FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

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see link for full story
http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/news/791 ... field.html
FBI agent’s gun recovered after theft in Plainfield

September 27, 2011 10:28PM



A gun was stolen from an FBI agent’s vehicle in Plainfield this week but recovered

Yates said the weapon was stolen Monday. Plainfield police said it was recovered Tuesday at a home they declined to identify.

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see link for full perp
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... 629&r=6243

Tulsan who admitted child-porn habit during FBI job screening sentenced to prison

By DAVID HARPER World Staff Writer
Published: 9/27/2011 5:21 PM
Last Modified: 9/27/2011 5:21 PM

A former Army intelligence analyst who admitted a child-pornography habit during an interview for a job with the FBI was sentenced to nearly four years in prison Tuesday for possessing the illegal material.


Steven Wayne Gilliam, 32, of Tulsa went to the FBI office in Oklahoma City in July 2010 in connection with his application for a job as an intelligence analyst, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Gallant wrote in a Sept. 19 court filing. He disclosed to a polygraph examiner that he had viewed child pornography on his home computer in the recent past, according to the document.

Gallant wrote that “at that point, the pre-employment screening turned into a consensual interview.” Gilliam waived his Miranda rights and told an FBI agent and a task force officer that he viewed child pornography about once a month and preferred children as young as 8 years old, according to Gallant’s filing.

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Stalking the Secret Patriot Act
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/stalking ... triot-act/
Posted by Julian Sanchez

Since this spring’s blink-and-you-missed-it debate over reauthorization of several controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) have been complaining to anyone who’d listen about a “Secret Patriot Act“—an interpretation of one of the law’s provisions by the classified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granting surveillance powers exceeding those an ordinary person would understand to be conferred from the text of the statute itself. As I argued at the time, there is an enormous amount of strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that this referred to a “sensitive collection program” involving cell phone location tracking—potentially on a mass scale—using Patriot’s “Section 215″ or “business records” authority.

Lest anyone think they’d let the issue drop, Wyden and Udall last week released a sharply-worded letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, blasting the Justice Department for misleading the public about the scope of the government’s surveillance authority. The real audience for an open letter of this sort, of course, is not the nominal recipient, but rather the press and the public. Beyond simply reminding us that the issue exists, the letter confirms for the first time that the “secret law” of which the senators had complained does indeed involve Section 215. But there are some additional intriguing morsels for the attentive surveillance wonk.

The letter focuses particularly on “highly misleading” statements by Justice Department officials analogizing Section 215 powers to grand jury subpoenas. “As you know,” Wyden and Udall write, “Section 215 authorities are not interpreted in the same way that grand jury subpoena authorities are, and we are concerned that when Justice Department officials suggest that the two authorities are ‘analogous’ they provide the public with a false understanding of how surveillance law is interpreted in practice.”

Now, this is a little curious on its face. Ever since the original debate over the passage of the Patriot Act, its defenders have tried to claim that a variety of provisions allowing the FBI to more easily obtain sensitive records and documents were no big deal, because grand juries have long enjoyed similarly broad subpoena powers. The comparison has been specious all along: grand juries are an arm of the judicial branch designed (at leas in theory) to serve as a buffer between the power of prosecutors and the citizenry. It exists for the specific purpose of determining whether grounds for a criminal indictment exist, and is granted those broad subpoena powers precisely on the premise that it is not just another executive branch investigative agency. To argue, then, that it would make no difference if the FBI or the police could secretly exercise the same type of authority is to miss the point of how our system of government is meant to work in a pretty stunning way. It’s akin to suggesting that, since juries can sentence people to life in prison, it would be no big deal to give the president or the director of the FBI the same power.

