out one important suggestion that did not appear to be highlighted in the internal talking points.

"What strikes me about the talking points is that they didn't call for calm among the public," Neumann said. "Even in the early hours after the incident, it was known private militias had self-deployed. …They seemed more interested in Rittenhouse's reputation than calling for calm and actual law and order."

The latest regarding Kyle Rittenhouse follows multiple reports about the staggering number of donations he has received through fundraising efforts sphere headed by a Christian crowdfunding website. According to Rittenhouse's lawyer, the Christian has received more than $1 million in donations from more than 11,000 donors.

As of Monday night, a total of $605,550 had been donated to the FightBack Foundation for Rittenhouse's legal fund. Another $534,000 had also been donated to Rittenhouse through the Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo. However, all funds will ultimately be transferred to the FightBack Foundation.

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/12/homeland-security-whistleblower-corruption/

If CHAD WOLF, the man currently running the largest law enforcement agency in the country, had any idea of what was coming, he didn’t show it. On Wednesday, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security stood before his colleagues and delivered the 2020 “State of the Homeland Address,” detailing the many ways in which his department was living up to its post-9/11 mission and supporting President Donald Trump’s agenda. Everyone on the DHS livestream was socially distanced and wearing masks — everyone, that is, but KenCuccinelli, the department’s “senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary.”

Last month, the Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that both Wolf and Cuccinelli are illegally occupying their positions atop DHS. But what the two men lack in legal authorization to work, they make up for in fealty to the president. Teeing up the crowd for Wolf’s remarks this week, Cuccinelli spoke of threats to “our cherished homeland” and said that “after decades of putting globalinterests ahead of the safety and the prosperity of our citizens, this administration has boldly put America first.”

Wolf, a former Transportation Security Administration lobbyist, struck a similar tone in his prepared remarks, drawing applause when he mentioned Homeland Security’s role in policing protests in Portland, Oregon, and his department’s ongoing efforts to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. The event had just barely concluded when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence published a 24-page whistleblower complaint accusing Wolf, Cuccinelli, and other current and former DHS leaders, including former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was also present at Wednesday’s address, of illegally manipulating and politicizing intelligence to bolster the president’s talking points and policy objectives in numerous ways across multiple years.

The man behind the complaint was Brian Murphy, a war on terror veteran who ran Homeland Security intelligence operations and served as a principle adviser to the secretary of DHS and the director of national security. Though complicated by the fact that Murphy himself had previously been accused of overseeing disturbing surveillance practices earlier this year, the whistleblower complaint marked the latest revelation in a long line of stories suggesting that DHS has become the armed extension of a Trumpian political project.

Murphy’s allegations ranged from inflating the number of known or suspected terrorists crossing the border, to the suppression of intelligence on right-wing terrorists, to the stifling of reports on Russian interference in the coming election. Murphy claimed that his efforts to push back on the senior DHS officials were met with retaliation and a demotion. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chair of the intelligence committee, described his complaint as “grave and disturbing,” adding in a statement, “We will get to the bottom of this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American people, and put a stop to the politicization of intelligence."

john Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the politicization of Homeland Security operations under the Trump administration has been “tremendous,” and that it first began in the border and immigration realms and steadily expanded to include militarized Border Patrol BORTAC units deployed to arrest protesters in a major American city against the wishes of local officials.

“It’s at the point now where it’s really undermining the operational capability of DHS to work with the state and local governments,” Sandweg told The Intercept. “There’s going to be repercussions.”

In his complaint, Murphy claimed that in a series of meetings, Wolf and Cuccinelli personally intervened in an effort to doctor information related to the recent protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd, instructing him to “modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups.” Murphy also claimed that the men improperly inserted themselves in the creation of a “Homeland Treat Assessment” report earlier this year, blocking circulation of the document out of concerns over how it “would reflect upon President Trump.”

“Two sections were specifically labeled as concerns: White Supremacy and Russian influence in the United States,” Murphy’s complaint said. The complaint went on to describe a series of meetings in May and June, as protests against police brutality spread to every state in the country, in which “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.”

Murphy’s allegations come two months after an investigation by The Intercept that analyzed a trove of hacked law enforcement documents that were posted online under the title “BlueLeaks.” The materials included documents produced at the local, state, and federal level, including Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, otherwise known as I&A, where Murphy worked. The Intercept’s analysis focused on hundreds of documents produced during the recent protests that referenced “antifa,” a loose movement of antifascist political activists, and revealed glaring disparities between law enforcement’s depiction of groups on the right and the left.

In the case of antifa, the documents revealed that law enforcement intelligence was often vague, mixed up in online conspiracy theories or untethered to evidence of suspected criminal activity. On the far right, on the other hand, the documents showed law enforcement agencies across the country sharing detailed and specific information on the mobilization of armed groups looking to use the unrest as cover to attack law enforcement and protesters and set off a civil war. In July, the sergeant of an elite Air Force security unit with ties to the so-called boogaloo movement was arrested on suspicion of assassinating a federal court security officer and killing a California sheriff’s deputy, strongly suggesting that the online threats circulating at the time went beyond mere posturing.

:{:{Read Our Complete Coverage:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:normal;display:block;letter-spacing:0px;margin-bottom:5px;text-transform:capitalize"):}::{BlueLeaks:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;width:420px;float:left;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;max-width:420px"):}:

During the protests, I&A shared intelligence that was both dubious and disturbing. On June 2, for example, the office circulated a tweet to law enforcement agencies across the country reporting that antifa was stashing bricks to “fuel protests.” As Mainer magazine later reported, the original source of the information was a pro-Trump biker who called himself “the wolfman” and previously spread conspiracy theories online.

At the same time, I&A circulated intelligence in late May detailing conversations inside an encrypted white supremacist Telegram channel, in which thousands of followers were encouraged to use guns, Molotov cocktails, and chainsaws to attack police and “spread racial hatred.” The following day, I&A published an intelligence note again describing conversations in another white supremacist Telegram channel, in which followers were encouraged to “engage in violence and start the ‘boogaloo’ — a term used by some violent extremists to refer to the start of a second Civil War — by shooting in a crowd.”

At the time, Trump, along with Wolf, Cuccinelli, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr were agitating for a crackdown on antifa, with Trump calling the movement a terrorist organization and Barr announcing that Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country would be called to root out leftist “agitators.”

The Justice Department has launched hundreds of domestic terrorism investigations in the weeks since, while a Trump Super Pac has used the antifa crackdown to raise money for the president’s reelection efforts.

On June 1, Trump boosted a tweet from Brian Kilmeade, in which the “Fox and Friends” co-host said he saw no evidence of white supremacists mobilizing in response to the protests. “TRUE!” Trump tweeted. Later in the day, Trump delivered an address in the Rose Garden threatening to use the military in response to the “professional anarchists” and antifa elements in the streets. He made no mention of groups on the far right. The next morning, DHS circulated a report acknowledging “media reports” indicating “that neo-Nazi, and other paramilitary far-right groups, are calling for terror attacks during the ongoing unrest throughout the United States.” According to a distribution list at the bottom of the report, the document was shared with the White House Situation Room, DHS headquarters, federal interagency operations centers, and state and local partners.

Despite the intelligence circulating in his own office regarding threats from the far right, Cuccinelli continued to keep the focus on the left, tweeting, “Their silence is deafening. Cities across America burn at the hands of antifa and anarchists while many political leaders are refusing to call it what it is: domestic terrorism.”

Murphy and his office drew national attention in late July, when news broke that I&A had disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports summarizing the tweets of a New York Times reporter and the editor of a prominent Washington, D.C. national security blog; both had published unclassified DHS documents related to the Portland protests. At the time, Wolf said he had ordered a stop to the intelligence gathering and launched an investigation into the matter. Murphy was singled out as the official driving the intelligence collection, with sources telling the Washington Post that the former FBI agent had “earned a reputation at DHS for aggressively trying to expand the operations of the intelligence office.”

