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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see FBI main and COINTELPRO for pre- 7/17 info</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">prolly neglected</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see maralago
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1219 bak
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 8 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a </font><span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">seasoned Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence officer told the United States Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered by his superiors to "stop investigating Rudy Giuliani and to cut off contact with any sources who reported on corruption by associates of former President Donald Trump,"</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> according to a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23903968/wed-redact.pdf" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">whistleblower complaint</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">that was</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">exclusively obtained</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">by</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">Business Insider</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">'s Mattathias Schwartz.</span></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in Russia-focussed counter-intelligence, claims in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in 'a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering' aimed at protecting 'certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents' who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs," Schwartz writes. "Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included 'anyone in the [Trump] White House and any former or current associates of President Trump.'"</span></p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Schwartz explains that the employee's account was "apparently leaked and posted in mid-July to a Substack newsletter. <em>Insider</em> has independently obtained a copy of the complaint and verified its authenticity, but has not corroborated all of its claims."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/theyre-coming-for-everyone/" target="self" title="view post: 'They’re coming for everyone': Looming Georgia indictments send Trump allies running for cover" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">'They’re coming for everyone': Looming Georgia indictments send Trump allies running for cover</a></strong><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/license/1438263772?adppopup=true" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/license/1438263742?adppopup=true" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The unnamed individual said in an interview with Insider that he was motivated by the desire to "policymakers accountable, whether they're on the left or the right." <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">According to Schwartz</a>, the whistleblower felt the FBI was at "a decision point" and wondered, "Are we going to do public corruption or not?"</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Schwartz continues, "The whistleblower told Insider that he was finally ordered to stop investigating Giuliani and the rest of the Trump White House in August 2022, after months of what he says <b>were persistent efforts to frustrate his work, </b>at a meeting with three FBI supervisors at a bureau field office. Insider was able to confirm the agent's account of the meeting with a second source with knowledge of what took place."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Schwartz notes that "the directions he received included a strict prohibition on filing intelligence reports relating to Giuliani or any other Trump associate" during an August 2022 meeting where he was fed "performance issues and concerns" despite having "eight consecutive years of "excellent" or "outstanding" work.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"In one case, the statement says, the agent developed information from confidential informants that Giuliani had allegedly done paid work for Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian oligarch and 'asset of the Russian intelligence services.' (That charge was <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/putin-russia-ukraine-invasion-nazi-operation-1325817/" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">previously reported</a> by Rolling Stone.) The whistleblower also looked into claims that Giuliani had fraudulently raised money from investors to produce a never-completed film about Joe Biden in the months before the 2020 election," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Schwartz explains</a>. "The agent's reporting on Giuliani wasn't received well in the bureau's New York field office</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, his statement says. 'In the midst of my reporting involving Giuliani, which had previously been identified by my supervisor as 'high impact,' my management told me they received a call from a supervisor in [the New York field office], who they did not identify,' the statement says. 'This supervisor had taken issue with my reporting.'"</span></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bad an 3 23</font></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Legal experts are blasting the Federal Bureau of Investigation after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/fbi-dispute-trump-mar-a-lago-raid/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a bombshell Washington Post exclusive report</a> reveals some FBI agents were “afraid” to raid Mar-a-Lago and some wanted to simply shut down the criminal investigation, delaying for months the retrieval of classified documents that <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Donald+Trump" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Donald Trump</strong></a> had unlawfully retained and refusal to return.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year,” The Post reports.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute,” and the “FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/trump-nuclear-documents/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a document describing</a> a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/02/buttigieg-goes-on-offense-as-republicans-attack/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Buttigieg Goes On Offense as Republicans Attack</a></strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Two senior FBI officials wanted to ask Trump’s permission to go to Mar-a-Lago to search </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">the ex-president’s resort and residence, despite having video evidence that appeared to show a trove of presidential documents being moved from a storage room after Trump was directed to return the items, including classified documents, that had been taken from the White House.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Foreign policy and intelligence expert <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/author/sipherjohn/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">John Sipher</a>, who spent 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said in response to the Post’s report, “Trump bullying worked.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Noted national security attorney Brad Moss, a frequent political commentator, <a href="https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1630932842732572674" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">observed</a>: “This extensive piece once again makes clear a simple fact: the FBI, traumatized from the Trump era assaults on it, treated Trump with kid gloves.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/02/federal-agencies-knew-of-several-jan-6-threats-against-democrats-says-government-watchdog/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Federal Agencies Knew of Several Jan. 6 Threats Against Democrats Says Government Watchdog</a>
</strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Criminal law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick <a href="https://twitter.com/CBHessick/status/1630897432706908162" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said</a> The Post’s story “confirms not only that the FBI is applying different (and more favorable) standards to Trump’s potentially criminal behavior, but also that this deference can be traced in part to Trump’s repeated attacks against the FBI.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman, who runs the paper’s “True Crime” blog, <a href="https://twitter.com/TomJackmanWP/status/1630933071095537664" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted</a>, “Timid and conservative FBI agents did not want to search Mar-a-Lago for classified docs, led by DC SAC Steven D’Antuono, who said ‘We’re not the presidential records police.'”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">USA Today opinion columnist Michael J. Stern <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelJStern1/status/1630912252806152194" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">observed</a>, “Trump keeps getting away with it because law enforcement keeps letting him.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Attorney, legal and national security analyst, and former FBI special agent Asha Marie Rangappa leveled perhaps the <a href="https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa/status/1630929226093191168" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">heaviest criticism</a>: “The FBI has a problem, and it’s coming from inside the house.”</p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="line-height: 16px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="line-height: 16px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">prompted by?  bb 3 23</font></p><p style="font-family: " libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" color="color" rgb="rgb">Darn the FBI, it's "always focused on the wrong thing." At least that's what Kellyanne Conway told us on Fox "News" this morning. (See <a href="https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1630966270605533184?cxt=HHwWgICxgdLLraItAAAA" style="font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: none;">video</a> below, posted by <a href="https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP" style="font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: none;">Republican Accountability Project</a>.)</p><p style="font-family: " libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" color="color" rgb="rgb">For instance, as the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kellyanne-conway-blasts-supporters-of-background-checks-884818/" style="font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: none;">avid gun defender</a> pointed out, the FBI keeps investigating those silly school shootings. And then there's the Jan. 6 riots they keep wasting their time on, as if a Capitol insurrection needs so much attention.</p><p style="font-family: " libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" color="color" rgb="rgb">"It's all been Jan. 6, Jan. 6 and the FBI," she griped. "It's all been school shootings and the FBI." The former Trump spokesliar then suggested the FBI get their act together and focus on China instead – because of course investigating foreign affairs is what the FBI is supposed to do.</p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/malcolm-x/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/malcolm-x/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx vid</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Late cop alleges in shocking letter that the FBI and NYPD conspired to assassinate Malcolm X</div><div>
</div><div>Malcolm X’s daughter on her father’s legacy and the new series 'Who Killed Malcolm X?' pix]</div><div>
</div><div> Lauren Floyd and Daily Kos February 22, 2021</div><div>   </div><div>
</div><div>Civil rights activist Malcolm X died on Feb. 21, 1965, 56 years ago, and decades after his death an undercover cop still didn't feel safe to reveal details of the assassination plot that left the late spokesman for the Nation of Islam shot to death at 39-years-old inside Harlem's Audubon Ballroom. Raymond Wood alleged in a letter he ensured was read after his death that <b>both the FBI and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, according to statements made during a news conference on Saturday. Reggie Wood, a relative of the late cop, read Raymond Wood's letter during that news conference and explained that it was written to his father.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I participated in actions that in hindsight were deplorable and detrimental to the advancement of my own Black people," Raymond Wood reportedly wrote in the letter dated Jan. 25, 2011. "My actions on behalf of the New York City Police Department [BOSSI] were done under duress and fear that if I did not follow the orders of my handlers I could face detrimental consequences."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Raymond said in the letter that because his health was declining, he feared that the family of Thomas Johnson, one of the men wrongfully convicted of Malcolm X's murder, wouldn't be able to clear his name in the event of Raymond's death. Johnson died in 2009, Spectrum News reported. <b>Raymond said in the letter that he was hired on April 17, 1964 and assigned to the Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI) unit. It was a team Raymond wrote he wasn't trained to join but the organization's purpose for him was "to infiltrate civil rights organizations" and "find evidence of criminal activity, so the FBI could discredit and arrest its leaders.</b>"</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"After witnesssing repeated brutality at the hands of my coworkers [Police], I tried to resign," Raymond wrote. "Instead I was threatened with arrest by pinning marijuana and alcohol trafficking charges on me if I did not follow through with the assignments."</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He said his handlers told him "to encourage leaders and members of civil rights groups to commit felonious acts." Those members included Walter Bowe and Khaleel Sayyed, members of Malcolm X's security detail who Raymond allegedly convinced to attempt a bombing of the Statue of Liberty. "On February 16, 1965 The Statue of Liberty plot was carried out and the men were arrested just days before the assassination of Malcolm," Raymond wrote. "At that time I was not aware that Malcolm X was the target." Raymond said in the letter that he was ordered to be in the Audubon Ballroom the day of Malcolm's death and witnesses saw him leaving the scene. "Thomas Johnson was later arrested and wrongfully convicted to protect my cover and the secrets of the FBI and NYPD," Raymond wrote. "I have placed my full confession into the care of my cousin Reginald Wood Jr.</span></div><div>
</div><div>"I have requested that this information be held until after I have passed away," Raymond added. "It is my hope, that this information is received with the understanding that I have carried these secrets with a heavy heart and remorsefully regret my participation in this matter."</div><div>
</div><div>Both civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter, called for an investigation into the new evidence during the news conference. "Any evidence that provides greater insight into the truth behind that terrible tragedy should be thoroughly investigated," Shabazz said.</div><div>
</div><div><b>"Several months ago, the Manhattan District Attorney initiated a review of the investigation and prosecution that resulted in two convictions for the murder of Malcolm X,"</b> the NYPD said in a statement Spectrum News obtained. "The NYPD has provided all available records relevant to that case to the District Attorney. The Department remains committed to assist with that review in any way."</div><div>
</div><div>Reggie Wood said during the news conference that Raymond's letter helped him understand "the pain and guilt" Raymond felt. "I hope that this information helps the Shabazz family, excuse me, to more clearly understand what happened to their father on that horrible day," Reggie Wood said. "As a Black man, I am disgusted to know that what happened 60 years ago is still going on today. We are living under (former director of the FBI) J. Edgar Hoover's Jim Crow system of policing our Black and brown people."</div><div>