That’s not what Wyden and Udall are stressing here, however. Rather, they seem to be suggesting that the scope of the 215 authority itself has been secretly interpreted in a way that goes beyond the scope of the grand jury subpoena power. Now that ought to be striking, because the grand jury’s power to compel the production of documents really is quite broad. Yet, what Wyden and Udall appear to be suggesting is that there is some kind of limit or restriction that does apply to grand jury subpoenas, but has been held by the secret court not to apply to Section 215 orders. One possibility is that the FISC may have seen fit to issue prospective 215 orders, imposing an ongoing obligation on telecommunications companies or other recipients to keep producing records related to a target as they’re created, rather than being limited to records and documents already in existence. But given the quantity of evidence that already suggests the “Secret Patriot Act” involves location tracking, I find it suggestive that the very short list of specific substantive limits on grand jury subpoena power in the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual includes this:

It is improper to utilize the grand jury solely as an investigative aid in the search for a fugitive in whose testimony the grand jury has no interest. In re Pedro Archuleta, 432 F. Supp. 583 (S.D.N.Y. 1977); In re Wood, 430 F. Supp. 41 (S.D.N.Y. 1977), aff’d sub nom In re Cueto, 554 F.2d 14 (2d Cir. 1977). … Since indictments for unlawful flight are rarely sought, it would be improper to routinely use the grand jury in an effort to locate unlawful flight fugitives.

As the manual makes clear, the constraints on the power of the grand jury generally are determined by its purpose and function, but locating subjects for the benefit of law enforcement (rather than as a means of securing their testimony before the grand jury) is one of the few things so expressly and specifically excluded. Could this be what Wyden and Udall are obliquely referring to?

On a possibly related note, the Director of National Intelligence’s office sent Wyden and Udall a letter back in July rebuffing his request for information about the legal standard governing geolocation tracking by the intelligence community. While refusing to get into specifics, the letter explains that “there have been a diverse set of rulings concerning the quantum of evidence and the procedures required to obtain such evidence.” Now, a bit of common sense here: it is inconceivable that any judge on the secret court would not permit cell phone geolocation tracking of a target who was the subject of a full-blown FISA electronic surveillance warrant based on probable cause. There would be no “diversity” if the intelligence agencies were uniformly using only that procedure and that “quantum of evidence.” This claim only makes sense if the agencies have sought and, under some circumstances, obtained authorization to track cell phones pursuant to some other legal process requiring a lower evidentiary showing. (Again, you would not have “diversity” if the court had consistently responded to all such requests with: “No, get a warrant.”)

The options here are pretty limited, because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act only provides for a few different kinds of orders to be issued by the FISC. There’s a full electronic surveillance warrant, requiring a probable cause showing that the target is an “agent of a foreign power.” There’s a warrant for physical search, with the same standard, which doesn’t seem likely to be relevant to geotracking. The only other real options are so-called “pen register” orders, which are used to obtain realtime communications metadata, and Section 215. Both require only that the information sought be “relevant” to an ongoing national security investigation. For pen registers, the applicant need only “certify” that this is the case, which leaves judges with little to do beyond rubber-stamping orders. Section 215 orders require a “statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds” to think the information sought is “relevant,” but the statute also provides that any records are automatically relevant if they pertain to a suspected “agent of a foreign power,” or to anyone “in contact with, or known to” such an agent, or to the “activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of [an] authorized investigation.” The only way there can logically be “a diverse set of rulings” about the “quantum of evidence and the procedures required” to conduct cell phone location tracking is if the secret court has, on at least some occasions, allowed it under one or both of those authorities. Perhaps ironically, then, this terse response is not far short of a confirmation.

In criminal investigations, as I noted in a previous post, the Justice Department normally seeks a full warrant in order to do highly accurate, 24-hour realtime location, though it is not clear they believe this is constitutionally required. With a court order for the production of records based on “specific and articulable facts,” they can get call records generally indicating the location of the nearest cell tower when a call was placed—a much less precise and intrusive form of tracking, but one that is increasingly revealing as providers store more data and install ever more cell towers. For realtime tracking that is less precise, they’ll often seek to bundle a records order with a pen register order, to create a “hybrid” tracking order. Judges are increasingly concluding that these standards do not adequately protect constitutional privacy interests, but you’d expect a”diverse set of rulings” if the FISC had adopted a roughly parallel set of rules—except, of course, that the standards for the equivalent orders on the intelligence side are a good deal more permissive. The bottom line, though, is that this makes it all but certain the intelligence agencies are secretly tracking people—and potentially large numbers of people—who it does not have probable cause to believe, and may not even suspect, are involved in terrorism or espionage. No wonder Wyden and Udall are concerned.

