''No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.''
Cyril Connolly (1903-1974), British critic. "The Journal of Cyril Connolly 1928-1937," p. 230, David Pryce-Jones, Journal and Memoir (1983).
Seth -Jane Roberts
The Nature of Reality
As words would give little hint of the reality of color or sound to someone who did not experience these, so words can only give insight into the nature of reality. I have been sent to help you, and others have been sent through the centuries of your time, for as you develop you form new dimensions, and you will help others.
There is never any justification for violence. There is no justification for hatred. There is no justification for murder. Those who indulge in violence for whatever reason are themselves changed, and the purity of their purpose adultered.
If you do not like the state of your world, it is you yourselves that must change, individually and en masse. This is the only way that change will be effected.
The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours. It has not been forced upon you by some outside agency. You form your own dreams and you form your own physical reality. The world is what you are. It is the physical materialization of the inner selves which you have formed.
It is wrong to curse a flower and wrong to curse a man. It is wrong not to hold any man in honor, and it is wrong to ridicule any man. Your must honor yourselves and see within yourselves the spirit of eternal validity. You must honor all other individuals, because within each is the spark of this validity. When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you. When you are violent, the violence returns.
I speak to you because yours is the opportunity to better world conditions and yours is the time. Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear.
There is no man who hates but that hatred is reflected outward and made physical, and there is no man who loves but that love is reflected outward and made physical.
Beyond myself there is another self and still another, of which I am aware. And that self tells you that there is a reality beyond human reality and experience that cannot be made verbal or translated into human terms. And to that self, physical reality is like a warm breath forming in the winter air...
http://www.whistleblowersblog.org/2016/ ... lications/Amicus Brief Filed on Behalf of FBI Whistleblower with Larger ...
Whistleblowers Protection Blog
On December 6th, the National Whistleblower Center filed an amicus brief in support of FBI whistleblower Darin Jones. Jones alleged he made whistleblower disclosures about an improper award of a $40 million contract and other improper procurement spending at the FBI. The FBI fired him from his position as a Supervisory Contract Specialist, which Jones alleges was done as an act of retaliation for his whistleblowing. The FBI argued that the current inadequate whistleblower protections at the FBI did not protect Jones because they require whistleblowers to report to the highest-ranking FBI official at their job site, rather than reporting to their immediate supervisor, which is consistent with FBI policy. Because Jones behaved in a manner consistent with standard practices at the FBI of reporting alleged wrongdoing through the managerial chain of command, he was written out of whistleblower protection for supposedly not reporting his allegations to the correct office and the retaliation against him has thus far been tolerated by the Department of Justice.
In an amicus brief filed in support of Jones this week, the National Whistleblower Center argues that the whistleblower protections do in fact apply to Darin Jones. The argument here is that if FBI officials have the authority to hire or fire personnel, they are necessarily acting in the shoes of the Attorney General of the United States. This means the Whistleblower Protection Act prohibits these officials from retaliating against a whistleblower if they are aware of the Whistleblower’s legal reporting activities because under current law FBI employees are protected if they disclose wrongdoing to the Attorney General. In Jones’s case the FBI officials who fired him were acting on behalf of the Attorney General and they were the very same officials to whom he reported his whistleblower disclosures. You can read the amicus brief here.
http://nypost.com/2016/12/09/drunk-cop- ... and-badge/'Drunk' cop stripped of his gun and badge
The NYPD cop suspended for being drunk on the job had a sobering morning on Friday — walking into his upstate house clutching a giant Dr Pepper cup.
Officer Richard Evans, 44, refused to comment outside the Newburgh home at about 9 a.m., hours after The Post reported that he was stripped of his gun and badge for being “unfit for duty” Thursday during his midnight-to-8-a.m. shift in The Bronx’s 52nd Precinct.
Evans had responded early Thursday to a report of a drunken dispute, and a civilian there accused the cop of being drunk as well.
