FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

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http://www.allgov.com/news/controversie ... ews=857944


Walmart Recruited FBI and Lockheed Intelligence Unit for Surveillance of Employee Union




Friday, November 27, 2015


When workers at Walmart tried to unionize two years ago, company executives turned to a defense contractor and the FBI to keep track of labor organizers and supporters.

Using documents obtained from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Bloomberg Businessweek reported the retail giant launched a surveillance campaign targeting OUR Walmart, which organized protests in 2013 against the company.

Walmart leadership was so concerned about the union activity that “it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group” Susan Berfield reported for Bloomberg Businessweek.

“We are fighting for all workers to be paid a fair wage and enough hours to put food on the table and provide for our families,” Mary Pat Tifft, a Wisconsin Walmart employee of 27 years, said, according to Common Dreams. “To think that Walmart found us such a threat that they would hire a defense contractor and engage the FBI is a mind-blowing abuse of power.”

The media investigation into Walmart revealed that inside its global security operation is an Analytical Research Center (ARC), led by a former FBI officer, Ken Senser. And overseeing ARC is an executive, Steve Dozier, who used to run the Arkansas State Police. Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas.

ARC also took action the year before in 2012 when labor activists talked about organizing strikes on Black Friday that year, which could have hurt sales on one of the biggest shopping days of the year. “When we received word of potential strikes and disruptive activity on Black Friday 2012, that’s when we started to ask the ARC to work with us,” Karen Casey, who was in charge of Walmart’s U.S. labor relations, told the NLRB. “ARC had contracted with Lockheed leading up to Black Friday to help source open social media sites.”

Additionally, a Lockheed analyst, Christian Blandford, monitored the social media of activists in Bentonville before Walmart’s shareholder meeting two years ago.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce (by Susan Berfield, Bloomberg)

‘Mind-Blowing Abuse of Power’: Walmart Spied on Workers with FBI, Lockheed Martin's Help (by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams)

Labor Board Charges Wal-Mart with Illegally Firing and Punishing Employees (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

[fruhmenschen]

Link du jour

http://www.newsandtribune.com/opinion/b ... c2346.html


1.




December 01. 2015 1:44PM
Is the offical Kennedy assassination version wrong?

If there were more than three shots fired at President Kennedy from behind, then the government version of his assassination is wrong. The government claims Kennedy was shot by one gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot three times, from behind President Kennedy.
The Nov. 18, 2013 presentation by Jesse Greenspan, in a “History in the Headlines” Internet article, at http://www.history.com/news/the-other-v ... assination, describes James Tague standing ahead of the Kennedy motorcade when Tague heard a loud bang and felt something slam into his right cheek. A bullet appeared to have missed President Kennedy, hitting the street curb, sending debris flying into Tague’s face, causing injury to his face.
In his excellent book titled “Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy,” Jim Marrs reports that the FBI crime lab found lead fragments where the curb was hit (near Tague) consistent with the lead used in a rifle bullet. Marrs states that Tague later claimed that one of the three shots he heard fired from the grassy knoll in front and to the right of Kennedy missed Kennedy and hit the curb near him.
The Internet “History” article titled, “Beyond Dallas: The Assassination’s Key Players after Nov. 22, 1963,” published Nov. 22, 2013, by Christopher Klein, at http://www.history.com/news/beyond-dall ... ov-22-1963, states that Dr. Robert N. McClelland, Assistant Professor of Surgery at Parkland Hospital, responded to President Kennedy in the emergency room as he died. And, that Dr. McClelland states that the hole in the back of Kennedy’s head was an exit wound, and not an entrance wound as claimed by the government (the Warren Commission). In other words, Kennedy was shot in the head from the front.
The You Tube video by the JFKASSASSINATIONFORUM.COM titled “JFK Assassination Interview with Parkland Hospital Doctor Charles Crenshaw, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZ87gOlKkM, presents an interview with Dr. Crenshaw, who was the surgeon who worked on President Kennedy when he died. He says that he looked over Kennedy’s wounds very carefully after the President was declared dead, and that Kennedy was shot twice from the front. One shot from the front went into Kennedy’s head at the upper right part of his head, blowing out pieces of Kennedy’s skull and brain from the back of his skull. The second wound was in the throat, just above the necktie, creating a small opening, about the size of the little finger.
Dr. Crenshaw has been a trauma surgeon for decades, and he has dealt continuously with gunshot wounds. He emphatically states that Kennedy was shot twice from the front. He also claims that someone tampered with the throat wound by significantly enlarging it (to be like a larger exit wound and not the smaller entrance wound that it was) after Kennedy was wrapped in sheets and after he helped place Kennedy into a coffin in the emergency room; and, that this wound enlargement occurred before Kennedy was photographed later, just before his autopsy at the naval hospital.
Dr. Crenshaw states that the autopsy sketches, pictures, and conclusions about Kennedy’s head and neck injuries during the Kennedy autopsy, and later used by the Warren Commission as crucial evidence, do not represent Kennedy’s injuries in the emergency room!
A You Tube video titled “The Limo Windshield, Bullet from Front,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vClwuJ0yuWM, interviews Dr. Evalea Glanges, who was outside the hospital while Kennedy was dying in the hospital, and she claims she inspected a bullet hole in the front windshield of Kennedy’s limo, which she claims clearly indicated that the windshield was shot from in front of the limo.
The You Tube video titled “Bullet Holes in the Limousine and Extra Bullets in Dealey Plaza at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtFoPCKVp-8, states that FBI Agent Charles Taylor wrote in his report that there was a bullet hole in the front windshield of Kennedy’s limo and bullet fragments were removed from it. Also, Dallas Motorcycle Police officer Stavis Ellis wrote that a pencil could be inserted through the hole in the front windshield. Dallas Patrolman Nick Prencipe recorded there was a hole in the windshield. Another witness, Harold R. Freeman, said there was a hole in the front windshield. Carl Renas, connected with the Ford Motor Company, where the Kennedy limo was re-built after the assassination, reported what appeared to be a gunshot hole in the chrome trim of the car.
This video also shows a used .45 cal. bullet in the grass along the Kennedy travel route and that Dallas Police Officer J.W. Foster saw the bullet strike the grass near a manhole cover. This video provides a picture of Dallas Police Officer Ed Brewer kneeling by the manhole cover, protecting the bullet as evidence. This is not the bullet that hit the curb near Tague, which I have already described above in this article.
Jim Marrs states in his book, “Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy,” that ”Dallas policeman J. W. Foster, from his vantage point on the top of the triple underpass, saw a bullet strike the grass on the south side of Elm near a manhole cover.” Marrs writes that newsmen and spectators were kept away from this spot by the police who told them that “a bullet was embedded in the grass inches from the manhole cover.”
Marrs also writes that Wayne and Edna Hartman found two more holes in the ground and a Dallas Police officer told them that this was where two more bullets hit the ground, fired from the grassy knoll located in front and to the right of Kennedy when he was shot.
There are many, many more research books and videos claiming that more than three shots were fired by more than one person at President Kennedy, including shots fired from in front of Kennedy, such as the You Tube video titled “Six JFK Shooters-3 tied to CIA,” athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfjGL0_xRM, which presents pictures, narratives, and explanations claiming six people shot at Kennedy.
Is the official Kennedy assassination version that one man shot three times at Kennedy from behind, wrong
http://www.hillsdale.net/article/201512 ... /151209986




2.

Ex-Connecticut mayor returns to office after prison stint
December 1, 2015
Associated Press
Save |
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — The former mayor of Bridgeport, who spent seven years in federal prison for public corruption, will once again be sworn in as mayor of Connecticut's largest city.
Joe Ganim completed a stunning political comeback when he defeated incumbent Mayor Bill Finch in the Sept. 16 primary and easily defeated seven opponents in the general election to win back his old job. The campaign by the Democrat, who was released from prison just five years ago, was fueled by a wave of goodwill from voters who fondly remembered his years in office, from 1991 until 2003.
The 56-year-old former attorney is scheduled to take the oath of office Tuesday evening at Klein Memorial Auditorium. The inauguration originally was to be held at a park, but plans were changed due to expected inclement weather.
Since his election night victory, Ganim has been busy meeting with state and federal officials, rebuilding relationships that may have been bruised during the campaign. Few elected officials endorsed Ganim. Also, he has made some initial appointments and created a 75-member transition task force with seven committees.
Those committees have been focusing on economic development, community neighborhood services, education and youth, government operations and financial policies, government accountability and transparency, and public safety and emergency services. They have until Feb. 1 to make a formal presentation to the new mayor.
On Monday, Ganim announced he was appointing 10 people, most of whom supported him during the campaign, to positions in the mayor's office. He tapped former FBI agent Edward Adams to serve as his senior adviser and director of governmental accountability and integrity. Adams, who said he played a leading role in the corruption probe that sent Ganim to prison, was actively involved in the Democrat's efforts to win back his old job.
Ganim has promised a "transparent government, accessible and accountable to our citizens," adding how the city's government "will be clean and effective."
- See more at: http://www.morningjournalnews.com/page/ ... s9ptU.dpuf



3.
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/ ... -homicides

The Feds Lose Hundreds of Guns a Year, and They Keep Turning Up in Bay Area Homicides
Crime / Law & Order The Feds Lose Hundreds of Guns a Year, and They Keep Turning Up in Bay Area Homicides
Posted By Adam Brinklow on Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:18 AM

• raymondclarkeimages/Flickr

A sick sense of déjà vu accompanied the announcement last week that the gun used to kill Oakland muralist Antonio Ramos in September was the same weapon stolen from a federal agent’s car in San Francisco weeks earlier. A federal agent’s gun was also the murder weapon in the shooting death of Kathryn Steinle in July, and again in that case the weapon was snatched during a car break-in.

In neither case is it clear how a government-issued sidearm got into the hands of the killer. Alleged Steinle shooter Francisco Sanchez says he found the Bureau of Land Management ranger’s gun stashed under a bench on Pier 14, a head-scratching claim that is probably impossible to disprove no matter how unlikely it sounds. The burglary of the ICE-issued gun that killed Ramos was solved, but without securing the missing weapon.

Federal agents and police lose track of their guns all the time. UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo Bennett had her gun stolen out of her car in August. Cops in San Francisco and Hayward pulled similar boners this year, too. FBI agents, DEA agents, and even a Secret Service agent assigned to protect President Obama have suffered the same embarrassment, almost always because the guns were left in cars, just like the ones that killed Ramos and Steinle.

This is a trend with a long and unfortunate pedigree: A GAO report from 2003 showed that federal agents lose about 250 guns every year, 80 percent of which are never recovered. This includes the occasional shotgun and “submachine gun.” More recently (and embarrassingly), the ATF, the very federal agency tasked with preventing illegal gun trafficking, lost about a dozen guns every year from 2009 to 2013.

That’s just too many guns, guys.

In fairness, this is a tiny number compared to the hundreds of thousands of other firearms the ATF estimates are also stolen every year. But there’s an important distinction: There is no federal law regulating how civilians store guns. Federal agencies, on the other hand, issue strict rules about handling weapons. Which are then ignored.

Or so we‘re forced to assume.

In most cases, we don’t even know what the rules are because G-men are notoriously tight-lipped about them. (San Francisco magazine’s Joe Eskenazi spent months trying to get the Bureau of Land Management to explain their policy on the proper storage of firearms, only to get essentially a blank sheet of paper in response.)

There is at least a halfway reasonable excuse for this: If the public knew where the feds stashed guns, it would only make it easier to steal them. Fair enough, but there’s one big problem: Whatever the rules are, it seems a lot of people aren’t bothering to follow them, and at some point there needs to be accountability to the public.

Given that carelessly “lost” guns have now killed two people in the Bay Area in a span of under three months, that point is now. But ICE has not commented so far, and nobody’s exactly holding their breath.

It’s not surprising that they want to keep covering their butts, but what will it take for this seemingly simple lesson to sink in? Even non gun-owners in San Francisco know that the dumbest thing you can do is leave your gun in the car, so there’s no excuse for trained law officers to do it this often.

Supervisor David Campos has proposed a city law that would make it a misdemeanor for anyone to leave an unsecured gun in a car. Campos called it a “no-brainer.” He’s right.



4.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/artic ... ond-exile/
Terror in Little Saigon: A Second Exile
In partnership with:

/
Comments
December 1, 2015
/
by
A.C. Thompson
By 1989, Doan Van Toai had become a prominent commentator on the political affairs of Vietnam, his home country. Toai had witnessed the corruption of South Vietnam’s political leaders, and later suffered first-hand the brutality of the Communist victors after the war. Now, in America, he’d found cause for cautious optimism.
Toai wrote essays for publications including The Wall Street Journal. He’d done a stint as a researcher at Tufts University outside Boston, and launched an advocacy group called the Institute for Democracy in Vietnam. Working with a co-author, he had published a well-received memoir called The Vietnamese Gulag. He gave speeches around the world.
And then, on a summer morning outside Toai’s house in Fresno, California, a man armed with a .380-caliber pistol shot him. One bullet wrecked Toai’s jaw and destroyed six teeth before exiting beneath his left ear. Another ruined his intestines.
After the shooting, the Vietnamese Organization to Exterminate Communists and Restore the Nation took credit for the attempted murder of Toai. The FBI had long regarded the ostensible group — VOECRN — as a cover for the violent work of a very public organization founded years before by former South Vietnamese military officers. That group, formally known as the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, had brought elements of the war back home to America. Its members wanted to re-take Vietnam and openly raised money to finance an army to do so. The FBI, over many years of frustrating investigation, had come to believe the group, known most commonly as the Front, was willing to kill or terrorize those in American who criticized its aims and operations.
Toai was one of those detractors, and his brush with death had an effect that doubtless pleased the Front. He gave up public writing. He abandoned the speeches.
“I quit talking,” he said.
In that, Toai had company. Other survivors of dozens of acts of terror carried out against Vietnamese immigrants on American soil during the 1980s — many of which the FBI suspected the Front was responsible for — shut up or moved. Some abandoned businesses or retreated from their own communities and what had been active public lives.
ProPublica and FRONTLINE reported last month on the Front’s suspected campaign of terror and the government’s failed efforts to hold anyone accountable. Today’s installment of Terror in Little Saigon examines the steep, enduring price paid by the victims of that violence. These Vietnamese-American victims had already experienced the twin calamities of war and displacement before landing in the U.S. Now, in a variety of ways, they had been returned to the life they thought they had left behind, one circumscribed by fear, one less than fully free, one in which brutality went unpunished.
It could feel, said one victim, like a second exile.
The FBI listed Toai in its files as a likely victim of the Front. But for all of the FBI’s suspicions, the agency failed to ever make a case against the Front’s members for what, by 1990, had become a string of killings, arsons and beatings. Among those murdered were five Vietnamese-American journalists and the FBI considered the Front to have been behind most, if not all, of those murders. But the bureau had not made a single arrest for those killings.
Vietnamese-American journalists say that the political disputes that roiled the community during the 1980s have largely dissipated. Even then, they say, it was only a small minority of extremists who seemed bent on silencing those with whom they disagreed.
Still, many of those who suffered back then are to this day reluctant to talk about their experiences. ProPublica and FRONTLINE set out to talk to as many victims as we could. Toai hadn’t spoken publicly about his shooting for years. Others we spent time with — including a relative of a murdered journalist named Le Triet — hadn’t spoken at all about their grief, frustration and enduring fear.
Some affected by the violence of that era remain resolute in their silence. ProPublica and FRONTLINE arranged an interview with a Vietnamese-American radio host who had been on air during those volatile years. The host ultimately backed out of the interview, sending a text message saying that he was still worried about discussing the period. A prominent writer who’d been targeted for death after lambasting the Front in a book also declined to speak, as did a man who survived a near-fatal shooting. In San Jose, California, a man who had gotten death threats from VOECRN in 1988 was too scared to revisit the incident.
Toai, 43 when he was shot, recovered from his wounds in a hospital room watched over by an armed guard. He was stitched up, and his damaged mouth was fitted for artificial teeth.
But his new American life had been forever altered.
“After that,” Toai said of his unsolved shooting, “I’m thinking this country is not safe.”
—
Twenty-five years after the murder of Le Triet, a 61-year-old columnist for a Virginia-based magazine called Van Nghe Tien Phong, one of his close relatives would only agree to talk about the killing on the condition that he or she would not be named.
After all, the person said, the authorities have never arrested those responsible. The relative had never spoken publicly about the case and its aftereffects.
Shortly after Triet’s assassination in 1990, Triet’s relative got what they said was a menacing phone call. “The person said, ‘I know where you are. I know who you are. I know where you live. And you don’t know anything about me. So you should watch your back.'” Shaken, the relative bought a pistol and took shooting lessons.
“I cannot forget how I felt in those days. Because I knew the police were in the dark,” the relative said.
Triet was the last of the five Vietnamese-American journalists killed during the spate of violence within the Vietnamese-American community. An assassin — or assassins — fired a barrage of .380 caliber bullets, killing both Triet and his wife, Dang-Tran Thi Tuyet, as they returned to their home in Fairfax County, Virginia, after a dinner party.
Triet had suffered greatly while living in Vietnam. After Ho Chi Minh’s forces took control of northern Vietnam in 1945, they killed Triet’s father and 26-year-old brother by burying them alive. As a 16-year-old boy, Triet was sent to a series of Communist prisons, where he spent roughly three years; during much of that time, his captors tortured him. When his hair grew shaggy, he used a piece of broken glass to cut it.
The emotional damage was deep. In those days, the relative said, Triet “was very angry. Anger is what he had.”
Triet and his family moved south, to Saigon, in 1954. When the city was seized by the Communists in 1975, Triet fled again, this time to the U.S. Triet wound up in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., an area that would become a hub for Vietnamese refugees. It was not an easy transition — for nearly a decade he never saw one of his three children, a daughter who remained in Vietnam.
But eventually Triet developed some semblance of a normal life. He got a job as a furnace operator with Arlington County’s Water Pollution Control Division and began writing columns for Tien Phong magazine, which brought him widespread renown within the Vietnamese diaspora. “Those were his happy years,” said the relative. “He considered himself successful. He lived comfortably.”
In print, Triet could be caustic. His “pen was sharp and he was intelligent,” the relative recalled. “He was annoyed by anything unjust.”
One of his frequent targets was the Front, which he had supported at first, but had come to believe was misleading its followers and misappropriating donations. When the writer and his wife were murdered, the relative immediately suspected the crime was a product of the long-running feud between the group and the writer.
Triet was the second Tien Phong employee to be assassinated. Ten months earlier, layout designer Do Trong Nhan was murdered in similar fashion when a gunman squeezed at least eight shots into Nhan’s 1980 Datsun 200-SX as he prepared to drive to work. The shots struck the 56 year old in the face, neck, abdomen, chest, left shoulder and left hand. Police records show the fatal shots were fired from a .380 caliber auto-loading handgun.
According to interviews and FBI documents, investigators believed the killings of Nhan, Dang-Tran and Triet may have been the work of the same professional assassin or assassins.
Several former members of the Front have publicly denied any involvement in the murders. But five former senior Front members told ProPublica and FRONTLINE the group operated a death squad.
After the murders, the relative said, the fear was crushing: waking from sleep screaming or sobbing. The relative once had enjoyed going to Tet festivities, Vietnamese-language book signings, performances by Vietnamese-American musicians. The deaths of Le Triet and his wife, and the threatening call that followed, changed all that. The relative chose to stay away from those cultural events, effectively banishing themself from the community. The relative moved to a new neighborhood far from the Vietnamese-American enclaves of Northern Virginia and severed nearly all ties to the old life. Among the worries was the relative would somehow get drawn into the dispute that had led to the murders of Triet and Tuyet.
“The joy of our lives was limited unfairly,” the relative said.
—
Former newspaper publisher Nguyen Tu A — brash, outspoken — was one of the few victims to share his story without hesitation.
During the 1980s, Tu A published a weekly Vietnamese-language newspaper called Viet Press. It had a circulation of as much as 7,000. And in its pages, Tu A, much like Toai and Triet, challenged the Front. Days after Toai was shot, Tu A received a communique signed by VOECRN. It was a picture of drops descending into a spreading pool of blood, according to an FBI description. There were four words on the page: “Who is the next?”
“Nguyen Tu A had written an article critical of the Front,” observed an FBI agent in a report, adding that Tu A’s politics were similar to those of Toai — he thought trade and diplomacy between Vietnam and the U.S. could liberalize the regime.
Tu A, who lives in Westminster, California, said the threats, though not acted upon, had an effect: He shuttered the paper after less than five years of publishing; and more lastingly, the threats forced him to live in a near constant state of wariness. Looking back, that state of suspicion was crystallized for him by a strange phone call he has never been able to expunge from his memory.
It was about 9 p.m. one night, he said, when an unidentified man called him with urgent news: your brother has been in a car accident and been taken to a nearby hospital. Tu A, the caller said, needed to come to the hospital as quickly as possible. Suspicious, Tu A contacted the police. He learned that his brother hadn’t been in a crash, wasn’t injured and wasn’t at the hospital.
Tu A didn’t go anywhere.
“It was a trap,” he said.
Shrewd? Paranoid? Tu A isn’t sure what to make of his choice. It’s just another small, unnerving uncertainty in an unsolved domestic terrorism case.
—
Doan Van Troai has always insisted he doesn’t know who shot him. That’s what he told the cops back in 1989 and that’s what he told ProPublica and FRONTLINE during a series of interviews this year, both on camera and off. He told us he long ago gave up on the idea of ever seeing the man who shot him stand trial.
FBI records, though, show agents thought the Front was possibly behind the attack. One informant told FBI agents he’d been present during a Front chapter meeting when a leader informed the assembled members that the organization was responsible for the shooting, bureau documents indicate. The chapter leader revealed that Toai “had been punished by the Front” for his writings, the informant said.
Toai had grown up in a Mekong Delta village called Rach Ranh. His mother farmed rice; his father, like many men of his generation, fought to push the French colonialists out of Vietnam.
“It was a blessed land. Rice grew well in the rich, alluvial soil,” Toai wrote in Vietnamese Gulag, which was co-authored by David Chanoff. “Fruit abounded and was available for the picking.” As a child he caught fish with his bare hands.
As a young man, Toai moved to the big city — Saigon — and eventually went to work as a branch manager for a bank. The position gave him a close-up view of the culture of bribery and kickbacks plaguing the government in the south.
And so when the Communists took control of the south in 1975, Toai was hopeful. Then 30 years old, with an easy smile and hair worthy of a Kennedy, Toai thought the new regime might represent an antidote to corruption. He took a job on the Revolutionary Finance Committee, which would overhaul the financial system in the territory the Communists now controlled.
But within two months, police had tossed him into a jail cell, a 12-by–30 foot box with some 40 other men. Toai says his imprisonment came after he balked at plans to confiscate private property from small business owners and farmers.
Conditions were beyond grim. He remembers his jailers mixing sand into his daily serving of rice, making it nearly inedible. The sand, his captors told him, was so he would think of his mistakes while he ate. Day after day, Toai and the other inmates had to write up autobiographical narratives so they could be educated about the many misdeeds they’d committed throughout their lives. Deaths due to a lack of medical care were common.
Finally, after 28 months in captivity, Toai strode out of prison. He never got a concrete explanation for why he’d been imprisoned or why he’d been released. He fled Vietnam, and wound up in America with his wife and three children.