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see link for full story
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/us/ev ... -list.html
Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: September 27, 2011



WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

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SEE LINK FOR FULL STORY
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/202217.html
Am I a threat to national security?
Sat Oct 1, 2011
chroniclesmagazine.org
Justin Raimondo

When I first saw the memo from the FBI's counterterrorism center in Newark, declaring that I'm “a threat to National Security”, not to mention an “agent of a foreign power”, I was incredulous. These can't be real FBI documents, I thought to myself. Someone is pulling my leg.



Sadly, no. As I discovered upon further investigation, the memo is all too real. The provenance of the documents, which indicate that the feds launched a “preliminary investigation” of Antiwar.com, myself, and our webmaster, Eric Garris, is as follows: An obscure blogger made an FOIA request for information about the FBI's investigation of the “High Fivers”- the five Israelis who were arrested on September 11 and held for six months on suspicion that they had some foreknowledge of the events on that dark day.



I wrote about this subject in the August 2003 issue of Chronicles-and, what do you know, that piece is included in the FBI file! Isn't it encouraging to learn that our state-subsidized sneaks are reading this magazine

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The media's favorite word when referring to criminal conduct of law enforcement personnel "rogue"

see link for full rogue
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/10/04 ... 36303.html

Rogue EPA Agent Pleads Guilty to Obstructing Justice
By LAWRENCE HURLEY of Greenwire
Published: October 4, 2011


Keith Phillips, who signed a plea bargain yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, faces up to 10 years in prison on the obstruction of justice count and five years for the perjury count.

Phillips' guilty plea does not relate to his actions in the aborted criminal prosecution of Hubert Vidrine Jr. and Canal Refining Co., which is based in Church Point, La. The charges stemmed instead from his testimony in a civil malicious prosecution action brought by Vidrine.

In his deposition, Phillips falsely testified that he did not have an affair with FBI agent Ekko Barnhill during the Vidrine investigation, which lasted from September 1996 to December 1999 (Greenwire, July 28).

A federal judge awarded Vidrine $1.67 million for malicious prosecution in a ruling issued Friday that included considerably more detail about Phillips' conduct.

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Withers helped assassinate Martin Luther King

see link for full story
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/20 ... tographer/
Judge hears arguments on release of Memphis photographer Ernest Withers' FBI file

By Bartholomew Sullivan
Posted October 4, 2011 at 4 p.m.



WASHINGTON — A federal judge will decide whether to compel the FBI to release an index to the confidential informant file of the late Memphis photographer Ernest C. Withers once she decides whether its release is subject to a public records request from The Commercial Appeal.

In an hour-long hearing this morning, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked lawyers for both sides to explain why an exemption to the file’s release under the Freedom of Information Act did or didn’t apply. But she also suggested the government’s argument relied on “pretending” Withers’ informant status is not an open secret.

The government says it has the discretion to deny release of a confidential informant file when a third party, such as the newspaper, asks for it by the suspected informant’s name unless it has “officially confirmed” the person’s status as an informant.

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see link for full story
http://www.sbsun.com/breakingnews/ci_19038800
Developer Burum's attorney says FBI searches unconstitutional
Joe Nelson, The (San Bernardino County) Sun
Posted: 10/04/2011 01:59:35 PM PDT

FBI agents violated Rancho Cucamonga developer Jeff Burum's civil rights and lied when they said they did not search his attorney's office, according to a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Riverside.

Burum's attorney, Stephen G. Larson, is demanding that all of Burum's property seized during the Sept. 15 raid by FBI and IRS agents immediately be returned to him.

The warrants were served at nine locations in San Bernardino and Riverside counties in connection with a county corruption scandal involving allegations of bribery, extortion and fraud, according to the federal search warrant.