In his complaint, Murphy said the media reports concerning the collection of information on journalists were “significantly flawed and, in many instances, contained completely erroneous assertions,” and that “I&A never knowingly or deliberately collected information on journalists, at least as far as Mr. Murphy is aware or ever authorized.”

The expansive network of law enforcement fusion centers where I&A directs much of its work product have been the subject of years of criticism for exhibiting a “persistent pattern of violating Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, producing unreliable and ineffective information, and resisting financial and other types of standard public accountability.” As The Intercept reported in late July, I&A under Trump has repeatedly directed its intelligence-gathering efforts at immigration advocates on the border. DHS officials in San Diego oversaw a sweeping, binational intelligence-gathering operation targeting lawyers, journalists, and asylum advocates associated with the migrant caravans that became a key political talking point for the Trump administration during the 2018 midterm elections.

Federal Agents at Protests Renew Calls to Dismantle Homeland Security

It is unclear what role, if any, Murphy played in those events, though his complaint notes that during his March 2018 to July 2020 tenure, he was “responsible for all intelligence activities in DHS.” He has been called to testify before Congress later this month, where those questions may come up.

Throughout the past three and half years, the leadership of DHS has been steadily hollowed out, resulting in a department increasingly run by allies of Trump’s anti-immigration adviser, Stephen Miller. To many Homeland Security veterans, the ascent of Wolf and Cuccinelli is the disturbing encapsulation of that trend — one former DHS official, speaking to The Intercept on background, described Wolf as a “back bencher” and “literally a joke.”

On Thursday, one day after Murphy’s complaint made news across the country, the White House sent a letter to the Senate formally nominating Wolf to head DHS. Twenty-four hours later, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, subpoenaed Wolf to testifybefore his committee, noting in a statement that the acting secretary had been dodging the lawmakers’ questions since protests picked up in June.

“This administration has so completely fueled the negative stereotype of the agency, that is going to have real world implications for the agency for years to come, not just in dealing with Congress,” Sandweg said. “I think they’ve done incalculable damage.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/dhs-threatens-netflix-filmmakers-to-keep-damning-footage-from-airing-before-the-election-report/

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that a pair of Netflix filmmakers shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary about President Donald Trump’s immigration policy were threatened by federal officials, ordered to delete footage unflattering to Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers, and told to delay release of the documentary until after the 2020 election.

“In early 2017, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepared to carry out the hard-line agenda on which President Trump had campaigned, agency leaders jumped at the chance to let two filmmakers give a behind-the-scenes look at the process,” reported Caitlin Dickerson. “But as the documentary neared completion in recent months, the administration fought mightily to keep it from being released until after the 2020 election.After granting rare access to parts of the country’s powerful immigration enforcement machinery that are usually invisible to the public, administration officials threatened legal action and sought to block parts of it from seeing the light of day.”

“In heated phone calls and emails, they said, [an] official pushed to delay publication of the series, currently set to air on Netflix next month,” continued the report. “He warned that the federal government would use its ‘full weight’ to veto scenes it found objectionable. Several times, the filmmakers said, the official pointed out that it was their ‘little production company,’ not the film’s $125 billion distributor, that would face consequences. The filmmakers said they were told that the administration’s anger over the project came from ‘all the way to the top.'”

According to the report, the filmmakers responded by “using an encrypted messaging service to communicate with their production team,” putting security cameras in their office, and concealing the hard drives on which they were storing raw footage.

over the past four years, immigration policy has been one of the most controversial and contentious aspects of the Trump presidency, from the Muslim travel ban, to the “zero tolerance” family separation policy, to the recent effort to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment, which experts consider unconstitutional.

You can read more here.

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A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police. Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Wolf

same day! COVID info

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/white-house-to-oust-dhhs-inspector-general-whose-report-drew-trump-fury/

an 520

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-administrations-serial-ig-purges-fuel-calls-for-anti-corruption-provisions-in-next-covid-19-package/

1219 new

*****

We’ve noted the regime’s past hostility toward investigating white supremacist terrorism. This week, CREW sued the Department of Homeland Security for refusing to turn over documents “that would explain former-DHS Advisor for Policy Katharine Gorka’s involvement in revoking grants combating white supremacy and white nationalism.” Gorka is the wife of Sebastian Gorka, the fascist former deputy assistant to Trump.

Before joining the government, [Katharine] Gorka was a contributing author of Breitbart, a website favored by white nationalists and white supremacists. While Gorka was a DHS official, DHS focused almost exclusively on combating Islamic extremism while reducing or eliminating funding of programs to combat white supremacy. DHS even reportedly considered renaming the DHS Countering Violent Task Force to “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”

This comes in the wake of leaked emails revealing that senior White House advisor Stephen Miller, the regime’s point-person on immigration and refugee policy–sent a bunch of white supremacist claptrap to his sources at Breitbart.

*****

we keep ticking off the boxes to fascism, but attacking political enemies certainly rate, not 1st time/ pro-immigrant activists deported?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/despite-arrest-by-homeland-security-79-year-old-immigrant-rights-activist-vows-to-keep-protesting-report/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/warnings-of-eco-terrorism-mass-casualties-at-new-okla-tenn-oil-pipeline

OPINION: WASHINGTON SECRETS

Warnings of eco-terrorism, 'mass casualties' at new Okla-Tenn oil pipeline

by Paul Bedard

| April 18, 2017 02:13 PM

[odd pix, scary? Dakota Access pipeline opponents burn structures in their main protest camp in southern North Dakota near Cannon Ball, N.D., on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, as authorities prepare to shut down the camp in advance of spring flooding season. (AP Photo/James MacPherson)

Just months removed from the violence and attacks on police by environmental extremists fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, state and federal officials are warning of similar, potentially catastrophic, attacks against another new pipeline between Oklahoma and Tennessee that enters service in the fall.

A report from the Department of Homeland Security, and Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, warns of attacks from eco-terrorists to anti-government militia on the Diamond Pipeline project.

"Law enforcement are assessing what environmental extremists did to disrupt Dakota Access Pipeline – Molotov cocktails, rocks, arson, roadblocks, chaining themselves to equipment, improvised explosive devices, etc – and seeing many of the same activities potentially happening around Diamond pipeline," according to a police representative.

[map pipe route]

The 11-page "field analysis report," stamped "Unclassfied//For Official Use Only," said that there are no pending threats to the $900 million, 440-mile pipeline under construction, but that the potential is very real.

"While the Diamond Pipeline project has not seen the same level of disruption as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), we are concerned that negative perceptions about enforcement efforts against DAPL opponents could inspire like-minded individuals to seek out reprisal violence against similar targets, including the Diamond Pipeline," said the report, provided to Secrets.

Some peaceful protests have already occurred.

The report revealed that five oil pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border were shutdown in October, and it provided photographic evidence of the arson and sabotage of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Police are keen consumers of the report because it was sheriffs and local cops that felt the brunt of the pressure at Dakota, sometimes getting in violent clashes with protesters.

According to the report, "Pipeline construction projects frequently arouse concerns about environmental and land-use issues. While most opposition activity related to pipeline construction remains nonviolent and lawful protest activity, some violent extremists may take advantage of lawful gatherings to attempt to threaten, incite, or commit violent acts against public safety officers or facility staff."

The biggest concerns cited in the report:

— "DHS and the authoring fusion centers assess the most likely potential domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline construction project or associated entities is fromenvironmental rights extremists motivated by resentment over perceived environmental destruction."

— "We assess that the second most likely potential domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline or associated entities—including law enforcement and private contract security guards—is from militia extremists opposed to government enforcement of eminent domain policies."