</div><div>View the full news conference below:</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/fbi-memo-warns-of-far-right-violence-to-come-during-post-election-flashpoint/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/fbi-memo-warns-of-far-right-violence-to-come-during-post-election-flashpoint/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>o<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ne day after President Donald Trump urged his supporters to</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/30/behavior-desperate-man-trump-denounced-calling-supporters-engage-voter-intimidation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">engage in voter intimidation </a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">during the general election and</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/29/fascism-our-door-asked-condemn-white-supremacist-groups-trump-tells-them-stand" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">called on</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">the violent white supremacist group Proud Boys to "stand by" rather than "stand down,"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><em>The Nation</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/white-supremacist-boogaloo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">that the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> FBI is preparing for a "violent extremist threat" posed by a far-right, anti-government militia whose members have advocated for a "race war."</span></b></font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Identifying the loosely-organized group known as the "Boogaloos" as the specific threat, the FBI's Dallas field office prepared an<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/478202738/Boogaloo-Adherents-Likely-Increasing-Anti-Government-Violent-Rhetoric-and-Activities#download&from_embed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> intelligence report</a> on Tuesday—the day of the first presidential debate—titling the document, "Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Known for wearing Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues and carrying weapons to rallies, "Boogaloos" </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/boogaloo-boys-movement-who-are-they-what-do-they-believe" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reportedly</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> intend to bring about a second American Civil War, which some adherents </span><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/white-supremacist-boogaloo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">believe </a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">will be a "race war."</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In one high-profile case against a Boogaloo proponent, Steven Carrillo was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/steven-carrillo-california-officers-deaths-suspect-boogaloos/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">accused</a> this year of <b>killing two law enforcement officers with the aim of "provoking retaliation from the police against the demonstrators" at a Black Lives Matter rally.</b></span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Boogaloo movement has also had a <a href="https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/virus-restrictions-fuel-anti-government-boogaloo-movement" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">strong presence</a> at protests against Covid-19 restrictions, where many adherents were armed.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">With Trump repeatedly stoking the perception among his supporters that—despite the fact that he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/us-election-polls-tracker-swing-states-joe-biden-donald-trump" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">trails </a>Democratic candidate Joe Biden in several swing state polls—the only legitimate election will be one that he wins and that mail-in ballots will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/mail-in-voting-explained.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">result in a rigged election</a>, the FBI believes Election Day could be a "potential flashpoint" in an escalation of the Boogaloos' violent activities over the next three months, leading up to Inauguration Day in January 2021.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Boogaloo adherents likely will expand influence within the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility] due to the presence of existing anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, the sentiment of <b>perceived government overreach, </b>heightened tensions due to Covid-19-related state and local restrictions, and violence or criminal activity at lawful protests as a result of the death of an African American USPER [US person] in Minneapolis, factors that led to violence at otherwise peaceful and lawful protests in the FBI Dallas AOR," the<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/478202738/Boogaloo-Adherents-Likely-Increasing-Anti-Government-Violent-Rhetoric-and-Activities#download&from_embed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> report </a>reads.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Indicators that this assessment is correct include increased violent social media posts of boogaloo adherents and increased 'patrolling' or attendance at events that are anti-law enforcement, anti-government, or anti-authority,</b>" the Dallas field office continues.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On social media, journalist Medhi Hasan </span><a href="https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1311474545224830981" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">called</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> the report "a huge story."</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <em>Nation</em> reporter Ken Klippenstein, who wrote about the FBI's warning for the outlet, urged federal law enforcement agents to share more information about their concerns regarding the election and potential violence by white supremacist groups.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ef9c4f162b28ce3b0d403c313df4db05" id="78d94" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-twitter-tweet-id="1311463199192084482" data-twitter-extracted-i1601658634707470186="true" style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);"><div style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you're federal law enforcement, please text me at 202-510-1268 (use Signal). I know you guys are a lot more wo… https://t.co/UH4KwCa79I</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Ken Klippenstein (@Ken Klippenstein)<a href="https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/statuses/1311463199192084482" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">1601512167.0</a></font></blockquote></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As<em> Common Dreams</em><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/30/proud-boys-celebrate-trump-shout-out-warnings-grow-president-inciting-violence" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> reported</a> Wednesday, members of the Proud Boys celebrated the president's refusal to denounce white supremacy at the debate.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group's reaction was "a perfect example of how Trump's voter fraud disinformation and emboldened white supremacists and other violent extremists are a recipe for disaster this fall," <a href="https://twitter.com/amyspitalnick/status/1311396782153310209" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted </a>Amy Spitalnick of the anti-racist group Integrity First for America.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/09/10/fbi-sting-boogaloo-hamas/">https://theintercept.com/2020/09/10/fbi-sting-boogaloo-hamas/</a></font></div><div>
</div><div>...<span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;">The Boojahideen case did something rare: Over the years, the FBI usually uses foreign terror plots to coax would-be adherents of these foreign groups, whereas in the Boojahideen case, the FBI linked up domestic extremists with a foreign terror group. Under the Justice Department’s normal modus operandi — using something of a</span><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/domestic-terrorism-fbi-prosecutions/" style="font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; color: rgb(102, 83, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">double standard</a><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;">— right-wing domestic terrorists do not face terrorism charges.</span></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-size: 20px;">Still, the use of stings involving foreign-terror plots is still unsettling to some law enforcement and rights experts. Human Rights Watch has <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/21/us-terrorism-prosecutions-often-illusion" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; color: rgb(102, 83, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">critized these stings</a> for often targeting “those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent.” The FBI has long defended its practices by saying that stings allow federal law enforcement to find would-be terrorists before real terrorist groups have the opportunity, but, as in the Boojahideen case, the threats often seem to be concocted by the FBI out of whole cloth in order to initiate charges.[ex fbi at brennan]</p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/23/revealed-how-the-fbi-targeted-environmental-activists-in-domestic-terror-investigations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link guk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Revealed: how the FBI targeted environmental activists in domestic terror investigations</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>US news</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Protesters were characterized as a threat to national security in what one calls an attempt to criminalize their actions</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adam Federman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tue 24 Sep 2019 01.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 25 Sep 2019 14.11 EDT</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helen Yost, a 62-year-old environmental educator, has been a committed activist for nearly a decade. She says she spends 60 to 80 hours a week as a community organizer for Wild Idaho Rising Tide. She’s been arrested twice for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yost may not fit the profile of a domestic terrorist, but in 2014 the FBI classified her as a potential threat to national security. According to hundreds of pages of FBI files obtained by the Guardian through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit, and interviews with activists, Yost and more than a dozen other people campaigning against fossil fuel extraction in North America have been identified in domestic terrorism-related investigations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investigations, which targeted individual activists and some environmental organizations, were opened in 2013-2014, at the height of opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline and the expansion of fossil fuel production in North America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From an FBI communication on Helen Yost, dated 24 July 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> From an FBI communication on Helen Yost, dated 24 July 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new Foia documents reveal the bureau’s motivation for investigating a broad cross-section of the environmental movement and its characterization of non-violent protesters as a potential threat to national security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2010, the DoJ’s inspector general criticized the FBI for using non-violent civil disobedience as grounds to open domestic terrorism investigations. US citizens swept up in such investigations can be placed on terrorism watchlists and subjected to surveillance and restrictions on international travel. The designation can also lead local law enforcement to take a more confrontational approach when engaging with non-violent activists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Resistance Now: Sign up for weekly news updates about the movement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI’s 2013-2014 investigation of Keystone XL activists in Houston violated internal agency guidelines designed to prevent the bureau from infringing on constitutionally protected activities. The investigations opened in 2013-2014 were closed after the FBI concluded that the individuals and organizations had not engaged in criminal activity and did not a pose a threat to national security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, the Obama administration rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project, which required state department approval because it would cross international borders, handing the environmental movement a major victory. More large-scale protests followed, including the standoff over the Dakota Access pipeline, which temporarily delayed the project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But those decisions have been reversed in recent years. Donald Trump has approved construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and his administration has also advocated for stiffer penalties against activists who engage in non-violent direct action targeting fossil fuel infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the wake of the Standing Rock protests, seven states have passed legislation making it a crime to trespass on property containing critical infrastructure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its July 2014 file on Yost, the FBI cited federal anti-terrorism legislation prohibiting “attacks and other violence against railroad carriers” as the primary justification for opening the investigation. Violation of the law can lead to up to 20 years in prison. Activists who engage in non-violent civil disobedience and are charged with minor offenses such as trespassing are typically released within 48 hours.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI characterized Yost as being driven by a “desire to stop fossil fuels which, in her political view, are destroying parts of the US, specifically Montana, Idaho and Washington”. In addition, the FBI discussed the case with the US attorney’s office in Idaho, local law enforcement, and BNSF Railway, which operates the main rail line delivering coal and oil to export terminals in the Pacific north-west.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI communication on Helen Yost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> From an FBI communication on Helen Yost, dated 24 July 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the FBI file, the bureau opened the investigation based on information that Yost “was organizing and planning on conducting illegal activities against railroad companies from Montana into Idaho and Washington”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yost said Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) never organized direct action protests to disrupt oil train traffic passing in the region. The heavily redacted Yost investigation concludes that “no potential criminal violations or priority threats to national security warranting further investigation were identified”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WIRT did participate in a series of community-led events and workshops in July and August 2014 opposing the transport of oil and coal by rail. “Investigators may have conflated several community events to assume such fictitious allegations,” Yost said in an email.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For several years, WIRT, founded in 2011, had been publicizing its actions on the organization’s Facebook page. Much of its activity had focused on stopping the passage of huge trucks known as megaloads, which transport processing equipment to tar sands oil fields in Canada and weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, along one of Idaho’s scenic byways.