Someone at the scene shot video of the allegedly drunken Evans and complained to 311, according to a law-enforcement source.
Adding insult to injury Thursday, a photo emerged of Evans passed out in a chair in the station-house locker room, his shirt pulled up to
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity ... mpted-hackGeorgia’s Secretary of State Accuses Homeland Security of Attempted Hack
Georgia’s secretary of state alleges Homeland Security tried to illegally hack the state’s computer network that contains the voter registration database.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp claims in a letter to Homeland Security that his office discovered that a DHS Internet address tried to breach the computer system, the Hill reports.
The system also contains personal information of more than 6.5 million residents, 800,000 corporate entities and 500,000 licensed or registered professional.
“On November 15, 2016, an IP address associated with the Department of Homeland Security made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s firewall,” Kemp wrote. “I am writing you to ask whether DHS was aware of this attempt and, if so, why DHS was attempting to breach
https://www.cyberscoop.com/fbi-will-inc ... t-ag-says/GOVERNMENT
FBI will increasingly rely on foreign help to stop hackers, Assistant AG says
FBI Director James Comey (Flickr / Brookings Institution)
Chris Bing Dec 8, 2016 | CyberScoop
The emergence of cybercrime as a global phenomenon is causing the FBI and Justice Department to increasingly rely on international law enforcement collaboration, legal treaties and informal agreements in addition to cooperation from the private sector, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Leslie Caldwell described, Thursday.
“We have greatly increased our international cooperation with international law enforcement partners all around the world, including in countries that just two years ago we had no relationship with,” Caldwell said. “As cybercrime proliferates so too does our relationships with countries around the world. We’ve got to continue to do build those international relationships and grow them and improve them because they are going to be more and more critical every single day.”
In an effort to fight these criminals, Caldwell said the Justice Department will be pursuing new legislative remedies next year in the same vein as recent changes made to Rule 41, which became effective as of Dec. 1.
These changes to Rule 41 — a mandate first designed in the scope of wiretap authorization procedures — enables investigators to secure warrants during the course of computer crime cases even while the suspect’s actual location is hidden. Critics believe the rule change will cause the FBI to expand its use of hacking techniques to access evidence on computers.
“There are other laws that we look to fix and to change and to update. As I have said, most of these proposed fixes are very technical and very narrow and they are designed just like the Rule 41 change to address very specific issues that we have encountered,” said Caldwell.
The Assistant Attorney General provided no further information regarding proposed, future changes to existing federal rules of criminal procedures and was unavailable for questions follow her public speaking event.
Caldwell’s comments — which were made during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a D.C.-based think tank — come just one week after european law enforcement authorities disclosed multiple arrested associated with the dismantling of an international cybercrime network known as Avalanche.
“We’ve really developed our capabilities to disrupt criminal networks both here and overseas … working hand in hand with international partners to address technical threat like botnets, bulletproof hosts, darknet markets and international hacking forums,” said Caldwell.
The downfall of Avalanche is being trumpeted as a sort case study, showing how domestic law enforcement can combat digital crime through multi-stakeholder cooperation.
The Avalanche takedown operation included help from prosecutors and investigators in 40 different countries. It is believed that the criminal network caused more than $100 million in damages to a wide array of both public and private sector organizations — largely through the deployment of ransomware and banking trojans.
Broadly speaking, the advent and proliferation of hacking tools and anonymizing software are allowing cybercriminal to cause greater damage with less effort while seeing more of a return on their investment, Caldwell explained.
“We’ve seen a growth in global, very sophisticated cyberthreats. And there are some very significant loopholes in terms of our legal authorities, many of which have not kept pace with changes in technology,” Caldwell said.
She added, “in recent years and frankly since I have been on this job, there has been a drastic increase in warrant-proof encryption … [also] our access to offshore data and cross border access to data is very inefficient and very haphazard,” Caldwell said of the Justice Department’s challenges in prosecuting cybercrime.