— "We assess that potential attacks against the Diamond Pipeline or related entities would most likely be simple and designed to damage physical infrastructure or equipment by sabotage or arson. Previous attacks against pipelines or related targets have included assaults on law enforcement, private contract security guards, or construction personnel."[where? Fallin gun?]

— "We assess the primary potential threat of violence against the Diamond Pipeline and related entities is from lone offenders who adhere to environmental rights extremist beliefs and believe violence is justified against such projects due to their perceived harm to the environment. Previous incidents involving lone offenders committing violent acts against targets associated with similar energy projects suggest that the pipeline and associated entities could be attractive targets for an attack by lone environmental rights extremists."

— "Militia extremists have engaged in armed standoffs, threats, and disrupted IED plots targeting law enforcement entities perceived to be enforcers of oppressive government land-use policies, according to media reporting. Although their capabilities vary, some militia extremists have well-rehearsed paramilitary skills, as well as access to and proficiency using firearms and explosives. As a result, successful violent attacks have the potential to cause mass casualties."

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

mma 519

We know that Fox News has unprecedented influence on Trump's decision-making. One example this week shows just how pervasive Fox's influence is-- and how much taxpayer money could be at risk.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Trump has “alarmed” military commanders and Department of Homeland Security officials by aggressively lobbying them to grant a border wall contract to Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based construction company whose CEO, Tommy Fisher, has regularly appeared on Fox and other conservative outlets to promote his company’s bid.

Fisher has used a Fox-centric PR strategy to directly pitch the president in hopes of obtaining a federal contract, making at least 10 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business since January 2018.

And Fox’s promotion of Fisher’s bid has not been limited to the network’s supposed “opinion” shows. The network’s flagship “news” broadcast, Special Report, ran a packaged report that essentially served as an infomercial for Fisher’s proposal. Introduced by anchor Bret Baier and reported by national correspondent William La Jeunesse, the segment featured an interview with Fisher and credulously repeated his claims that he could construct the wall “faster, better, and cheaper.”

contractor direct line to trump brain // whitaker:

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/24/how-one-company-used-fox-centric-pr-strategy-try-get-trump-give-it-lucrative-federal-contract/223793

omg

Fox News has unprecedented influence over President Donald Trump’s decision-making. Trump’s worldview is shaped by the hours of propagandistic and sycophantic programming he often watches in a day, as well as his private consultations with many of the network’s stars on a wide variety of topics. As a result, Fox’s commentators have at times dictated the president’s policy agenda and political strategy, harnessed the news cycle by directing his attention to their particular obsessions, provided staffers for his administration, and hand-picked the recipients of his pardons.

And now, the network is emerging as a platform that can determine who could receive hefty federal contracts.

Fisher claims that his company can build a border wall both faster and cheaper than his competitors thanks to a patent-pending installation system, but the Army Corps of Engineers determined that Fisher’s design “did not meet its requirements and lacked regulatory approvals” and that the firm’s previous work on a barrier project “came in late and over budget,” the Post reported. Rejected through the procurement process, Fisher is trying to go around it through the right-wing media, a method that has allowed him to reach the president. Trump is now trying to sidestep the contracting process because, as Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) explained to the Post, he “had seen [Fisher] on television” -- specifically on Fox -- “advocating for his version of the barrier.”

Fisher has used a Fox-centric PR strategy to directly pitch the president in hopes of obtaining a federal contract, making at least 10 appearances on Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, since January 2018, according to a Media Matters review. Programs the president regularly watches, including Fox & Friends and The Ingraham Angle, have repeatedly granted Fisher an uncritical platform to shill for his company.

Fisher’s strategy mimics that of K Street lobbyists who pay off TV pundits to promote their messages during on-air appearances and lawyers who put their clients and their relatives on Fox to ask the president for pardons.

The CEO has honed his pitch to appeal to the president in particular, as demonstrated by his March 5 appearance on Fox & Friends, during which co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked him to explain “why should the president, or why should his administration, choose your company?"

[vid]

Fisher first appealed to the president as a businessman, saying Trump should know that his company would do the work for less money than other companies, get it completed faster, and throw in access roads and other additions.

He went on to describe his company as “the first responder” of the industry, appealing to Trump’s well-known obsession with police officers and firefighters.

And he also tried to link the bid to one of Trump’s notable construction successes, the renovation of the Wollman Rink in Central Park in the 1980s. “I think he’ll understand,” Fisher argued, “just like the Central Park deal with the ice skating rink, if you need it done now, nothing against government bureaucracy, but it takes time, so you need an expert to come in there and do it now and do it right.”

Earhardt ended the interview by giving Trump another reason to prefer Fisher: “You might be able to build it just in time for that election, too.”

And Fox’s promotion of Fisher’s bid has not been limited to the network’s supposed “opinion” shows. On April 19, the network’s flagship “news” broadcast, Special Report, ran a packaged report that essentially served as an infomercial for Fisher’s proposal. Introduced by anchor Bret Baier and reported by national correspondent William La Jeunesse, the segment featured an interview with Fisher and credulously repeated his claims that he could construct the wall “faster, better, and cheaper."

[vid]

All of this laudatory coverage has had Fisher’s desired effect, with the president reportedly promoting the company’s bid in meetings with senior military and DHS officials and forcing them to explain “that the president could not just pick a company” to get the contract in defiance of the federal procurement process.

Fisher harnessed the incredible power of Fox’s hold on the president to get much closer than he should have to taxpayer dollars. He won’t be the last to try to do so.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/29/headlines/trump_admin_disbanded_domestic_terror_unit_amid_rising_far_right_violence

latest white nationalist killing comes after the Department of Homeland Security disbanded its domestic terrorism unit last year, reassigning its analysts to other departments. DHS says the threat of “homegrown extremism” has been significantly reduced, but in a review of 50 murders committed by extremists in 2018, the Anti-Defamation League found 49 came at the hands of right-wing extremists, with white supremacists alone accounting for 39 of the murders.

Topics:

Department of Homeland Security

White Supremacy

Racism

Race in America

Hate Groups

basically fired when she told trump he was asking he to do crimes

Kirstjen Nielsen Steps Down as DHS Secretary

miller calling deputies to scream for not being tough enough

https://www.alternet.org/immigration/calling-me-liar-are-fighting-words-democratic-lawmaker-walks-out-dhs-sec-nielsen-after

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trump-ignores-the-law-in-naming-acting-homeland-security-secretary-after-nielsens-resignation/

After Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday, Donald Trump moved swiftly to announce her temporary replacement. But, characteristically for Trump, he ignored what the law says about that.

“I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary,” Trump tweeted. The law, though, says that the deputy secretary would become acting secretary, and, because there’s currently no deputy secretary, the agency’s third-ranking position, the undersecretary for management, would take over. That would be Claire Grady.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jamie Dupree reports that Nielsen’s shift from resigning immediately on April 7 to staying in her role until April 10 is “a move which could give her the ability to help alter the chain of succession inside DHS.” It’s not exactly babies in cages, but it would be appropriate for Nielsen to end her tenure by taking one last chance to help Donald Trump do questionably legal things.

Confirmation hearings for anyone Trump nominates to replace Nielsen are likely to become a major showdown over Trump’s immigration and border policies.

basically fired when she told trump he was asking he to do crimes

Kirstjen Nielsen Steps Down as DHS Secretary

miller calling deputies to scream for not being tough enough

Nielsen’s rehabilitation tour has already begun

DN 11/18 atomwaffen

...A.C. THOMPSON: James Mason was kind of an obscure figure in the neo-Nazi movement. He had been involved with the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell, he had been involved with other neo-Nazi groups but he was not really a main player. Mason’s deal is he says, “Hey, we’re not going to create Nazism, fascism in America through the ballot box. We’re not going to do it through politics. We’re not going to do it through political protest. We’re going to do it through the gun. And the way that we’re going to do this is terrorism, assassination, acts of hyper-violence and just general chaos. We’re going to collapse the system and then we will take charge.”