Chicago mayor fires police chief amid outcry over police shooting of teen




Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired the city's police superintendent Tuesday, a week after the release of a dash-cam video that showed a white Chicago officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times.
Emanuel called a news conference to announce the dismissal of Garry McCarthy, who only days ago insisted to reporters that the mayor had his "back."
The mayor praised McCarthy's leadership of the force but called it an "undeniable fact" that the public's trust in the police had eroded.
"Now is the time for fresh eyes and new leadership," Emanuel said.
Protesters have been calling for McCarthy's dismissal in response to the handling of the death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was killed in October 2014.
Some aldermen, particularly members of the city council's black caucus, have also been seeking McCarthy's resignation, citing the city's crime rate and questions about the department transparency.
The city released video of the shooting only after a judge ordered it to be made public. The release set off several days of largely peaceful protests. Officer Jason Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder.
"Any case of excessive force or abuse of authority undermines the entire force and the trust we must build with every community in the city," the mayor said. Police officers are only effective "if they are trusted by all Chicagoans, whoever they are and wherever they live in the city."
Emanuel introduced McCarthy as his pick to lead the department in May 2011, replacing former FBI agent Jody Weis, who was unpopular with many rank-and-file officers who claimed Weis did not stand behind them
v

[fruhmenschen]

Bonus read


JFK assassination info sent in by
Ed Tatro

A Profile In Courage, Congressman Neil Gallagher
archive.larouchepac.com/node/28114
Sep 17, 2013 - Neil Gallagher is the only man alive who not only was a close personal friend of John F. Kennedy, but fought the apparatus associated with the ...

A Profile In Courage, Congressman Neil Gallagher - YouTube
Video for neil gallagher jfk▶ 1:40:08

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byul-xnPFCM


Sep 18, 2013 - Uploaded by LaRouche PAC Video Archive
Neil Gallagher is the only man alive who not only was a close personal friend of John F ...


Former Congressman Neil Gallagher Interviewed: Fighting the ...
www.thomhartmann.com/.../former-congres ... terviewe...
Sep 19, 2013 - 4 posts - ‎3 authors
Neil Gallagher is the only man alive who not only was a close personal friend of John F. Kennedy, but fought the apparatus associated with the ...





Link du jour

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... e-killings


1.

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.com/

geared up
December 2, 2015 Uncategorized active shooter drills, bank spying,
Doomsday readiness, must-read Hilary e-mails, real-world or exercise?,
Russia presents evidence about ISIS/Turkey oil, San Bernadino, SITE
beheads a Russian, Zuckerberg PR stunt

geared up

‘She said she thought it was a drill:’ Starting last year, center’s
staff began completing active shooter drills | 02 Dec 2015 | Today, we
read: San Bernardino mass shooting leaves multiple dead, authorities
say – At least 14 people were killed and up to three suspects were
being sought in a mass shooting Wednesday on the grounds of a social
services facility in Southern California, authorities said. San
Bernardino County sheriff spokeswoman Coral Castro told Newsday that
San Bernardino police are still searching for the trio of suspects.
Authorities said 14 people were killed and at least 14 more were at
area hospitals, some with “significant injuries.” … A witness told CNN
his daughter was evacuated from the building. “She said she thought it
was a drill,” he said. Starting last year, the staff began completing
active shooter drills. [San Bernardino County participated in an
active shooter exercise YESTERDAY. ‘It looks the three actors have
been caught.’ Wow, blatant. (MSNBC) See also, for historical
perspective: Active shooter drills held in Rancho Cucamonga | 01 Aug
2013 | Various law enforcement agencies in San Bernardino County
worked together Thursday for hands-on drills simulating an active
shooter inside a movie theater. They gathered at the Victoria Gardens
Shopping Center in Rancho Cucamonga. During an early-morning drill,
girls came out screaming for help, and the sheriff’s department went
into the movie theater in full tactical gear and guns drawn as if it
were a real event. Officials have been practicing the drill all week.
The Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department was one of the agencies
participating in the event… Members of the fire department will go in
with a team of armed law enforcement officers before the scene has
been deemed completely safe to treat the seriously wounded. It’s a
technique modeled after what combat soldiers do to treat the wounded
in a war zone. Also, see: Active-shooter drills held in Rancho
Cucamonga by KABC – Los Angeles – Law enforcement agencies in San
Bernardino County worked together for drills simulating an active
shooter inside a theater. (Video)]

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Kristin Myricks, IRC employee not at work on 12/2, tells CNN at 3:50PM
EST that mass shooting drills regularly taking place on the IRC campus
since 2014.

“SWAT Team already geared up and in area [before shooting.” -FOX
Business, 4:35PM EST

Much much more at

http://memoryholeblog.com/2015/12/02/sa ... pen-forum/

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ed-states/

via

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

[&&]{**}[##]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XMcYCgQXMQ

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https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015 ... -exercise/

[&&]{**}[##]

“… Whether mass shootings are approached as the mainstream reports
them, or as false flags, staged scenarios, or outright hoaxes, there
is a common thread which runs through some of them: official training
exercises held just prior to, or at the same time as, the shootings.”

Eight such events are detailed here:

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015 ... shootings/

[&&]{**}[##]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... un-control

[&&]{**}[##]

http://www.vvng.com/vvc-alerts-public-t ... -training/





{**} In Other News {**}

[fruhmenschen]

Bonus read


http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/new ... ned/npcdp/

CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION
Sheriff’s lack of attendance at meetings questioned but he’s not worst

Posted: 8:52 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, 2015

By Eliot Kleinberg and Mike Stucka - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer


WEST PALM BEACH —

When the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission meets, you can
count on six people, nearly a fifth of the panel, being prominently
absent.

Four are federal law enforcement agents. One is Palm Beach County
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. And one is the county Clerk and Comptroller,
Sharon Bock.
+Sheriff’s lack of attendance at meetings questioned but he’s not
worst photo
Richard Graulich
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw

Among them, the six have attended 37 of 284 meetings since 2007, for a
combined attendance average of 13 percent, a Palm Beach Post analysis
of attendance records shows.

By comparison, none of the remaining 26 members on the panel has an
attendance record below 55 percent.

Furthermore, the difference between “public sector” and “private
sector” members in attendance is striking. The 21 public sector
members, from law enforcement, courts and local and federal
government, have an average attendance of 53 percent. The 11 private
sector members, selected by the Economic Council of Palm Beach County,
average 85 percent.
+Sheriff’s lack of attendance at meetings questioned but he’s not
worst photo
Damon Higgins
Palm Beach County Clerk & Comptroller Sharon Bock

The Criminal Justice Commission was created by the County Commission
in 1988, at the behest of the Economic Council, to build partnerships
among agencies to improve the county’s criminal justice system. Its
“public sector” membership is automatically comprised of various law
enforcement, judicial and government posts.

Bradshaw has attended 13 of the 72 meetings held during his terms in
office, and Bock has gone to one of 70 meetings during her terms.

The four federal law enforcement officers are John McKenna, assistant
special agent in charge at the West Palm Beach district office of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (attended 0 of 40 meetings held
during the time he has been appointed to the board); Robert Shirley of
the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (0 of
26); FBI agent Michael D’Alonzo (1 of 6); and Rolando Garcia of the
U.S. Attorney’s Office (22 of 68).
+Sheriff’s lack of attendance at meetings questioned but he’s not
worst photo
William Kramer, chairman, Palm Beach County Criminal Justice
Commission

McKenna’s schedule has not allowed him to attend any of the justice
panel meetings but he does attend Law Enforcement Planning Council
meetings, DEA spokeswoman Anne-Judith Lambert said last month. ATF
spokesman Carlos Gonzalez said Shirley “is just an honorary member” of
the justice commission and also is a regular member of the Planning
Council. In response to questions abut D’Alonzo’s record, FBI
spokesman Michael Leverock said his office is “not in a position to
discuss the schedule of our agents.” And Garcia’s office did not
respond to requests for comment.

Attendance became an issue when, at a Nov. 13 meeting of some justice
panel members, chair William Kramer and others asked about Bradshaw’s
record.

“I think it’s really important that the chief law enforcement officer
of the county attend.” said Kramer, a business consultant and a former
general manager of Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in Belle
Glade.

Priscilla Taylor, who is the county commissioner on the criminal
justice commission, said later she’s not convinced the absence of Bock
and Bradshaw undermines the commission’s legitimacy. But, she said,
“it sure would be nice if they were there.”

Bradshaw told The Post on Nov. 13 that he deliberately skips the
meetings becauseof concerns about Florida’s Government in the Sunshine
law and opening his constitutionally independent office to the
scrutiny of the county Inspector General and Commission on Ethics. The
Sunshine law argument is one he has made since at least 2010.

Both he and Bock have said that because their commission membership
places them on the same public board as law enforcement colleagues,
such as the State Attorney and Public Defender, they would in effect
be violating the public meetings laws any time they discuss a pending
criminal or civil case with each other outside of a publicly noticed
board meeting.

But after The Post asked Bradshaw on Nov. 25 about a 2013 law that
exempts the sheriff, clerk and others from public meeting requirements
when discussing active criminal intelligence information or active
investigations at criminal justice commission meetings, he said, “It
wasn’t about the Sunshine Law because I knew that got rectified.”

Rather, Bradshaw repeated that he doesn’t want to be answerable to the
county’s Inspector General and Ethics Commission.

“Those have never been resolved,” he said.

“The county wants to keep putting restrictions on the sheriff’s
office,” Bradshaw said. He said he was “not going to allow the county
commission to control the constitutional office of the sheriff.”

Bock also discounted the Sunshine Law issue last month. She said it’s
a question of time.

“I have over 1,000 statutory duties as constitutional clerk and
comptroller and I am a board member on countless committees both local
and statewide,” Bock said.

State Rep. David Kerner, D-Lake Worth, himself a member of the Palm
Beach County Criminal Justice Commission, is the legislator who pushed
through the Sunshine Law exemption for criminal justice commission
members. He said he wouldn’t second-guess Bradshaw’s and Bock’s
decisions to err on the side of caution in attending meetings.

“It’s a decision they have to make individually,” Kerner said. “It’s
not a blanket exemption.”

But Barbara Petersen, executive director of the First Amendment
Foundation, a Tallahassee-based open-government advocate



1.



http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op ... sid/63379/


9/11 Whistleblower Coleen Rowley
Saturday, December 05, 2015
TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002

Washington DC - infoZine - Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent
and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed
some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures -- was named one of TIME
magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Rowley wrote to the FBI
Director again in February 2003 with some hard questions about the
reliability of the evidence being adduced to “justify” the impending
invasion of Iraq. She now warns of terror attacks being used as
pretexts for official agendas. She also warns that bulk collection of
personal data by government, like military interventions, is not only
counter to liberty, but counterproductive to the alleged goal of
stopping attacks.

Coleen Rowley
Coleen Rowley. Photo courtesy of accuracy.org
She just wrote the piece "Visa Waiver Program Has Same Weak Links;
Mass Surveillance and Terrorist Watchlisting Don't Work," which
states: "Politicians are scoring points with a frightened U.S.
population by hyping the supposed danger of letting in up to 10,000
Syrian refugees, but a much greater or actual risk exists in the
current gaps in a visa-waiver program. Yesterday's massacre in San
Bernardino again underscores the ineffectiveness of relying upon bulk
data collection and intelligence agencies' watch-listing processes to
'keep us safe from terrorism.'

She wrote a piece for the Star Tribune, "Coleen Rowley: Ten years
after Iraq," which in 2013 gave an overview of major issues: "Ten
years ago, I made the ultimately futile effort of writing to FBI
Director Robert Mueller warning that he needed to tell the truth about
the Bush administration’s unjustified decision to preemptively invade
Iraq and the likelihood it would prove counterproductive. ...

"My letter compared Bush-Cheney’s rush to war with the impatience and
bravado that had led to the FBI’s disastrous 1993 assault at Waco,
where 'the children [the FBI] sought to liberate all died when [David]
Koresh and his followers set fires.' On a much more tragic scale,
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and millions more
were wounded or displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure was destroyed. Severe
problems remain with lack of clean drinking water, electricity and a
lack of professionals in Iraq to help rebuild.

"Even worse, the flames of sectarian hatred were ignited, based on
religious and ethnic differences, leading to violent civil

2.



2 stories

1.


https://oig.justice.gov/special/9704a/

USDOJ/OIG Special Report

The FBI Laboratory: An Investigation into Laboratory Practices
and Alleged Misconduct in Explosives-Related and Other Cases (April
1997)
Table of Contents

After viewing any of the following links, use your browser's GO/BACK
function to return to this page.


PART ONE: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


PART TWO: BACKGROUND TO THE OIG INVESTIGATION
I. The FBI Laboratory
A. Organization of the Laboratory
B. The Laboratory's Quality Assurance Plan and Accreditation
C. The Hiring of Non-Agent Examiners
D. Changing Legal Standards for Admissibility and Disclosure
II. Whitehurst and His Allegations
III. The OIG Investigation


PART THREE: ANALYSIS OF PARTICULAR MATTERS

SECTION A: ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING TERRY RUDOLPH
I. Introduction
II. The Psinakis Case
A. Factual Background
B. Analysis of Rudolph's Conduct in Psinakis
III. The Laboratory's 1989 Reviews of Rudolph's Casework
A. Factual Background
B. Analysis of the 1989 Reviews
IV. The FBI OPR Investigation in 1991-92
V. The 1992 Corby Review
A. Factual Background
B. Analysis of the 1992 Corby Review
VI. The 1995 Corby Review
A. Factual Background
B. Analysis of Corby's 1995 Review
VII. Conclusion
A. Rudolph
B. Management


SECTION B: THE VANPAC CASE
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of the Whitehurst Allegations
A. The Alleged Violation of Protocols
B. The Identification of Red Dot Smokeless Powder
C. Thurman's Testimony About the Explosives
D. Claims That Thurman Testified Outside His Expertise
E. Claims That Martz Misled the Jury About His Qualifications
F. Claims That Martz Improperly Testified About Smokeless
Powders Found in the Devices
G. Claims That Martz Improperly Analyzed Primers
H. Testimony by Martz About the Search at Moody's House
I. The Conduct of the Prosecutors
IV. Conclusion


SECTION C: WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING
I. Introduction
II. Testimony of SSA David Williams in the Salameh Trial
A. FBI's Manufacture of Urea Nitrate
B. Williams' Opinions on Defendants' Capacity to Manufacture
Urea Nitrate and on the Explosive Used in the Bombing
C. Williams' Testimony Regarding the Attempt to Modify
Whitehurst's Dictation
D. Other Allegations
III. Pre-Trial Issues
A. Specimen Q23
B. Specimen Q65
C. Other Matters Involving Williams
D. Allegation Concerning SSA Haldimann
IV. Conclusion


SECTION D: THE BUSH ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
A. The Laboratory Reports
B. Verbal Reports by Ronay
C. The Missile Strike
IV. Conclusion


SECTION E: AVIANCA BOMBING
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
A. The Crime Scene
B. The Laboratory Analysis
C. The AConfessor
D. The Whitehurst Memorandum
E. The Trials
III. Analysis
A. Hahn's Testimony
B. Whitehurst's Conduct
IV. Conclusion
A. Hahn
B. Whitehurst
C. Kearney
D. Corby


SECTION F: ROGER MARTZ'S TESTIMONY IN O.J. SIMPSON CASE
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
A. The Claim that Martz Committed Perjury by Testifying
that He Authored the Testing Procedures
B. The Claim that Martz Misled the Court Concerning the
FSRU's Validation Study and Other Matters
C. The Claims That Martz Misled the Defense Concerning
His Erasure of Digital Data and Improperly Erased Digital Data
D. Criticism of Martz's Presentation
IV. Conclusion


SECTION G: OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
I. Introduction
II. William's Report
A. Velocity of Detonation
B. Identification of the Explosive
C. Weight of the Explosive
D. Other Conclusions Concerning the Explosive Device
E. Bases for Conclusions
F. Restatement of AE Dictation
G. Other Allegations
III. Thurman's Review of Williams' Report
A. Specific Items in the Report




3.


3 stories

read this first about FBI agent Don Robinson


http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/new ... tleblowers

Grassley Questions FBI on More Alleged Retaliation Against Whistleblowers
Sep 10, 2007


Grassley Questions FBI on More Alleged Retaliation Against Whistleblowers


WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley has again reminded the FBI that the law does not allow retaliation against government whistleblowers. Grassley reiterated his concerns to FBI Director Robert Mueller in a letter sent yesterday.



The Senator’s letter forwards allegations of retaliation against FBI Agent Bassem Youssef, chief of the Communications Analysis Unit. Youssef is the highest ranking Arab-American in the FBI. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Youssef raised concerns within the FBI that he, as one of the highest ranking Arabic-speaking agents, was not being assigned to cases related to the attacks.

“It seems like every time I turn around, there’s another allegation of whistleblower retaliation at the FBI. It appears to be second nature for them,” Grassley said. “Director Mueller has talked often about the fact that he won’t tolerate retaliation, but it doesn’t look like the message is getting through to his management team.”



Grassley is a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has conducted oversight of the FBI since the mid 1990s.



Here is a copy of the letter to Mueller. A copy of the signed letter along with the attachment can be found here.