While Caldwell — who said she plans to leave public service before the President-elect’s inauguration on January 20 — spoke extensively about the Bureau’s challenges to prosecute computer crimes on Thursday, it is also true that U.S. law enforcement is undoubtedly getting better at tracking down these types of criminals.
Over just the last four months, the Justice Department has announced the arrest of multiple prominent hackers, including a series of individuals responsible for breaking into email accounts belonging to U.S. officials. Other recent prosecutions include the sentencing of 22-year-old Timothy French, an accomplished hacker who targeted multiple universities an
http://federalnewsradio.com/agency-over ... committee/New FBI Headquarters Gets Green Light from Congressional Commitee
The long-delayed effort to build a new FBI headquarters has gotten the green light from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to move forward.
But the GSA still needs to finalize the location of the new headquarters, Federal News Radio reports.
The committee approval was praised by chairman Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa.
“This will greatly improve the FBI’s security posture and its operations, and save money. But because of the size and complexity of the project, it will important to ensure there is strong congressional oversight to keep the project on time and on budget,” Shuster said.
The plan calls for the GSA and FBI to pay for the headquarters. President Obama’s 2017 budget proposal includes $1.4 billion for the project, which has already received $390 million under the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill.
Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., said many challenges are involved.
“What makes this project challenging is it is not a simple construction project of a single building. The project will be a secure campus with separate visitor screening, its own utility plant and specialized security requirements,” Barletta said
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/ken-pax ... NbBiqv41O/Ken Paxton taps Ted Cruz adviser for key attorney general office job
METRO-STATE By Chuck Lindell - American-Statesman Staff
...
Chip Roy, a key political strategist for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, will be Attorney General-elect Ken Paxton’s right-hand man at the Texas agency, Paxton announced Tuesday.
Roy, who will serve as Paxton’s first assistant attorney general, was Cruz’s chief of staff for almost two years before moving into an advisory role in September — a move some saw as positioning Cruz for a potential presidential run in 2016.
Roy also has close ties to Gov. Rick Perry, helping to write “Fed Up!” — a book that helped launch Perry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2012 — and running the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations in Washington, D.C., after he was appointed by Perry in 2011.
At his confirmation hearing before the Texas Legislature, Roy promised to run the state-federal office in a way that would uphold “liberty and state sovereignty” while opposing federal regulations that are “destroying our nation and endangering the state.”
Roy has also served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas and as a senior staff member for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
“Chip is a longtime friend, and someone whose counsel I trust,” Paxton said in a written statement. “I am pleased that he will bring his strong legal mind, devotion to liberty and servant’s heart to the office of attorney general as first assistant.”
Related
Ken Paxton taps Ted Cruz adviser for key attorney general office job
Paxton also announced his transition advisory team:
Roger Alford, law professor and associate dean at Notre Dame University
Ernest Angelo Jr., former chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission and former mayor of Midland
Jordan Berry, campaign strategist with Berry Communications in Austin
Kevin Brannon, Paxton’s campaign manager
Susanna Dokupil, Senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and former assistant solicitor general of Texas
Dee Kelly, founding partner of Kelly, Hart and Hallman in Fort Worth
Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society in Virginia
Oliver “Buck” Revell, former associate deputy director of the FBI.
Chip Roy, first assistant attorney general.
Kelly Shackelford, president and chief executive of Liberty Institute in Plano.
Andy Taylor, prominent Republican lawyer, former first assistant attorney general.
David Whitehurst, partner in the Whitehurst Cawley law firm in Addison.
http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/ocbpt_08.htmLockerbie — A Parallel
"The covert operators that I ran with would blow up a 747 with 300 people to kill one person. They are total sociopaths with no conscience whatsoever."
— Former Pentagon CID Investigator Gene Wheaton
On December 21, 1988, in the tiny town of Lockerbie, Scotland, 270 lives came to a traumatic and fiery end when Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the skies. Two hundred and fifty-nine people plunged to their deaths, and 11 more died on the ground.