And that message, which he promulgated in a newsletter called Siege throughout the '80s, has been adopted by this new generation of white supremacists who say, “Yeah, that's what we want to do. That’s the most extreme thing we can do. Let’s do it.” And they have sort of adopted him as their guru, as their intellectual eminence.

AMY GOODMAN: How important are these people? How many are there? And let’s go back, A.C., to when President Obama first came into office, this report on the threat of white supremacy and domestic terrorists that was squelched by right-wing congressmembers who demanded it not be released. Is this what they were tracking?

A.C. THOMPSON: Yeah. This is exactly what they were tracking. I think we should say also it was retracted eventually by the Obama administration. Yeah, that is when thiswhole thing starts ticking up–2008, 2009. You see resistance to the first African American president in this country. You see dissatisfaction from veterans coming home from wars that have been very hard on them, and they’re returning to a disastrous economy and having difficulties fitting in, in some cases. And you see anger about potential gun control legislation.

What has happened since then is all of these things have ticked up, they’ve escalated and now we’re in a much more dangerous place than even Daryl Johnson at DHS was predicting at that time. One of the things that he predicted is he said, “Look, I’m concerned that these returning veterans will get involved with these groups. We have seen it in the past. It may happen again.” And that is exactly what has happened.

...

activ suppress

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/15/vermont_immigrant_rights_group_sues_ice

major new federal lawsuit claims that immigration agents are targeting undocumented organizers for their activism in Vermont. The suit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles of carrying out a multiyear campaign of political retaliation against members of the group Migrant Justice. According to the lawsuit, Migrant Justice was infiltrated by an informant, and its members were repeatedly subjected to electronic surveillance. At least 20 active members of Migrant Justice have been arrested and detained by ICE. We speak with Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based group founded and led by immigrant farmworkers.

NBC News is reporting the Trump administration is ending a program that provides grants to groups fighting domestic terrorism. The Countering Violent Extremism grant program is run by the Department of Homeland Security and was established during the Obama administration. It supports organizations fighting hate groups, including white supremacist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist groups.

FEMA coast guard hurri response diverted to ICE baby jails 13K kids 819

https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone-pipeline-protest-activism-crackdown-standing-rock

will parrish and sam---

no lnx

"Treating protest as terrorism': US plans crackdown on Keystone XL activists

Documents suggest an aggressive response to possible protests against the oil pipeline amid fears of another Standing Rock

Will Parrish and Sam Levin

Thu 20 Sep 2018 04.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 20 Sep 2018 11.39 EDT

Protests at Standing Rock during the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock]

Angeline Cheek is preparing for disaster. The indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation in Montana fears that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline could break and spill, destroy her tribe’s water, and desecrate sacred Native American sites.

But environmental catastrophe is not the most immediate threat.

The government has characterized pipeline opponents like her as “extremists” and violent criminals and warned of potential “terrorism”, according to recently released records.

[Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’

Read more]

The ACLU of Montana, which filed a lawsuit this month against the government seeking Keystone records, earlier obtained a DHS report that said pipeline protesters were engaged in “criminal disruptions and violent incidents”. The report included two past cases of alleged “environmental rights extremists” committing violence.

But the events in question – a 2012 bombing and a 2015 shootout with police – had no clear links to any environmental protests, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice.

“Treating protest as terrorism is highly problematic,” said German, noting that the US government has long labeled activism as “terrorism”, once claiming that filing public records requests was an “extremist” tactic. “It’s an effective way of suppressing protest activity and creating an enormous burden for people who want to go out and express their concerns.”

The “terrorist” and “extremist” labels can be used to justify brutality and a militarized operation, said Andrea Carter, an attorney with the Water Protector Legal Collective, a group that has represented Standing Rock defendants.

They are instant experts on quashing the indigenous insurgency. It’s very, very concerning

Rachel Lederman, civil rights lawyer

“It’s a really egregious tactic,” she said, noting that the labels also lay the groundwork for prosecutors to turn low-level misdemeanor cases into federal felony trials. “A lot of it has to do with public relations.”

The Montana documents have also shone a light on the coordination between governments across state lines, raising questions about how extensively law enforcement was devoting resources to Keystone protests before they had materialized. An email from the Montana fish, wildlife and parks department from earlier this year said state officials had conducted “extensive conversations with North Dakota to learn what worked and what didn’t work” when responding to Dapl demonstrations.

Montana authorities have done further training sessions on harnessing social media and have begun monitoring posts of anti-pipeline activists, a sheriff said at one meeting, according to a local news report.

The records also highlighted the existing relationships between law enforcement and TransCanada. A county sheriff included a TransCanada executive on communications about one law enforcement training. In August 2017, the Montana Petroleum Association, a trade group, also hosted a panel on “environmental activism” in the state, featuring three law enforcement officers alongside TransCanada’s senior security adviser. = FASCISM

Rachel Lederman, a civil rights lawyer representing Standing Rock activists in a civil case, said it was alarming to see that law enforcement from North Dakota was giving advice about future pipeline protests: “They are instant experts on quashing the indigenous insurgency. It’s very, very concerning, because what happened at Standing Rock was just a wholesale violation of civil rights.”

John Barnes, a Montana justice department spokesman, defended the preparation efforts, saying in an email to the Guardian that authorities were committed to protecting “the first amendment rights of everyone while also protecting private property and public safety”. He added: “In North Dakota, bad actors associated with the Dakota Access pipeline protests maliciously targeted public officials and law-enforcement personnel online, and so it is important that people be prepared here.”

A protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters

Some activists said the law enforcement tactics would not deter them from Keystone opposition efforts – whether in court or on the ground.

“We’ve got a lot against us. We’re the underdog,” said Lance Four Star, the Fort Peck Assiniboine council chairman, who recounted a recent incident of harassment and heckling by a pro-pipeline, pro-Trump group while the tribe was doing a ceremony. “I may never see the results of my efforts in my lifetime, but hopefully our grandchildren will. What we’re protecting now is this water we inherited.”

Peck said she was also concerned about a potential increase in violence against indigenous women, stemming from the “man camps” where oil workers live. But the Montana wildlife department appeared to minimize this concern in one of the records, saying, “Although man-camps bring a certain degree of law enforcement challenges, the primary enforcement focus is protest activity.”

Organizers have discussed a “variety of strategies” to oppose construction, including “prayer camps” similar to Standing Rock, said Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member Joye Braun, who organized against Dapl and has been involved in Keystone efforts.

“Clearly, they’re scared of the power of our movement,” she said, adding that she accepted the reality that she may be under surveillance when she travels the pipeline route to meet activists. “We haven’t gone anywhere, and we’re just building momentum.”

Native Americans know the risks are immense. But the “terrorism” label would not intimidate them, said Leoyla Cowboy, the wife of Little Feather, who was recently sentenced to three years in federal prison for “civil disorder” at Standing Rock.

“As indigenous people, it’s embedded in our DNA. It’s our obligation to stand up.”

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Atlantic reported on August 28 that Ian Smith, who had recently worked at DHS as a policy analyst on immigration issues, “had in the past been in contact with a group that included known white nationalists as they planned various events." In one email, Smith said regarding plans for a dinner party, "So it’s settled—we know my home shall remain judenfrei.” As Rosie Gray noted in the Atlantic, "Judenfrei is a German word meaning “free of Jews,” which the Nazis used to describe areas from which Jews had been expelled or killed."