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The campaign involved posting public records on the megaload routes, tracking their progress, and at times blockading their movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yost was also active in protesting against the shipment of coal and oil by rail to export terminals in Seattle. In the summer of 2014, WIRT, along with several other environmental organizations and native groups across the Pacific north-west, sponsored a series of rallies and workshops in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those protests were peaceful – a handful of activists in Montana including the environmental writer Rick Bass were arrested for trespassing – and in the end the FBI concluded that Yost did not pose a threat to national security. Several months later the investigation was closed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, in the file closing the case, it appears that Yost has been watchlisted, which is standard for named subjects of FBI domestic terrorism investigations, according to Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice. Being watchlisted can lead to heightened scrutiny from law enforcement and delays or additional screenings when traveling. Yost said she had not traveled overseas since the FBI investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yost, who was contacted by an FBI agent when the case was still active, said she was not surprised by the agency’s actions. Surveillance was a form of suppression, she said, and this was another attempt to criminalize the actions of “normal people” working to protect natural resources. But she remains undeterred.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Assume they know the color of your underwear every morning and get up and resist anyway,” Yost said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herb Goodwin, a 70-year-old activist, has a similar philosophy. “We’re all under surveillance,” Goodwin said. “If they want to look at your stuff, they’re going to.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2013-2014 Goodwin frequently participated in actions organized by Yost and WIRT. He was also part of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Bellingham, Washington, in 2011 and was one of 12 individuals arrested that year for blockading a BNSF coal train passing through the city. They became known as the Bellingham 12.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goodwin was one of at least a dozen environmental activists, many of them affiliated with the group Deep Green Resistance, contacted by FBI agents in autumn 2014. In early October that year, not long after Goodwin returned from a megaload resistance campaign in Idaho, an FBI agent and a police intelligence officer showed up at his residence. According to Goodwin, they wanted to ask him questions about the environmental group Deep Green Resistance. Goodwin refused to cooperate and referred the agents to his lawyer, who himself became a subject of interest to the FBI.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Founded in 2011 Deep Green Resistance (DGR), based on the principles laid out in the book of the same name, describes itself as a radical organization that “uses direct action in the fight to save the planet”. Though the group supports underground movements, its members abide by a code of conduct that includes a commitment to nonviolence and operating entirely above-ground. According to the group’s website, “We do not want to be involved in or aware of any underground organizing.” In another FBI interview with a DGR member documented in the files, the activist even invited the agents to attend one of DGR’s presentations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI files show that the bureau initiated the two-year investigation into DGR to determine if the group or any of its members were planning to engage in the destruction of energy facilities or attacks against railroad companies, referring to the same federal statute cited in the Yost investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the FBI also took an interest in constitutionally protected activities, including DGR members’ participation in public meetings and lectures and the group’s early organizing efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even though the FBI investigation found no evidence that DGR was planning to engage in violent activity, it often portrayed the group as an extremist organization. One individual contacted numerous times by the FBI was said to have been a “suspected member of the Deep Green Resistance’s extremist wing” and a participant in DGR’s “Midwest extremist planning process”. DGR did have a strategic planning conference in Wisconsin in spring 2012 which they said was attended by about 30 people, but it was publicly advertised and focused on building the organization, fundraising and leadership training.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From an FBI communication on Deep Green Resistance, dated 28 November 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> From an FBI communication on Deep Green Resistance, dated 28 November 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI also focused its attention on DGR organizing at Western Washington University, which hosted a lecture in 2011 by two of the group’s members, Max Wilbert and Dillon Thomson. Information about the lecture, titled Environmentalism for the New Century, and about the professor who hosted it was included in the FBI files. Wilbert, who attended WWU, is also a member of DGR’s board of directors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As part of the investigation, the FBI met with the university’s police department to “discuss possible Deep Green Resistance presence on the WWU campus”. The FBI also said it would attempt to determine whether any of the professors in the environmental sciences department were involved in the “DGR movement”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI communication on Deep Green Resistance</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> From an FBI communication on Deep Green Resistance, dated 21 November 2013.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sweeping investigation into DGR’s activities was formally closed in 2014 but Wilbert assumes that the group is still being closely watched. Wilbert, who is also a writer and photographer, frequently posts short polemical essays on his Facebook page or the Deep Green Resistance website.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wilbert said that on 7 September 2018, nearly four years after the investigation was closed, he got a call from an FBI agent in Seattle informing him that the bureau had received an anonymous tip regarding something he had written online. The agent also left a card at Wilbert’s parents’ home.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m pretty outspoken about being a revolutionary, somebody who believes in the necessity for revolutionary change,” Wilbert said. “It’s not something I hide.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An FBI file documenting the online tip describes Wilbert as “an environmental extremist” involved in “inciting violence in Seattle”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">German, the former FBI agent, whose recent book, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide, chronicles the troubling post-9/11 expansion of the FBI’s domestic surveillance powers, said the agency had failed to heed the warnings laid out in a 2010 justice department IG investigation that criticized the FBI’s targeting of certain domestic advocacy groups. According to German, the Yost files and the two-year DGR investigation show how “ineffective these internal oversight mechanisms are to preventing abusive and wasteful investigations of non-violent protesters”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/russia-government-carried-out-shocking-breach-of-the-actual-substance-of-fbi-communications-in-2016-report/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/russia-government-carried-out-shocking-breach-of-the-actual-substance-of-fbi-communications-in-2016-report/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia government carried out shocking breach of ‘the actual substance of FBI communications’ in 2016: report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson September 16, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, the Russian government not only interfered in the United States’ presidential election — a fact that has been well-documented in the Mueller report — it also spied on U.S. intelligence within the United States. And according to an investigative report by Zach Dorfman, Jenna McLaughlin and Sean D. Naylor for Yahoo News, Russian operatives “targeted FBI communications” and successfully “hampered the bureau’s ability to track Russian spies on U.S. soil.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the sources for Yahoo News’ report, a former senior official for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), asserted, “It was a very broad effort to try and penetrate our most sensitive operations.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On December 29, 2016, the outgoing Obama Administration gave almost three dozen Russian diplomats only 72 hours to leave the U.S. and seized two rural estates owned by the Russian government. At the time, Russian officials insisted that those estates were merely vacation spots. But according to Yahoo News’ report, the estates were used for spying — and that spying was so comprehensive that it underscores “U.S. counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Security compromises in the U.S., according to Yahoo News, “gave Russian spies in American cities — including Washington, New York and San Francisco — key insights into the location of undercover FBI surveillance teams, and likely the actual substance of FBI communications.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former U.S. officials told Yahoo News adds that Russian spies successfully cracked some types of encryption used by U.S. intelligence. A former U.S. national security official, interviewed anonymously, told Yahoo News, “Any time you find out that an adversary has these capabilities, it sets off a ripple effect. The Russians are able to extract every capability from any given technology…. They are singularly dangerous in this area.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian spies, according to Yahoo News’ report, also compromised the FBI’s backup communications systems. “This was something we took extremely seriously,” a former senior counterintelligence official told Yahoo News.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yahoo News’ report also quotes a former senior counterintelligence official as saying, “The intel reporting was they did break our codes or got their hands on a radio and figured it out. Either way, they decrypted our comms.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joel Brenner, who headed U.S. counterintelligence from 2006-2009, told Yahoo News, “When I was in office, the counterintelligence business was.… focused entirely on its core concern, which is insider threats, and in particular mole hunting. This is, in fact, the core risk, and it’s right that it should be the focus. But we were neither organized nor resourced to deal with counterintelligence in networks, technical networks, electronic networks.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/revealed-the-fbi-is-targeting-immigration-activists"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/revealed-the-fbi-is-targeting-immigration-activists</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Revealed: The FBI is targeting immigration activists</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Igor Derysh<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>September 6, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An FBI document obtained by Yahoo News shows that the bureau is monitoring groups that protest the Trump administration immigration policies as “extremists.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as <b>“anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The evidence cited for the FBI’s claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from “antifa” groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “<b>The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Those are three very different groups,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite Wray’s testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/where-is-the-fbi-former-federal-agent-who-spent-years-infiltrating-white-supremacist-groups-has-some-questions"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/where-is-the-fbi-former-federal-agent-who-spent-years-infiltrating-white-supremacist-groups-has-some-questions</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Where is the FBI?’ Former federal agent who spent years infiltrating white supremacist groups has some questions</font></b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Joe Sexton / ProPublica September 3, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late in 2017, ProPublica began writing about a <b>California white supremacist group called the Rise Above Movement.</b> Its members had been involved in violent clashes at rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, and several cities in California. They were proud of their violent handiwork, sharing videos on the internet and recruiting more members. Our first article was titled “Racist, Violent, Unpunished: A White Hate Group’s Campaign of Menace.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More articles followed, and another neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, was exposed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael German, a former federal agent who spent years infiltrating white supremacist groups, said the work of the groups constituted “organized criminal activity,” and he asked, in so many words, “Where is the FBI?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Federal authorities wound up arresting eight members of the Rise Above Movement, and five of them have since pleaded guilty to<b> federal riot charges. </b>This summer, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that, over the last nine months, the bureau’s domestic terrorism investigations had led to 90 arrests, many of them involving white supremacists. And in recent weeks, there have been additional arrests: a Las Vegas man said to be affiliated with <b>Atomwaffen and a young man in Chicago affiliated with Patriot Front, another white supremacist group.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The activity concerning the threat of white racists has gone beyond arrests. There have been a variety of proposals making their way through Congress aimed at creating federal criminal statutes that might make prosecuting domestic terrorism threats more effective. The FBI Agents Association has supported new laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We went back to German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program and the author of the forthcoming book<b> “Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy</b>,” to inquire about the significance of the seeming burst of enforcement efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI, made aware of German’s observations and arguments, declined to comment, but it provided a link to recent testimony by bureau officials before Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There have been a handful of arrests of alleged white supremacists in recent weeks. What do you make of them? A temporary reaction to the El Paso, Texas, massacre? Evidence of a deeper commitment by the FBI? Coincidence?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>First, the arrests of several white nationalists allegedly planning acts of violence since the El Paso attack demonstrate beyond question that the FBI has all the authority it needs to act proactively against white supremacist violence. </b>Claims from the FBI Agents Association and other current and former Justice Department officials that the government needs new laws to target this violence are false. I worked successful domestic terrorism undercover operations against white supremacists in the 1990s, and no one ever suggested we didn’t have all the authority we needed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It is hard to know if these arrests mark a new increase in attention to far-right violence because the Justice Department doesn’t keep reliable data about how many investigations and prosecutions it conducts against white supremacists</b>. It sometimes categorizes them as domestic terrorism, other times as hate crimes or even gang crimes, obscuring the true scope of the violence they inflict on our society. And since the Justice Department defers the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes to state and local law enforcement, the FBI doesn’t even know how many people white supremacists kill each year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Justice Department and FBI de-prioritize the investigation and prosecution of far-right violence as a matter of policy, not a lack of authority. These recent cases are a result of increased public pressure to do something about these crimes</b>. But the Justice Department and FBI have done nothing to amend their policies that de-prioritize the investigation of white supremacist crimes. Maintaining public pressure and focusing on changing the biases that drive these policies is essential to forcing a change in priorities at these agencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least two of the arrests appear to have involved a certain infiltration of white hate groups online. Noteworthy? Overdue?