Several minutes before flight 103 took off from London's Heathrow airport, FBI Assistant Director Oliver "Buck" Revell rushed out to the tarmac and pulled his son and daughter-in-law off the plane.[1001]
How did he know?
Perhaps Revell's intimate knowledge derived from his relationship with Lt. Colonel Oliver North. In March of 1986, North advised Attorney General Edwin Meese to head off the FBI's ensuing investigation into Iran-Contra. Meese informed Revell. Consequently, North managed to keep abreast of the FBI's investigation by conveniently receiving copies of all FBI files.[1002]
Widely known for his inestimable and illegal support of the Contras, North (along with General Richard Secord and Iranian Albert Hakim) was a business associate of Syrian arms and drug runner Monzer al-Kassar. For his role in shipping Polish arms to North's mercenary army, al-Kassar became the recipient of North's undying gratitude [and laundered drug proceeds].[1003]
Like so many criminals, drug-dealers, and mass-murderers the CIA had cozied up to over the years, al-Kassar enjoyed the highly valued status of CIA "asset."
Al-Kassar was also closely aligned with Rifat Assad, brother of Syrian dictator Hafez Assad. Assad's daughter Raja was Kassar's mistress, and had once been married to Abu Abbas, a colleague of the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal. Rifat himself was married to the sister of Ali Issa Dubah, chief of Syrian intelligence, who, along with the Syrian army, controlled most of the opium production in Lebanon's Bekka Valley. The drug profits financed various terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), run by former Syrian army officer Ahmed Jibril.[1004]
Al-Kassar also acted as middleman in the ransom paid by the French to effect the release of two hostages held in Beirut. Given his assistance in securing the release of those hostages, the CIA believed al-Kassar would prove invaluable in negotiating the release of the six American hostages then bein
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/201 ... harry.htmlDid Harry Morel Jr., the former St. Charles Parish district attorney now imprisoned for obstructing justice, get a sweetheart deal because of friendly ties between his defense attorney and a top prosecutor? Did the FBI retaliate against one of its agents because he aggressively pursued Morel and complained about the prosecutor?
That's what the chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent letters inquiring into both issues on Nov. 15 to U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey Jr. A spokeswoman for Grassley's office said Wednesday (Dec. 7) he had not received a response.
Morel, 73, was the top prosecutor in Louisiana's 29th Judicial District for 33 years. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in New Orleans to obstruction of justice and is serving a three-year prison term in federal prison.
In Harry Morel case, FBI agent challenged prosecutor's ethics
Investigation into St. Charles Parish DA was called Operation Twisted Justice
In his letters, Grassley said FBI agent Michael Zummer reported to the Judiciary Committee that a "relationship between then-First Assistant United States Attorney Fred Harper and defense attorney Ralph Capitelli may have resulted in a lenient plea agreement" for Morel. Zummer filed an ethics complaint in 2013 with the Justice Department's inspector general about Harper, who shared ownership in a condominium with Capitelli.
Harper later sold his share to his girlfriend, Grassley writes. Capitelli has dismissed Zummer's assertion of favoritism, and has described him as an overzealous agent whose investigatory tactics are questionable.
Fred Harper
In August, Zummer wrote a 31-page letter to Morel's sentencing judge, outlining his concerns about the way the prosecution was handled. U.S. District Judge, Kurt Engelhardt did not put the letter into the public court record but described it as "troubling" because of the ethical breaches alleged b
http://news.wbfo.org/post/fbi-looking-d ... b-outreachFBI outreach
The FBI hosted an employment workshop on Buffalo's East Side Thursday, as it looks to further diversify its workforce.
Listen Listening...1:55 WBFO's Chris Caya reports.