During a search of offices at Diversified Pacific, Burum's development company in Rancho Cucamonga, where several other business offices are located, federal agents repeatedly searched Larson's office, according to Larson's motion.

But FBI Agent Jonathan Zeitlin, in a written declaration to the court, said agents never searched Larson's office, an assertion Larson calls "absolutely false."

"Security videotape from Diversified Pacific shows agents entering Mr. Larson's office 12 times, opening cabinets, and apparently examining file cabinets," according to the motion.

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see link for full story
http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists ... position=4

Bulger victims’ families forced to fight for justice
Peter Gelzinis By Peter Gelzinis
Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi won’t be in the Moakley Courthouse tomorrow. Neither will Catherine Greig, the woman who played house with Whitey during his 16 fugitive years.

Only the lawyers for the estates of Debra Davis, Deborah Hussey and Louis Litif, alongside a handful of loved ones, will gather before a panel of federal appeals judges.

These judges will allow lawyers for the Justice Department 20 minutes to say why the families of three victims who were strangled, shot and stabbed after allegedly crossing paths with a pair of gangsters — who moonlighted as FBI informants — do not deserve the millions already awarded to them by two federal judges.

Meanwhile, lawyers arguing on behalf of Davis, Hussey and Litif will have to divide their 20 minutes as best they can.

As part of his plea deal with the government, Flemmi has already described in gory detail how he served up his two young lovers, Davis and Hussey, to Bulger, who allegedly then proceeded to squeeze the life out of both young women.

Whitey’s former henchman and surrogate son, Kevin Weeks, has published the story of how Litif was targeted for extinction after word got out that the former Southie bookie and bar owner was planning to spill his guts to John Connolly, the same G-man who was protecting Whitey.

Several months back, this same appeals court overturned the $6.4 million the late U.S. District Court Judge Reginald Lindsay awarded to the widow and two sons of Michael Donahue, who perished in a hail of machine gun fire after agreeing to give a ride to a friend, Brian Halloran.

The judges ruled the Donahues were too late in filing their suit. Somehow, this family should have realized earlier that the FBI was just as sinister as Whitey and Stevie. Begging the question: How were they supposed to know what most cops didn’t know?

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2 reads from the Boston Phoenix with some analysis
The corporate death squad called the FBI has been in bed with the Mafia since the 1920's each using the other to engage in sociopathic behaviour.
The FBI Director J Edgar Hoover allowed the Mafia to exist by denying its existence until the New York State police arrested over 100 Mafia heads in upstate New York on November 14, 1957. It was called the Apalachin Meeting. Google Apalachin Meeting wilki fbi .
J Edgar Hoover allowed the Mafia to infiltrate and destroy American Unions on behalf of American Corporations.
On November 22, 1963 the Director of the FBI J Edgar Hoover conspired with the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and other government agencies and private individuals to assassinate President
Kennedy. This is well documented in the banned documentary called
THE GUILTY MEN made by the History Channel.
You can watch it on youtube. google
the guilty men youtube jfk Watch the 45 minute version.
In 1999 attorney William Pepper convinced a Memphis Jury in Civil Court that the FBI in collaboration with the Mafia, other government agencies and private individuals had assassinated Martin Luther King.
The jury held a press conference after the trial and said it was a clear cut case of the FBI assassinating Dr King. google
james douglass mlk rockwell
1st read
see link for full story
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/12796 ... final-act/
Whitey Bulger and the Feds: The final act
Choosing the slow grind: Why are we trying Whitey in federal court, when state courts would deliver justice more swiftly?
By HARVEY A. SILVERGLATE | October 5, 2011
As the notorious and corrupt pas-de-deux between James "Whitey" Bulger and the Department of Justice approaches its finale with Bulger's capture and eventual trial in Massachusetts's Federal District Court, we are left to reassess the ultimate implications of this long and fateful dance. While Bulger's arrest represents an opportunity for both clarity and closure, the Boston United States attorney's strategy for trying him promises neither. Instead, it raises some profound questions.
Federal prosecutors in Boston controversially dismissed the sweeping 1995 racketeering indictment that led Bulger to flee the state and become one of the FBI's Most Wanted. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz chose to focus instead on a newer, and significantly narrower, racketeering indictment centering on 19 murders in which Bulger is alleged to have had a hand, pending before Judge Richard G. Stearns.