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Many researchers have suggested that the internet fuels white nationalist violence and therefore suppression of these online communities is necessary.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> But white supremacists have been killing people in this country for more than a 100 years before the internet was created. They use the internet more to communicate today than 20 years ago, just like all the rest of us do, but that doesn’t mean there is more violence. In fact, as the recent cases suggest, internet communications make them far easier to track and infiltrate, so it is more a boost to law enforcement more than to violent militants.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But mass monitoring of social media for clues isn’t an effective strategy, as there are far more people expressing racist ideas online than committing violence. The FBI would be very busy chasing down false leads, which would only dull the response. Instead, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies should work from reasonable criminal predicates. Where there is objectively credible evidence that someone is planning to do harm they should act. The number of homicides in the U.S. has fallen significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, but so has the clearance rate. Even though there are fewer homicides now, fewer are being solved. I think it is because we are spending so much time and resources on suspicion-less surveillance and intelligence gathering rather than traditional evidence-based law enforcement tactics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a variety of proposed legislation aimed at creating more specific federal domestic terrorism statutes. Worthy? Wrongheaded?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress shouldn’t pass broad new laws or stiffer penalties, as there are already dozens of federal statutes outlawing domestic terrorism, hate crimes and organized violent crime that carry significant sentences. There are bills that demand better data collection by the Justice Department, which would reveal where counterterrorism resources should be devoted and where they are being wasted. This is the better approach. Proper policies can’t be developed without a better understanding of the crime problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the meantime, Congress should explore mechanisms to fund and implement community-led restorative justice practices that would redress the communal injuries hate crimes are designed to inflict. White supremacists try to intimidate and marginalize the communities they attack. Making sure these communities are cared for, protected and supported after an attack frustrates that goal. More policing isn’t always the right answer, and certainly not the only one.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was recently news coverage of leaked FBI threat assessments listing the promotion of an array of political conspiracy theories as a domestic menace. What did you make of that?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI intelligence assessment declaring conspiracy theorists a domestic terrorism threat should worry all of us. It had a line defining conspiracy theorists as those who do not hold the “official” or “prevailing” view on a particular topic. Given that the intelligence community has often been the promoter of false narratives, particularly about the lawfulness of its own conduct, giving them license to target people who disagree with the “official” view is chilling. It is basically a declaration that the government will treat dissent as dangerous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was a recent case that has to puzzle the public. A Coast Guard lieutenant was arrested with guns and a target list of politicians and others, and held on firearms charges. At least one federal magistrate thought he deserved bail because the government had failed to provide evidence of terrorist acts and the simple gun charges didn’t merit him being held without bail. A judge overturned the magistrate and kept the lieutenant held. All that can be hard to follow for an American public concerned about safeguarding its rights and its citizens. Thoughts?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s difficult to talk about cases that have not yet gone to trial because there is little information available outside the government’s allegations, which haven’t been proven yet. But there are some principles of our legal system that should be applied in all cases, including this one, even though we seem to have moved far from them over the years. First, people are innocent until proven guilty. That means, absent government evidence that a defendant poses a threat to the public or to abscond, that person should be released until trial, and bond should only be used to guarantee appearance. Of course, many people with allegations that seem less serious than those against the Coast Guard officer don’t receive bond, but that is a question for those judges and prosecutors, not the ones involved in this case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Obviously the government initially failed to present evidence that justified pretrial confinement, so based on the charged conduct the judge considered bond. This result should happen more often, not less. When the government got its act together, added charges and presented evidence of a potential threat to the public, the judge ordered him held. The burden is on the government and shouldn’t be met through sensationalized press releases but through reasonable evidence presented in court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, prosecutors can only charge people with crimes they committed, not crimes the government thinks they might commit in the future. Lots of people stockpile weapons in this country. And if keeping a creepy diary is against the law, plenty of people will go to jail. Where the government has evidence that laws were broken, they have the power to act, which — ironically given the hyperbolic news coverage of this incident — they did here. The officer was arrested and is being prosecuted for crimes the government alleges he committed, so there seems to be no problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Justice Department seems to have tried to make this into a test case for demanding new authorities, even though prosecutors obviously had enough evidence to address the threat. Compare this case to the Larry Hopkins case in New Mexico. There the FBI received a tip in 2017 that a formerly incarcerated felon who was the “commander” of a border militia group that harassed migrants was also planning to assassinate Hillary Clinton, George Soros and Barack Obama. The FBI went to Hopkins’ trailer and recovered nine firearms he was not permitted to own due to his previous felony convictions, which included weapons charges and impersonating a police officer. The FBI did not arrest Hopkins and instead let him continue to operate with his militia group for 18 months, harassing migrants in the desert, until a video of his group pointing weapons at a group of migrants they detained went viral and sparked public outrage. Only then did the FBI take action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comparing the two cases, the FBI had much more significant evidence of potential dangerousness from Hopkins than from the Coast Guard officer, yet they took no action against Hopkins. I think they saw the Coast Guard officer’s case as a ready-made scandal near D.C. that they could sensationalize to pressure Congress into passing a broad new domestic terrorism law. Obviously, they already had enough authority to arrest him on the drug and weapons charge, and his possession of illegal silencers. So there was no lack of authority to arrest him in the first place. It was a manufactured scandal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What, if anything, is different today than two summers ago in Charlottesville concerning the threat of white supremacists and the government’s response at all levels to it?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the violence in Charlottesville was a wake-up call for everyone. The media finally recognized that white supremacists were engaging in terrorism, too. The level of violence these far-right groups inflict has been persistent over time, but studies show that the media gave terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslims 350% more coverage than violence committed by other terrorists. The increased reporting post-Charlottesville eventually caused policymakers to take notice, which in turn compelled the FBI and Justice Department to begin to take these crimes more seriously. The media coverage drives public perception, which causes policymakers to act. It remains to be seen whether they react in a way that improves the situation and builds a more inclusive society, or makes it worse by giving law enforcement broad powers to continue targeting marginalized communities agitating for civil rights and changes in government policies.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/08/04/whistleblowers-surveillance-fbi-trump/">https://theintercept.com/2019/08/04/whistleblowers-surveillance-fbi-trump/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/08/fbi-oregon-anti-pipeline-jordan-cove-activists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Law enforcement groups, including the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 0);"> FBI, have been monitoring opponents of a natural gas infrastructure project in Oregon and circulated intelligence to an email list that included a Republican-aligned anti-environmental PR operative</span>, emails obtained by the Guardian show.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The South Western Oregon Joint Task Force (SWOJTF) and its members were monitoring opponents of the Jordan Cove energy project, a proposal by the Canadian energy company Pembina to build the first-ever liquefied natural gas export terminal on the US west coast, as well as a new 232-mile pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas to the port of Coos Bay.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Trump administration has named Jordan Cove as one of its highest-priority infrastructure projects.</b> Jordan Cove opponents have raised concerns about the project’s significant environmental impacts, impacts on public lands, indigenous rights and climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The emails, obtained via open records requests, reflect the increased scrutiny and surveillance to which law enforcement agencies are often subjecting indigenous and environmental groups, activists say.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It also comes amid an uptick in civil disobedience and direct actions challenging fossil fuel infrastructure projects – particularly in the wake of the Native American-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. They also reflect a nationwide tendency for rightwing partisans, law enforcement agencies and the fossil fuel industry to ally with one another in the suppression of such activities.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An email distribution list associated with the taskforce included addressees in the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">FBI, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Forest Service (NFS), Oregon state police (OSP), and various Oregon municipal police and sheriffs departments. But some of its recipients are outside any government agency, most notably Mark Pfeifle, the CEO of the political consultancy Off The Record Strategies.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Pfeifle was previously a Bush administration PR adviser on national security. More recently, Pfeifle worked with law enforcement on a counter-information operation against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When contacted by telephone about the Jordan Cove project, Mr Pfeifle said “I just don’t have anything for you, I’m not up on it,” before ending the conversation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emails circulated on the SWOJTF email list include activists’ social media posts, emails and rally announcements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pfeifle appeared on the distribution list of a November 2018 email from the list’s apparent keeper, the<b> Coos county deputy sheriff, Bryan Valencia</b>, which described a recent protest action b<b>y Southern Oregon Rising Tide, a direct action climate justice group.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“These are the<b> tactics that are currently being used to forcibly insert their narrative into the conversation,” </b>Valencia wrote. He noted: “There has long been a call for a ‘Standing Rock’ action by the Klamath Tribe in Klamath county.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Don Gentry, the chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said Valencia’s characterization is false – his tribe has never put out such a call. “We’re working through the readily available channels to get this project stopped,” Gentry said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In January 2019, Valencia circulated information on Facebook event attendance to a smaller group of SWOJTF officers, <b>related to an upcoming Oregon department of state lands hearing, to some members of the taskforce, despite stating there was a “lack of a criminal nexus”.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Coos county sheriffs office (CCSO) public information officer, Gabriel Fabrizio, wrote in response to emailed questions that SWOJTF had been set up to “ensure a multi-agency approach to any and all contingencies”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fabrizio added: “As potential dangers to the safety of the citizens and businesses of the county are identified, we monitor groups as long as necessary to determine if they will become a danger to others. <b>Once it’s determined a group has not or likely will not conduct criminal activity, we discontinue monitoring.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He also wrote that “Mr Pfiefle has no relationship with the Coos county sheriff’s office or with the SWOJTF. He was involved with training that was presented by the National Sheriffs Association to emergency responders in Coos county.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He also denied that SWOJTF had been engaged in surveillance. “Surveillance implies an active gathering of data and images, and any monitoring we have conducted has been passive, simply watching for information,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The records reveal the existence of other law enforcement intelligence activities related to monitoring the work of environmental groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a November 2018 email to Valencia, a <b>BLM law enforcement analyst noted her role in the “Forest Intelligence Group (FIG)” that is also tracking activists</b>. “I appreciate anything you find, and I am glad to share likewise,” the analyst wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fabrizio said in an email response to questions that FIG “began its life as a timber investigators meeting in the mid eighties … It has been sharing information about activity including criminal activity in our regions forests since that time. The intent of the group is to identify activities that may require sharing of resources or have an impact across traditional jurisdictional lines.