September 6, 2007


The Honorable Robert S. Mueller

Director

Federal Bureau of Investigation

935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20535

Dear Director Mueller:

As you know, I believe that encouraging people to report waste, wrongdoing, or mismanagement in any organization is critical to improving the integrity and efficiency of its operations. Protecting whistleblowers from retaliation is critical if the leadership of an organization is serious about hearing what they have to say. Unfortunately, the FBI has a deeply engrained culture of retaliation, in which anyone who speaks out is branded as a troublemaker. Thus, many choose to stay silent rather than risk their careers.


To your credit, you have regularly stated that you will not tolerate retaliation against FBI whistleblowers. However, sometimes it appears as if your message is not being heard or understood by the management at the FBI. I am writing today to bring to your attention allegations I have received that illustrate how the FBI’s anti-whistleblower culture remains a serious problem and raise questions of potential witness intimidation.


Attached please find an internal FBI email from Agent Bassem Youssef, which was copied to you, where he reports several disturbing comments made by FBI personnel. As you know, Agent Youssef is a material witness in the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG’s) continuing inquiry into issues relating to National Security Letters and so-called “exigent letters.” Moreover, I understand that he will also be giving classified testimony in the OIG’s investigation of issues related to certain controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs.


In this context, the comments that I understand were made to Agent Youssef by senior Bureau officials raise serious questions about whether they were not only endorsing retaliation for past whistleblowing, but also attempting to influence Youssef’s upcoming testimony. For example, the email that you were provided states that in Youssef’s presence Agent Ed Moschella said of another whistleblower that the proper response was to “hang him.” Further, and in that same email, it says that Agent Don Robinson stated that at his interview with the OIG relating to the National Security Letters investigation, “I threw him [Bassem Youssef] under the bus.” Moreover, Youssef reported that another individual reportedly asked in connection with the National Security Letter inquiry, “Are you … getting ready to throw Bassem Youssef off the roof?"


Given your affirmative statements and assurances that you will not support retaliation against FBI whistleblowers, please provide written answers to the following questions:


1. How do you plan to deal with these comments?

2. Were you aware of the attached email prior to receiving this letter?

3. How have you dealt with this issue since you were copied on the email in early August?

4. Please provide a detailed written response outlining any steps you have taken to address these allegations and to ensure that Agent Youssef is free to give complete honest, forthcoming, and candid testimony in OIG inquiries without fear of reprisal.


If these allegations are true, it would be a disappointing confirmation that the FBI’s anti-whistleblower culture is as strong as ever. That culture will never change if senior officials are allowed to openly speak of retaliating against whistleblowers without fear of discipline for doing so. I appreciate your prompt written response no later than September 20, 2007.


All replies should be sent electronically in Adobe portable document format. Please have your staff contact XXXX at (202) 224-4515 with any questions regarding this matter.


Sincerely,





Charles E. Grassley

U.S. Senator


Attachment

cc: Patrick Leahy, Chairman

Senate Judiciary Committee


Arlen Specter, Ranking Member

Senate Judiciary Committee


Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General

U.S. Department of Justice

Click here to view the response from FBI Director Mueller to Senator Grassleys







1.



http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/d ... ple-out-o/


December 4, 2015 in City
New Crisis Center in CdA aims to keep people out of ER, jail


Don Robinson, director of mental health crisis center for Kootenai Health talked about the December 9 opening of the center at their office in Coeur d’Alene on Friday, November 20, 2015.




Northern Idaho Crisis Center ribbon-cutting and open house

When: Noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Kootenai Health Campus, 2195 Ironwood Court, Coeur d’Alene

Phone: (208) 625-4884

More info: www.nicrisiscenter.org.

Early in his career as an FBI agent, Don Robinson worked as a crisis/hostage team negotiator.

He spent Friday and Saturday nights talking to suicidal people on bridges, or in phone conversations with others who’d barricaded themselves in their homes. The shifts gave him an appreciation for how mental illness and substance abuse derail lives.

As the director of the new Northern Idaho Crisis Center, Robinson and his staff will provide a refuge for people who find themselves spiraling out of control.

The center opens Wednesday in Coeur d’Alene. It will give individuals 18 and older a place to get immediate help for a mental health or addiction-related crisis, plus referrals for follow-up treatment. Admittance is voluntary, and people can stay at the center for up to 24 hours.

“It takes a lot of courage to make it up to the front door,” Robinson said last month, while giving tour of the 2,200-square-foot facility on the Kootenai Health campus. When people take that step, he wants them to find “a safe, warm, welcoming place.”

Besides private counseling rooms, the center will have a waiting area with coffee, snacks and Internet access, and respite rooms for napping.

Robinson recently retired after 23 years with the FBI, including seven years as head



2.


Waco, Texas: Where A Part Of America'S Heart And Soul Died.
www.islandone.org/Politics/Waco.McCurry.html
Within minutes it was evident that the raid was an utter failure. .... Koresh for the tragedy in Waco, Texas, and say action was not taken by the FBI soon enough, ...
FBI Failures & Criticism - Zpub.com
www.zpub.com/notes/fbi-fail.html
How the FBI Turned the Screws on Wen Ho Lee. Waco, Texas. April 1993 - "... they've driven their tanks up to us, they've bust in the side of the building a little bit ...
Readings | Waco - The Inside Story | FRONTLINE | PBS
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/stonerpt.html
3. The Waco Tactics in light of the group psychology of the FBI · B. Failure to use ... 1. Failure of coordination between tactical and negotiating arms of the FBI
The Standoff in Waco - The Texas Observer
www.texasobserver.org/the-standoff-in-waco/
Apr 18, 2013 - But he did note that “certain FBI and Department of Justice officials failed to disclose … evidence and information about the use of pyrotechnic ...
The FBI's Management of the Standoff at Mt. Carmel
www.justice.gov/.../waco/report-deputy- ... co-texas...
Sep 15, 2014 - Report to the Deputy Attorney General on the Events at Waco, Texas ... the FBI had been brought to Waco to "salvage a failed tactical effort.
Evaluation of the Handling of the Branch Davidian Stand-Off in ...
www.justice.gov/.../waco/evaluation-han ... and-waco...
Sep 15, 2014 - Waco, Texas which ended on April 19, 1993 when fire consumed the ... the tear gas operation, although shots were fired at the FBI from the compound. .... seal, but Koresh stated that the negotiator had "failed" and refused to ...
Waco Inquiry Failed to Test Correct F.B.I. Gun, Official Says ...
www.nytimes.com/.../waco-inquiry-failed ... icial-sa...
Jun 2, 2001 - A simulation that helped lead an independent inquiry to conclude that F.B.I. agents did not fire their guns in their siege of the Branch Davidian ...
B. Thurman's Method of Review
IV. Martz's Examination of Evidence
V. Conclusion


SECTION H: OTHER MATTERS

SECTION H1: YU KIKUMURA
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
A. The Claim that Thurman Misled the Jury or Deprived
Kikumura of a Fair Trial
B. The Claim that Thurman Improperly Failed to Disclose
Aspects of His Education or Training
C. Claims that Thurman Improperly Testified Outside His
Expertise
D. Claims that Thurman Improperly Testified about the Possible
Use of Other Materials in Explosive Devices
E. Other Aspects of Thurman's Testimony
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H2: NORFOLK TANK FARMS
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H3: MELISSA BRANNEN
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H4: PAOLO BORSELLINO
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H5: GINO NEGRETTI
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H6: CONLON CASE
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H7: JUDGE JOHN SHAW
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H8: GHOST SHADOW GANG
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H9: THE UNABOM ARTICLE
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Discussion
A. Publication of the Article
B. The Allegation that Mohnal and Ronay Rebuffed Burmeister
C. The Laboratory's 1995 Response to Burmeister's Concerns
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H10: THURMAN'S ALLEGED ALTERATION OF DICTATION
I. Introduction
II. Alteration of Whitehurst's Dictation
A. Background
B. Analysis
III. Burmeister's Allegation
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H11: HIGGINS' ALLEGED ALTERATION OF DICTATION
I. Introduction
II. Factual Background
III. Analysis of Laboratory Reports
A. Category One
B. Category Two
C. Category Three
D. The Remaining 21 Laboratory Reports
IV. Conclusion
SECTION H11: CHART


SECTION H12: TOBIN ALLEGATIONS
I. Introduction
II. The Reporting of Metals-Related Examinations
A. Improper Wire Gauging
B. The La Familia Case
C. The Peter Mauchlin Case
III. Alcee Hastings Matter
A. The Background to the Investigating Committee Proceedings
B. Malone's Testimony before the Investi's Testimony
D. Analysis
IV. Conclusion


SECTION H13: GEORGE TREPAL


PART FOUR: WHITEHURST'S ALLEGATIONS OF RETALIATION
I. Introduction
II. Analysis of Whitehurst's Allegations
A. The Claim that the FBI Improperly Punished Whitehurst for
His Conduct in the Psinakis Case
B. The Claim that the FBI Ignored and Covered Up
Whitehurst's Allegations Concerning Software Theft and Assault
C. Referral for Psychiatric Examination and Counseling
D. The Claim that the FBI Improperly Investigated Whitehurst
for Disclosure of Confidential Information
E. The Claim that the FBI Improperly Disclosed Henthorn
Material Concerning Whitehurst
F. The Claim that the FBI Punished Whitehurst by Reassigning
Him to the Paints and Polymers Program
G. Other Evidence of Retaliatory Intent
III. Conclusion


PART FIVE: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS CONCERNING INDIVIDUALS
I. Individuals Central to Whitehurst's Allegations or Whose Conduct
is Criticized in this Report
A. Terry Rudolph
B. Roger Martz
C. J. Thomas Thurman
D. David Williams
E. Richard Hahn
F. Robert Heckman
G. Wallace Higgins
H. Alan R. Jordan
I. Michael Malone
J. J. Christopher Ronay
K. Robert Webb
II. Laboratory Management
A. Charles Calfee
B. Kenneth Nimmich
C. James Kearney
D. John Hicks
E. Alan T. Robillard
III. Other Individuals
A. Roger Asbury
B. Edward Bender
C. Louis J. Freeh
D. Donald Haldimann
E. Ronald Kelly
F. Lynn Lasswell
G. Richard Laycock
H. Thomas Mohnal
I. Bruce McCord
J. Mark Olson
K. Howard Shapiro
IV. FBI OPR and FBI OGC
V. Frederic Whitehurst


PART SIX: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ENHANCING QUALITY IN THE LABORATORY
I. ASCLD/LAB Accreditation and External Review
II. Restructuring the Explosives Unit
III. Principal and Auxiliary Examiners
IV. Report Preparation
V. Adequate Peer Review
VI. Case Documentation
VII. Record Retention
VIII. Examiner Training and Qualification
IX. Examiner Testimony
X. Protocols
XI. Evidence Handling
XII. The Role of Management


PART SEVEN: SUMMARY OF OIG RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FBI LABORATORY
I. ASCLD/LAB Accreditation and External Review
II. Restructuring the Explosives Unit
III. Principal and Auxiliary Examiners
IV. Report Preparation
V. Adequate Peer Review
VI. Case Documentation
VII. Record Retention
VIII. Examiner Training and Qualification
IX. Examiner Testimony
X. Protocols
XI. Evidence Handling
XII. The Role of Management


PART EIGHT: CONCLUSION


2.http://fedscoop.com/the-shark-tank-appr ... innovation




FBI's 'Shark Tank' — bureau turns to field agents for mobile
innovation

The FBI is depending more on agents to help develop, test and adopt
mobile applications in the field.


December 4, 2015 4:30 PM
Bio
An FBI agent overlooks the Shiprock land formation on the Navajo
Nation in New Mexico. (Wikimedia Commons)

The FBI is looking to field agents — and a reality TV show format — to
help develop the newest mobile technologies to support their mission.

Hoping to keep up with the pace of technology development, the bureau
is focusing on efforts that enable frontline personnel to drive
innovation, according to Kevin Tunks, product development and mobile
strategy lead in the FBI's mobile technology office.

One of those enablers came to Tunks and his team straight from the
television. They use a "Shark Tank" pitch meeting model to spur
internal innovation, he said Thursday at a Bloomberg Government event.
Just like the popular ABC television show, the FBI program lets people
with big ideas — in this case field agents — pitch their ideas for
mobile applications to a board of executives and other stakeholders.
But unlike the "sharks" on the show, the FBI team uses the model
because they "don't have a lot of development budget."

After the pitch, "as long as everybody [on the board] nods yes, or
doesn't say no, it moves forward," Tunks said, though he didn't
comment on the funding process once the ideas are approved. The agents
have 60 days to move their ideas into prototypes, he said.

"Worst case scenario, we've lost 60 days of somebody's time," Tunks
said. "Best case scenario, we've gotten a really transformational
product out of a group of people ... the people who really do the
mission that are creating a solution for themselves."

So far, the concept has resulted in "10-plus apps," he said, which
have been received well in the field, "because it was built by the
field, it was built for the field."

Tunks, who explained his role as taking the 30,000 Android phones the
FBI bought earlier this year "beyond just email ... to build custom
and internal apps that really unlock new business processes," said the
bureau is depending more on field agents, whether they're IT experts
or amateur mobile hobbyists who serve the bureau in some other
capacity, to help develop, test and adopt mobile applications in the
environments in which they're meant to be used.

"We really have turned a lot over to the field," Tunks said. "Our
moniker is 'How can we do IT at mission speed?'"

"We focus our small energies on being able to create platforms ... and
really leveraging our own internal resources to do things," he added.

Sometimes that means developing more effective governance so agents
can follow latest industry practices, he said, and sometimes that's
"building the underlying components that allow people to really build
on top of so that they're just doing that top of the

[fruhmenschen]

Bonus read








Inside the Mob: Freddy Geas, Artie Nigro have little in common but ...

Bologna, of New York, was acting as an FBI informant while committing
all manner of crimes ... Two of the eight convicted defendants -
former West Springfield mob ...






http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/ ... tions.html

December 6 2015








1.
State inmates in solitary confinement surpass 4,000 despite vows to
limit use

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, December 6, 2015, 4:00 AM




In response to a federal lawsuit, state correction officials announced
in February that they would reduce the use of solitary confinement for
pregnant inmates and prisoners under 18.

The number of state prison inmates tossed in solitary confinement has
surpassed 4,000 for the first time in three years, despite vows by
officials to limit its use, the Daily News has learned.

And prison advocates say there’s been an increase since this summer,
due in large part to backlash from correction officers after the June
escape of Richard Matt and David Sweat from the Clinton Correctional
Facility upstate.

In response to a federal lawsuit, state correction officials announced
in February that they would reduce the use of solitary confinement for
pregnant inmates and prisoners under 18. The reforms also included
limiting the punishment to 30 days for convicts with developmental
disabilities.

Initially, there was a sharp drop.

The number of inmates in solitary confinement fell to 6.8% of the
total inmate population on June 1, state records show. The 3,621
prisoners in solitary that month marked the lowest total in at least
the last three years.

But it suddenly spiked by almost 300 inmates in July, bringing the
percentage to about 7.4% of the state’s total prison population. By
September, the number of inmates in solitary surpassed 4,000 for the
first time since 2012, records show. On Tuesday, there were 4,029
inmates in solitary, documents show.

“What’s so disturbing is that it has taken years to get some small
change … and that got swept away in three months,” said Jack Beck of
the Correctional Association, one of the nation’s oldest




2.


http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-m ... story.html


LAPD misclassified more than 25,000 serious crimes as minor, audit
finds


A report shows LAPD misclassified serious crimes, ommitting them from
the tally of violence over the past seven years.

Poor training, an error-prone records system and widespread confusion
among Los Angeles police led to thousands of serious crimes being
omitted from the city's tally of violence over the past seven years,
an audit by the department's independent watchdog found.

In the report, which was released Friday, Inspector General Alex
Bustamante estimated the LAPD misclassified more than 25,000
aggravated assaults as minor incidents from 2008 to 2014.

The errors meant the number of serious attacks would have been 36%
higher than what the LAPD reported during that time, the audit found.
Aggravated assaults are included in the department's official count of
crime, while the less-serious incidents are not counted.

The number of misclassified crimes was not large enough to alter the
overall crime trends reported by the department from one year to the
next, which included a steady drop in violence until 2014, when the
crime rate began to climb. Bustamante's report echoes the findings of
a Times analysis in October that also concluded the department
misclassified thousands of crimes during an eight-year period ending
in 2012.

However, the inspector general, who had far greater access than The
Times to crime reports and other internal LAPD documents, found
considerably more errors.

The inaccurate statistics "were due to a combination of systemic
issues, procedural deficiencies, department-wide misconceptions about
what constitutes an aggravated assault, and, in a small number of
cases, individual officer error," the audit found.
See the most-read stories this hour >>

In one startling finding, Bustamante wrote that a survey conducted by
department officials in recent years found roughly 70% of LAPD
personnel had received "little or no training" on standardized rules
for reporting crime that are set out by the FBI.

The internal survey also found there was "some confusion" within
department ranks about who was responsible for entering the
information about incidents into the agency's crime database. And
watch commanders, who serve as station supervisors, often wrongly
refer to the state's criminal penal code when making decisions about
how to classify crimes instead of FBI guidelines.
LAPD underreported serious assaults, skewing crime stats for 8 years
LAPD underreported serious assaults, skewing crime stats for 8 years

The widespread shortcomings gave rise to a host of problems.

When completing reports on domestic violence cases, for example,
officers and supervisors often failed to specify if the attack was a
serious or minor offense under the FBI rules, Bustamante wrote.
Without knowing which to choose, station clerks "defaulted to the code
indicating simple assault," when documenting incidents into the
department's crime database, Bustamante found. One-fifth of the
misclassified incidents identified by the inspector general fit this
pattern, the report said.

More than a quarter of the errors were due to the LAPD failing to
count cases in which suspects brandished weapons as aggravated
assaults.

The police commission, a civilian board that oversees the LAPD,
instructed Bustamante to conduct the audit after a 2014 Times
investigation that examined 12 months of LAPD crime data and found
widespread errors in how assaults — including hundreds of stabbings
and beatings — were classified.

In response to that report, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck publicly
acknowledged problems with the department's process for recording
crimes. He launched a series of changes aimed at improving internal
accountability and the training officers receive on how to classify
crimes.

The reforms implemented last year center around a newly formed team of
detectives responsible for improving the quality of the department's
crime reporting. Known as the Data Integrity Unit, the team has
retrained hundreds of officers who have a role in classifying crimes.
The unit also now conducts spot checks on crime reports from across
the department's regional divisions in search of mistakes.

Bustamante concluded the reforms appear to be showing results as the
LAPD committed errors at about half the rate of previous years in the
first quarter of 2015, the audit found.

Saying the department had worked closely with the inspector general as
he conducted the audit, Assistant Chief Michel Moore acknowledged that
the department had made crime reporting errors. He said the reforms
and increased oversight the department implemented following the Times
investigation have begun to take root and are meant to improve the
accuracy of crime classifications.

The audit, based on a random sample of 3,856 minor crime reports, did
not address the issue of "reclassifications," which happen when a case
is initially documented as serious but later downgraded to a minor
offense. Last year, The Times obtained records on 53 incident reports
and found that one-third were improperly changed.

"Numbers matter, especially when they are reported to the public,"
said Matt Johnson, president of the police commission. "The increase
in aggravated assaults is very troubling and I wish it was identified
sooner, but I'm pleased



3.

http://www.evanstonnow.com/story/entert ... on-theater




FBI agent speaks on JFK 'Assassination Theater'

FBI agent speaks on JFK 'Assassination Theater'
By Eric Shoemaker on December 6, 2015 - 10:44am

The successful Chicago production of “Assassination Theater,” an
evidence-inspired recounting of the Chicago mob's involvement in the
JFK assassination, sports an Evanston actor and more than a few
surprises for the audience member.

The anniversary of the JFK assassination just passed on Nov. 22, and
for the occasion, actor Mark Ulrich and real life
character-and-FBI-agent Zack Shelton paired up for a panel discussion
after the show.

“I was involved with the two initial readings of the play at 16th
Street Theater and the Hemingway Museum,” said Ulrich in an interview
with Evanston Now. “Zack was in attendance at those readings. The
script was new, so we had a lot of questions ready, and what a great
resource Zack was. Playing someone like Zack…you feel an extra
responsibility trying to get it right. I don’t feel cut from that
cloth, so it takes some work on my part.”

“Mark and I got to talk a bit and we got into some of the things in
the play that speak a bit more strongly,” said retired FBI agent
Shelton. “He does an excellent job. Doesn’t have the New Orleans
accent...!” he laughed.