The original indictment, she said, had weaker evidence and deceased witnesses, and would be a more expansive case to prosecute. The ultimate goal, Ortiz said, is to "[ensure] that the defendant faces the most serious charges before the end of his natural life." Bulger is, after all, 82 years old, and both the government and the families of the victims would like to see justice done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Even so, the federal case against Bulger — contained in an 111-page, 48-count indictment — could drag on for years. But it doesn't have to. If the government wants to give the victims' families closure, there exists a much leaner and speedier solution: turn Bulger over to one of the numerous state jurisdictions where he allegedly committed crimes and where, after a very short trial, he could be imprisoned for life without parole, or even face the death penalty.

A state case would be simpler to try. Bulger stands accused of having a hand in 19 murders, but murder by itself only lands in federal court if it's committed on federal property, or if the victims are federal employees. Otherwise, a federal court has to show that the murder was committed as part of a federal offense, like racketeering — that's what the feds are going for in Bulger's case.

But in state court, prosecutors would only have to prove Bulger was involved in the murders, not the racketeering scheme surrounding them. Jury deliberations likely would be relatively short, since the jurors would not have to jump through all of the many complex sets of fact-findings required for a federal racketeering conviction.

And states are no less severe than the feds in penalizing murder. Massachusetts routinely imposes the life-without-parole sentence for first-degree murder. Several other states retain the death penalty.

Gangsters have been tried in state court before. Consider disgraced FBI agent John Connolly, a case with direct implications on the viability of a Whitey Bulger case in state court.

Connolly was indicted, in a highly complex federal racketeering case — involving allegations of falsifying reports, accepting bribes, funneling payoffs, and obstructing justice — in December of 1999. The federal case took three years to grind through the system. But when the state of Florida indicted Connolly for his role in the murder of a witness who had been supposed to testify against Bulger, it took two months from jury selection to conviction, with a sentence of 40 years in prison. He remains in a Florida cell to this day, and will stay there for the rest of his expected natural life.

2nd read

see link for full story
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/12793 ... w-justice/
Hollow justice
The FBI might have got its man, but anyone seeking real accountability from Whitey Bulger's government enablers will come away empty-handed yet again
By DAVID BOERI | October 5, 2011

When Whitey Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica, California, this summer, it may have seemed that a new day had dawned for the local FBI and for the Justice Department. With the old man back, however, and facing trial no time soon, the air is stale with evidence that, as Faulkner once wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Public reaction to Bulger's arrest has been as skeptical and cynical as it was to the FBI's insistent declaration over the years that it really was intent on finding him. There is a state of civil disbelief that they caught him in the manner they suggest, and widespread belief the bureau knew where he was all along.

For the local US attorney and the local FBI, who weren't here for acts one and two of the Bulger saga, this must be bitter indeed. At the one and only press conference about Bulger, the day after his arrest, they showed no signs of triumph or relief, and not once did the FBI proclaim its customary boast that "the bureau always gets its man."

The presence of the families of Bulger's victims at his first appearance in a Boston courtroom underscored the government's culpability in his reign of terror.

First, there was the decades-long protection of Bulger and his partner Stephen Flemmi as informants. Then there was the careening corruption — agents on the take, receiving gifts and money, one of them even living in the home of one of the Bulger mob — and collaboration and conspiracy in murders and other crimes. When outside law enforcement and a couple of hard-charging federal prosecutors pushed for indictment, the FBI maneuvered to thwart the effort. Finally came the back-door tip to Bulger to skip town, just ahead of indictments, followed by a search for the fugitive that was unenthusiastic, incompetent, or deliberately ineffective.