Smith is not just some low-level Nazi who accidentally got hired. Smith attended meetings at the White House and had a large footprint in right-wing media. The Washington Post reported on August 30 that "Smith, a Department of Homeland Security analyst who resigned this week after he was confronted about his ties to white nationalist groups, attended multiple immigration policy meetings at the White House, according to government officials familiar with his work.” Furthermore, “during the period he was in communication with white-supremacist groups, Smith wrote dozens of articles for publications including National Review, The Hill and the Daily Caller. Many of the pieces call for tighter immigration controls.” Mother Jonesreported more on Smith’s media career, writing that he has a “long history of radical anti-immigrant writings.”

In addition, Eric Hananoki found that Smith had donated thousands to Republicans in recent years, including to Trump, Rep. Dave Brat [R-VA], and Kansas secretary of state and gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach.

Trump, Kobach, and Brat all have had prior links to white supremacists as well.

icn 818

...

Protesters Under Surveillance

As activists were fighting the Diamond Pipeline in Oklahoma, Energy Transfer Partners was planning another oil pipeline at the southern end of its network.

The Bayou Bridge pipeline is slated to run from Texas to St. James Parish, Louisiana, already home to many petrochemical facilities. Along the way, it crosses through the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp and a center of the state's crawfish industry.

Environmentalists were alarmed by the risks the project posed to residents of St. James Parish and the swamp's fragile ecosystem. And they quickly felt as if law enforcement agencies were working against them. For one thing, some officials openly supported the project. Joseph Lopinto, now Jefferson Parish sheriff, spoke at a hearing last year on behalf of the National Sheriffs' Association and urged regulators to approve the pipeline.

Anne Rolfes, an organizer of the pipeline resistance and founder of the advocacy group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said activists also suspected they were being watched.

During the protests at Standing Rock, a private security company hired by Energy Transfer Partners had compiled daily intelligence briefings and coordinated with local law enforcement, as detailed in reports by The Intercept.

Rolfes' group this year also obtained a handful of documents through a public records request that indicate state officials were tracking their efforts.

One state police report from November said the agency sent an investigator from its criminal intelligence unit to a hearing where activists had allegedly planned a protest, and that a local sheriff's office planned to send a plainclothes officer. Rolfes said no protest was planned; activists merely intended to speak at a public hearing.

In the following months, an intelligence officer with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness sent two emails to colleagues describing environmental groups' priorities, quoting Rolfes' newsletter and an article about the groups and adding a photograph of her.

Louisiana State Police declined to comment. Mike Steele, a spokesman for the state Homeland Security Department, rejected the notion that his agency spies on activists. He said this type of open-source tracking was similar to what they conduct ahead of football games or festivals. "We do that with any type of event, because safety is the number one concern," he said.

Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel issued a statement saying, "any claims that our company or our security contractors have inappropriately monitored protestors in false." It's unclear what surveillance, if any, the company or its contractors have deployed in Louisiana. Energy Transfer Partners has also been accused of spying by a family in Pennsylvania.

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Rolfes said Louisiana officials are treating activists like criminals. "We're going to be followed while we participate in the democratic process?" she said.

The arrests in August of the three protesters on boats who were detained by off-duty officers only deepened the activists' feelings that the state and energy industry were working against them. While the arresting officers were working as contractors, they wore their state uniforms and badges and carried weapons.

Spees, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the incident represented a problematic melding of public and private authorities. After the industry-supported bill was enacted by the state, she said, state employees acted on behalf of an energy company to detain activists under the new law.

"It's as though they've become the hired hands for private oil companies and pipelines companies," she said.

Activists in Virginia, where two gas pipelines are drawing protests, have also been tracked by that state's Fusion Center—which shares information across agencies to combat terrorism and crime—according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In Washington state, a local sheriff's office has monitored activists opposed to a major pipeline project that connects with Canada's tar sands, sharing information with that state's Fusion Center, documents obtained by The Intercept show. Protest groups there already tried to block tanker traffic associated with the project, and local authorities have conducted trainings to prepare for mass protests.

The nation's intelligence community has a dark history of tracking political movements, including the FBI's COINTELPRO, which snooped on Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Earlier this decade, FBI agents monitored opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, according to The Guardian,yyy and the bureau had at least one informant at Standing Rock.

Even if local law enforcement agencies today are doing little more than collecting news articles and other open source information, covert surveillance risks equating political protest with criminal activity, said Keith Mako Woodhouse, a historian at Northwestern University who wrote a book about radical environmentalists.

"It gives a sense that law enforcement is, if not on the side of, at least more sympathetic to the industries and practices that are being protested," he said. "Presumably they're not surveilling the energy companies."

Pipeline companies have cultivated that relationship. They have reimbursed state law enforcement millions of dollars for providing security for their projects in North Dakota, Iowa and Massachusetts, for example. Most major pipeline companies also run charitable campaigns that have contributed millions of dollars to local emergency responders and other agencies and groups along their routes. The National Sheriff's Association, in turn, supported the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access pipelines while it called protesters"terrorists."

A Worrying Trend

Over the past decade, the sense of urgency around climate change has intensified. Scientists say there is little time before the planet is committed to potentially devastating warming. The only practical way to avoid that is to largely eliminate fossil fuel use over the next several decades.

The government's response has been minimal, "so the next step is civil disobedience," said Woodhouse, the historian. "And if anything, it's surprising that it hasn't happened sooner and at a greater scale."

Woodhouse said efforts to suppress environmental protest trace back to the rise of radical environmental groups in the 1980s and `90s, when public officials slapped names like "eco-terrorism" and "ecological terrorism" on activists who vandalized equipment or animal testing facilities.

Now, Woodhouse said, environmentalists are threatening one of the country's most powerful industries. Some advocates say the new push against activists seems more widespread and unabashed.

"I think there is a very worrying trend—and the trend is on both sides of the political aisle to be perfectly frank and candid—a trend of trying to suppress political speech that you don't agree with," said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

"I think a lot of people feel a lot more threatened than they have in a long time," he said, "and I think that's true on all sides of the political spectrum. And when people feel threatened, they tend to lash out."

a nationally televised incident that "should disturb every single person living in the United States," agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General's Office on Wednesday interrupted an interview with former ICE spokesperson James Schwab, who resigned from his position in March after he was asked to perpetuate lies on behalf of the Trump administration.

"This is intimidation," Schwab told CBS reporter Jamie Yuccas after the agents left his doorstep. "And this is why people won't come out and speak against the government."

Watch:

baby jails

https://www.alternet.org/you-are-lying-period-trump-dhs-secretary-blasted-denying-existence-family-separation-policy

In a "heinous lie" aimed at distorting the historical record and avoiding responsibility for the mass cruelty perpetuated on her watch, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen falsely claimed in a series of tweets late Sunday that the Trump administration does "not have a policy of separating families at the border."

"This misreporting by members [of Congress], press, and advocacy groups must stop. It is irresponsible and unproductive," Nielsen wrote, neglecting to mention data from her own department showing that nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their families in just six weeks due to the Trump adminstration's so-called "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

Lawmakers, activists, and reporters who have persistently highlighted and denouncedthe Trump administration's family separation policy—which was officially unveiled byAttorney General Jeff Sessions in May—were quick to call out Nielsen's blatant lie on Sunday, pointing out that a quick look at her department's website is enough to expose the falsehood.

https://theweek.com/articles/766230/homeland-security-wants-monitor-journalists-time-sound-alarm

Department of Homeland Security intends to list and trackhundreds of thousands of news outlets, journalists, bloggers, and "influencers" in traditional and new media alike. Its plan is to analyze targets' "sentiment," monitor "any and all" coverage of select news stories, and possibly share data with "federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners."

If you find yourself skeptical of this proposal of mass state monitoring of the press, consider yourself a bonafide member of the "tinfoil hat wearing, black helicopter conspiracy theorists," DHS representative Tyler Houlton said Friday. It's all very routine, he argued, casting the project as an innocent means of "monitoring current events." Just shut up and let us do this, crackpots.