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a telephone interview, a spokesman for the US attorney in Oregon also confirmed the existence of another body mentioned in the emails: a <b>“domestic terrorism working group” </b>led by the assistant US attorney, Craig Gabriel, that meets “roughly quarterly” in Portland. He said that the group was mostly made up of federal agencies but included some local law enforcement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s really just to discuss any current issues in the domestic terrorism arena. This could be local issues, all the way up to international issues,” the spokesman said. <b>He said protest movements would be “within the scope” of its discussions even if no criminal activity had occurred.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In another email exchange, an FBI agent, Michael Frost, offered “open source and social media training” to the Coos county sheriffs, writing to Valencia that “with the significant social media presence of the anti-pipeline individuals, I figured your office would be a good place to start”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The flyer for the training promises law enforcement officers information on tracking individuals online while minimizing their “digital footprint”, and indicates that it would be hosted by yet another law enforcement “task force”: the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Portland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A spokesperson for the FBI’s Portland field office said in an email: “The FBI does not comment on what may or may not be an ongoing investigation. <b>However, it is important to note that the FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on first amendment-protected activity.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the training session, the spokesperson said: “The FBI’s Portland field office regularly provides training to local law enforcement agencies. This training covers a wide range of law enforcement topics, including<b> appropriate and legal use of open source material in investigations.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fabrizio said that the offer of training had not been taken up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Coos Bay is located more than 200 miles away from Portland, the Portland police bureau (PPB) officer Andrew Hearst is also part of the SWOJTF email list. Hearst told Valencia in January 2019: “As always if we hear anything about our people heading down to your area we will alert asap.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jordan Cove opponents expressed alarm upon learning about the level of scrutiny they are receiving from so many different law enforcement entities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is outrageous that our Oregon public agencies are actually working to plan how to stifle the very southern Oregonians whose drinking water, property and communities are threatened by this project,” said Sylvia Mangan, a retired public health nurse who lives on one of the proposed pipeline routes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Asked why Pfeifle was included in the distribution of intelligence on protest groups, Fabrizio wrote: “Open source information is posted on public forums and not considered sensitive.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He added: “Anyone who may be affected by potential actions are involved as an effort in community outreach and according to the tenets of community policing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pfeifle previously described his work with law enforcement at Standing Rock during a 2017 presentation to oil, gas and banking executives during a pipeline conference in Houston. “<b>A lot of things that we were doing were being done to put a marker down for the protesters. And, ‘OK, if you’re going to go protest somewhere? There’s going to be consequences from it.’”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an email comment, the ACLU of Oregon questioned the legality of the activities revealed in the emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Monitoring and compiling information about Oregonians’ political or social views, activities, or associations violates Oregon law,”</b> said the spokeswoman Sarah Armstrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lauren Regan, the executive director of the Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, says the SWOJTF’s activities reflect a nationwide trend. “<b>Police and corporations are working together to suppress movements against fossil fuels,”</b> she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Holly Mills of Southern Oregon Rising Tide, a group regularly subjected to scrutiny in the records obtained by the Guardian, said:<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> “We know that the state, police and corporations have often tried to stop movements like this one by using fear as a tactic and repressing dissent. We have prepared ourselves with this in mind, and we communicate on social media and over email with the assumption that cops might be reading.”</span></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/qanon-conspiracists-appear-at-trump-rally-only-hours-after-fbi-warning-on-far-right-conspiracy-group/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/qanon-conspiracists-appear-at-trump-rally-only-hours-after-fbi-warning-on-far-right-conspiracy-group/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx ah</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far-right proponents of the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory — which claims that an alliance of Hollywood actors and Washington, D.C. politicians, among others, have been engaging in an international child sex ring —<b> are not only unhinged; they are also potentially dangerous, according to the FBI. And this week, the Washington Post reports, some QAnon proponents turned up at a rally for President Donald Trump on the same day the FBI issued a bulletin warning that the group could be dangerous.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the bulletin, proponents of QAnon as well as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory have the potential for violence. In 2016, Pizzagate proponents claimed that Democrats were using a Washington, D.C. pizzeria for child sex abuse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The bulletin reads, “The FBI assesses these<b> conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts. </b>And it goes on to say that<b> reports “of a sudden rise in threats and unfounded accusations against a given individual or business may indicate impending conspiracy theory-driven crime or violence.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday at a Trump rally in Cincinnati, according to the Post, a supporter named Brandon Straka used a QAnon slogan: “where we go one, we go all.” And other QAnon proponents were seen at the rally as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the cultish QAnon community, Trump is held in high regard: QAnon theorists believe his presidency is meant to help carry out a worldwide battle against a child sex ring — and Q is an anonymous figure who sends sporadic messages on the battle.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx ref thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</b></div><div><b>Using his Attorney General William Barr as a hitman, President Donald Trump began laying the groundwork to jail his perceived enemies as the Justice Department follows his order to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Barr has asked U.S. Attorneys to examine how the counterintelligence and FBI investigations began and has refused to turn over the unredacted report from special counsel Robert Mueller</span>, who has a recording of a person “connected to” Congress attempting to influence Michael Flynn’s testimony.</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the government Thursday to provide a public transcript of a voice mail message from Trump’s attorney reminding the former national security adviser of the president’s fondness for him, when Flynn was considering cooperation with Mueller’s team.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Trump reacted by citing a Fox News poll showing “58 percent of people say that the FBI broke the law” by investigating him, and calling for investigators to be jailed for “treason.”</b></div><div>
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</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!</span></div><div>
</div><div>135K</div><div>4:11 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>83.5K people are talking about this</div><div>Twitter users were quick to respond, and it wasn’t pretty.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div> · May 17, 2019</div><div> My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Anita Creamer</div><div>?</div><div>@AnitaCreamer</div><div>Spoken like a true fascist.</div><div>
</div><div>62</div><div>6:40 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>See Anita Creamer's other Tweets</div><div>
</div><div>BrooklynDad_Defiant!</div><div>@mmpadellan</div><div>Replying to @realDonaldTrump</div><div>We only see ONE person guilty of TREASON, and that's you...</div><div>
</div><div>Unless you count all of the unindicted co-conspirators, all the people who WERE indicted, all the people who plead guilty, and all those who CONTINUE to cover your treasonous tracks.</div><div>
</div><div>Yeah, TREASON.</div><div>LONG sentence.</div><div>
</div><div>3,345</div><div>7:45 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>817 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Eugene Gu, MD</div><div>?</div><div>@eugenegu</div><div>Replying to @realDonaldTrump</div><div>Trump is a deranged dictator who wants to abuse his power to exact retribution on his enemies. He sounds exactly like a Joseph Stalin screaming “TREASON!” and it’s damn scary.</div><div>
</div><div>8,011</div><div>4:14 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>1,875 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Morten Øverbye</div><div>?</div><div>@morten</div><div>Replying to @realDonaldTrump</div><div>Treason is the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the head of state or overthrow the government. </div><div>
</div><div>Cooperating with a foreign adversary to undermine democracy is treason. Investigating wether someone cooperated with a foreign adversary is not.</div><div>
</div><div>935</div><div>4:17 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>126 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div> · May 17, 2019</div><div> My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>???????????? ????????</div><div>@TheBaxterBean</div><div>REMINDER: 17 hours after firing FBI director Comey over the Russia investigation, Russian photographers took these photos of Trump w/ Russian govt officials inside our WH — all U.S. press were banned from attending.</div><div>
</div><div>(we only know because Russia released photos)</div><div>
</div><div>THIS IS TREASON</div><div>
</div><div>3,372</div><div>6:48 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter</div><div>1,557 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Donald J. Trump</div><div>?</div><div>@realDonaldTrump</div><div> · May 17, 2019</div><div> My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Josh Campbell</div><div>?</div><div>@joshscampbell</div><div>2019: The President of the United States is demanding long jail sentences for FBI officials who investigated threats from a hostile foreign adversary</div><div>
</div><div>8,861</div><div>4:23 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>2,670 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Anonymous White House Official</div><div>@littledeekay</div><div>Replying to @realDonaldTrump</div><div>Follow me for a sec, homefry. Russian operatives were targeting your Campaign to try to infiltrate and influence the outcome of American elections, a pillar of our democracy. Do you want our intelligence community ignoring these efforts and letting foreign governments attack us?</div><div>
</div><div>2,921</div><div>4:38 AM - May 17, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>476 people are talking about this</div><div>Share your response in the comments section below.</div><div>Don't miss the latest Political Digs.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fbi-says-it-lost-missing-files-on-the-white-nationalist-hate-site-stormfront-report/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fbi-says-it-lost-missing-files-on-the-white-nationalist-hate-site-stormfront-report/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> FBI told reporter Emma Best that has lost or could not find its records on the white nationalist hate site Stormfront, MuckRock reported this week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Best had requested the records through the Freedom of Information Act, but the bureau only returned 104 pages of files. It believed there were more records to find:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For your information. a search of the indices of our Central Records System reflected there were additional records potentially responsive for your Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts (FOIA) request. We have attempted to obtain this material so it could be reviewed to determine whether it was responsive to your request. We were advised that the potentially responsive records were not In their expected location and could not be located after a reasonable search. Following a reasonable waiting period. another attempt was made to obtain this material. This search for the missing records also met with unsuccessful results.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not clear how extensive a “reasonable search” has to be, so it’s difficult to assess if the materials are truly lost or just inconveniently stored.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“FBI claims to have lost the file on the neo-nazi group Stormfront. Sure, Jan,” Best said. Best added that they didn’t think the bureau was acting unusually deceptive, noting that the FBI claims it can’t find records frequently.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My implication wasn’t that they lost it on purpose, just that they either didn’t look very hard or have an organizational system that would have Hoover spinning in his grave,” they explained.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forward reported that some of the members on Stormfront were “gleeful” in response, suspecting that an ally in the bureau buried the files. But a review of the forum showed that many of the hate site users seemed shocked that the bureau would have any interest in Stormfront at all. Some suspected that the failure to release the files may even be an attempt to hide the extent to which the bureau is monitoring the site.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Combating white supremacy has long been a part of the FBI’s mission, even while it also targeted civil rights leaders in the past. Director Christopher Wray recently said it poses a “persistent, pervasive threat” to the United States, and the bureau has recently found an increase in the white supremacist domestic terrorism. But critics have said that President Donald Trump’s administration, it has become more difficult to fight the danger this ideology poses.</font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/fbi-white-supremacist-domestic-terror/index.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/fbi-white-supremacist-domestic-terror/index.html</font></a></div><div><div class="elleafmedia elleafmedia--sourced-paragraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="el-editorial-source" kern="kern" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700;">CNN)</cite></font></p><p class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The FBI has seen a significant rise in the number of white supremacist domestic terrorism cases in recent months,</b> a senior FBI counterterrorism official said Thursday.</font></p></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The official said the FBI has been grappling with the rise of domestic threats while international terror threats have remained constant with the fall of the ISIS caliphate in Syria.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The domestic terror cases generally include suspects involved in violence related to anti-government views, racial or religious bias,<b> environmental extremism</b> and abortion-related views.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI wouldn't provide specific numbers to quantify the increase of in the number of white supremacist domestic terrorism cases. Unlike international terrorism investigations, domestic terrorism cases pose thornier issues for the FBI because of First Amendment protections. The US doesn't have a domestic terrorism law and no government agency designates domestic groups as being terrorist organizations. That means many cases the FBI calls domestic terror-related end up with a variety of charges for violations of laws related to guns or even other state charges.