Still trying to keep control, the Justice Department made a decision to claim that the guy behind the wheel of the car wreck was Bulger's FBI handler John Connolly and Connolly alone. A special outside prosecutor, John Durham, capped the oil blowout of damage by prosecuting Connolly, who was convicted in 2002. Durham made himself seem even-handed by going after and winning the convictions of a Boston cop and then, in 2003, a retired state cop, as if the Boston Police and the Massachusetts State Police had been as culpable as the feds. Durham conducted an investigation of other possible law-enforcement-related crimes, closed it without prosecuting anyone else in the FBI, and never filed a report.

"Everyone go home," you could hear the Justice Department and FBI saying. "It's all over."

And it was . . . until Whitey came back. Sadly, new people in charge of the institutions responsible for the wreckage are showing the old instincts of the FBI and Justice Department to contain the scandal and avoid accountability at all costs.

Public skepticism continues because there has never been a full accounting of what happened in this city, inside the Justice Department, and especially within the Boston office of the FBI. The legitimacy of our institutions suffers. The way to restore it would be through a tireless, muckraking effort to uncover the worst of the worst and bring the truth, at long last, to light.

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see link for full story
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10 ... aki-probe/

House Chairman Charges FBI With Stonewalling Awlaki Probe

By Catherine Herridge

Published October 06, 2011




Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has provided documents or witnesses for an official congressional investigation launched by the House Homeland Security Committee into the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a CIA-led mission last Friday, Fox News has learned.

The congressional investigation -- opened in May -- questioned whether the cleric's contacts with three of the five hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, were coincidental or part of the terror plot's development.

The House Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., is also seeking to learn more about the FBI's contacts with the cleric before and after Sept. 11. For instance, in October 2002, an FBI agent told customs agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to let the cleric go from federal detention even though there was an active warrant for Awlaki's arrest

An investigation by Fox News' Special Unit entitled "The American Terrorist" showed the Awlaki arrest warrant and the decision to release him from federal custody was likely withheld from the Sept. 11 commission that was convened to review how the Sept. 11 attacks occurred and how to prevent future attacks.

During a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, King demanded answers from FBI Director Robert Mueller.

"Do I have any reason to believe that we're not going to get the information ... involving the FBI's dealings with al-Awlaki and the Justice Department dealings with al-Awlaki?" he asked.
"No and I, quite obviously, I'd go back and check and see what has happened in response to that letter," Mueller said, adding, that the bureau would return a response to King.

King also questioned the cleric's stint as a guest speaker at the Pentagon in February 2002 -- first reported by Fox News -- and the fact the FBI had interviewed the cleric at least four times in the first eight days after Sept. 11 because of his known contacts with the three hijackers. Mueller, whose bureau is run out of the Justice Department, replied that he would have to get back to him.

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see link for full story
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/10/s ... ative-fix/
October 7, 2011 | 12:10 PM | By Ali Winston

San Francisco JTTF reforms stalled, Supervisor considering legislative fix

The struggle to bring the San Francisco Police Department’s involvement in the local Joint Terrorism Task Force back under civilian oversight is still dragging on – and the head of the FBI’s San Francisco office appears to be firmly in opposition to any reform efforts.

A memo from the ACLU of Northern California and the Asian Law Caucus to a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors indicates that Special Agent in Charge Stephanie Douglas, who heads the San Francisco Branch of the FBI, is firmly opposed to local regulations that bar police from monitoring people engaged in First Amendment activity.

The ACLU and the Asian Law Caucus say that Special Agent in Charge Stephanie Douglas informed them of her stance on altering SFPD’s participation at a May 31, 2011 meeting. The memo also states that SAC Douglas does not approve of San Francisco’s regulations restricting SFPD from monitoring First Amendment activity.

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see link for full story
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articl ... tinue.html
Rosenthal defenders complain about FBI
October 08, 2011 9:39 PM
By EMMA PEREZ-TREVINO, The Brownsville Herald



Gamez and Muñoz claim they have credible evidence the FBI agent has intimidated a witness to extract a false accusation against Rosenthal. They say this is not the first time they have heard that the agent has used such tactics and that they are considering reporting the instances to the Office of Professional Responsibility.