Yet I am bareheaded, untroubled by black whirlybirds, and utterly unconvinced.

Consider the practical incongruities. While a database of the sort DHS wants could be used to follow news stories, it isn't necessary for the job. From basic Google News alerts to subscription services none;">document says, an existent public relations service would easily do the trick. The Department of Homeland Security in the Year of Our Lord 2018 is DHS is surely aware media services are available, which raises the question of why it did not elect to use one. If the aim here, as Houlton claims, is "nothing more than the standard practice of monitoring" the news, why not use the standard programs to do it?

The distinction seems to be twofold. First, the DHS database is noticeably personal. It is not content with assessing the general mood on a given news story, or even the editorial stance of an entire outlet. No, the database will list individuals — "journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc." — including not only their contact information, employment, and beat, but "any other information that could be relevant." Any other information. Is it so surprising this plan is anxiety-provoking for those of us who could conceivably be listed?

The second distinction is this is a government list — DHS evidently wants a proprietary database, not the rent-a-list services it could obtain more quickly and cheaply — and government lists do not have a stellar reputation. The terrorist watchlist is exemplary on this point, and reviewing its record of abuse and incompetence takes us nowhere tinfoil territory.

Officially known as the Terrorist Screening Database, the watchlist includes the no-fly list and 10 other lists and screening programs in the Departments of Justice, Defense, Treasury, and Homeland Security. It is a sprawling data monster best known for its failures, and it has explodedfrom fewer than 50,000 entries at the close of the Bush administration to more than 1.8 million people today. Almost 40 percent of those listed have no demonstrable ties to terrorism, and 99 percent of the names suggested for the list are accepted. Evidence as flimsy as a suspicious social media post is enough for inclusion. The removal process is slow, confusing, and secretive.

....

administration to more than 1.8 million people today. Almost 40 percent of those listed have no demonstrable ties to terrorism, and 99 percent of the names suggested for the list are accepted. Evidence as flimsy as a suspicious social media post is enough for inclusion. The removal process is slow, confusing, and secretive.

This is how you end up with list members like actor Mark Ruffalo, former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a 4-year-old boy, a Marine veteran, an Air Force veteran, a "wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar," acquitted people, and dead people. "The watch lists operate like a ratchet: It is beyond easy for a government official to ‘nominate’ someone for listing, yet exceedingly difficult to be removed," explains law professor Ramzi Kassem at The Washington Post. "And the consequences of such highly arbitrary and potentially abusive government action can be devastating."

It is this list-making expertise DHS now seeks to apply to the press, and the potential for abuse both individual and institutional is enormous. Unethical law enforcement agents have used databases to creep on love interests, exes, and others they find sexually interesting. Now, they can add the press to their stalking pool.

At an institutional level, a supply of big data creates its own demand for state action. If this list is created, DHS will want to do something with it, and that something almost certainly won’t be limited to innocuous fare like sending out press releases and keeping up with current events.

Despite its deeply flawed construction and sloppy maintenance, the terrorist watchlist has been pitched as a means of gun control. What opportunities might present themselves to a press-phobic administration once a media list like this is on hand

...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/kamala-harris-blisters-racist-kirstjen-nielsen-fiery-senate-interrogation

Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials since early 2016 that leftist extremists known as “antifa” had become increasingly confrontational and dangerous, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security formally classified their activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents obtained by POLITICO.

Since well before the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, DHS has been issuing warnings about the growing likelihood of lethal violence between the left-wing anarchists and right-wing white supremacist and nationalist groups.

Previously unreported documents disclose that by April 2016, authorities believed that “anarchist extremists” were the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets. They were blamed by authorities for attacks on the police, government and political institutions, along with symbols of “the capitalist system,” racism, social injustice and fascism, according to a confidential 2016 joint intelligence assessment by DHS and the FBI.

After President Donald Trump’s election in November, the antifa activists locked onto another target — his supporters, especially those from white supremacist and nationalist groups suddenly turning out in droves to hail his victory, support crackdowns on immigrants and Muslims and to protest efforts to remove symbols of the Confederacy.

Those reports appear to bolster Trump’s insistence that extremists on the left bore some blame for the clashes in Charlottesville and represent a “problem” nationally. But they also reflect the extent that his own political movement has spurred the violent backlash.

In interviews, law enforcement authorities made clear that Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and policies — first as a candidate and then as president — helped to create a situation that has escalated so quickly and extensively that they do not have a handle on it.

“It was in that period [as the Trump campaign emerged] that we really became aware of them,” said one senior law enforcement official tracking domestic extremists in a state that has become a front line in clashes between the groups. “These antifa guys were showing up with weapons, shields and bike helmets and just beating the shit out of people. … They’re using Molotov cocktails, they’re starting fires, they’re throwing bombs and smashing windows.”

Almost immediately, the right-wing targets of the antifa attacks began fighting back, bringing more and larger weapons and launching unprovoked attacks of their own, the documents and interviews show. And the extremists on both sides have been using the confrontations, especially since Charlottesville, to recruit unprecedented numbers of new members, raise money and threaten more confrontations, they say.

“Everybody is wondering, 'What are we gonna do? How are we gonna deal with this?'” said the senior state law enforcement official. “Every time they have one of these protests where both sides are bringing guns, there are sphincters tightening in my world. Emotions get high, and fingers get twitchy on the trigger.”

Even before Charlottesville, dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of people on both sides showed up at events in Texas, California, Oregon and elsewhere, carrying weapons and looking for a fight. In the Texas capital of Austin, armed antifa protesters attacked Trump supporters and white groups at several recent rallies, and then swarmed police in a successful effort to stop them from making arrests.

California has become another battleground, with violent confrontations in Berkeley, Sacramento and Orange County leading to numerous injuries. And antifa counter-protesters initiated attacks in two previous clashes in Charlottesville, according to the law enforcement reports and interviews.

By JACQUELINE KLIMAS and WESLEY MORGAN

Rallies are scheduled over the next few months across the country, including in Texas, Oregon, Missouri and Florida. Authorities are particularly concerned about those in states where virtually anyone, including activists under investigation for instigating violence, can brandish assault rifles in public.

Tensions have gotten so heated that after activists traded accusations after Charlottesville, a rumor circulated online that antifa would try and shut down the massive Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally because there were too many Confederate flags and Trump signs. It wasn’t true, but it prompted an outpouring of pleas by attendees for anti-fascists to come so they could assault them. One displayed a “Sturgis Survival Kit” for potential antifa protesters, complete with a tourniquet, morphine, body cast and defibrillator.

“Both the racists and a segment of violent antifa counter-protestors are amped for battle in an escalating arms race, where police departments are outmaneuvered, resulting in increasingly violent dangerous confrontations,” said former New York City police officer Brian Levin, who has been monitoring domestic militants for 31 years, now at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “It’s an orchestrated dance. The rallies spill over into social media and then even more people show up at the next rally primed for violent confrontation.”

In recent decades, authorities have focused almost exclusively on right-wing groups as the most likely instigators of domestic terrorist violence, especially since Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

More recently, the antifa groups, which some describe as the Anti-Fascist Action Network, have evolved out of the leftist anti-government groups like “Black bloc,” protesters clad in black and wearing masks that caused violence at events like the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests. They claim to have no leader and no hierarchy, but authorities following them believe they are organized via decentralized networks of cells that coordinate with each other. Often, they spend weeks planning for violence at upcoming events, according to the April 2016 DHS and FBI report entitled “Baseline Comparison of US and Foreign Anarchist Extremist Movements.”

Protesters in black, associated with Antifa, beat a man with a pole and shield during a "No-To-Marxism" rally Aug. 27 in Berkeley, California.