Zack Shelton was in the FBI for 28 years. Much of that time was spent
between Chicago and Texas, where he eventually retired and took up
private investigation. “It’s mentioned in the play: James Files, a
subject of mine in 1980,” said Shelton. “He was an associate of a big
mobster in Chicago, selling tractor-trailer loads of goods in Melrose
Park, where you had to be in the mob.”

“I gave the information of Files to a private investigator…got
together with a producer in California when I retired, and I
interviewed Files from there, and the rest is history.” That history
is the subject of “Assassination Theater: Chicago's Role in the Crime
of the Century,” which reinforces Shelton’s claim that the Chicago mob
was responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy.

“I went to Joliet prison and we, Files and I, talked about the case,
back in 1980. Basically I threw some names at him, and we talked, he
was very pleasant to me, it wasn’t like cop and bad guy, it was like a
real personable conversation. He went into how he went down to Dallas,
sent there by Nicoletti [mobster], what his role was, and I…he looked
me in the eye…” Shelton drifted off.

“I was 50/50 when I left the room; I had more to prove up his story
than to disprove the story. Was he there that day? Definitely. Did he
take that shot? I’m not 100 percent sure. In my dealings with crooks,
they do embellish a lot of their role, and you’ve gotta get through
all that…Take what they say with a grain of salt. You get to the point
where, why would he say he did it when he didn’t do it?”

Shelton’s further investigation did more to shore up the story than to
debunk it. “I talked to a lot of mob people, CIA/FBI agents, and came
up with the story,” he said. Then Hillel Levin, the playwright,
contacted Shelton about the investigation, they talked about JFK, and
Levin began his own research to write the play now staged at the
Museum of Broadcast Communications.

“The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, because of what it
is- the Museum of Broadcasting,” said Shelton. “Of any place to have
it, it’s turned out to be great. In the museum are all of these great
people and it fits right in with the tone of the play.”

“We animate all of the characters, but we use their own words,” said
Ulrich, when asked about dramatization in the play. “If you hear those
guys speaking, it’s what they said. Hillel and Zack [also characters
in the play] have opinions, but the others, it’s all what they said.”

“What’s different about this play is, we know what the Warren
commission said, what the accepted narrative was in the 60’s, and why
it had to be that way, because of the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis,
the power void that the death of a president creates,” said Ulrich.
“There were tremendous pressures that demanded a quick resolution,
quick answers, and a quick restoration of power and leadership, and
the quelling of anxieties. So we can understand why the Oswald story
was necessary."

"But we don’t have those same anxieties, pressures, today. I feel it’s
important for us to look at this event knowing that, with fresh eyes,
and say ‘we don’t have to accept those things we were told.’ When our
children ask us what happened, when we talk about this, what is it we
want to say, and what do we know?”

Ulrich believes the play is the perfect conduit for this discussion.
“Every American has a responsibility to own our history. In the play,
we present a lot of material and it’s in your lap.”

And in terms of Chicago’s blame in the assassination? “We definitely
make the case for the mob doing it, but [the play is] even stronger
than that because it allows, demands, that the audience be
participants,” said Ulrich. The “investigative journalism” style of
the play is strongly suited for convincing the audience of a unique
perspective, but, being a play, it also leaves room for
interpretation.

“People of my age group grew up with this,” said Ulrich. “For me, I
don’t remember the event, but I grew up right after it and it was very
much- it permeated our awareness of politics and the potential for
tragedy. So my connection, and I think everyone who sees the show- has
a personal connection with the story even if it's very thin.”

“All my life I’ve never really bought the traditional explanation.
While it’s possible, it’s highly improbable,” said Ulrich. “That’s
what this play does – Hillel is of my generation, Zack, Hillel, we
grew up with the story. I think we all thought there was something
fishy about it. I never thought we’d have any satisfying explanation
for it. This play attempts to not just add to the noise, when it comes
to conspiracy, but to clarify.”

Shelton disagrees somewhat with the interpretation of the play by
Levin. “There’s so much to this, I’ve told everybody, it’s a big
jigsaw puzzle. If you get a few pieces, it doesn’t mean anything. But
if you start putting it together, it starts to make a big picture. To
put all that into a two-hour performance, you just can’t do it.
There’s so much that I have that’s not in the play."

"In the play, him and I argue- he thinks it was totally the mob, I
disagree with him, I think there had to be some government
involvement. He doesn’t get into that, he thinks he does, but I
disagree with him. But the way he presents it, I don’t think America
could accept the fact that our government killed our president, but
that the mob did and the government covered it up. I think America can
accept that. Of any time in America since that time, today is the time
America can accept that truth.”

Shelton skirted around some of the juicier tidbits of the case,
leaving it for others to decide for themselves after seeing the play.
“There’s a possibility here in the next coupla years that [Files]
could get out of jail. There’s some stuff he says he has that may
corroborate his story, which I tell him he needs to get to me. There’s
one thing he says he has that would prove it; the whole world would
believe him then.”

“Assassination Theater: Chicago’s Role in the Crime of the Century”
runs through Jan. 31 at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in
downtown Chicago. Tickets are available online or by calling
800-838-3006.



4.


Sunday, 06 December 2015
Government and Corporations Are Responsible for Culture of Surveillance


http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/item ... rveillance


Government and Corporations Are Responsible for Culture of Surveillance

In the almost two and a half years since former NSA contractor Ed Snowden revealed the ubiquitous surveillance under which the world lives, much of the focus has been on what government agencies are doing. The problem, though, runs deeper. The surveillance state exists within a culture of surveillance created by the incestuous relationship between overreaching government agencies and nosy corporations.

There is no liberty without privacy. As the culture of surveillance grows, liberty recedes. The New American has reported on many of the threats to privacy that are becoming more and more commonplace. Some Smart TVs are spying on users via their integrated cameras, microphones, and Internet connectivity and then reporting back to the manufacturers, who sell that data to advertisers. Other "Internet of Things" devices have surveillance capabilities that are marketed as features promising convenience to users. Facebook performs social/psychological experiments on its users and also harvests users' data to sell to advertisers.

To make matters worse, Microsoft has turned its operating system, Windows, into a suite of softwares designed to spy on users, report back to Microsoft on their use, and remotely remove software from their computers, all while hiding these activities from all but the most tech-savvy users.

With the proliferation of surveillance as a "convenience feature" or as a prerequisite to using otherwise useful tools, is it any wonder that a Pew study last year found that privacy is eroding, with many accepting that erosion as normal? And with greater acceptance comes greater erosion. As The New American noted after the study was released:

Moving forward, many young Internet users who today are more than willing to trade their birthright of privacy and liberty for a mess of potage (or a cup of coffee) are going to become the example that the next generation imitates. What one generation accepts, the next expects.

Last year the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century, Judge Richard Posner, said the NSA should have free range to "vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks." He went on to say that the only reason anyone would object, is that they are "just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of [their] conduct." The surveillance culture has alreday become so pervasive that his remarks — which should have caused outrage — were largely unreported. When they were reported, they were used largely as justification for the mass surveillance that is destroying privacy and liberty.

And it's not just the use of computer technology that puts privacy at risk. Retailers regularly use their "rewards" cards to collect information on their customers' purchases, again for advertising purposes. While many see the value in targeted advertising, the following story this writer shared in a previous article illustrates how such convenience masks a very real threat to privacy:

Data mining is a big problem, as we saw from the documents leaked by Snowden. But there is more to it than most people realize. In 2012, a father of a teenage girl saw for himself how powerful this form of information gathering and analysis can be. Several years ago, Target department stores started offering Redcard. It's a credit or debit card that can be used to make purchases at Target stores and on their website. It offers a five-percent discount any time it is used. Target's reason for doing this is simple. It ties all of your purchases together into one profile for data-analysis purposes so that they can send you advertising based on not just what you buy, but what their data analysis tells them you are going to buy. How effective is it? The father of that teenager stormed into a store outside Minneapolis and demanded to know why his daughter was receiving advertisements for baby clothes, baby furniture, and diapers. After all, she is still in high school. The manager said he would look into it and call the father in a day or so. When he called two days later, the father said that he had talked with his daughter and learned that she was, indeed, pregnant. Target figured it out before her own father did.

While that particular event involved Target, other retailers use their "rewards" cards in much the same way — with varying degrees of success and accuracy.

Companies, including major retailers, use a variety surveillance methods to keep an eye on both customers and employees. While some of this surveillance may have some justification — such as preventing robbery and shoplifting — it is still part of the surveillance culture that threatens privacy and liberty. Much of the surveillance practiced by companies has little, if any, justification.

Walmart is the world's largest company with more than 11,500 stores operating in 28 countries. With more than 2.2 million employees, it is also the world's largest employer. Because of understandable concerns about employees unionizing, the retail giant has conducted campaigns of surveillance on a level that many nations would have difficulty rivaling.

When Walmart senior management heard about plans for an employee strike on Black Friday 2012, they formed a Delta Team to begin spying and reporting on employees to determine who was a threat and how best to react. The organization behind the plans for a strike was OUR Walmart (the Organization United for Respect at Walmart), which was the offspring of the United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW) union. While Walmart publicly pretended not to be concerned, Bloomberg reported:

Walmart considered the group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they're called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the "home office," as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

Besides being one of the largest defense contractors in the world, Lockheed Martin "also has an information technology division that offers cybersecurity and data analytics services," according to the report by Bloomberg:

Lockheed Martin is one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. Although it's best known for making fighter jets and missile systems, it also has an information technology division that offers cybersecurity and data analytics services. Tucked into that is a little-known operation called LM Wisdom, which has been around since 2011. LM Wisdom is described on Lockheed's website as a tool "that monitors and analyzes rapidly changing open source intelligence data ... [that] has the power to incite organized movements, riots and sway political outcomes." A brochure depicts yellow tape with "crime scene" on it, an armored SWAT truck, and a word cloud with "MAFIA" in huge type.

Karen Casey was the labor relations executive at Walmart as the plans for OUR Walmart's Black Friday strike began to come to light. In January 2015, she testified in the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearings that resulted from complaints that Walmart retaliated against employees that participated in protests which took place in June 2013. In her testimony, she told how the Analytical Research Center, which is part of Walmart's global security division, entered into a contract with Lockheed Martin to "source" the "open social media sites" used by the protesters. Again, from Bloomberg:

The Analytical Research Center, or ARC, is part of Walmart's global security division. Ken Senser, a former FBI officer, oversees the entire group. The executive responsible for ARC was Steve Dozier, according to Casey's testimony. He was director of the Arkansas State Police before he joined Walmart in 2007. "When we received word of potential strikes and disruptive activity on Black Friday 2012, that's when we started to ask the ARC to work with us," Casey said during her testimony. "ARC had contracted with Lockheed leading up to Black Friday to help source open social media sites."

"Sourcing" refers to gathering data from those sites. In other words, Lockheed Martin was hired — at least in part — to conduct surveillance on the social media pages of the protesters.

So, the world's largest company employs a former FBI agent and a former director of the Arkansas State Police, has contracted with one of the largest defense contractors in the world, and contacted the FBI all to conduct surveillance on its own employees. While this writer is certainly no union apologist and can understand a company not wanting its employees to unionize, surely there is a place somewhere on the other side of Walmart's actions where the line should have been drawn.

As the surveillance culture — and by extension, the surveillance state — has grown, government agencies and corporations have reaped the benefits while ordinary citizens have paid the price. Freedom-loving Americans should stop participating in the culture of surveillance and instead actively resist it. The solution is two-fold. Those concerned about privacy should elect men and women who value privacy as much as they do and put pressure on Congress to dismantle both the apparatus and the agencies that have conducted government-sanctioned surveillance on ordinary citizens. They should also develop a mindset of protecting themselves against surveillance. Fortunately, there are many tools available for anyone

[fruhmenschen]

Link du jour


http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=75226



1.





http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/07/fren ... blic-wifi/


French police want to ban public WiFi during emergencies
The 'Gendarmes' also want to ban the Tor network outright.
December 7 2015

The FBI isn't the only law enforcement agency that wants to restrict
privacy for the sake of national security. Following the Paris attacks
of November 13th, French police and gendarmes have submitted a wish
list of security measures for a new bill, according to a document
discovered by LeMonde. Among other things, police want to ban public
WiFi during states of emergency, "because of the difficulty of
identifying people connected to it," according to LeMonde. French law
enforcement also wants the Tor network banned completely and would
force companies like Microsoft to hand the encryption keys for apps
like Skype to police.

The bill could go up for a vote as early as January 2016, but there's
no guarantee that the proposed measures will be in the final draft,
let alone passed into law. In the US, the FBI has also requested that
companies like Facebook, Apple and Microsoft give it backdoor access
to encrypted voice, video and chat messages. However, companies have
pointed out that such measures would make such applications less
secure for everybody, or drive users to other apps.

The idea of banning Tor also seems unrealistic, given that it is a
loose, volunteer-run network with servers located around the world.
It's also used by journalists and other groups with legitimate needs
for privacy, and not just terrorists and drug dealers. The French
police proposal seems like it would be difficult to implement, and
also be problematic given that privacy is a huge concern across
Europe. With recent events, however, security has obviously become


2

for the uneducated and the uneducable

high school dropout can't find work so he joins the Marines to Semper
Fi
and collect some money.
High school dropout is sent to Paris Island to be all he can be. He is
trained to kill women and children and a occasional freedom fighter
trying to protect his wife from being raped by Mr Semper Fi.
High school dropout ships out to invade Iraq for USEmpire and US oil
companies.
American oil companies are struggling with the problem of Peak Oil.
Peak oil means we no longer have a infinite supply of oil.Maybe you
saw the documentary film END OF SUBURBIA see
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/previews.htm

high school drop out didn't because his high school teachers were too
busy DUMBING him down
see
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/bookstor ... nblum1.htm

High School dropout manages to kill a couple hundred women and
children while throwing in a occasional rape. Mr Sempi Fi has now been
transformed into Mr serial killer.
Mr high school dropout/serial killer now begins to experience extreme
depression from his actions. Mental Wealth workers call it Post
Traumatic
Stress Syndrome. But the only people who experience traumatic stress
in Iraq are the Iraqi women being raped by Semper Fi's before they
shot and killed them.
Good thing serial killer/high school dropout has never read the
research
of Ian Stevenson MD whose groundbreaking study of 3,000 children who
remember previous lives provides the science for the existence of
reincarnation. see
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... enson.html

What this means for high school dropout is that he will be coming back
again for another life . Of course so will the people he murdered , so
for practical purposes he has another couple hundred lives he has to
live getting "wacked" by the life forms he semper fi'd.

The difference this time is the raped and murdered have had some time
to ponder while they wait for him to pass over, how they will "do" Mr
Semper Fi- the high school drop out serial killer.

Mr high school dropout comes back from Iraq out of work unless he
re-enlists. There are not to many job openings for serial killers
until he lands a job working with his be all you can be buddies at the
local police department or the FBI.

3.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/drugs-fund-terrorism


The Narco Terror Trap
The DEA warns that drugs are funding terror. An examination of cases
raises questions about whether the agency is stopping threats or
staging them.
By Ginger Thompson / Pro Publica
December 7, 2015



IN DECEMBER 2009, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abdelrahman, smugglers from
northern Mali, walked through the doors of the Golden Tulip, a hotel
in Accra, Ghana. They were there to meet with two men who had offered
them an opportunity to make millions of dollars, transporting cocaine
across the Sahara. Touré wore a dashiki, and Abdelrahman had on
tattered clothes and a turban that hid much of his face. They tipped
the guards at the entrance and then greeted Mohamed, a Lebanese
radical, in the lobby. Mohamed took them up to a hotel room to see
David, a drug trafficker and a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC. “Hola, Colombiano,” Touré said, as he entered
the room. Abdelrahman tried to call David “007” in Spanish, but said
“477” instead. David, who was dressed in a short-sleeved pullover and
Bermuda shorts, laughed and offered his guests bottles of water.

Touré and Abdelrahman came from Gao, a parched and remote city in
northern Mali which has long been used as a base for smuggling of all
kinds, from immigrants to cigarettes. In recent years, the surrounding
region has also been the scene of conflict between violent bands of
nomadic insurgents, including members of al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM). During months of meetings and phone calls, David and
Mohamed had told Touré that the FARC had some 30,000 fighters at war
with the United States, and that it wanted to work with al-Qaida,
because the groups shared the same enemy. “They are our brothers,”
Mohamed said. “We have he same cause.” Touré had explained that he had
connections to the organization: he ran a transport company, and, in
return for safe passage for his trucks, he provided al-Qaida with food
and fuel.

Still, David remained skeptical. He needed assurances that Touré’s
organization was up to the task. The FARC had a lot of money riding on
the deal and was willing to pay Touré and Abdelrahman as much as
$3,000 per kilo, beginning with a 50-kilo test run to Melilla, a
Spanish city on the North African mainland. Loads ten times that size
would follow, David said, if the first trip went well.



“If you’re done, I’m going to speak,” Touré said. He told David and
Mohamed that he was tired of all the “blah, blah, blah.” He had
operatives along the smuggling route, which stretched from Ghana to
Morocco. Abdelrahman, whom Touré had introduced as the leader of a
Malian militia, said that he had hired a driver with links to
al-Qaida. They had also bribed a Malian military official, who would
help them cross the border without inspection.

David was reassured. “I want us to keep working together, because
we’re not doing this for the money — we’re doing this for our people,”
he said.



Two days later, Touré and Abdelrahman went back to the Golden Tulip to
collect their initial payment. Oumar Issa, a friend from Gao who was
also involved in the plan, waited at another hotel to receive his
portion. Instead, the smugglers were met by Ghanaian police officers.
David and Mohamed, it turned out, were not drug traffickers but
undercover informants for the United States Drug Enforcement
Administration. Within days, Touré, Abdelrahman, and Issa were turned
over to the DEA, put on a private jet, and flown to New York, where
they were arraigned in a federal courthouse. They were charged under a
little-known provision of the Patriot Act, passed in 2006, which
established a new crime, known as narco-­terrorism, committed by
violent offenders who had one hand in terrorism and the other in the
drug trade.



In announcing the charges, Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, said, “As terrorists diversify into
drugs, they provide us more opportunities to incapacitate them and cut
off funding for future acts of terror.” The case marked the first time
that the narco-­terrorism provision had been used against al-Qaida.
The suspects appeared to be precisely the kind of hybrid whom the law,
which does not require that any of the targeted activities take place
in the U.S., had been written to catch. Michele Leonhart, the DEA
administrator at the time, said, “Today’s arrests are further proof of
the direct link between dangerous terrorist organizations, including
al-Qaida, and international drug trafficking that fuels their
activities.”



As the Malians’ case proceeded, however, its flaws became apparent. The
defendants emerged as more hapless than hardened, childhood friends
who believed that the DEA’s informants were going to make them rich.
“They were lying to us. And we were lying to them,” Touré told me from
prison. Judge Barbara Jones, who oversaw the final phases of the case,
said, “There was no actual involvement by the defendants or the
undercovers … in the activities of either al-Qaida or the FARC.”
Another judge saw as many problems with the statute as with the merits
of the case. “Congress has passed a law that attempts to bind the
world,” he said to me.



The investigation continues to be cited by the DEA as an example of
its national-security achievements. Since the narco-terrorism
provision was passed, the DEA has pursued dozens of cases that fit the
broad description of crimes under the statute. The agency has claimed
victories against al-Qaida, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and the FARC and
established the figure of the narco-terrorist as a preeminent threat to
the United States.




With each purported success, the DEA has lobbied Congress to increase
its funding. In 2012, Michael Braun, who had served as the DEA’s chief
of operations, testified before Congress about the link between
terrorists and drug traffickers: “Based on over 37 years in the
law-­enforcement and security sectors, you can mark my word that they
are most assuredly talking business and sharing lessons learned.”



That may well be true. In a number of regions, most notably Colombia
and Afghanistan, there is con­vincing evidence that terrorists have
worked with drug traffickers. But a close examination of the cases that
the DEA has pursued reveals a disturbing number that resemble that of
the Malians. When these cases were prosecuted, the only links between
drug trafficking and terrorism entered into evidence were provided by
the DEA, using agents or informants who were paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to lure the targets into staged narco-­terrorism
conspiracies.