To help spread the word about its job opportunities, the FBI invited about 70 community leaders to First Shiloh Baptist Church for a recruitment workshop. Pastor Emory Brown of Refreshing Springs Church says familiarizing more people with what the FBI does can help start to improve the relationship between the community and law enforcement.
"Especially at a time like this, you know, when there's so many difficulties in the community and across the country, I think it's very important to be able to get facts and get insight and build relationships and bridges so that we can move forward as a country as a city," he says.
The goal of 24-year-old Stephanie Mejia is to become a special agent. Mejia, a social worker, says she thinks the FBI's effort to hire "more minorities is awesome."
"Because the more people you see that are similar to you in the community, the more people are willing to open up to you, if say you are in a situation where a crime has occurred and you can trust them," she says. "Like I think we definitely need more trust in the community between civilians and law enforcement and this is great that they're trying to reach out to minorities and others in the Buffalo community."
But it is not all law enforcement. In fact more than half of the FBI jobs are non-agent positions. Adam Cohen, Special Agent in Charge in Buffalo, says there are a variety of opportunities, including auto mechanics, IT specialists, intelligence analysts, linguists, scientists, accountants and more.
"So we have an entire range of positions available and we are
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/fb ... wanted=allF.B.I. AGENT ADMITS HARASSING BLACK FBI AGENT
WASHINGTON, A Chicago-based agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged that he and other white colleagues planned a campaign of ''retribution'' against a black agent, Donald Rochon, whose case has prompted a national debate over racism in the bureau.
Newly released F.B.I. documents also show that the white agent, Gary W. Miller, has conceded that in 1985 he forged Mr. Rochon's signature on an application for death and dismemberment insurance for the Rochon family.
Mr. Rochon has described the unsolicited insurance policy as a death threat. Mr. Miller, who was suspended without pay for two weeks as a result of that incident and others aimed at Mr. Rochon, has denied that he was trying to harass the black agent. Agents Admit Harassment
The disclosures, contained in court papers filed here Friday, amount to the first public acknowledgment by the bureau that white agents may have participated in harassment of Mr. Rochon in Chicago, where he was assigned from 1984 to 1986.
The newly released documents are bound to cause further embarrassment for the bureau, which has been criticized by Congress over the Rochon case and over other discrimination claims involving black and Hispanic employees. More than half of the F.B.I.'s Hispanic agents have joined in a separate lawsuit against the bureau, charging that they faced discrimination in hiring and promotion.
Mr. Rochon has said that while he and his family were living in Chicago, their safety was repeatedly threatened in anonymous telephone calls and obscene, racist letters from white F.B.I. agents.
The Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have found that Mr. Rochon was the victim of ''blatant racial harassment'' in the F.B.I.'s Omaha office in 1983 and 1984. In one incident, someone in the Omaha office taped a picture of an ape's head over a photograph of Mr. Rochon's son.