Protesters in black, associated with Antifa, beat a man with a pole and shield during a "No-To-Marxism" rally Aug. 27 in Berkeley, California. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Dozens of armed anti-fascist groups have emerged, including Redneck Revolt and the Red Guards, according to the reports and interviews. One report from New Jersey authorities said self-described antifa groups have been established in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.

Some of the DHS and FBI intelligence reports began flagging the antifa protesters before the election. In one from last September, portions of which were read to POLITICO, DHS studied “recent violent clashes … at lawfully organized white supremacist” events including a June 2016 rally at the California Capitol in Sacramento organized by the Traditionalist Workers Party and its affiliate, the Golden State Skinheads.

According to police, counter-protesters linked to antifa and affiliated groups like By Any Means Necessary attacked, causing a riot after which at least 10 people were hospitalized, some with stab wounds.

At the Sacramento rally, antifa protesters came looking for violence, and “engaged in several activities indicating proficiency in pre-operational planning, to include organizing carpools to travel from different locations, raising bail money in preparation for arrests, counter-surveilling law enforcement using three-man scout teams, using handheld radios for communication, and coordinating the event via social media,” the DHS report said.

The intelligence assessments focus less on guns than handmade weapons used by antifa, with photos of members brandishing ax handles and shields, often with industrial-sized bolts attached to create crude bayonets. A senior state law enforcement official said, “A whole bunch of them” have been deemed dangerous enough to be placed on U.S. terrorism watch lists.

The FBI and DHS had no comment on that, or on any aspect of the assessments, saying they were not intended to be made public.

By the spring of 2016, the anarchist groups had become so aggressive, including making armed attacks on individuals and small groups of perceived enemies, that federal officials launched a global investigation with the help of the U.S. intelligence community, according to the DHS and FBI assessment.

The purpose of the investigation, according to the April 2016 assessment: To determine whether the U.S.-based anarchists might start committing terrorist bombings like their counterparts in “foreign anarchist extremist movements” in Greece, Italy and Mexico, possibly at the Republican and Democratic conventions that summer.

Some of the antifa activists have gone overseas to train and fight with fellow anarchist organizations, including two Turkey-based groups fighting the Islamic State, according to interviews and internet postings.

In their April 2016 assessment, the DHS and FBI said the anarchist groups would likely become more lethal if “fascist, nationalist, racist or anti-immigrant parties obtain greater prominence or local political power in the United States, leading to anti-racist violent backlash from anarchist extremists.”

The assessment also said the anarchist groups could become more aggressive if they seek to “retaliate violently to a violent act by a white supremacist extremist or group,” they acquire more powerful weapons or they obtain the financial means to travel abroad and learn more violent tactics.

Several state law enforcement officials said that all of those accelerating factors have come to pass. And recent FBI and DHS reports confirm they are actively monitoring “conduct deemed potentially suspicious and indicative of terrorist activity” by antifa groups.

But one of the internal assessments acknowledged several significant “intelligence gaps,” including an inability to penetrate the groups’ “diffuse and decentralized organizational structure,” which made it difficult for law enforcement to identify violent groups and individuals. Authorities also “lack information to identify the travel patterns linking U.S. and foreign anarchist extremists,” the assessment said.

The two agencies also said in their April 2016 assessment that many of the activities the groups engaged in “are not within the purview of FBI and DHS collection” due to civil liberties and privacy protections, including participating in training camps, holding meetings and communicating online.

In another assessment this past August, DHS warned about the potential for unprecedented violence at Charlottesville. The agency also acknowledged gaps in its understanding of antifa, saying it had only “medium confidence” in its assessments regarding both the affiliations among the various groups and the motivation of attackers.

Said one senior New Jersey law enforcement official following the antifa groups: “There’s a lot more we don’t know about these groups than what we do know about them.”

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-10-25/ice-seeks-to-reopen-private-prisons-shuttered-by-justice-department

http://www.propublica.org/article/library-support-anonymous-internet-browsing-effort-stops-after-dhs-email

immigr moms in solitary for hunger strike, w/ kids; paid 3$/day, ice cream is 350, color bedspread syndrome kpfa 4/17

For the second time this spring, mothers held in a southern Texas privately-run immigrant detention center with their children have staged a hunger strike and work stoppage to protest their inhumane conditions of confinement and demand immediate release for themselves and their families.

Ten mothers detained at Karnes Detention Camp began the peaceful protest on Tuesday, vowing to eat only one meal per day until their demands are met, Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy director for the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Raices), told Common Dreams Wednesday morning.

The women's demands echo those issued by dozens of mothers who staged a similar peaceful protest at the facility in late March and early April to coincide with the Easter holiday.

The hunger strike launched on Tuesday aims high in the chain of command, calling forImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Sarah Saldaña to reverse course from the Obama administration's controversial policy of detaining families seeking asylum, and instead, grant the strikers parole and release.

The women say the situation is urgent.

They report harrowing conditions at the prison, which has a capacity of 532 but is slated to expand to more than double its current beds. People held there are compensated just $3 a day for working to run the facility, denied their rights to meet with legal aid workers, forced to drink water contaminated by fracking waste, and their children are suffering ill health and psychological effects related to their incarceration, according to a letter sent toColorlines.

Women have alleged sexual abuse and assault from prison guards and staff, prompting community protests outside the facility.

Abdollahi, who is involved in direct support, compared the facility to an internment camp: "The conditions are absolutely horrendous. Parents are not allowed to be parents, to decide what their kids eat, how many times their diapers have changed. They have to ask permission for milk to nurse their children with."

These conditions are "very harmful and detrimental," Abdollahi added, because a majority of people in the prison are fleeing violence.

Delmi Cruz is a 37-year-old mother and asylum-seeker from Honduras who has been detained at the facility with her 11-year-old son for over six months. "It’s very hard here, the food isn’t adequate, it’s awful, horrible...the children who eat it become sick," Cruz toldthe Guardian, according to an article published Tuesday. "My son has horrible stomach pain and is still very sick."

Cruz is participating in the hunger strike despite what she described as retaliation from guards for her part in the earlier protest, when she was placed in the medical unit's solitary confinement along with her son.

Abdollahi said there are signs this punishment is beginning again: "Cruz called us frightened on Tuesday, saying that women are being called to medical and there has been retaliation."

Bob Libal, executive director of the advocacy organization Grassroots Leadership, toldCommon Dreams that the women on hunger strike are victims of the Obama administration's harsh policies towards people who seek asylum in the United States.

"Between 2009 and 2014, the policy was not to detain asylum-seeking families," said Libal. "This was after a very controversial policy during the Bush administration of locking up families. Many groups were involved in organizing and legislative efforts to end the practice of detaining families, and in 2009, the Obama administration said it was ending this practice."

"However," Libal added, "last summer after the increase in the number of refugee kids made the news, the administration reversed course."

Amid this political climate, the Karnes facility was opened by ICE last summer under orders from the Department of Homeland Security to detain asylum-seekers at the border, rather than grant them bond.

GEO Group, the private company that runs the prison, has faced numerous accusations of abuse, medical neglect, violence, and civil rights violations, including hundreds of lawsuits, at its prisons and mental health facilities around the world. A report released on Wednesday by Grassroots Leadership reveals that GEO Group, along with other private prison corporations, has aggressively lobbied for harsher immigration policies.

Outside the Karnes prison, people across the country are mobilizing to defend the people impacted by these policies.

Supporters of the hunger strike are making phone calls to ICE, signing petitions, and even planning solidarity vigils and fasts, said Abdollahi, adding, "These women are desperate to get out."

Keystone XL Activists Labeled Possible Eco-Terrorists in Internal TransCanada Documents

By Steve Horn

Documents recently obtained by Bold Nebraska show that TransCanada - owner of the hotly-contested Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline - has colluded with an FBI/DHS Fusion Center in Nebraska, labeling non-violent activists as possible candidates for "terrorism" charges and other serious criminal charges.