The DEA strongly defends the effectiveness of such sting operations,
claiming that they are a useful way to identify criminals who pose a
threat to the United States before they act. Lou Milione, a senior
official at the agency, told me, “One of the things the DEA is kind of
in the business of is almost all of our investigations are proactive.”
But Russell Hanks, a former senior American diplomat, who got a
firsthand look at some of the DEA’s narco-­terrorism targets during the
time he served in West Africa, told me, “The DEA provided everything
these men needed to commit a crime, then said, ‘Wow, look what they
did.’” He added, “This wasn’t terrorism — this was the manipulation of
weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest
records.”



ON sEPT. 11, 2001, when
 American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the
Pentagon, DEA agents were among the first to respond, racing from their
headquarters, less than half a mile away. A former special agent named
Edward Follis, in his memoir, “The Dark Art,” recalls how he and
dozens of his colleagues “rushed over … to pull out bodies, but there
were no bodies to pull out.” The agency had outposts in more than 60
countries around the world, the most of any federal law-enforcement
agency. And it had some 5,000 informants and confidential sources.
Michael Vigil, who was the DEA’s head of international operations at
the time, told me, “We called in every source we could find, looking
for information about what had happened, who was responsible, and
whether there were plans for an imminent attack.” He added, “Since the
end of the Cold War, we had seen signs that terrorist groups had
started relying on drug trafficking for funding. After 9/11, we were
sure that trend was going to spread.”



But other intelligence agencies saw the DEA’s sources as drug
traffickers — and drug traffickers didn’t know anything about terrorism. A
former senior money-laundering investigator at the Justice Department
told me that there wasn’t any substantive proof to support the DEA’s
assertions.



“What is going on after 9/11 is that a lot of resources move out of
drug enforcement and into terrorism,” he said. “The DEA doesn’t want
to be the stepchild that is last in line.” Narco-­terrorism, the
former investigator said, became an



4.


http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/04/the-my ... revealing/


The Mysterious Death of an Artist Whose Drawings Were Too Revealing
A story of banking, organized crime, intelligence, petrodollars and politics...all seen through the lens of innovative Art.
Lombardi Wordcloud Photo credit: lombardinetworks.net (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Lombardi Wordcloud Photo credit: lombardinetworks.net (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Patricia Goldstone’s INTERLOCK is the first biography to explore the life and suspicious death of Mark Lombardi, a controversial artist whose drawings walked the line between art and information — and revealed the incestous connections between banking, organized crime, politicians, the FBI and the CIA.

His work highlighted such subjects as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the Iran-Contra affair, the World Finance Corporation, and the relationship between George W. Bush and Harken Energy Corporation. The mystery of Lombardi’s alleged suicide has yet to be resolved. On March 22, 2000, he was found hanged. Friends find it suspicious because Lombardi was on the the cusp of achieving the recognition that would crown his career.

Goldstone talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about the full scope of Lombardi’s life and work.

For a look at some of Lombardi’s dangerously revealing and possibly fatal work, go here, and here.

Related front page panorama photo credit: George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979–90, (5th Version), 1999, by Mark Lombardi (flashpointmag.com), Mark Lombardi (Mesa Multimedia / YouTube)

[fruhmenschen]

Link du jour


http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=75226



1.





http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/07/fren ... blic-wifi/


French police want to ban public WiFi during emergencies
The 'Gendarmes' also want to ban the Tor network outright.
December 7 2015

The FBI isn't the only law enforcement agency that wants to restrict
privacy for the sake of national security. Following the Paris attacks
of November 13th, French police and gendarmes have submitted a wish
list of security measures for a new bill, according to a document
discovered by LeMonde. Among other things, police want to ban public
WiFi during states of emergency, "because of the difficulty of
identifying people connected to it," according to LeMonde. French law
enforcement also wants the Tor network banned completely and would
force companies like Microsoft to hand the encryption keys for apps
like Skype to police.

The bill could go up for a vote as early as January 2016, but there's
no guarantee that the proposed measures will be in the final draft,
let alone passed into law. In the US, the FBI has also requested that
companies like Facebook, Apple and Microsoft give it backdoor access
to encrypted voice, video and chat messages. However, companies have
pointed out that such measures would make such applications less
secure for everybody, or drive users to other apps.

The idea of banning Tor also seems unrealistic, given that it is a
loose, volunteer-run network with servers located around the world.
It's also used by journalists and other groups with legitimate needs
for privacy, and not just terrorists and drug dealers. The French
police proposal seems like it would be difficult to implement, and
also be problematic given that privacy is a huge concern across
Europe. With recent events, however, security has obviously become


2

for the uneducated and the uneducable

high school dropout can't find work so he joins the Marines to Semper
Fi
and collect some money.
High school dropout is sent to Paris Island to be all he can be. He is
trained to kill women and children and a occasional freedom fighter
trying to protect his wife from being raped by Mr Semper Fi.
High school dropout ships out to invade Iraq for USEmpire and US oil
companies.
American oil companies are struggling with the problem of Peak Oil.
Peak oil means we no longer have a infinite supply of oil.Maybe you
saw the documentary film END OF SUBURBIA see
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/previews.htm

high school drop out didn't because his high school teachers were too
busy DUMBING him down
see


http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

High School dropout manages to kill a couple hundred women and
children while throwing in a occasional rape. Mr Sempi Fi has now been
transformed into Mr serial killer.
Mr high school dropout/serial killer now begins to experience extreme
depression from his actions. Mental Wealth workers call it Post
Traumatic
Stress Syndrome. But the only people who experience traumatic stress
in Iraq are the Iraqi women being raped by Semper Fi's before they
shot and killed them.
Good thing serial killer/high school dropout has never read the
research
of Ian Stevenson MD whose groundbreaking study of 3,000 children who
remember previous lives provides the science for the existence of
reincarnation. see
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... enson.html

What this means for high school dropout is that he will be coming back
again for another life . Of course so will the people he murdered , so
for practical purposes he has another couple hundred lives he has to
live getting "wacked" by the life forms he semper fi'd.

The difference this time is the raped and murdered have had some time
to ponder while they wait for him to pass over, how they will "do" Mr
Semper Fi- the high school drop out serial killer.

Mr high school dropout comes back from Iraq out of work unless he
re-enlists. There are not to many job openings for serial killers
until he lands a job working with his be all you can be buddies at the
local police department or the FBI.

3.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/drugs-fund-terrorism


The Narco Terror Trap
The DEA warns that drugs are funding terror. An examination of cases
raises questions about whether the agency is stopping threats or
staging them.
By Ginger Thompson / Pro Publica
December 7, 2015



IN DECEMBER 2009, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abdelrahman, smugglers from
northern Mali, walked through the doors of the Golden Tulip, a hotel
in Accra, Ghana. They were there to meet with two men who had offered
them an opportunity to make millions of dollars, transporting cocaine
across the Sahara. Touré wore a dashiki, and Abdelrahman had on
tattered clothes and a turban that hid much of his face. They tipped
the guards at the entrance and then greeted Mohamed, a Lebanese
radical, in the lobby. Mohamed took them up to a hotel room to see
David, a drug trafficker and a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC. “Hola, Colombiano,” Touré said, as he entered
the room. Abdelrahman tried to call David “007” in Spanish, but said
“477” instead. David, who was dressed in a short-sleeved pullover and
Bermuda shorts, laughed and offered his guests bottles of water.

Touré and Abdelrahman came from Gao, a parched and remote city in
northern Mali which has long been used as a base for smuggling of all
kinds, from immigrants to cigarettes. In recent years, the surrounding
region has also been the scene of conflict between violent bands of
nomadic insurgents, including members of al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM). During months of meetings and phone calls, David and
Mohamed had told Touré that the FARC had some 30,000 fighters at war
with the United States, and that it wanted to work with al-Qaida,
because the groups shared the same enemy. “They are our brothers,”
Mohamed said. “We have he same cause.” Touré had explained that he had
connections to the organization: he ran a transport company, and, in
return for safe passage for his trucks, he provided al-Qaida with food
and fuel.

Still, David remained skeptical. He needed assurances that Touré’s
organization was up to the task. The FARC had a lot of money riding on
the deal and was willing to pay Touré and Abdelrahman as much as
$3,000 per kilo, beginning with a 50-kilo test run to Melilla, a
Spanish city on the North African mainland. Loads ten times that size
would follow, David said, if the first trip went well.



“If you’re done, I’m going to speak,” Touré said. He told David and
Mohamed that he was tired of all the “blah, blah, blah.” He had
operatives along the smuggling route, which stretched from Ghana to
Morocco. Abdelrahman, whom Touré had introduced as the leader of a
Malian militia, said that he had hired a driver with links to
al-Qaida. They had also bribed a Malian military official, who would
help them cross the border without inspection.

David was reassured. “I want us to keep working together, because
we’re not doing this for the money — we’re doing this for our people,”
he said.



Two days later, Touré and Abdelrahman went back to the Golden Tulip to
collect their initial payment. Oumar Issa, a friend from Gao who was
also involved in the plan, waited at another hotel to receive his
portion. Instead, the smugglers were met by Ghanaian police officers.
David and Mohamed, it turned out, were not drug traffickers but
undercover informants for the United States Drug Enforcement
Administration. Within days, Touré, Abdelrahman, and Issa were turned
over to the DEA, put on a private jet, and flown to New York, where
they were arraigned in a federal courthouse. They were charged under a
little-known provision of the Patriot Act, passed in 2006, which
established a new crime, known as narco-­terrorism, committed by
violent offenders who had one hand in terrorism and the other in the
drug trade.



In announcing the charges, Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, said, “As terrorists diversify into
drugs, they provide us more opportunities to incapacitate them and cut
off funding for future acts of terror.” The case marked the first time
that the narco-­terrorism provision had been used against al-Qaida.
The suspects appeared to be precisely the kind of hybrid whom the law,
which does not require that any of the targeted activities take place
in the U.S., had been written to catch. Michele Leonhart, the DEA
administrator at the time, said, “Today’s arrests are further proof of
the direct link between dangerous terrorist organizations, including
al-Qaida, and international drug trafficking that fuels their
activities.”



As the Malians’ case proceeded, however, its flaws became apparent. The
defendants emerged as more hapless than hardened, childhood friends
who believed that the DEA’s informants were going to make them rich.
“They were lying to us. And we were lying to them,” Touré told me from
prison. Judge Barbara Jones, who oversaw the final phases of the case,
said, “There was no actual involvement by the defendants or the
undercovers … in the activities of either al-Qaida or the FARC.”
Another judge saw as many problems with the statute as with the merits
of the case. “Congress has passed a law that attempts to bind the
world,” he said to me.



The investigation continues to be cited by the DEA as an example of
its national-security achievements. Since the narco-terrorism
provision was passed, the DEA has pursued dozens of cases that fit the
broad description of crimes under the statute. The agency has claimed
victories against al-Qaida, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and the FARC and
established the figure of the narco-terrorist as a preeminent threat to
the United States.




With each purported success, the DEA has lobbied Congress to increase
its funding. In 2012, Michael Braun, who had served as the DEA’s chief
of operations, testified before Congress about the link between
terrorists and drug traffickers: “Based on over 37 years in the
law-­enforcement and security sectors, you can mark my word that they
are most assuredly talking business and sharing lessons learned.”



That may well be true. In a number of regions, most notably Colombia
and Afghanistan, there is con­vincing evidence that terrorists have
worked with drug traffickers. But a close examination of the cases that
the DEA has pursued reveals a disturbing number that resemble that of
the Malians. When these cases were prosecuted, the only links between
drug trafficking and terrorism entered into evidence were provided by
the DEA, using agents or informants who were paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to lure the targets into staged narco-­terrorism
conspiracies.



The DEA strongly defends the effectiveness of such sting operations,
claiming that they are a useful way to identify criminals who pose a
threat to the United States before they act. Lou Milione, a senior
official at the agency, told me, “One of the things the DEA is kind of
in the business of is almost all of our investigations are proactive.”
But Russell Hanks, a former senior American diplomat, who got a
firsthand look at some of the DEA’s narco-­terrorism targets during the
time he served in West Africa, told me, “The DEA provided everything
these men needed to commit a crime, then said, ‘Wow, look what they
did.’” He added, “This wasn’t terrorism — this was the manipulation of
weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest
records.”



ON sEPT. 11, 2001, when
 American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the
Pentagon, DEA agents were among the first to respond, racing from their
headquarters, less than half a mile away. A former special agent named
Edward Follis, in his memoir, “The Dark Art,” recalls how he and
dozens of his colleagues “rushed over … to pull out bodies, but there
were no bodies to pull out.” The agency had outposts in more than 60
countries around the world, the most of any federal law-enforcement
agency. And it had some 5,000 informants and confidential sources.
Michael Vigil, who was the DEA’s head of international operations at
the time, told me, “We called in every source we could find, looking
for information about what had happened, who was responsible, and
whether there were plans for an imminent attack.” He added, “Since the
end of the Cold War, we had seen signs that terrorist groups had
started relying on drug trafficking for funding. After 9/11, we were
sure that trend was going to spread.”



But other intelligence agencies saw the DEA’s sources as drug
traffickers — and drug traffickers didn’t know anything about terrorism. A
former senior money-laundering investigator at the Justice Department
told me that there wasn’t any substantive proof to support the DEA’s
assertions.



“What is going on after 9/11 is that a lot of resources move out of
drug enforcement and into terrorism,” he said. “The DEA doesn’t want
to be the stepchild that is last in line.” Narco-­terrorism, the
former investigator said, became an



4.


http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/04/the-my ... revealing/


The Mysterious Death of an Artist Whose Drawings Were Too Revealing
A story of banking, organized crime, intelligence, petrodollars and politics...all seen through the lens of innovative Art.
Lombardi Wordcloud Photo credit: lombardinetworks.net (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Lombardi Wordcloud Photo credit: lombardinetworks.net (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Patricia Goldstone’s INTERLOCK is the first biography to explore the life and suspicious death of Mark Lombardi, a controversial artist whose drawings walked the line between art and information — and revealed the incestous connections between banking, organized crime, politicians, the FBI and the CIA.

His work highlighted such subjects as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the Iran-Contra affair, the World Finance Corporation, and the relationship between George W. Bush and Harken Energy Corporation. The mystery of Lombardi’s alleged suicide has yet to be resolved. On March 22, 2000, he was found hanged. Friends find it suspicious because Lombardi was on the the cusp of achieving the recognition that would crown his career.

Goldstone talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about the full scope of Lombardi’s life and work.

For a look at some of Lombardi’s dangerously revealing and possibly fatal work, go here, and here.

Related front page panorama photo credit: George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979–90, (5th Version), 1999, by Mark Lombardi (flashpointmag.com), Mark Lombardi (Mesa Multimedia / YouTube)

[fruhmenschen]

two different stories

two different FBI False Flag Ops


1.

Unknown DNA sample obtained, but not provided during Oklahoma City bombing investigation


http://okcfox.com/news/fox-25-investiga ... city-bombi


Monday, December 7th 2015

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building following the April 19, 1995 bombing. (KOKH/FILE)

OKLAHOMA CITY — Has Oklahoma failed to honor one of the victims in the Oklahoma City Bombing? Or did investigators sit on the crucial clue to the identity of another conspirator for nearly two decades? These are questions about the bombing case many thought was closed years ago.

Read more on the investigation from our partners at The Washington Times.

Fox 25, working with The Washington Times, has confirmed that Oklahoma officials have a DNA profile that was never identified from the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. That DNA sample came from an unmatched left leg found at the scene of the bombing.

Oklahomans will likely remember the controversy surrounding the leg back in the late 1990s. Originally an unmatched leg was identified as a misidentified body part that actually belonged to the known bombing victim, Airman First Class Lakesha Levy. Levy's body was exhumed to replace the leg and officials discovered she had been buried with the wrong left leg. That leg was never identified.

The government argued the leg was not identified because of a paperwork error. In testimony and reports filed for the multiple trials of both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols investigators said it was not possible to obtain DNA from the sample. At McVeigh's trial, his attorney Stephen Jones argued the leg was proof of a third conspirator.

"We had no DNA evidence at the trial and the government didn't test for DNA evidence or if they did test for it they didn't tell us the result they didn't let us know," Stephen Jones, the attorney for McVeigh, told Fox 25.

It turns out the state did have a DNA profile. The Oklahoma State Medical Examiner's office confirms it is in possession of a DNA profile, along with tissue samples from the leg. Amy Elliott, the Chief Administrative Officer, told Fox 25 the sample was compared to 10 known victims but it did not match any of those people. Elliott, who was not with the office in 1995, said she does not know what process was used to determine which victims were compared to the sample.




Fox 25 also contacted attorneys who represented Terry Nichols for his state trial. Those attorneys say they do not recall ever being provided at DNA sample from that unmatched leg.

Lou Keel, one of the Oklahoma County district attorneys who prosecuted Nichols, said he was unware if a DNA test was every performed on the leg; or if was even possible to run a DNA test on the leg.

How did the existence of an unknown DNA sample not emerge in the 20 years since the bombing? There may not be an answer to that question, but Jeffrey Scott Shapiro with The Washington Times told Fox 25 "It is my understanding that the relationship between Oklahoma City and federal authorities was quite contentious during the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and the trials."

"We have here, people that today still walk unaccountable for the crimes committed in Oklahoma City," Jones said. He believes the DNA profile does not belong to victim 169, but rather to the man multiple witnesses saw with McVeigh before the bombing.

"The government was not able, despite the most expensive FBI investigation on record then, could find anyone that claimed to have seen just Tim McVeigh downtown," Jones said, "But there are probably two dozen people who claimed to see Tim McVeigh and at least one other person."

Once secret FBI documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information request by a Utah attorney,- and part of his on-going lawsuit against the government related to the bombing, reveal the potential of a video showing another man with McVeigh when he delivered the truck bomb.

The records show national media outlets were approached in 1995 about purchasing the video from an FBI source. The FBI memo states the video being offered for sale showed McVeigh driving up and walking away. After McVeigh exits, another man is seen "exiting the passenger side of the Ryder truck and walking to the back of the truck." That man walks out of the camera's view before the blast happens.

"There is no reported disappearance of someone that hasn't been found that was in or around Oklahoma City at that time," Jones said of his theory the leg belongs to the third conspirator.

However, government investigators have insisted McVeigh and Nichols acted alone in the bombing.

The Oklahoma City field office for the FBI told Fox 25 the national office would have to respond to our questions about the unknown DNA profile. In a statement, Special Agent Ann Todd confirmed the last known tests on the leg, identified as P-71 (for "part-71") was performed in 1997.

"Without reviewing the investigative case file---which is not readily available---the Laboratory has no way of knowing if additional DNA analysis was conducted after 1997," Agent Todd wrote, "It is the mission of the FBI Laboratory to apply scientific capabilities and technical services to the collection, processing, and exploitation of evidence in support of investigative and intelligence priorities. When a request is received by the FBI Laboratory to analyze cold case evidence---or evidence from older cases---with current scientific capabilities, communication occurs between the investigators and FBI scientists to evaluate whether current technologies can be applied. Exhaustive efforts were made by the FBI to identify the left leg known as P-71. Investigators will follow-up with officials from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to obtain a copy of the DNA analysis, conducted by the private lab, and determine its validity to the case."

Jones believes this newly revealed unknown DNA profile proves there was no paperwork error or mix up with the remains. Jones wants the government to re-open the investigation to solve the mystery.

"If the government were to reopen the investigation and actively pursue it, it doesn't negate what the government did with Mr. McVeigh or Mr. Nichols or for that matter with the Fortiers, you don't re-try McVeigh after he's been executed," Jones said.

"I don't think it is ever time to put any investigation to rest when it remains unsolved and the information could be important to the American public," said Shapiro, who uncovered the existence of the unknown DNA sample, " This was probably the single most significant domestic act of terrorism in the United States history. If there is a possibility that there was a broader conspiracy; if there is a possibility there were other terrorists involved, I think it is crucial the American public kn

also see


Image for the news result
Oklahoma City bombing: Medical examiner has partial DNA extracted from unknown, unmatched leg
Tulsa World‎ - 13 hours ago
According to a story from The Washington Times, the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner has ...
Okla. officials go quiet in response to questions about unidentified DNA from OKC bombing
KOKH FOX25‎ - 1 day ago
Fox Investigates: What will Oklahoma do with knowledge of unidentified DNA from bombing?
KOKH FOX25‎ - 2 days ago
More news for dna okc bombing
Unknown DNA sample obtained, but not provided during Oklahoma ...
okcfox.com/.../fox-investigates-unknown-dna-sample-obtained-but-not-pro...
3 days ago - OKLAHOMA CITY — Has Oklahoma failed to honor one of the victims in the Oklahoma City Bombing? ... That DNA sample came from an unmatched left leg found at the scene of the bombing. ... How did the existence of an unknown DNA sample not emerge in the 20 years since the bombing?
Oklahoma City Bombing Secret: DNA Extracted From Unknown Leg
www.forensicmag.com/.../oklahoma-city-b ... acted-un...
2 days ago - The Oklahoma City Medical Examiner has partial DNA from an unmatched left leg collected from the ruins, reviving the possibility of a 169th ...