Mr. Rochon has long contended that the later incidents in Chicago, which are the subject of an inves
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/199 ... int-lawyerFootprint Prank Gets FBI Agent Suspended
BOSTON — An FBI agent screening a prominent black lawyer for a federal judgeship forced the lawyer to submit a footprint and then posted the print and joked about the stunt, the Boston Herald reported Saturday. Both the agent and his supervisor were suspended for the prank, which happened about a month ago, the newspaper said, citing sources it didn't identify. The agent, whose name was not disclosed, told lawyer Walter Prince that collecting footprints was standard procedure. Then he hung the print on a wall at the Boston FBI office. ''There can be no question that this type
The FBI FRUHMENSCHEN program
"The FBI FRUHMENSCHEN program is one of the least known of the many illegal FBI black ops programs. FRUHMENSCHEN is a german word that means ape man. This program was created by FBI agents during the 1940's to target black elected officials in sting operations without cause because the FBI feels blacks are incapable of governing. The National Council of Churches of Christ issued a resolution condeming this program during the late 1980's. Dr Mary Sawyer , professor of Religious studies at Iowa State University wrote two books about this program including HARRASSMENT OF BLACK ELECTED OFFICIALS TEN YEARS LATER 1987. Former FBI agent Dr Tyronne Powers documents this program in his book EYES TO MY SOUL. Massachusetts filmaker Curtis Henderson of Jamaica Plain documented this program in his 1987 film ALABAMA SUMMER. FBI informant attorney Hirsch Freidman blew the whistle on this program. One offshoot of this program was the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King by FBI agents as documented in two books by King family attorney William Pepper. The books are ACT OF STATE and his earlier book called ORDERS TO KILL. Anyone analyzing the Ford trial must first look at the history of the FBI FRUHMENSCHEN program funded with American tax dollars Eyes to My Soul: The Rise or Decline of A Black FBI Agent by Tyrone Powers " One of the most readable and important of [recent African American autobiographies]....Powers is a compelling writer." William Jelani Cobb - Washington City Paper " The significance of this literary masterpiece has compelled me to violate my most sacred rule: never expose your battle plan to the enemy...with this work of art by Mr. Powers, my collection is now complete." James Wm. Morrison, Esq., Civil Rights Attorney About Eyes to My Soul Former FBI Special Agent Tyrone Powers, a veteran of the Maryland State Police, spent nine years as an FBI agent, with posting in Cincinnati and Detroit. He resigned in August 1994. The picture of the country's top law enforcement agency that emerges from Powers' eloquent prose reveals an organization beset by the same problems of racism that plague the rest of American society. Powers describes sheet -clad students at the FBI Academy impersonating Ku Klux Klansmen. He reports on FBI agents in Detroit raising funds for white Detroit policemen charged with (and later convicted of ) second degree murder in the death of Black motorist Malice Green. White agents according to Powers' narrative, urinated on photographs of President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore. Powers provides eyewitness evidence of the agency's extra- legal harassment of African American Mayors Coleman Young (Detroit), Marion Berry ( Washington, DC) and Harold Washington
https://www.aclu.org/blog/shhhh-what-fb ... know-aboutRacial Mapping
Shhhh – What The FBI Doesn’t Want You to Know About its Racial Profiling Program
By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 12:40pm
The FBI is using a racial and ethnic mapping program to collect intelligence on American communities – and it doesn’t want you to know which ones it’s spying on, or how it’s using census data to do so. The ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed a brief in federal court on Friday to challenge the FBI’s secrecy over its profiling practices.
FBI documents we already secured show that the Bureau is profiling some communities for intelligence collection based on false stereotypes that ascribe certain types of crimes to entire minority communities. Targeted groups include Muslims and Arab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia, Chinese and Russian-Americans in California, and broad swaths of Latino-American communities in multiple states.
We obtained these FBI documents through the ACLU's “Mapping the FBI” campaign. As part of the campaign, 34 ACLU affiliates filed public records requests in 2010 to uncover how the FBI is collecting and “mapping” information about racial and ethnic groups around the country. Here’s just one troubling example: a 2009 Detroit FBI field office memorandum shows that the Bureau sought to collect information about Middle Eastern and Muslim communities in Michigan – without any evidence of actual wrongdoing and based on a generalized and entirely unsubstantiated threat assertion.
The public needs – and deserves – to know more about the FBI’s racial and mapping program. For that reason, the ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan brought a federal lawsuit in July 2011 to enforce our request for records about how the program is being used in Michigan. But the Bureau refused to disclose hundreds of documents – and most problematically, it fought to keep secret its use of information from public sources.
On Friday, we filed a brief in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge the FBI’s sweeping secrecy claims. Our brief makes a simple but important argument: the Freedom of Information Act doesn’t permit the FBI to hide its use of information about Michigan communities that is already publicly available, like U.S. Census and other demographic data.
This just makes sense. Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act to help uncover information about government programs – not to let the government claim secrecy over census statistics that are already public.