In the document reviewed by The Herald, the attorneys make specific allegations against the FBI agent, including that he told the witness he was not the target of the investigation but that if he didn’t give up Rosenthal, he would be charged with obstruction of justice.

According to the allegation, the agent asked the witness to give false testimony about Rosenthal and even suggested what he might say.

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see link for full story
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/column ... 7&srvc=rss
Victims’ kin cling to hope vs. FBI
Peter Gelzinis By Peter Gelzinis
Sunday, October 9, 2011

Tommy Donahue was grateful to learn that Congressman Stevie Lynch will try to answer for some of the sins the United States government has inflicted upon Donahue’s family.

He lost his father 29 years ago in a squall of machine gun bullets. Michael Donahue was slaughtered when Whitey Bulger, an FBI-sanctioned thug, allegedly opened fire on him and Edward Brian Halloran, the friend he was driving home.

To say that Tommy Donahue was cautiously optimistic yesterday about what a congressman could do to correct the injustice handed down by the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals would be a real stretch.

Three judges decided that the Donahue family deserved the $6.4 million a lower court had awarded for the pain a widow and her two sons had endured.

However, three other judges voted to deny the compensation on the grounds that Michael Donahue’s loved ones had been too late in filing suit.

Because there was a tie, the Donahues lost. And the federal government didn’t have to cough up a dime for the murder its “top-echelon” informant stands accused of.

“My hopes have been in the garbage for a long, long time now,” Tommy was saying yesterday. “My family got one page from the (appeals) court telling us why we lost.

“And we get two dozen pages telling us all the reasons we should have won. What are we supposed to make of that?

“Look,” he sighed, “I will say that what Congressman Lynch is trying to do for us does bring a little bit of light into this dark alley of ours. It does.”

Having every federal judge they’ve stood before agree that Whitey Bulger murdered their father, and yet being denied what is right and just based solely on some arbitrary technicality, only convinces Tom Donahue that Congress needs to get involved.

“Years after my father was murdered, why was the FBI still coming around to question my mom?” Tommy asked.

“What the hell were they up to? Did they want to see if she knew something, or heard something, about who Whitey Bulger really was? That he was this killer with government connections?”

In a statement emailed to Michael Donahue’s widow, Patricia, Lynch said: “I am not certain that the House rules would permit a personal relief bill. But this case is compelling and I am willing to make the effort.”

A personal relief bill ... what an appropriate choice of words.

Personal relief from the tyranny inflicted upon one family by a predator such as Whitey, who operated under the protection of the government.

And personal relief from the kind of maddening logic that says the U.S. government can go into business with a stone-cold killer ... and there is nothing you can do about it.

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story
http://www.hindustantimes.com/US-media- ... 55027.aspx
US media seeks release of Headley terror trial tape
Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, October 08, 2011

Key US media are seeking the release of a behind-the-scenes videotape of FBI agents interrogating admitted terrorist David Coleman Headley that was played in open court during a recent terrorism trial. Confessed Pakistani-American terror plotter David Headley was the star witness in the
conviction of his Pakistani-Canadian boyhood friend Tahawwur Rana for helping the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

While Rana was cleared by the court of involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, he was convicted of helping LeT plan a foiled attack on a Danish newspaper which published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Several news organisations made a routine request for copies of Headley's FBI video that was played in court, but US Federal prosecutors in Chicago refused to do so, according to ABC News.

In a motion filed on late Thursday in federal court in Chicago, they have asked that the US attorney be directed to turn over the tapes.

After Headley was arrested, and during almost two weeks of FBI questioning, he turned on his boyhood friend Rana. Parts of that interrogation were played in court by Rana's attorney, who suggested that Headley was simply trying to save himself.

But Rana's lawyer neglected to enter the video into evidence, a technicality now claimed by prosecutors as the reason they don't have to make it public.

But in a motion filed Thursday for media access to the video, ProPublica, a public interest reporting organisation, and the PBS show Frontline are demanding the video, citing a court ruling that "what transpires in the courtroom is public property".