2.



http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/12/e ... nt-couple/

Third Eyewitness To San Bernardino Shooting Says It Wasn’t ‘Terror Couple’ Who Carried Out Attack
December 9, 2015 12:05 pm·

san-bernardino-terrorism





“It’s not him,” a third San Bernardino shooting witness proclaimed about Sayd Farook and his wife.

The so-called “terror couple” have been accused of masterminding an ISIS terror attack on a Christmas office party where Sayd worked.

Earlier this month, the attorneys for the Farook family maintained that they do not believe the suspects are the ones who carried out the attacksin question.

Several eyewitnesses and family of witnesses and victims initially said that three athletic Caucasian men had been responsible for carrying out the attacks. Police immediately banned them from speaking with the media.

Just days ago, another eye-witness in the office came forward and said that in spite of what the law enforcement and mainstream media narrative is saying, the people who carried out the attack where very athletic, large, Caucasian men, who were three – not two – in number. Farook’s wife, it should be remembered weighed approximately 90lbs.

Now, a third prominent eye-witness, Chirs Nwadike, has stepped up to challenge the mainstream narrative. He recently told reporters he received a phone call from an unknown person around 7 p.m., on the evening of the shooting, who told him that he must say that Sayd Farook was the shooter.

You read that right, he says that he was called and told to change his story and say that Farook carried out the attacks with his wife, even though that is very different than what he witnessed.

Nwadike told reporters:

“No it’s not him [Sayd]. I told them about it. He’s quiet. He doesn’t make any trouble.”

“He was just spraying bullets everywhere,” Nwadike said. But the gunman was not Sayd, or his wife.

[fruhmenschen]

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/17/protec ... taliation/


December 17, 2015 | Klaus Marre
Protecting FBI Whistleblowers from Retaliation
Whistleblower report chart of complaints. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from U.S. Government Accountability Office and adil113 / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Whistleblower report chart of complaints. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from U.S. Government Accountability Office and adil113 / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

There are few things in Washington that garner bipartisan support these days. Protecting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblowers is now on that short list.

On Thursday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the ranking Democrat on the panel jointly introduced legislation to better shield from retaliation Bureau employees who report waste, fraud or misconduct. FBI whistleblowers are among the most poorly protected in the federal workforce.

“It’s no secret that FBI whistleblowers often face harsh consequences for simply trying to address failures or misconduct at work,” Judiciary Committee Chairman and frequent FBI critic Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said.

“Inconsistent and confusing disclosure rules and perpetual delays in retaliation investigations have left well-intentioned whistleblowers without adequate protections from reprisal.”

Former agent Michael German, a 16-year veteran of the Bureau, is one of the best-known FBI whistleblowers and his case illustrates that retaliation against those speaking out could weaken national security.

“I experienced two years of sustained and collaborative retaliation that pushed me out of the FBI, despite a career of superior performance and an unblemished disciplinary record…”

“I know the toll exacted on whistleblowers because I resigned from the FBI after this system failed to protect me from retaliation for internally reporting a mismanaged terrorism investigation,” German testified before the committee earlier this year.

After reporting the problem, he was ostracized from further participation in that investigation (which was in Tampa, Florida) and, it was threatened, he may never be allowed to work undercover again. Not long afterward, German was informed that he was being investigated for unauthorized travel and for spending $50 in case funds — a probe that was apparently bogus, and was later dismissed.

“In effect, the Inspectors had performed a retaliatory investigation against me on behalf of the Tampa managers involved in my complaint,” German testified. “I believe the only reason they told me they did this investigation was to warn me they would entertain even the pettiest allegations against me if I continued pursuing the whistleblower complaint.”

In addition, the FBI officials German had complained about were informed of the complaint — and who made it.

And, after he began working on a different terrorism probe, in Portland, Oregon, an assistant director of the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) told the case agent and the supervisor that German’s involvement in the investigation was “problematic” — because he was a whistleblower. OPR is the entity supposed to handle whistleblower complaints.

“While these concerns might seem cynical, I experienced two years of sustained and

collaborative retaliation that pushed me out of the FBI, despite a career of superior performance

and an unblemished disciplinary record,” German testified. “High-level FBI officials who had nothing to do with the original complaint initiated adverse personnel actions against me because they heard I was a whistleblower.”

Grassley hopes his legislation — the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act — will help agents like German who have the courage to come forward and report problems. It would not only expand outlets for protected disclosures but also improve the process to halt reprisals.

Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office determined that the FBI awarded corrective actions in only 3 out of 62 whistleblower retaliation complaints.

Some of the complaints were dismissed in part because the whistleblowers had reported a problem to somebody in their chain of command who “was not one of the nine high-level FBI or DOJ entities designated under DOJ regulations to receive such disclosures.”

In other words, whistleblowers were not protected from retaliatory actions simply because they went to the wrong person with their complaint.

The new bill would change that by extending whistleblower protections to FBI employees who make disclosures to their supervisors. It would also make clear that Bureau staff can take their complaints directly to members of Congress.

“Whistleblowers serve an essential role in providing transparency and accountability in the Federal government,” said ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick Leahy (VT). “It is important that all government employees are provided with strong and effective avenues to come forward with evidence of government abuse and misuse, and that they have protections from retaliation.”

The bill would also end the practice of the Bureau itself investigating FBI whistleblower complaints. Instead, all cases will be investigated by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which will issue annual reports on the outcomes.

Even FBI Director James Comey appeared to agree that Bureau employees blowing the whistle must be protected.

“I think it’s very, very important that we create the safe zones that all of our people need to raise concerns that they might have,” Comey said at a December 9 committee hearing; he pledged to work with the lawmakers on strengthening those protections.

With the various problems that have plagued the FBI over the years, and which have been detailed by WhoWhatWhy (for example here, here, and here) as well as by Grassley, stronger whistleblower protection will improve accountability at the Bureau and give the public more confidence in the justice system.

[fruhmenschen]

link du jour


http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... r-burkeman


http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/11/m ... a-england/


Bonus read


http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/17/protec ... taliation/


December 17, 2015 | Klaus Marre
Protecting FBI Whistleblowers from Retaliation
Whistleblower report chart of complaints. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from U.S. Government Accountability Office and adil113 / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Whistleblower report chart of complaints. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from U.S. Government Accountability Office and adil113 / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

There are few things in Washington that garner bipartisan support these days. Protecting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblowers is now on that short list.

On Thursday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the ranking Democrat on the panel jointly introduced legislation to better shield from retaliation Bureau employees who report waste, fraud or misconduct. FBI whistleblowers are among the most poorly protected in the federal workforce.

“It’s no secret that FBI whistleblowers often face harsh consequences for simply trying to address failures or misconduct at work,” Judiciary Committee Chairman and frequent FBI critic Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said.

“Inconsistent and confusing disclosure rules and perpetual delays in retaliation investigations have left well-intentioned whistleblowers without adequate protections from reprisal.”

Former agent Michael German, a 16-year veteran of the Bureau, is one of the best-known FBI whistleblowers and his case illustrates that retaliation against those speaking out could weaken national security.

“I experienced two years of sustained and collaborative retaliation that pushed me out of the FBI, despite a career of superior performance and an unblemished disciplinary record…”

“I know the toll exacted on whistleblowers because I resigned from the FBI after this system failed to protect me from retaliation for internally reporting a mismanaged terrorism investigation,” German testified before the committee earlier this year.

After reporting the problem, he was ostracized from further participation in that investigation (which was in Tampa, Florida) and, it was threatened, he may never be allowed to work undercover again. Not long afterward, German was informed that he was being investigated for unauthorized travel and for spending $50 in case funds — a probe that was apparently bogus, and was later dismissed.

“In effect, the Inspectors had performed a retaliatory investigation against me on behalf of the Tampa managers involved in my complaint,” German testified. “I believe the only reason they told me they did this investigation was to warn me they would entertain even the pettiest allegations against me if I continued pursuing the whistleblower complaint.”

In addition, the FBI officials German had complained about were informed of the complaint — and who made it.

And, after he began working on a different terrorism probe, in Portland, Oregon, an assistant director of the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) told the case agent and the supervisor that German’s involvement in the investigation was “problematic” — because he was a whistleblower. OPR is the entity supposed to handle whistleblower complaints.

“While these concerns might seem cynical, I experienced two years of sustained and

collaborative retaliation that pushed me out of the FBI, despite a career of superior performance

and an unblemished disciplinary record,” German testified. “High-level FBI officials who had nothing to do with the original complaint initiated adverse personnel actions against me because they heard I was a whistleblower.”

Grassley hopes his legislation — the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act — will help agents like German who have the courage to come forward and report problems. It would not only expand outlets for protected disclosures but also improve the process to halt reprisals.

Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office determined that the FBI awarded corrective actions in only 3 out of 62 whistleblower retaliation complaints.

Some of the complaints were dismissed in part because the whistleblowers had reported a problem to somebody in their chain of command who “was not one of the nine high-level FBI or DOJ entities designated under DOJ regulations to receive such disclosures.”

In other words, whistleblowers were not protected from retaliatory actions simply because they went to the wrong person with their complaint.

The new bill would change that by extending whistleblower protections to FBI employees who make disclosures to their supervisors. It would also make clear that Bureau staff can take their complaints directly to members of Congress.

“Whistleblowers serve an essential role in providing transparency and accountability in the Federal government,” said ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick Leahy (VT). “It is important that all government employees are provided with strong and effective avenues to come forward with evidence of government abuse and misuse, and that they have protections from retaliation.”

The bill would also end the practice of the Bureau itself investigating FBI whistleblower complaints. Instead, all cases will be investigated by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which will issue annual reports on the outcomes.

Even FBI Director James Comey appeared to agree that Bureau employees blowing the whistle must be protected.

“I think it’s very, very important that we create the safe zones that all of our people need to raise concerns that they might have,” Comey said at a December 9 committee hearing; he pledged to work with the lawmakers on strengthening those protections.

With the various problems that have plagued the FBI over the years, and which have been detailed by WhoWhatWhy (for example here, here, and here) as well as by Grassley, stronger whistleblower protection will improve accountability at the Bureau and give the public more confidence in the justice system.


1.

I recently tried to contact Steven Greer MD through a mutual friend
named Tom Valone.

Tom is a PhD who works at the US Patent Office in DC.
Tom has been trying to develop zero point energy for the last 20
years.
Dr Steven Greer just made a film called Sirius.
Tom Valone appears in the film.

Closer to home in Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue
has sued the FBI agents involved in creating the Oklahoma City
bombing trying to force them to turn over the videotapes they took
from survelliance cameras after the bombing.

Trentadue has solid evidence the videotapes will show other bombers.
FBI agents refuses to turn over the videotapes.
Salt Lake City FBI agent Quirk has threatened a witness who was to
testify.
see story
Did the FBI tamper with a witness in OKC bombing evidence case?


http://fox13now.com/2014/11/13/did-the- ... ence-case/








FBI agents decided to release the following information yesterday
through their public relations firms called the US Media or Main
Stream Media
In FBI speak this is called plausible denial.
The FBI agents can now turn over the survelliance videotapes to
attorney Trentadue
from the Oklahoma City bombing and claim the bomber died in the blast

also see below for breaking story about 911



Unknown DNA sample obtained, but not provided during Oklahoma City
bombing investigation


http://okcfox.com/news/fox-25-investiga ... city-bombi


Monday, December 7th 2015

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building following the April 19, 1995
bombing. (KOKH/FILE)

OKLAHOMA CITY — Has Oklahoma failed to honor one of the victims in the
Oklahoma City Bombing? Or did investigators sit on the crucial clue to
the identity of another conspirator for nearly two decades? These are
questions about the bombing case many thought was closed years ago.

Read more on the investigation from our partners at The Washington
Times.

Fox 25, working with The Washington Times, has confirmed that Oklahoma
officials have a DNA profile that was never identified from the April
19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. That DNA
sample came from an unmatched left leg found at the scene of the
bombing.

Oklahomans will likely remember the controversy surrounding the leg
back in the late 1990s. Originally an unmatched leg was identified as
a misidentified body part that actually belonged to the known bombing
victim, Airman First Class Lakesha Levy. Levy's body was exhumed to
replace the leg and officials discovered she had been buried with the
wrong left leg. That leg was never identified.

The government argued the leg was not identified because of a
paperwork error. In testimony and reports filed for the multiple
trials of both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols investigators said it
was not possible to obtain DNA from the sample. At McVeigh's trial,
his attorney Stephen Jones argued the leg was proof of a third
conspirator.

"We had no DNA evidence at the trial and the government didn't test
for DNA evidence or if they did test for it they didn't tell us the
result they didn't let us know," Stephen Jones, the attorney for
McVeigh, told Fox 25.

It turns out the state did have a DNA profile. The Oklahoma State
Medical Examiner's office confirms it is in possession of a DNA
profile, along with tissue samples from the leg. Amy Elliott, the
Chief Administrative Officer, told Fox 25 the sample was compared to
10 known victims but it did not match any of those people. Elliott,
who was not with the office in 1995, said she does not know what
process was used to determine which victims were compared to the
sample.




Fox 25 also contacted attorneys who represented Terry Nichols for his
state trial. Those attorneys say they do not recall ever being
provided at DNA sample from that unmatched leg.

Lou Keel, one of the Oklahoma County district attorneys who prosecuted
Nichols, said he was unware if a DNA test was every performed on the
leg; or if was even possible to run a DNA test on the leg.

How did the existence of an unknown DNA sample not emerge in the 20
years since the bombing? There may not be an answer to that question,
but Jeffrey Scott Shapiro with The Washington Times told Fox 25 "It is
my understanding that the relationship between Oklahoma City and
federal authorities was quite contentious during the Oklahoma City
bombing investigation and the trials."

"We have here, people that today still walk unaccountable for the
crimes committed in Oklahoma City," Jones said. He believes the DNA
profile does not belong to victim 169, but rather to the man multiple
witnesses saw with McVeigh before the bombing.

"The government was not able, despite the most expensive FBI
investigation on record then, could find anyone that claimed to have
seen just Tim McVeigh downtown," Jones said, "But there are probably
two dozen people who claimed to see Tim McVeigh and at least one other
person."

Once secret FBI documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information
request by a Utah attorney,- and part of his on-going lawsuit against
the government related to the bombing, reveal the potential of a video
showing another man with McVeigh when he delivered the truck bomb.

The records show national media outlets were approached in 1995 about
purchasing the video from an FBI source. The FBI memo states the video
being offered for sale showed McVeigh driving up and walking away.
After McVeigh exits, another man is seen "exiting the passenger side
of the Ryder truck and walking to the back of the truck." That man
walks out of the camera's view before the blast happens.

"There is no reported disappearance of someone that hasn't been found
that was in or around Oklahoma City at that time," Jones said of his
theory the leg belongs to the third conspirator.

However, government investigators have insisted McVeigh and Nichols
acted alone in the bombing.

The Oklahoma City field office for the FBI told Fox 25 the national
office would have to respond to our questions about the unknown DNA
profile. In a statement, Special Agent Ann Todd confirmed the last
known tests on the leg, identified as P-71 (for "part-71") was
performed in 1997.

"Without reviewing the investigative case file---which is not readily
available---the Laboratory has no way of knowing if additional DNA
analysis was conducted after 1997," Agent Todd wrote, "It is the
mission of the FBI Laboratory to apply scientific capabilities and
technical services to the collection, processing, and exploitation of
evidence in support of investigative and intelligence priorities. When
a request is received by the FBI Laboratory to analyze cold case
evidence---or evidence from older cases---with current scientific
capabilities, communication occurs between the investigators and FBI
scientists to evaluate whether current technologies can be applied.
Exhaustive efforts were made by the FBI to identify the left leg known
as P-71. Investigators will follow-up with officials from the Office
of the Chief Medical Examiner to obtain a copy of the DNA analysis,
conducted by the private lab, and determine its validity to the case."

Jones believes this newly revealed unknown DNA profile proves there
was no paperwork error or mix up with the remains. Jones wants the
government to re-open the investigation to solve the mystery.

"If the government were to reopen the investigation and actively
pursue it, it doesn't negate what the government did with Mr. McVeigh
or Mr. Nichols or for that matter with the Fortiers, you don't re-try
McVeigh after he's been executed," Jones said.

"I don't think it is ever time to put any investigation to rest when
it remains unsolved and the information could be important to the
American public," said Shapiro, who uncovered the existence of the
unknown DNA sample, " This was probably the single most significant
domestic act of terrorism in the United States history. If there is a
possibility that there was a broader conspiracy; if there is a
possibility there were other terrorists involved, I think it is
crucial the American public kn

also see


Image for the news result
Oklahoma City bombing: Medical examiner has partial DNA extracted from
unknown, unmatched leg
Tulsa World‎ - 13 hours ago
According to a story from The Washington Times, the Oklahoma City
Medical Examiner has ...
Okla. officials go quiet in response to questions about unidentified
DNA from OKC bombing
KOKH FOX25‎ - 1 day ago
Fox Investigates: What will Oklahoma do with knowledge of unidentified
DNA from bombing?
KOKH FOX25‎ - 2 days ago
More news for dna okc bombing
Unknown DNA sample obtained, but not provided during Oklahoma ...
okcfox.com/.../fox-investigates-unknown-dna-sample-obtained-but-not-pro...
3 days ago - OKLAHOMA CITY — Has Oklahoma failed to honor one of the
victims in the Oklahoma City Bombing? ... That DNA sample came from an
unmatched left leg found at the scene of the bombing. ... How did the
existence of an unknown DNA sample not emerge in the 20 years since
the bombing?
Oklahoma City Bombing Secret: DNA Extracted From Unknown Leg
http://www.forensicmag.com/.../oklahoma ... acted-un...
2 days ago - The Oklahoma City Medical Examiner has partial DNA from
an unmatched left leg collected from the ruins, reviving the
possibility of a 169th ...


2.


My name is Niels Harrit.

I wish to say a few words about the new project Professor Leroy Hulsey
has launched at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. (You may listen to
my statement here [
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4Z3P8 ... e=youtu.be ].)

Many of you may have wondered why all the universities and high
schools have been silent about the collapse of the three World Trade
Center skyscrapers on September 11th, 2001. At our universities, we
have a constant flow of seminars, conferences, symposia,
presentations, defenses, lectures, etc., where everything is discussed
in assemblies of peers.

Everything is discussed - except 9/11.

I will not go into details about the mechanisms by which this has
happened. But you may take a look down the list of the scientists who
actually have spoken out. And you will notice that a majority are
retired - like myself.

Of course, the university is not dead. Just silent. Expertise and
integrity are still abundant. One very living example of this is
Professor Leroy Hulsey from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has
undertaken the exciting project of modeling the collapse of World
Trade Center 7.

I urge you to see Professor Hulsey's presentations on this project [
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... ek8EwtkA7Y
]. This is a scientist of the very highest competence and integrity.

Professor Hulsey's project is unique in three respects. As already
emphasized, it is the first independent, university-based modeling of
the collapse of World Trade Center 7. This should have happened many
years ago. But late is far better than never.

Secondly, it is transparent. Usually, scientists don't like to be
looked over their shoulder while they work. But in this case the
public will be informed and invited to interact as the project
proceeds.

Thirdly, this project is crowd-funded. University research like this
must be funded because scientists have to eat on a regular basis.
Normally, university research is funded by grants. But this research
may be the first case of crowd-funding a university project.

The duration of this project is from now until April 2017. Architects
& Engineers for 9/11 Truth has asked us to be sustaining supporters
through that date. So, if you can spare a modest amount each month,
please sign up for this option, though a one-time donation will also
help [
https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50694/do ... evaluation ].

We don't know where Professor Hulsey's research ...