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2017, there were about 150 arrests on charges the FBI classifies as domestic terror, and about 120 in 2018. The official said the FBI is on course to match or exceed those numbers this fiscal year.</font></div><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-5 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="zn-bodyread-all" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-7 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Overall, the FBI has about 5,000 terrorism-related investigations open, including 850 related to domestic terrorism, according to the official. About 1,000 are related to ISIS or other affiliated groups, and another 1,000 are for homegrown violent extremism.</b></font></div><div class="zn-body__paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reflecting law enforcement concern over the issue, earlier today at a hearing Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan called "white supremacist extremist violence" a "huge issue" and called it an "an evolving and increasingly concerning threat."</font></div></ul></div></ul></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/</font></a></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">harder to track nomenclasture cats</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">TUESDAY,</span> during a House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/politics/rashida-tlaib-congressman-describes-threats-against-her/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">described</a> a death threat she and fellow Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar had received in the mail. “A good Muslim is a dead one,” the letter had read. The hearing, called “Confronting White Supremacy: Adequacy of the Federal Response,” featured the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Michael McGarrity. Tlaib wondered why threats like the one against her and Omar don’t qualify as domestic terrorism. “We get so many of them, and I keep asking, ‘What happens? What happens to these individuals?’” She asked McGarrity, “How is that not enough to fall under domestic terrorism?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the U.S., there is no criminal charge specifically for “domestic terrorism.” For example, white supremacist James Fields Jr., who killed Heather Heyer with his Dodge Challenger at the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was described as a domestic terrorist; even racist then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/jeff-sessions-speaks-doj-investigation-charlottesville-attack-49201717" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a> the attack met the definition of “domestic terrorism.” Yet he was convicted for hate crimes, not on terror charges.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead of being a legal category, “domestic terrorism” is used by federal law enforcement as a framework to organize and describe cases and investigations. But thanks to a recent shift in how the FBI classifies its domestic terror categories, the answer to Tlaib’s urgent question, “what happens” to white supremacist threats, writ large, is all the harder to discover.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the last decade, the FBI classified domestic terrorism cases using 11 categories, including a specific grouping for white supremacists. At the end of April, the FBI and Justice Department revealed to Senate Judiciary Committee staffers that a new classification system was now in place, employing only four categories: racially motivated violent extremism; anti-government and anti-authority extremism; animal rights and environmental extremism; and abortion extremism.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “racially motivated” category is the most problematic one. Under an administration that has made a point of drawing <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/31/pittsburgh-shooting-anti-semitism-media-bias/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">false equivalences</a> between deadly white supremacist violence and anti-racist dissent, the FBI’s category collapse is as unsurprising as it is disconcerting.</font></p><blockquote class="stylized pull-left" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="left" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 2em 0px; padding: 0px 2em 0px 0px; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: left; max-width: 60%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new nomenclature reflects the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to enabling white supremacists.</font></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/right-wing-extremism-linked-to-every-2018-extremist-murder-in-the-us-adl-finds" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">According</a> to the Anti-Defamation League, between 2009 and 2018, white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S. Yet the distinct and deadly threat of white supremacist violence is now unnamed and merely folded into the too-broad “racially motivated extremism” category. That category folds in “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">black identity extremism</a>” — an FBI category conjured in 2017 to make the unsubstantiated claim that black organizers fighting against racist police executions were a national security threat.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new nomenclature reflects the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to <a href="https://www.apnews.com/a36d40133acf40b5a0ddda2fa130736e" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">enabling</a> white supremacists. But the new classifications are more than semantic: They render it impossible for the public, or even elected officials, to know whether the FBI is dedicating resources to investigating the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/alt-right-campus-free-speech-adl-splc/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">very real</a> threat of white supremacist terror or if those resources are going toward the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">harassment</a> of Black Lives Matter and civil rights activists. Only the former use of government time and money would be justified, but both cases would fall under “racially motivated extremism.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">EARLIER THIS MONTH,</span> the FBI’s inability to distinguish white supremacist, far-right terror cases in its data was made clear during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing. During his testimony, McGarrity, the same FBI official questioned this week by Tlaib, was asked by House members how many current domestic investigations were targeting white supremacists. He couldn’t answer with any specificity, save to say that 50 percent of current investigations related to the “racially motivated” category and that the “majority” of these involved white supremacists. Another 40 percent of investigations, he said, related to “anti-government” extremism, without delineating whether targets were right- or left-wing groups. So, while we can know that 90 percent of current domestic FBI investigations involve supposedly “racially motivated” or “anti-government” cases, we can’t know to what extent the agency is abusing these “terror” categories to persecute anti-racist activism and civil rights struggle — as federal law enforcement has historically done.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">  ==</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">new cointelpro blk extremists</font></p><p><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-fbi-appears-to-be-engaged-in-a-modern-day-version-of-cointelpro-aclu-racial-justice-program-deputy-director/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-fbi-appears-to-be-engaged-in-a-modern-day-version-of-cointelpro-aclu-racial-justice-program-deputy-director/</font></a></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">D<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">enouncing the database as “an illegal boondoggle,” a civil rights organization on Wednesday is calling for a congressional probe after the FBI admitted it lied for years when it insisted federal authorities do not share the so-called terrorist watchlist with private entities.</span></font></div><div class="p1_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, as the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Associated Press</em><a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-share-terrorist-watchlist-with-1400-private-groups-2019-02-20" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> first reported</a>, the federal government has shared the controversial Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) with 1,441 private entities including universities, detention facilities, and hospitals.</font></p><div class="p2_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The list, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/1._complaint_1.23.17_1.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">may contain</a> as many as a million names and, according to civil rights groups, the names are placed there on dubious grounds.</font></p><div class="p3_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</em>:</font></p><div class="p4_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><div class="clearfix" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; clear: both;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The government’s admission comes in a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in Alexandria by Muslims who say they regularly experience difficulties in travel, financial transactions, and interactions with law enforcement because they have been wrongly added to the list.</font></p><div class="p5_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></div></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the challenge brought by the Washington D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, according to <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</em>, “ordered the government to be more specific about how it disseminates the watchlist” because “the plaintiffs are entitled to the information to try to prove their case that inclusion on the list causes them to suffer ‘real world consequences.'” The government responded earlier this month with the list of entities, though it did not say how they then use the TSDB.</font></p><div class="p6_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The indiscriminate dissemination of the watchlist is but the latest indication that the federal government’s watchlisting system is an illegal boondoggle,” said CAIR litigation director Lena Masri in a statement. “We call on congressional leadership to investigate the private sector dissemination of watchlisting information that stigmatizes the innocent and makes none of us safer.”</font></p><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-illegal-cia-operation-that-brought-us-9-11/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-illegal-cia-operation-that-brought-us-9-11/</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was it conspiracy or idiocy that led to the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to detect and prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon headquarters? That’s one of the questions at the heart of “The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror,” by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski. In their careful and thorough investigation of the events leading up to the attacks, the authors uncover a story about the Central Intelligence Agency’s neglect, possible criminal activities and a cover-up that may have allowed al-Qaida to carry out its plans uninhibited by government officials.</font></p><div class="p1_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the journalists tell Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer how an interview with Richard Clarke, the counterterror adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, led them to a jaw-dropping revelation regarding two hijackers involved in the infamous attacks. As it turns out, Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two men linked to al-Qaida, were staying at an FBI informant’s home in San Diego in 2000, and they were being tracked by the National Security Agency. Despite knowledge of the men’s ties to the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11, neither was investigated by the FBI. Clarke and others believe that this may have had to do with a CIA attempt to turn the two men into agency informants.</font></p><div class="p2_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="advertisement " style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SPONSORED</font></div><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When we sat down with Clarke … he told us he couldn’t see any other explanation but that there was an op [and] that it never made it to the White House because it would have had to go through him,” says Nowosielski. “And his friend [then CIA Director] George Tenet was responsible for malfeasance and misfeasance in the runup to 9/11.”</font></p><div class="p3_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once the plans for the 9/11 attack must have become clear to the CIA, why didn’t the agency prevent it from taking place? Duffy and Nowosielski come to the simple, shocking conclusion that because the CIA is prohibited from operating on U.S. soil, those involved in the operation chose to avoid prosecution rather than come clean.</font></p><div class="p4_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a well-documented case study that touches senior government officials, including current special counsel Robert Mueller and other high-level individuals, crucial questions arise about who is responsible for allowing “a plot that resulted in 3,000 murders” and led to ongoing U.S. military entanglements in the Middle East to move forward. However, our country’s recent crimes and the people behind them, including President Bush, are currently being “whitewashed” by our national obsession with Donald Trump, the authors warn.</font></p><div class="p5_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“All the crimes of the war on terror, the torture, Abu Ghraib, it’s all just gone—the unnecessary invasion of the war in Iraq, it’s all just sort of under the rug now because of Trump,” Duffy says.</font></p><div class="p6_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Listen to their discussion to learn more about the stunning investigation into the tragedy that changed the course of our nation’s history and the Americans who could have thwarted the attacks but decided to cover their own backs instead. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player.</font></p><div class="p7_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RS: </strong>Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. And the title is really appropriate for the book we’re going to talk about today, “The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror.” And the authors are John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski. And they are investigative reporters, and the watchdogs here are the people in our intelligence agencies that are supposed to be protecting the nation. And this book cuts very deeply into the unsolved mystery of how 9/11 happened. Why weren’t we better prepared to prevent it? It’s one of the most important events in American history; it certainly has shaped our lives in terms of a surveillance state, our rights and everything else, up to the present. And this book, I think, represents the most exhaustive and well-documented effort to get to the bottom of the whole thing. You’re very careful in what you do and do not assert about 9/11, what we don’t know about it, and particularly the role of George Tenet, who was then head of the CIA, and the role of the CIA in—what is the right word?—obscuring the story, even keeping information from the White House, from the FBI. So give me the gist of the book.</font></p><div class="p8_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RN: </strong>This is Ray. The book is largely about looking at this case study of the failure leading up to 9/11, the people who were involved in that failure, how that came about, and how they were successful, to the present day, in managing to obscure the public from really fully understanding that this was, in the words of one of our sources, really just a handful of people. And the most jarring thing is that they’re still, in some cases, working today in I guess Trump’s CIA. And we sort of document through the second half of the book what damage was done to America because they remained in their positions.