Further, the language in some of the documents is so vague that it could also ensnare journalists, researchers and academics, as well.

TransCanada also built a roster of names and photos of specific individuals involved in organizing against the pipeline, including 350.org's Rae Breaux, Rainforest Action Network's Scott Parkin and Tar Sands Blockade's Ron Seifert. Further, every activist ever arrested protesting the pipeline's southern half is listed by name with their respective photo shown, along with the date of arrest.

spooky biz spy on occupy

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Today, there’s nothing alien about that most un-American of terms. It has slipped so smoothly into our lives that “Homeland” is the name of a popular TV show, and college students looking for a good livelihood can now get a BA or an MA coast to coast in... yep, homeland security. (“You can build a career helping to protect our nation by earning your Bachelor of Science Degree in Homeland and Corporate Security at St. John’s University.”) And if you happen to be into securing the homeland, you can even join the “corporate and homeland security club” on campus. After college, given the money pouring into the “field,” the sky’s the limit.

Perhaps Booz Allen will hire you to consult for firms on -- you guessed it -- homeland security. (“Booz Allen is able to serve the Department of Homeland Security and our other clients because we make their mission our mission. We therefore understand what is needed to react quickly to rapidly changing events.”) Or perhaps you’ll be taken on by the Homeland Security Research Corporation in Washington to provide “premium market, technology, and industry expertise that enables our global clients to gain critical insight into the business opportunities that exist within the Homeland Security & Homeland Defense market. Government clients include the US, UK, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Canada, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Finland, and Singapore. US Congress, DHS, US Army, US Navy, DOD, DOT, GAO, NATO, and the EU are among others. HSRC serves over 600 private sector clients, including all major defense contractors and many Fortune 500 companies.”

Or what about the Chertoff Group, headed by Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Ashcroft Group, headed by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, or for that matter Good Harbor Security Management, led by former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke.

And that only scratches the surface. By 2006, only three years after the Department of Homeland Security had been set up, the New York Times was already reporting that “at least 90 officials” who worked there or at the White House office that preceded it had zipped through the revolving door into the private sector and were “executives, consultants, or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.”

What makes all of this remarkable is how quietly, how easily, how securely that most alien of words and the organization that goes with it have entered American life (and changed it). Which is why, thanks to TomDispatch regulars Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman from the invaluable National Priorities Project, this website is doing something rare these days: putting a spotlight on that modern cash cow and giant boondoggle lurking in the shadows of our world, the Department of Homeland Security. Tom

“Homeland Security”

The Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define

By Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman

http://www.t

Biometric databases.

Federal agencies ranging from the DoD to the FBI to the DHS are revamping their databases [8] to include iris scans, voice patterning, measures of gait, face recognition, and records of scars and tattoos. They also have a mandate to indiscriminately share this information between agencies and with unnamed foreign entities.

See more stories tagged with:

surveillance [9],

mannequin [10],

creepy

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/5-unbelievably-creepy-surveillance-tactics

CIR: oct 2 The nation’s vast network of anti-terrorism “fusion centers” for law enforcement have produced shoddy, untimely and often useless intelligence reports that have done little to keep the U.S. safer, a scathing U.S. Senate report concludes.

The 141-page report, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, identified problems with nearly every significant aspect of the Department of Homeland Security’s more than 70 fusion centers, which were designed for law enforcement to coordinate their intelligence gathering.

The report marks one of the most blistering indictments to date of the Department of Homeland Security’s domestic intelligence operation. The department, investigators conclude, “has not attempted to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the value federal taxpayers have received for that investment.”

Fusion centers were created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as the best way to get local, state and federal officials to share terrorism-related information, speak with each other and “connect the dots” of terrorist plots before they happened.

Many of the conclusions in the new U.S. Senate Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee probe mirror a CIR report last year on the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence and analysis office, which supports the fusion centers. The report found that intelligence and analysis often produced "intelligence spam" that relied on stale information and provided little valuable analysis, and which was widely ignored by federal counterterrorism officials.

In the rush to stand-up the department’s intelligence arm, the short-staffed office relied heavily on contractors, such as Booz Allen Hamilton and General Dynamics, which reaped millions of federal dollars.

In the new Senate report, investigators found that with the lack of oversight, fusion centers spent money wildly, including a San Diego fusion center that bought 55 flat-screen televisions at a cost of $75,000 to watch the news and display calendars.

Some fusion centers only exist on paper. For instance, taxpayers have shelled out millions of dollars in federal grants for a planned Philadelphia fusion center, but Department of Homeland Security dollars for it have since been frozen, and as of August this year, "the center still did not physically exist," according to the report.

All told, Homeland Security officials couldn’t account accurately for how much money has been spent on fusion centers, offering an estimate that ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion, a billion-dollar swing.

maddow bk

http://www.alternet.org/world/154836/Rachel_Maddow%3A_How_America%27s_Security-Industrial_Complex_Went_Insane_/?page=entire

Rendell and Ridge: From "Militant" Labelers to Terrorist Enable

In the fall of 2010, while Ed Rendell was Governor and Tom Ridge was Strategic Advisor of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the media discovered that Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security (DHS) was monitoring and filing intelligence reports on citizens speaking out against the then nascent shale gas industry's presence in the Marcellus Shale basin. http://marcelluscoalition.org/ In one bulletin, PA Homeland Security refers to "militants" and "environmental extremists" who dare to question the fossil fuel industry's practices.

That incident came and went, with many believing it was an isolated incident. It wasn't. Far from it, in fact.

PSYOPs, Insurgents, and "Eco-Terrorists" in the Marcellus and Eagle Ford

The industry was again caught red-handed in the fall of 2011 when DeSmogBlog, with the help of Earthworks' activist Sharon Wilson, uncovered a bombshell story.

The short version: at an October 2011 Houston, TX conference for shale gas industry public relations professionals, PR flacks for gas industry corporations Range Resources and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation revealed that they utilize psychological warfare tactics on concerned stakeholders in the areas in which they are fracking, and that they see themselves fighting a counterinsurgency war against these stakeholders, who in this fight are viewed as "an insurgency."

Then in February, The Public Herald reported that, during an August 2011 team reporting trip at Tioga State Forest in Troy, PA, some of its journalists were accused by Seneca Resources truck drivers as being "trespassing eco-terrorists." That's ironic given that Tioga is a public park operated by PA's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Seneca proceded to threaten to detain these journalists without legal authority to do so and also attempted to seize the camera of The Herald's reporting crew.

The Herald stated in response,

"To be labeled as, or even associated with, an ecoterrorist is no small thing…Clearly, a need for government to protect the people within the United States from real acts of aggression or violence has been usurped by private interests when journalists, or the public, can be so easily labeled as 'ecoterrorists.'"

There's more. On February 28, The Washington Post reported that the FBI is labeling anti-fracking activists in Texas' Eagle Ford shale basin, in the city of Denton, TX, as "eco-terrorists."

"Even as environmental and animal rights extremism in the United States is on the wane, officials at the federal, state and local level are continuing to target groups they have labeled a threat to national security, according to interviews with numerous activists, internal FBI documents and a survey of legislative initiatives across the country," wrote The Post.

The Hypocrisy Reeks

An insurgent, by definition in U.S. lexicon, is another name for a "terrorist."

While citizens concerned about the impacts from fracking and reckless gas industry practices are being labeled "eco-terrorists" and "an insurgengy," those responsible, directly or indirectly for having them labeled as such, are shilling on behalf of a State Department-designated terrorist organization.

The hypocrisy here reeks any way you slice it.

steve horn

http://www.nationofchange.org/rendell-and-ridge-militant-labelers-terrorist-enablers-1335453791