[fruhmenschen]

FBI agents tried to assassinate Pete Seeger on several occasions.
Public Television detailed one assassination attempt in their documentary about Peter Seeger in their
American Masters Series.

Peekskill Outrage - Sidney Poitier, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson ...
Video for pete seeger paul robeson american masters youtube
▶ 2:56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pgyACdT1rM
May 13, 2008 - Uploaded by Joe Stead
Peekskill Outrage - Sidney Poitier, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson ... white American was amongst ..




see

Pete Seeger And The Power Of The Song - YouTube
Video for pete seeger american masters youtube
▶ 1:33:01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udxvBtu8G3s
Nov 19, 2011 - Uploaded by weinsteinvod
In PETE SEEGER: POWER OF SONG, the only authorized biography, Jim Brown documents




also see



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... r-fbi-file

Pete Seeger’s FBI File Reveals How the Folk Legend First Became a Target of the Feds
It all started with a letter.


| Fri Dec. 18, 2015 6:00 AM EST



From the 1940s through the early 1970s, the US government spied on singer-songwriter Pete Seeger because of his political views and associations. According to documents in Seeger's extensive FBI file—which runs to nearly 1,800 pages (with 90 pages withheld) and was obtained by Mother Jones under the Freedom of Information Act—the bureau's initial interest in Seeger was triggered in 1943 after Seeger, as an Army private, wrote a letter protesting a proposal to deport all Japanese American citizens and residents when World War II ended.

Seeger, a champion of folk music and progressive causes—and the writer, performer, or promoter of now-classic songs, including as "If I Had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," Turn! Turn! Turn!," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Goodnight, Irene," and "This Land Is Your Land"—was a member of the Communist Party for several years in the 1940s, as he subsequently acknowledged. (He later said he should have left earlier.) His FBI file shows that Seeger, who died in early 2014, was for decades hounded by the FBI, which kept trying to tie him to the Communist Party, and the first investigation in the file illustrates the absurd excesses of the paranoid security establishment of that era.
.

In July 1942, Seeger was drafted into the Army. ("I was almost glad when I heard from my draft board," he later wrote in a diary.) He was assigned to be trained as an aviation mechanic at Keesler Field in Mississippi. While in the Army, he kept up with the news, and in the fall of 1942, Seeger, who was then 23 years old, wrote a letter of protest to the California chapter of the American Legion. It was to the point:

Dear Sirs -

I felt shocked, outraged, and disgusted to read that the California American Legion voted to 1) deport all Japanese after the war, citizen or not, 2) Bar all Japanese descendants from citizenship!!

We, who may have to give our lives in this great struggle—we're fighting precisely to free the world of such Hitlerism, such narrow jingoism.

If you deport Japanese, why not Germans, Italians, Rumanians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians?

If you bar from citizenship descendants of Japanese, why not descendants of English? After all, we once fought with them too.

America is great and strong as she is because we have so far been a haven to all oppressed.

I felt sick at heart to read of this matter.

Yours truly,

Pvt. Peter Seeger

I am writing also to the Los Angeles Times.

How did the American Legion respond? It forwarded Seeger's note to the FBI in San Francisco. And somehow this matter was brought to the attention of the Military Intelligence Service of the War Department. Within weeks, military intelligence was investigating Seeger—and soon updating the FBI on its effort. The official "reason for investigation," as numerous military reports forwarded to the FBI noted, was that "Subject wrote letter protesting and criticizing the California American Legion's resolution advocating deportation of all Japanese, citizens or not, after the war, and barring all Japanese descendants from citizenship."
​
Our 2004 profile of the folk music icon

Seeger had become a target merely because he had objected to mass deportations. The secret investigation coincided with the completion of Seeger's training as an aviation mechanic. He expected to be deployed to active duty. But while he was under investigation, those orders never came. He watched the rest of his training class be sent to airfields, but he stayed put. At first, he wasn't sure why. He was frustrated.

Military intelligence officers across the country began probing Seeger and his background. They searched police records in various locales (and found nothing). They discovered that a House committee had come across his name twice while investigating subversives in the pre-war peace movement. They secretly read his mail, including letters from his Japanese American fiancee, Toshi Ohta, who was living in New York City. The investigators were concerned that Ohta was working for the Japanese American Committee for Democracy, which promoted the American war effort but was considered by the military gumshoes to be a Communist-influenced group. In one letter to Seeger, Ohta said she suspected that the combination of Seeger's past work with the Almanac Singers, a group of lefty folk singers who sang mostly pro-labor songs, and his relationship with her would prevent him from being deployed overseas. She wrote, "Not that I mind that…from the danger point of view…But what good is your going through all this training and having the government spend so much money on you…if they don't allow you to use it." Seeger, several days later, wrote to his grandmother: "It is possible that I am being held here because of my former connections with the Almanac Singers and because of my engagement to a Japanese-American, but I doubt it. I have never tried to hide either fact."

Early in the investigation, an officer at Keesler Field interviewed Seeger, who noted that he was puzzled that he had not been deployed as an aviation mechanic, given that he had completed his training. Seeger pointed out that he played the five-string banjo well and requested that he be assigned to the Special Services Department, which provided entertainment for the troops. Seeger was asked about Ohta, and he informed the officer that her father was a Japanese refugee who had come to the United States because he disagreed with the militarists of Japan. Seeger said Ohta's father had been given the choice of being executed in Japan or leaving the country. He told the officer that the Japanese American Committee for Democracy sought to demonstrate that Japanese Americans were loyal citizens and that its sponsors included Albert Einstein and author Pearl Buck.
Pete Seeger FBI Interview (pg 129)

Seeger was not informed that he was under investigation.

After the interview, the officer wrote in a memo that he believed Seeger had been "truthful in all answers…and that he made no attempt to withhold anything." The officer added, "From all indications, Subject has no idea that anything he has done or any associations he might have had in the past or might have at the present time would be cause to hold him on this field or keep him under surveillance at any time." In a diary entry Seeger wrote later that year, he said he thought the questioning was prompted because someone had seen the return address on the letters that Ohta had sent him: "I was very frank with them, spontaneously volunteering all I thought they would want. I thought I had satisfied them." Seeger did not initially realize the military snoops were reading his mail and thoroughly investigating him. But months after this interview, he would suspect that his mail was being opened. He then came to the conclusion that his deployment was being blocked: "I hoped it was because of Toshi, but was afraid that it was because of my work as an Almanac Singer."

As part of the probe prompted by Seeger's protest letter, a military intelligence agent visited the grade school in Litchfield, Connecticut, that Seeger had attended—and found the available records did not cover the period when Seeger had been there. (And, he wrote in a report, "it is doubtful that the information obtained would be of any value.") This agent also went to Seeger's high school in Avon, Connecticut. (A member of the faculty said Seeger "possessed unusual literary talents" and was intelligent and "completely honest and reliable.") The report based on this interview noted that Seeger, after leaving high school, "appeared to have assumed a 'Bohemian' attitude in dress and appearance" and that this faculty member had concluded that Seeger had "developed a somewhat radical outlook on life" but was in no way "dangerous."

Another agent went to Harvard University, where Seeger had studied for a year and a half before withdrawing due to financial reasons, and he managed to review Seeger's academic records ("Grades in the first year were fair") and gain access to the membership list of the Harvard Student Union, of which Seeger had been the secretary. This agent spoke to faculty members and acquaintances of Seeger at Harvard, but they only remembered him slightly.

An agent in Detroit, Michigan, interviewed the director of student activities at Wayne State University about concerts there that had featured the Almanac Singers. (The interviewee had nothing to say about Seeger.) This agent also questioned the owner of a record store where the Almanac Singers had stored their instruments when they were in Detroit. A pal of Seeger's told another agent that, after studying at Harvard, Seeger had traveled around the country performing and collecting folk music, and that he had attended "Communist meetings." This friends said Seeger had been interested in the Communist Party because, as the interview report put it, "under their program the artist had an opportunity to produce his works without worry of starving to death, as they were subsidized by the government for such work."

As part of the Seeger probe, military intelligence did investigate Ohta. It also probed Charles Seeger, Pete's father and a noted musicologist. An agent interviewed the father "under pretext"—meaning the agent cooked up a phony reason for the interview—according to a report he later filed. Charles told the agent that his son had "bummed around" the country, playing the banjo and singing, before being drafted into the Army, and was "very much interested in the common people." Pete Seeger, this agent's report noted, "was a close friend and associate of 'Leadbetter,' also known as 'Leadbelly,' a negro murderer who escaped from prison a few years ago." (Lead Belly, whose real name was Huddie Ledbetter, did go to jail for killing a relative but was pardoned in 1925 after serving the minimum sentence. He went on to become a renowned folk singer.) Seeger's father pointed out that his son was frustrated that he had not yet been transferred to active duty and combat. He said his son was not a radical but possessed a liberal point of view.

On May Day in 1943, a military intelligence agent in New York City named Harwood Ryan interviewed folk singer Woody Guthrie as part of the Seeger investigation. Guthrie, who had been a member of the Almanac Singers, recounted that he had met Seeger in the summer of 1941 when both men had joined the group. Most of the act's engagements, Guthrie said, had been in union halls, and Seeger had been the best musician in the group and written most of the lyrics for their original songs. Guthrie told Ryan that the Almanac Singers had slept on freight trains, under bridges, and in churches while touring. According to the report Ryan filed, Guthrie gave the following description of Seeger:

[He] had been greatly interested in American folklore and had always been interested in people and what they were doing. [Seeger] had a great deal of energy and was brilliant, but he was hard to understand. Guthrie attributed this to the fact that [Seeger] always wanted to see things done in a more efficient and better way than they were being done. In addition, [Seeger] loved good organization and was always active in trying to make group endeavors work more smoothly. Guthrie would not name any of the groups, but said he referred to many kinds of outings or meetings in which people assembled at large gatherings.

Ryan asked Guthrie about Seeger's political views, and Guthrie responded:

[Seeger] was progressive in his outlook and had liberal views, maintaining that men had the right to organize and bargain collectively. In addition, [Seeger] was very much in favor of labor unions and most of the Almanacs' bookings were by such unions. According to Guthrie, [Seeger's] present politics are National Unity. Guthrie emphasized that [Seeger] is not an overthrower, but he is out to win the war. What [Seeger] wants personally, is to do Hitler the most damage possible. Guthrie said he had just received a letter stating that [Seeger] was extremely anxious to be sent on active service and that he could not understand why he was being held inactive in an unassigned group.

Guthrie told Ryan that Seeger could be trusted and that the Army should put his talents and strong mind to good use.

Ryan, though, was suspicious of Guthrie and thought he was being cagey about Seeger's political beliefs. In his report, he noted that in Guthrie's apartment he had spotted a large guitar that bore an inscription: "This machine kills Fascists." Ryan added that he believed "this bears out the belief that the Almanac Players were active singing Communist songs and spreading propaganda." He reported that he thought Guthrie had been "truthful as far as he went, but that he knew a great deal more about [Seeger's] politics and activities than he admitted."
Interview With Woodie Guthrie (pg 73)

Throughout 1943, the results of the military's probe were compiled in reports on Seeger. One memo reported that Seeger's "supervisors at Harvard University considered that Subject had radical ideas…and one of the supervisors thought that the Subject had a leaning towards Communism." It noted that a "reliable source" had said one of Seeger's "acquaintances" was a "self-confessed Communist, ardent in his love for the Communistic teachings of Russia," and one "acquaintance"—maybe the same one—said Seeger was "in sympathy with the Communist cause." The author of the report concluded that Seeger "will be further influenced along questionable lines by his new wife, the former Toshi Ohta, who is half-Japanese…Correspondence between the two indicated that both…were deeply interested in political trends, particularly anti-Fascist, and that she was a member of several Communist infiltrated organizations. Their marriage will quite possibly fuse and strengthen their individual radical tendencies." The report concluded that Seeger was "an idealist whose devotion to radical ideologies is such as to make his loyalty to the United States under all circumstances questionable." Seeger, this memo claimed, was "potentially subversive." The document was sent to J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI.

Another military intelligence report concluded that Seeger's "Communistic sypmpathies.…and his numerous Communist and otherwise undesirable friends" rendered him "unfit for a position of trust or reliability." A third report said Seeger is "intensely loyal at this time. He is eager to join the battle actively against Fascism, and is applying himself to improve his military and technical knowledge to be of greatest service." But it added that if the Communist Party line shifted against the war, Seeger could be susceptible to "potential subversion." This report also focused on his love for Toshi Ohta: "While this relationship appears on a high plane, this Officer believes it to be unorthodox and one which might lead to divided loyalty in the event this country's treatment of the Japanese were not in accord with the views of himself or the woman he expects to marry." It went on to point out that "as an entertainer, his songs have been colored subtly toward idealistic classlessness." And this memo concluded, "Despite [Seeger's] intelligence and desire to apply himself to the destruction of the enemy, this officer believes that enemy to be Fascism and not necessarily any enemy of the United States." That is, Seeger was more loyal to an abstraction than his country. The recommendation: that he remain under surveillance as a "potentially subversive" person.

The Seeger investigation apparently petered out after he was transferred to an airfield in Texas. But Seeger was not sent abroad as an aviation mechanic. Instead, he did become part of the Army division responsible for entertaining the troops. In the summer of 1944, he shipped off to the Pacific Theater, and he sang his way through the rest of the war.

After the war, Seeger remained an FBI target. It was a time of communist hunting. Confidential informants had fingered Seeger as a party member or sympathizer, and throughout the 1950s the FBI generated hundreds of reports on Seeger. The bureau closely tracked his musical performances and his appearances at political events. It monitored his associations with groups and persons suspected of being linked to or controlled by the Communist Party. FBI agents called his booking agency and pretended to be people who wanted to arrange a Seeger performance in order to collect information on his travels within the United States and overseas. The burgeoning folk music world overlapped with the progressive movement (which the bureau saw as riddled with and dominated by commies) and Seeger was at the nexus.

In the early 1950s, Seeger was a member of the Weavers folk group, as it became a national act with a string of hits. The group sold an estimated 4 million singles and albums. But as the Weaver reached this height, Seeger became the target of the blacklist banning entertainers suspected of Communist Party ties. A Senate committee investigated the Weavers. The demand for Weavers shows diminished. In 1953, two FBI agents working in the Security Informant Program tried to interview Seeger after he dropped one of his children at school near his home in upstate New York. "I think I had just better not say anything," he told them.

In 1955, Seeger was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Asked if he was a communist, Seeger defiantly replied, "I am not going to answer any questions as to my associations, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked." He did not plead the Fifth Amendment. He took a stand, telling the committee, "I would be very glad to tell you my life, if you want to hear of it." He added, "If you want to question me about any songs…I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business." Seeger told the committee, "I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion…I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers."

The congressmen running the commie-hunting committee were not pleased. In 1957, Seeger was cited for contempt of Congress for not answering the questions about his political associations. Four years later, after much legal wrangling, he was found guilty after a three-day trial. Seeger was sentenced to a year in prison. He remained free on bail, and a year later, the conviction was overturned when a federal appeals court determined the original indictment had been defective. After that, the Justice Department dropped the case.

Seeger's FBI files indicate the FBI actively monitored the contempt case against Seeger. Its agents stayed in contact with the prosecutors handling the case, as the bureau kept gathering information on Seeger's connections to progressive organizations—civil liberties and civil rights outfits, peace groups, pro-labor entities, and the like—that it deemed subversive. It closely watched his use of his passport.

After the contempt case concluded, the FBI remained on the Seeger beat. When the folk singer traveled abroad, according to a 1963 FBI note from Hoover to the State Department, the bureau notified the CIA and asked for any information it might obtain on Seeger overseas. At one point, when Seeger played a series of concerts in Hawaii in 1963, the FBI collected information on the shows, noting that an audience member from an "avowedly anti-Communist organization" had reported to the bureau that Seeger had sung a song that was "low keyed propaganda to the effect that America is a land of conformity" and also played a song from Japan about nuclear bombs. This source noted that "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" was inspired by a passage from a Soviet writer. In 1966, a FBI memo recorded the fact—obtained form a "reliable" source—that Seeger had registered for a Russian-language course. The bureau kept in touch with the police force and the postmaster of Beacon, New York, where Seeger and his wife, Toshi, lived, to keep a close eye on his comings and goings.

FBI surveillance of Seeger continued into the early 1970s. A 1971 FBI report listing evidence of his "CP Sympathy" noted that Seeger had entertained at a benefit concert for three soldiers who had refused to serve in Vietnam because they believed the war there was illegal, immoral, and unjust. Also, it pointed out that he had raised money at a Los Angeles concert for a group called Southern Californians to Abolish the House Committee for Un-American Activities. A 1972 FBI memo reported that Seeger "has manifested a revolutionary ideology." The message: He still needed watching.

By that point, Seeger had broken free from the black list, appearing on network television five years earlier on the popular Smothers Brothers' variety show. And he had become a prominent environmental crusader, building the Clearwater, a 106-foot sailing ship that cruised the Hudson River to promote efforts to clean up that major waterway. In the decades to come, Seeger kept on singing and organizing. While his FBI file gathered dust, he received numerous honors. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. President Bill Clinton in 1994 awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Seeger entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, as an early influencer. He won Grammy awards. He performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during an inaugural concert for President Barack Obama.

Seeger was 94 years old when he died. His wide-ranging impact on popular culture, music, and politics had survived all the efforts—behind closed doors and in the public—to brand him a subversive and an enemy of freedom. This was seven decades after he first became a target of government snoops merely because he was upset about a racist and unconstitutional idea and, as a private citizen, wrote a letter about it.
DOCID-70000968-Enclosure-100-HQ-200845-194

[fruhmenschen]

Bonus read






Here's How One Activist Convinced the FBI to Leave Him Alone
Sunday, 20 December 2015 00:00


http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3410 ... -him-alone

Newly released FBI documents confirm what some activist groups have argued for years: when FBI agents come knocking, the best response is to shut the door and call the press.

Leslie Pickering is no stranger to FBI harassment. Years ago, he was a spokesperson for the radical environmental group the Earth Liberation Front. By publicly making statements in support of militant tactics like property destruction, he immediately drew the attention of law enforcement. Today, he helps run an anarchist bookstore - and has found that the government is still monitoring his mail and First Amendment activity.

Pickering has been working with his attorney, Michael Kuzma, to obtain FBI documents about him. The court has ordered the FBI to process and release 30,000+ pages of his FBI file. In the first batch of those documents he has received, there is an account of the FBI's decision to "forego an interview" and not visit Pickering.

The reason?

Pickering never talked, and future visits could result in bad press for the FBI.

"In previous investigations, Pickering was not cooperative with interviewers," the document says. "Additionally, Pickering has used a possible FBI investigation against him to gain publicity in the local and national press. SSA concurrence was obtained to forego an interview."

Author Kristian Williams says Pickering's documents are a good example of the power and importance of non-cooperation and public exposure. Williams is the author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, and has also written about FBI harassment.

"The FBI's decision not to approach Pickering shows that, one, if you refuse to talk it reduces the likelihood that they'll approach you again (and conversely, talking at all only increases the likelihood they'll come back)," Williams told me. "And two, the FBI really doesn't like it when the people they're investigating publicize the fact, and if they think you will, they're less likely to try to approach you in the first place."

This often runs counter to activists' instincts in these situations, which is to attempt to talk their way out of it. And activists sometimes don't want to publicize the FBI visit, Williams said, because it could make other activists afraid to continue organizing, or it could be perceived as self-promotion.

Pickering says he understands those feelings, but documents like this show that non-cooperation, combined with media outreach, is the best response.

"It's never been easy resisting federal investigators or dealing with the mainstream media," Pickering said. "However, I have no doubt that full and consistent resistance of all these



https://youtu.be/rI8INgw0xq0




two stories



1.


The FBI Checked the Wrong Box and a Woman Ended Up on the Terrorism
Watch List For Years



http://www.ktoo.org/2015/12/20/the-fbi- ... for-years/



December 20, 2015 Nation & World, National Government

As the Senate debated a proposal earlier this month that would have
barred gun sales to people on the government’s terrorism watch lists,
Republicans decried the lists as unfair, unreliable and un-American.
“There’s no due process or any way to get your name removed from it in
a timely fashion,” Sen. Marco Rubio told CNN. “This is not a list you
can be certain of,” Jeb Bush said. Mike Huckabee asserted that some
people end up on the no-fly list due to “suspicion, not necessarily
even so much as probable cause.”

Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian architect with a doctorate from Stanford,
knows from personal experience that they have a compelling point.
Ibrahim is the only person since 9/11 to file a court challenge that
ultimately removed her name from the watch lists. It took her almost a
decade to prevail in court and even that victory has proved phyrrhic.
While a federal judge agreed that her inclusion on the no-fly list was
groundless, she remains unable to obtain a visa that would allow her
to visit the United States even to attend academic conferences. A
close look at her case by ProPublica provides dramatic evidence of
what was argued this month in Washington: It is indeed remarkably easy
to get on the list and nearly impossible to get off.
Rahinah Ibrahim with Rafeah Mustafa Kamal

Rahinah Ibrahim, right, with her daughter Rafeah Mustafa Kamal, at the
Park Royal Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. This photo was taken at a conference
of the International Association for the Study of Traditional
Environments, which Rahinah co-chaired. (Photo by Raymond Bonner for
ProPublica)

The questions of terrorism lists and visas appear likely to take
center stage in the coming months. While the Senate rejected the
amendment barring gun sales, Connecticut’s governor imposed just such
a ban on a threat that is more theoretical. Between 2004 and 2014,
more than 2,000 people on the government’s watch lists purchased
firearms in the United States, according to a study by the Government
Accountability Office. Questions are also emerging about how Tafsheen
Malik, one of the perpetrators in the San Bernardino terrorism attack,
managed to get a visa to join her husband despite her pro-jihadi
postings on social media.

Taken together, the two cases offer a disturbing look at the ability
of U.S. authorities to effectively and fairly guard the border.

Ibrahim’s saga began on Jan. 2, 2005. A devout Muslim, she got up
before dawn and said her morning prayers. A friend drove her up
Highway 101 from San Jose to the San Francisco International Airport.
She was booked on United Airlines Flight 41. Ibrahim planned a
stopover in Hawaii, where she would deliver a paper at a prestigious
conference, before continuing to Malaysia.

The 44-year-old mother of four felt good about her forthcoming trip
although she was still in pain from an emergency hysterectomy months
earlier. She had just completed four years of demanding course work,
while also working as a volunteer at the Stanford hospital. She had
just passed her oral exams, a considerable accomplishment for someone
who had grown up in rural Malaysia and not been out of the country
until she was 18.

When Ibrahim, wearing a hijab that allowed not a strand of her brown
hair to show, reached the counter, the ticket agent looked at her
reservation and summoned a supervisor. Soon, Ibrahim saw two San
Francisco police officers striding purposefully through the terminal.
After speaking with the supervisor, the officers told Ibrahim that she
was under arrest, handcuffed her and marched her through the crowded
terminal to a police car that drove her to the airport police station.
Inside, as she would later recall, she found herself in a deeply
uncomfortable setting, “a handcuffed Muslim woman surrounded by three
male policemen.” The officers locked Ibrahim in a cell where she sat
on a cold, stainless steel bench and cried, the scar across her
abdomen aching.

Ibrahim had no idea why she had been detained. She explained to the
police that two FBI agents interviewed her just nine days earlier and
she showed them the business card that one of them, Kevin Kelley, had
given her. Kelley was a member of the South Bay Joint Terrorism Task
Force in San Jose. He had asked about her academic work (her area of
concentration at the engineering school was affordable housing); her
husband (he’s very progressive and had allowed her to pursue her
career, something most men in her conservative country would not do)
and about Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group created in Malaysia but
best known for bombings of night clubs in Bali. Ibrahim told Kelley
she didn’t know much about Jemaah Islamiyah beyond headlines on the
Internet, but that she was a member of Jemaah Islam Malaysia, a
professional organization for people who had studied in the United
States and Europe and encouraged the practice of more moderate forms
of Islam.

After she had been detained at the police station for more than two
hours, an official from the Department of Homeland Security, Lee
Korman, showed up. He apologized to Ibrahim for her arrest and told
her that she had been removed from the no-fly list and was now free to
fly. It was the first time Ibrahim knew she was on the no-fly list.

Before 9/11, there were perhaps a dozen people worldwide on America’s
no-fly list. The numbers soared after the attacks and by 2013 there
were some 47,000 individuals on the list, according to a Justice
Department audit. Grandmothers, infants, honorably discharged veterans
and the disabled have found themselves barred from boarding. A few
notorious cases made headlines, such as when Sen. Edward Kennedy was
stopped several times — because, it turned out, there was a “T.
Kennedy” on some agency’s terrorist watchlist. Kennedy’s name was, of
course, removed. For tens of thousands of others, it was not so easy.

The no-fly list is part of the post 9/11 security apparatus, which is
a labyrinth of euphemisms and acronyms. The effort is coordinated by
the Terrorism Screening Center (TSC), a multi-agency group of
officials managed by the FBI in coordination with the CIA. All federal
departments and agencies are responsible “for collecting information
about potential terrorists or attacks’’ and sharing that information
with the FBI or the CIA, either of which can “nominate” individuals
for inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

From that database, names are passed “downstream” (in bureaucratic
jargon) to the so-called “frontline” agencies — for example, to the
Transportation Security Agency (TSA), which administers the no-fly
list and to the State Department, where the names are put into the
Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), which American consular
officers around the world call up when a foreigner applies for a visa.

State and local law enforcement officials have access to the database,
which now has some 700,000 records. A police officer pulling over a
driver for speeding can check the name on the driver’s license against
the TSDB. In addition, the lists are shared with more than 20 foreign
governments.

An FBI agent need only have a “reasonable suspicion,” to “nominate”
someone, the FBI guidelines say. It is supposed to be more than “a
mere guess or hunches.” But, as Huckabee noted, the standard is well
short of the probable cause the police need to arrest a person.

Ibrahim was born in 1969, the second of five children, into modest
circumstances, her father a mid-level civil servant. She inherited
school uniforms and textbooks from her older sister, and then passed
them on to her younger one. Neither of her parents had finished high
school, and they pushed their children to get an education.

Ibrahim had mild dyslexia and was something of a loner in school who
found solace in drawing. She finished first in her high-school class,
and was one of 25 students nationwide selected to study in the U.S.
She had been on an airplane only once before, a small one, to return
home from boarding school when her father died. When the flight
stopped for a layover in Hong Kong, Ibrahim got separated from the
rest of the group. Another student in the honor’s program, Mustafa
Kamal, the son of primary school teachers in a small rural town,
volunteered to find her. Kamal would continue chasing Ibrahim,
changing her life — romantically, unconventionally, profoundly.
Ibrahim enrolled in the University of Washington to study
architecture; Kamal studied civil engineering at California State
University, Long Beach. After a long-distance, telephone romance, they
married in the summer between their third and fourth years. Ibrahim
graduated with honors in 1984 after the birth of the couple’s first
child and moved to Southern California to study for a masters at the
Southern California Institute of Technology in Santa Monica.

Kamal assumed primary responsibility for domestic chores. “I was a
stay-at-home dad,” he said. He was becoming Americanized. Evenings he
watched the ABC News with Peter Jennings, and he was such a diehard
Los Angeles Lakers fan that he and his friends would adjust the time
of their evening prayers so they could watch the games on television.

“I always feel in love with America,” Kamal told me in an interview in
Malaysia. “We consider America our second home.” The years in the
United States had a profound impact. “I would say that we grew up in
the States. It changed our perspective on the world.” One of his
favorite television programs was Meet The Press, which he liked to
watch “just to see how these people argue.” On his Facebook page,
Kamal lists Henry Kissinger’s “Diplomacy” as one of his “likes.”

Living in America also changed their approach to Islam. They began to
practice their religion in a more Western context. “We call it
progressive Islam,” Ibrahim told me, during the only interview she has
given about her experiences.

After Ibrahim got her masters degree, the family returned to Malaysia
and she launched her career as an architect. At the age of 32, and
pregnant with her fourth child, Ibrahim became the first female
lecturer at University Putra Malaysia, a 7500-acre campus 12 miles
south of downtown Kuala Lumpur She was soon intellectually restless
and applied to Stanford, surprised when she was accepted.

In 2000, Ibrahim returned to the U.S. with an F1 student visa. Kamal
remained in Malaysia. He was the managing director of an environmental
consultancy business and had become deeply committed to international
relief work. Kamal traveled to Palo Alto every three months to visit
his wife.

On March 10, 2005, 10 weeks after her encounter at the San Francisco
airport, Ibrahim was set to fly from Malaysia to Stanford with plans
to put the final touches on her doctoral thesis. At Kuala Lumpur’s
gleaming, modern airport, when she reached the Cathay Pacific counter,
she put her bag on the scale — it was filled with presents for
patients at the Stanford hospital where she had worked as a volunteer.
A supervisory agent asked her to step out of line, and she watched as
he made and received calls on his mobile phone. She was puzzled.
Korman had told her she had been taken off the no-fly list; she gave
Korman’s card to the supervisor. At 9:25, five minutes before the gate
was to close, the agent told Ibrahim t






2.



Nichols says bombing was FBI op | Deseret News


http://m.deseretnews.com/article/660197 ... 44%2Cd.eWE



Feb 21, 2007 - Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and
criticism for the ... Trentadue said he plans to seek that deposition
of Nichols, but "I expect ...
New OKC Revelations Spotlight FBI Involvement In Bombing
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2 ... ations.htm
Feb 22, 2007 - New claims by Oklahoma City Bombing conspirator Terry
Nichols that ... In another report, the Deseret Morning News named the
FBI agent at Larry Potts, but that ... Jesse Trentadue has amassed
evidence that his brother was ...
Attorney: Ashcroft Gagged Nichols From ... - Prison Planet.com
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2 ... ichols.htm
Feb 22, 2007 - Trentadue drops new bombshell on Alex Jones Show ...
the Deseret Morning News identified the accused FBI provocateur as
Larry Potts.
Confirmed: FBI Got Warning Day Before OKC Bombing
redicecreations.com/article.php?id=14198
Feb 14, 2011 - The feds attempt to make Nichols accept responsibility
for the phone call ... Trentadue believes the government was desperate
to reach the box ... declaration from Nichols in which he fingered FBI
agent Larry Potts as ...

[fruhmenschen]

http://thetrialofwhiteybulger.com/a-chr ... f-3-15031/



A Christmas Story: A Good Cop Dying Young: Murdered by the FBI Top Echelon Informant Program – 1 of 3
December 21, 2015Uncategorized

() NaimovichJames Ring was a supervisor in the FBI’s Boston office. He was supervised the organized crime squad called C – 1. Ring involved the State Police in an investigation of Massachusetts State Trooper John Naimovich, shown in this post, a man with 23 years on the job. He was considered the top State Police organized crime investigator. He was a man I found beyond reproach. The FBI would go after him to put him out of business. Was it he came too close to the people it was protecting?

Tom Foley who brags about his pursuit of Whitey Bulger was a main participant in it. As a young trooper he worked for the FBI against Naimovich. He did this even after he knew he was set up by the FBI.

[fruhmenschen]

couple of stories



1.


https://www.ksl.com/?sid=37892335&nid=1 ... ng-lawsuit


NSA, FBI ask judge to dismiss Utah Olympic spying lawsuit
Posted Dec 26th, 2015


The FBI and National Security Agency have asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a former Salt Lake City mayor who claims agencies conducted mass surveillance of emails, texts and phone calls during the city's 2002 Winter Olympics.

There's no evidence the security agencies intercepted all communications in the Salt Lake City area before and during the games, federal lawyers argued in court documents. They also said the plaintiffs cannot show they were harmed if the surveillance did happen.

The agencies filed court documents last week asking a federal judge in Utah to dismiss the case. A judge has not yet made a decision.

Attorney Rocky Anderson, who was Salt Lake City's mayor at the time of the games, said Thursday that warrantless surveillance is harmful and the federal government needs to be held accountable.

"If these incursions on our rights of privacy and federal felonies are allowed to continue to go unchallenged, then we are further paving the road toward a more totalitarian and closed government," he said.

Anderson said he learned about the program from a 2013 report in the Wall Street Journal and has since confirmed it with an unnamed source who worked for the NSA during the Olympics. The games in and around the Salt Lake City area took place less than six months after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

His lawsuit was filed in August and names six plaintiffs, including Republican Utah Sen. Howard Stephenson and Utah historian William Bagley.

Anderson said he has identified nearly 200 other people who could make similar claims that the agency violated their Constitutional rights as well as several laws.

In their response to the lawsuit, the NSA and FBI said the plaintiffs have not shown they have legal standing to seek damages or how they were harmed by "the claimed surveillance."

Agency lawyers also cited federal laws that make federal government immune from a lawsuit. Attorneys said an exception under the federal Privacy Act does not apply.

Anderson's lawsuit alleges the NSA and FBI collected the contents of text messages and emails and data on every phone call in the area without probable cause.

The lawsuit seeks damages of at least $10,000 per plaintiff. Anderson has said it could be expanded to hundreds of thousands of people_everyone who was in Salt Lake City during that time as well as anyone who communicated with someone there.

Anderson said Thursday that he plans to file a response to the government's claims and have at least one NSA source testify in the case.



2.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion ... b00f2.html


Where information goes to die

December 26 2015

If you're going to despise or distrust the federal government, at least do it for the right reasons.

Turn on the TV or fire up the trusty Internet and you can find as many reasons as voters to be upset by the folks in the federal government. To be fair, the government cannot win: We need more postal service, we need less. We need more military, we need to pull out of any number of countries. And on it goes.

For all the failings of the federal government, I would argue we have better reasons than what cable TV gives us to be angry.

Last week was a good reminder of something that is played out dozens of times a year right here in Montana. In the trial of a man accused of murder, jurors learned that the murder weapon was the service gun of a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs agent. That raises the question: How does that happen, and how often is the gun of a federal agent used in a murder? In Montana?
Stolen BIA guns

And yet one astute reader pointed out that it has happened before, even in the relatively recent past. It turns out that Big Horn County Sheriff Lawrence "Pete" Big Hair's gun was stolen and used as a murder weapon in 1994 when Big Hair worked for the (you guessed it) BIA.

But this isn't a free-for-all aimed at the BIA.

It was an astute reader who pointed out the coincidence. The BIA couldn't be bothered with our pesky questions last week. The only BIA spokesperson in nearby Washington D.C. was out of the office when we called to ask. Another nameless BIA employee told us there were no other people in the entire federal government who could answer media questions. For the record: We're still waiting for a call back.

This is representative of what passes for information, transparency and accountability at the federal level — a maddening pattern of silence.

The Gazette continues to ask questions of the BIA or the FBI, the agencies charged with investigation and law enforcement on the reservations. Rarely does information get released until court documents are filed, sometimes years later.

Here's a sample of cases we continue to follow, without any information:

Recently, human remains were found on the Crow Reservation. We continue to call about information.
Jeffrey Hewitt, 38, of Billings, was founded dead on the Crow Reservation. Few details have ever emerged on that investigation because the FBI has no comment.
A 2-year-old was found dead in Lame Deer. The coroner confirmed the BIA was investigating. All calls have been referred to Washington D.C.
The Gazette had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get information about a shooting in Pryor. After the request, the federal agencies simply said there was no further information about it because the shooter was a minor.

Double standards

If Billings Police Chief Rich St. John or Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder acted in the same way, citizens would be outraged, and those two fine law enforcement officers would be out of jobs.

That's the point: Law enforcement agencies shouldn't be above the law they're charged with upholding.

I don't buy the excuse that it's just what happens on "the rez." That's a common retort every time some loud-mouthed journalist like me starts poking at this issue. But, if we accept that it's just the way things go down on the reservations, then we devalue the lives of those harmed by the crimes. Crime is no less violent, no less important just because it falls to the federal government to investigate.

In this way, the federal government reinforces a dangerous notion: That somehow mostly Indian crimes in Indian country are second-class concerns; that they don't deserve as much attention, transparency or follow-up. And, it is more than apparent to those of us who have to cover the crimes on the reservation that Washington, D.C., simply doesn't care about what goes on in the hinterlands of some place in between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The federal government should be ashamed for its lackadaisical law enforcement attitude, but shame would require the outrage of voters, something there are just too few of in places like Montana. So, the FBI and BIA let cases linger into oblivion.
Rural outrage

Montana Sen. Jon Tester should be given plenty of credit for trying to get some answers. In October, he sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel — who oversees the BIA — sharing the same frustrations about transparency. Maybe it should make me feel better that Jewell's department doesn't really respond to a sitting U.S. senator either.

So there's outrage at law enforcement for how it treats minorities in big cities. I can only imagine the outrage and anger that would happen if a stolen gun from an urban police department gets used against someone in a big city. When it happens here, it's just a curious footnote on a murder.

A good friend of mine who taught governme





3.

FBI specialist will speak in Dubuque about Internet safety

http://www.thonline.com/news/tri-state/ ... 628d8.html

Posted: Saturday, December 26, 2015 12:00 am

Online safety tips will be shared by a representative with the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a free public event in Dubuque.

Dubuque Community School District will host "Internet Safety for Parents and Community" at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 7, inside the George Washington Middle School auditorium.

FBI victim specialist Karen Gale will share information for parents, children and community members on how to stay safe online given risks as cyberbullying, exposure to inappropriate material and sexting.

Gale has been a victim specialist for more than 10 years. Her experience assisting victims and their families covers federal crimes like human trafficking, online sexual exploitation, kidnapping cases and mass-casualty events.

She


4.


Secretive data analytics startup, Palantir, increases total value by $5 billion


http://mobile.bignewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... -5-billion


Saturday 26th December, 2015
secretive-data-analytics-startup-palantir-increases-total-value-by-5-billion
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Low-profile data analytics startup Palantir has reportedly raised $880 million in recent weeks, increasing its overall value from $15 billion to $20 billion.

The private Silicon Valley company, helmed by CEO Alex Karp, services government agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, and businesses through accessible data analysis and specialized solutions ranging from fraud issues to national defense.

Sources told The New York Times Palantir's latest round of funding, which commenced last summer, raised a total of around $2 billion. Known investors are reportedly Bridgewater Associates, Tiger Global Management and Morgan Stanley.

Any new investing firms have not yet been revealed.

Palantir is now the fourth highest-valued startup in the world after leading contenders Xiaomi, Uber and Airbnb. It was launched in 2004 by founders Alex Karp, Peter Thiel



5.


McAfee anti-virus creator to run for U.S. president as Libertarian
John McAfee, developer of McAfee Anti-virus software, has filed to run for president as a Libertarian candidate.



http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/12/ ... 451160811/



Dec. 26, 2015 at 4:18 PM

McAfee Antivirus developer John McAfee has announced he will seek the Libertarian nomination for president. Photo by John McAfee/Twitter

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 2015-- John McAfee, better known in recent years for his brushes with the law in Belize and Guatemala than for his anti-virus software, filed to run for United States president as a Libertarian candidate.

McAfee told USA Today he plans to run on a platform of pardoning all marijuana users in prison and and to "stop the U.S. from being the world's policeman."

Doug Craig, a national board member of the Libertarian Party, said,"He fits right in with our political philosophy.:

Earlier this year, McAfee vowed to run as a member of the Cyber Party to "disrupt the political status quo" where his platform would focus on the "dangerously ignored issue of cybersecurity."

McAfee's campaign website says his qualifications for president are many:

"I have run a multi-billion dollar company, having to make decisions based on cash availability and the existence of real competitors while my government lived in a fantasy world and printed money when they had none to spend. I lived in a Third World Banana Republic, was tortured and had to watch my dog shot in front of my eyes by a soldier trained by the FBI at Quantico using an Ar-15 supplied by the US Government. I hid in the jungles of Central America for weeks while being chased by an army representing a government that I had refused to be extorted by."

[fruhmenschen]

Raytheon-Websense to Build FBI’s Consolidated Virtual Network


http://www.govconwire.com/2015/12/rayth ... l-network/



December 29, 2015

VA, December 29, 2015 — The Justice Department has awarded a Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) subsidiary a potential $8 million contract to build a virtual network that consolidates secret and unclassified systems’ access and viewing in one screen, ExecutiveBiz reported Monday.

GCN reported Wednesday it is in accordance with FBI‘s Enclave Consolidation Initiative to aim for an integrated system that is cost saving and has augmented security.

According to Ward Ponn, consulting engineer and chief architect at Raytheon-Websense, the virtual network technology will enable the user to access both FBI’s Secret network and also the virtual desktop of their unclassified network in “a single pane of glass, without the use of the KVM switching device.”

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