</font></p><div class="p9_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">JD: </strong>This is John. And intelligence was gathered around the time of the millennium that led people in the Bin Laden unit at the CIA to monitor a meeting in Malaysia that was a gathering of these al-Qaida figures. In monitoring this—</font></p><div class="p10_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RS: </strong>That was in the year 2000, right?</font></p><div class="p11_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">JD: </strong>Yes. Right at the outset of the year. In monitoring this meeting, they became aware of the fact that one of the attendees had a multiple-entry visa to the United States. That man’s name was Khalid al-Mihdhar. He would eventually be on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon; he was one of the hijackers. So this starts the whole thing there, the fact that the CIA becomes aware of this information; the Bin Laden unit, counterterror center, and then all the way up to George Tenet are aware of this information. There’s a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous about where that information goes, but it ultimately does not go over to the FBI’s counterterror division in New York, much to the protest of the FBI agents who were detailed to the CIA’s Bin Laden unit. And it did not make it to the White House counterterror czar, Richard Clarke, who very much finds this to be, like, the crux of the whole story—the fact that this information was kept from his office for basically a year and eight months, up until the success of the attacks. The crux is there, that they had this information, these guys were coming into the country, they had just left the terror planning summit, and this information was being held close by the Bin Laden unit, by the counterterror center, and by George Tenet. The reason for that is unknown; the speculation that Richard Clarke has was that George Tenet and these people in the Bin Laden unit and counterterror center thought having these al-Qaida people in the United States, they could possibly go through Allied proxies in the Saudi intelligence to try to get close to these guys, monitor them, potentially find out information from them or even try to flip them. That’s Richard Clarke’s speculation as to why this was kept from him for so long. Ultimately, the attack was successful; that they all just did their best to bury all this and, you know, hope no one noticed.</font></p><div class="p12_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RS: </strong>Let me just start off with something that was confusing to me in reading your book. Because the FBI generally comes off looking pretty good in your book, and the real problem is with the CIA, and to a lesser degree, with the NSA. And in the San Diego story, and this is covered in the 9/11 Commission Report and others, the two San Diego guys—they are staying at the home of an FBI informant at first. So when you say the FBI was not informed, weren’t some of these calls actually made from the home of an FBI asset?</font></p><div class="p13_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RN: </strong>It’s interesting when you know, A, that according to our NSA sources they were able to be pinged every time that Mihdhar and Hazmi, the two hijackers, called from that house that you mentioned in San Diego, back to Yemen. That somebody in the NSA was getting an alert as that was happening each time, and was aware of those connections. But that the house that was being used for the phone call was that of an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh. And Abdussattar was somebody the FBI recruited who was inside a popular mosque in San Diego, and who they thought might be able to feed them warnings of anybody who might be a radical Muslim terrorist. And Abdussattar claims that he simply missed the warning signs of the two tenants that he had in his home. I mean, it’s kind of interesting. He’s also, he’s not just an FBI informant, he’s also a Saudi, which kind of points to Richard Clarke’s conjecture, which he first laid out to us when we sat down in his office in 2009. And that was that once the CIA monitored the meeting in Malaysia, knew that these two guys were connected to Bin Laden and were of interest, and saw that they were heading to the United States, in Clarke’s words, they might well have thought that the best way to try to recruit these guys to feed information was not to send a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, American CIA agent to go to meet them. But, instead, to use our partners in Saudi Arabia and Saudi intelligence—which George Tenet, the head of the CIA, happened to be very close with—to try to recruit them. So I actually focus more on the fact that this guy was introduced to this house by a gentleman who’s been determined to be a Saudi agent, a guy named Omar al-Bayoumi, and that this guy then was perhaps working dually for Saudi intel and as an FBI asset. And everyone sort of focuses on, oh, Abdussattar Shaikh was an FBI asset, so that seems to put blame at the feet of the FBI. Could be; could be, but I would also focus on that Saudi angle, because it recurs so often.</font></p><div class="p14_53" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">RS: </strong>Well, it also goes to the question of the efficiency of the surveillance society. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><h3><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/11/19/fbi-describes-proud-boys-a.html">https://boingboing.net/2018/11/19/fbi-describes-proud-boys-a.html</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">extremist</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fbi-fires-agent-peter-strzok-over-anti-trump-text-messages">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fbi-fires-agent-peter-strzok-over-anti-trump-text-messages</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/23/the_new_cointelpro_meet_the_black"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/23/the_new_cointelpro_meet_the_black</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;">Texas, a black activist says he is the first person to be targeted and prosecuted under a secretive U.S. surveillance effort to track so-called black identity extremists. On December 12, activist Rakem Balogun awoke to armed</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span><span class="caps" style="letter-spacing: -0.2px; box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;">agents storming his Dallas apartment. He was then <b>jailed for nearly six months without the possibility of bail as the</b></span><b><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span><span class="caps" style="letter-spacing: -0.2px; box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span></b><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><b>investigated him for “domestic terrorism,</b>” in </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police brutality.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> He was released earlier this month, after U.S. attorneys failed to prosecute him. For more, we speak with Rakem Balogun, who was released earlier this month after being jailed for nearly six months. And we speak with Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a Black Lives Matter Bay Area activist.</span></font></div><div class="story_summary" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="mobile_anchor_target" id="transcript" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h5 class="transcript" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></h5><div class="text" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 27px; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> This is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Democracy Now!</em> I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JUAN</span> GONZÁLEZ:</strong> Well, we end today’s show in Texas, where a black activist says he is the first person to be targeted and prosecuted under a secretive U.S. surveillance effort to track so-called black identity extremists. On December 12th, activist Rakem Balogun awoke to armed <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> agents storming his Dallas apartment. He was then jailed for nearly six months without the possibility of bail as the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span>investigated him for “domestic terrorism,” in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police brutality. He was released earlier this month, after U.S. attorneys failed to prosecute him.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Balogun is a founding member of the groups <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Guerrilla Mainframe and the Huey P. Newton Gun Club. The groups coordinate meals for homeless people, organize youth picnics, run self-defense classes, protest police brutality and advocate for the rights of black gun owners</span>.<b> </b><b><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Guardian</em> reports investigators began tracking him after he was part of a 2015 protest against police brutality and that the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> learned about the protest from a video on <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">InfoWars,</span> the far-right website run by Alex Jones.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Balogun’s arrest comes after a leaked August 2017 report from the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit revealed that the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> claiming, quote, “it is very likely Black Identity Extremist perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Civil liberties groups have slammed the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> report, comparing the memo to the FBI’s covert <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">COINTELPRO</span> program of the 1950s, '60s and ’70s, Counterintelligence Program, which targeted the civil rights movement. Many have also noted the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> memo was dated August 3rd—only a few days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis killed an anti-racist protester, Heather Heyer, and injured dozens more. The <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> does not seem to be surveilling and targeting white people who<b> post violent things to social media</b>, including multiple white men who have recently carried out mass school shootings. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who shot dead eight students and two teachers last week at Santa Fe High School in Texas, had posted on his Facebook page a picture of a T-shirt reading “born to kill.” Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old man who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day had shared numerous posts on social media so disturbing, he was reported to the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> multiple times, yet they never arrested him.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well, for more, we go to Texas, where we’re joined by Rakem Balogun, who was released earlier this month after being held for nearly six months. In San Francisco, we’re joined by Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a Black Lives Matter Bay Area activist.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s begin with Rakem. You were arrested December 12th. Describe what happened.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> Well, pretty much, on December 12th, around 6 a.m. in the morning, me and my son was at home resting, when <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> agents rammed our door and immediately rushed us outside in our underwear, you know, under gunpoint, to be arrested and for me and my son to be separated and, overall, me be hauled off to jail.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> And what did they tell you? On what grounds? What were you charged with?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> I was charged with 922(g), which is prohibited possession of a firearm.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JUAN</span> GONZÁLEZ:</strong> And did you have a license for the firearm?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> Well, in the state of Texas, we don’t—you don’t need a license or even have to register firearms to have them legally. Long as, you know, you’re not a felon or considered a prohibited person, you’re able to have firearms within your home or your vehicle. And if it’s a long-barrel rifle, you’re able to open-carry that without any licenses or anything of that nature.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Why were you held for almost a year, Rakem, a half a year?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> Well, the reason why I was held is because the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> was pretty much<b> surveillancing me for over two-and-a-half years as a domestic terrorist.</b> And from surveillancing me for being a domestic terrorist, you know, they overreached and tried to use a previous charge from 2005 to say that this charge made me prohibited of having a firearm, which the elements of that charge actually didn’t. But the reason I was able to be detained for so long is because, when I initially got locked up, I went to a magistrate hearing with a magistrate judge for a bond, and the judge denied me bond based off of me using my First Amendment right to criticize police officers on Facebook.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JUAN</span> GONZÁLEZ:</strong> And how was your case ultimately resolved?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> It was dismissed. You know, we filed pretrial motions stating that I am not a prohibited person and forcing the United States government to prove that I’m a prohibited person not to have firearms. And the government failed to prove that. And so, therefore, they had to release me, after holding me over five months of being detained.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Let’s bring Malkia Cyril into this conversation, with the Center for Media Justice. Malkia, your thoughts on how Facebook and Instagram posts of people like the alleged mass shooters in Texas and Florida were able to post guns and other threatening language and symbols on their Facebook page, yet someone like Rakem is surveilled and held in jail for half a year and then not charged?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MALKIA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CYRIL</span>:</strong> Well, first of all, let’s be very clear: The history of gun control in this country is totally and completely focused on controlling the possession of weapons of black people, while allowing white people to run free shooting up the nation. So, I think that we have to, first of all, understand that, you know, whether we’re talking about posting online or we’re talking about just living your offline life, there’s discrimination in how black people and white people are treated in terms of their First Amendment rights and in terms of their right to carry. Second of all, on Facebook, we already know that black activists are being censored, are victims of hate speech regularly, are surveilled. There’s undue cooperation between Facebook and law enforcement agencies when it comes to the targeting of black activists. So, the online space, particularly on these platforms, these social media platforms, and especially on Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, is a contested space, is a discriminatory space and is a space that is virulently anti-black.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JUAN</span> GONZÁLEZ:</strong> I want to turn to Texas state Representative Sheila Jackson Lee questioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November about the leaked <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span>counterterrorism memo claiming that so-called black identity extremists pose a threat to law enforcement.</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">REP</span>. <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SHEILA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JACKSON</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">LEE</span>:</strong> Are you familiar with the names Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice? My question is, as I hold up the poster dealing with the report under your jurisdiction, “Black Identity Extremists,” it is interesting to me that you are opposing individuals who are opposing lethal force, similar to the attack on Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King on <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">COINTELPRO</span>, but there seems to be no report dealing with the tiki torch parade in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Why is there an attack on black activists versus any reports dealing with the “alt-right” and the white nationalists? Can you answer that question, quickly?</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ATTORNEY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GENERAL</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JEFF</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SESSIONS</span>:</strong> I’m not aware—</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">REP</span>. <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SHEILA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JACKSON</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">LEE</span>:</strong> Are you planning on investigating that?</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ATTORNEY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GENERAL</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JEFF</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SESSIONS</span>:</strong> When was that report completed?</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">REP</span>. <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SHEILA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JACKSON</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">LEE</span>:</strong> In August of 2017.</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ATTORNEY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GENERAL</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JEFF</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SESSIONS</span>:</strong> I’m not aware—I have not studied that report.</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(241, 242, 243); padding-top: 30px !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">REP</span>. <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SHEILA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JACKSON</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">LEE</span>:</strong> I ask you, too, because it’s an attack on individuals who are simply trying to petition the government in a redress of grievances.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">JUAN</span> GONZÁLEZ:</strong> That was U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee questioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Malkia Cyril, your comments?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MALKIA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CYRIL</span>:</strong> I mean, look, white supremacists have committed the largest share of domestic extremist-related killings last year. We know that white supremacy and white supremacists represent the biggest domestic threat to the United States. And yet, Trump cut funding to countering violent extremism to fight white supremacy. We understand very clearly where the priorities lie. And in a digital environment, those priorities—that discrimination and that undue focus on black people and black activists becomes exacerbated. So, that—you know, first of all, I’m just so happy to hear that sister speak so clearly to this issue, but we understand very, very clearly that under these current political conditions, black activists are being targeted, Muslims are being targeted, immigrants are being targeted, while white supremacists are running free.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> And what is happening with your battle against the FBI’s “black identity extremist” program, which I think a lot of people are going to be hearing for the first time right here, Malkia?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MALKIA</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CYRIL</span>:</strong> Well, let’s be clear. You know, I want to remind you all that in the '70s, what it took to even bring the Counterintelligence Program, that was targeting the Black Panther Party and other civil rights activists, to light, you know, several white people had to break into an <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> office, expose that program through illegal means. Right? Today, we have FOIAs. We have—you know, Color of Change, Center for Media Justice, <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACLU</span>, Center for Constitutional Rights have used the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FOIA</span>process to find out more information about this program. Color of Change has been able to uncover something called a race paper, you know, where they're looking into what really is going on.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But at the end of the day, we understand that very little information is available to us. Part of the problem is a deep lack of transparency. We know that the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> is undergoing its own separate crisis, which makes it even more difficult, under the current political conditions, to get any information. We know that members of Congress, you know, as you just heard, have gone to the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span>, the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> director, have gone to Jeff Sessions, and demanded information and not received any.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, right now, we see those in power stalling, not sharing information. I think it will require a lawsuit of pretty significant proportions just to get basic information, the goal of which is to get the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FBI</span> to withdraw this designation, to rescind any funds dedicated to attacking black activists using this designation. But it’s going to be an uphill battle and one that we’re prepared to be on.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Rakem, do you think you are still under surveillance? And what happened—</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> Yes, I—</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Go ahead.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RAKEM</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BALOGUN</span>:</strong> Yes, I do.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> And how are you going to challenge what happened to you, being held and then not tried?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/dear-liberal-america-fbi-not-your-friend-and-it-never-has-been"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/dear-liberal-america-fbi-not-your-friend-and-it-never-has-been</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Kansas, a federal jury convicted three white male militia members Wednesday of plotting to massacre Somali immigrants at a mosque and an apartment building in Garden City. Gavin Wright, Patrick Stein and Curtis Allen were found guilty of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, after an </span><span class="caps" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: top;">FBI</span><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> informant said they were plotting to use guns and car bombs to mass murder Somalis. The three belonged to a militia called the Crusaders. At trial, their lawyer admitted the trio referred to Muslims as “cockroaches” but argued they hadn’t meant to go through with their plot.</span></font></div><div><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">entrapment // animal rights tutt?</font></span></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">https://www.theXXXguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/standing-rock-fbi-investigation-dakota-access</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no link</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Revealed: FBI terrorism taskforce investigating Standing Rock activists</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">FBI representatives have contacted several ‘water protectors’, raising alarm that an indigenous-led movement is being construed as domestic terrorism</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> A permit has been granted for the oil pipeline to cross the Missouri river, following Donald Trump’s executive order. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> A permit has been granted for the oil pipeline to cross the Missouri river, following Donald Trump’s executive order. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Sam Levin in Cannon Ball, North Dakota</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">@SamTLevin</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">email</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Friday 10 February 2017 06.00 EST Last modified on Friday 14 July 2017 13.42 EDT</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The FBI is investigating political activists campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline, diverting agents charged with preventing terrorist attacks to instead focus their attention on indigenous activists and environmentalists.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Guardian has established that multiple officers within the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce have attempted to contact at least three people tied to the Standing Rock “water protector” movement in North Dakota.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The purpose of the officers’ inquiries into Standing Rock, and scope of the task force’s work, remains unknown. Agency officials declined to comment. But the fact that the officers have even tried to communicate with activists is alarming to free-speech experts who argue that anti-terrorism agents have no business scrutinizing protesters.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The idea that the government would attempt to construe this indigenous-led non-violent movement into some kind of domestic terrorism investigation is unfathomable to me,” said Lauren Regan, a civil rights attorney who has provided legal support to demonstrators who were contacted by representatives of the FBI. “It’s outrageous, it’s unwarranted … and it’s unconstitutional.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Regan, who has regularly visited Standing Rock and is the executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Oregon, said she learned of three cases in which officers with the taskforce, known as the JTTF, tried to talk to activists in person. She described the encounters as attempted “knocks and talks”, meaning law enforcement showed up at people’s doors without a subpoena or warrant and tried to get them to voluntarily cooperate with an interview.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The three individuals, who include a Native American and a non-indigenous activist, asserted their fifth amendment rights and did not respond to the officers, according to Regan, who declined to identify them to protect their privacy and out of fear of retribution.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Two of them were contacted in North Dakota and a third at their home outside the state, according to Regan. She said all three contacts were made in recent weeks after Trump’s inauguration.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Trump, a former investor in Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based firm behind the pipeline, took executive action in his first week in office to expedite the project. On Wednesday, workers began drilling to complete the pipeline across the Missouri river.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The JTTF revelation comes at a time when there have been increasing concerns at Standing Rock about law enforcement surveillance, police violence and the targeted arrests and prosecutions of activists.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Since the summer, law enforcement officials have made roughly 700 arrests, in some cases leading to serious felony charges and possibly lengthy state prison sentences. Following recent indictments, at least six activists are now facing charges in federal court. Rumors about JTTF have caused further stress among the activists.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Regan said she was able to confirm the identity of one of the JTTF officers, Andrew Creed, who attempted to contact an activist. Reached by phone, he declined to comment to the Guardian, saying, “I can’t talk to you” before hanging up.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">An FBI spokesman, Jeffrey Van Nest, also declined to answer any questions, saying: “We’re not in a position to provide a comment as to the existence of an investigation.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In November, a JTTF officer also showed up to the hospital room of Sophia Wilansky, a 21-year-old who was seriously injured during a standoff with law enforcement at Standing Rock, according to her father, Wayne Wilansky. The FBI took her clothes and still have not returned them, he said in an interview this week.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Wayne said he suspected that the FBI brought a terrorism agent given that local police had alleged that activists set off an explosion that caused his daughter’s injuries. Witnesses have said they believe she was hit by a police concussion grenade.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The timing of the FBI hospital visit in Minneapolis was upsetting, he added. “It was especially disturbing, because Sophia’s blood pressure was going up. She was about to be wheeled into surgery.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> Activists at Standing Rock have faced blizzard conditions at the camp during the winter months.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> Activists at Standing Rock have faced blizzard conditions at the camp during the winter months. Photograph: Michael Nigro/Pacific/Barcroft</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Police have repeatedly painted the anti-pipeline movement as dangerous, which is why JTTF may be involved, Regan said.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“From the very beginning, local law enforcement has attempted to justify its militarized presence … by making false allegations that somehow these water protectors were violent.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Analysis How Keystone XL and Dakota Access went from opposition to resurrection</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Both projects were opposed by grassroots groups, mired in court battles and produced high-profile clashes between environmentalists and energy interests</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> Read more</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The attorney said it also seemed likely that JTTF may have contacted other water protectors and said she worried they may not have realized their best option is to remain silent and contact a lawyer.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This is not the first time the JTTF has been tied to an investigation of civil rights protesters. Records from Minnesota suggested that the taskforce monitored a Black Lives Matter demonstration.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For indigenous leaders who have vowed to continue fighting the pipeline on the ground, the FBI investigations and ongoing federal prosecutions have become increasingly worrisome. It’s particularly troubling to some given the US government’s history of aggressively targeting Native American protesters and turning them into political prisoners.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“This is history repeating itself,” said LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who founded the first camp opposing the pipeline. “I keep on thinking, how we did come to this point? … When did Americans lose their rights? When did America stop following the law?”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Brandy-Lee Maxie, a 34-year-old Nakota tribe member from Canada, said it’s difficult not to worry about possible prosecution. But the cause, she said, is too important to give up: “I’m staying here. Whatever happens to those who stay happens. We’ve just gotta keep praying.”</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></font></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>