Our brief also raises another critical issue: whether the FBI (or any other government agency) can secure an entirely secret, one-sided judicial process to resolve a challenge to its potential use of the FOIA’s exclusion provision, 5 U.S.C. § 552(c). That provision allows a government agency to avoid confirming or denying the very existence of records in its possession in certain circumstances. The possibility of abuse is obvious, and that makes it all the more important that there be a meaningful process for FOIA requesters to challenge – and the public to know – whether a government agency is properly relying on the provision.
The details of this issue may sound technical, but in essence, it’s simple. The FBI proposed a one-sided, secret judicial process to decide whether its reliance on the provision was proper. We proposed to the court a fair and transparent alternative to secret process. We argue that the FBI’s proposal goes against a fundamental tenet of our judicial system: public access to courts and judicial opinions. It also undermines a critical purpose of the FOIA: to promote government transparency and accountability.
We hope the Sixth Circuit will adopt our process to resolve our claim and those of future FOIA requesters who fight back against government secrecy. And, ultimately, we hope to get the information we all need to know about the true impact of FBI racial and ethnic mapping on our civil rights and civil liberties.
Learn more about racial mapping and other civil liberty issues
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/int ... er-rights/Intelligence Chief Publishes New Training Guide to Teach ...
The Intercept-
Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he appreciated the decision to release the training guidance, but he ...
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/30636/49/Secret Love Child Instead!
Thursday, 08 December 2016
Fidel Castro fathered a secret love child with a CIA operative dispatched to assassinate him — but instead of killing the Cuban strongman, she became the “spy who really loved him!”
Just days after the dictator’s death, double agent Marita Lorenz has revealed intimate details of their forbidden affair, and her shocking betrayal of her American handlers to RadarOnline.com in a blockbuster exclusive interview.
In yet another bombshell, 77-year-old Marita has claimed their child — who she thought she’d lost during her pregnancy — is alive and well, and living in Cuba!
“I had a forbidden love child with Fidel Castro!” Marita told Radar.
“The CIA and FBI wanted me to believe that Fidel killed our son, Andre, but that was a lie.”
She claimed Castro — who died at the age of 90 on Nov. 25 — reunited her with
http://www.dailyamerican.com/news/polit ... 2c579.htmlAP sources: Mattis received anonymous email in Petraeus case
By TED BRIDIS Associated Press Updated 33 min ago
http://www.theintelligencer.com/news/cr ... 786283.phpAttorney entitled to fees in
ex-Panther case
Friday, December 9, 2016
OMAHA, Neb. — A lawyer who handled the final appeal of a man convicted in the 1970 bombing death of an Omaha police officer is entitled to attorney's fees, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The state's high court found that Douglas County District Judge James Gleason abused his discretion when he refused to order payment to Timothy Ashford, an Omaha lawyer who claimed about $7,400 in fees for work he did on a post-conviction appeal for David Rice. Gleason had appointed Ashford to represent Rice, but later determined the appeal was frivolous and refused to order payment to Ashford.
But the high court said reasonable fees must be paid to a lawyer once he or she is appointed to a case. The high court ordered the case be sent back to Douglas County — but to a different judge — to determine the amount Ashford should receive.
Rice, who went by the name Mondo we Langa, was convicted along with fellow Black Panther Edward Poindexter in the death of officer Larry Minard. Authorities say they lured police to a house with a 911 call, then detonated a homemade bomb that killed Minard.
The pair maintained their innocence and argued they were targeted by an FBI program
Man Wrongfully Convicted by Perjured FBI Testimony Freed After 28 Years in Prison; Donald Eugene Gates Released on Basis of New DNA Evidence
Aug 5th, 2014 @ 10:37 am › Mary Jane Wilmoth
The following is from guest contributor Jon C. Hopwood.
This article was originally published in 2009 on Yahoo Voice and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
Summary: Donald Eugene Gates, who was convicted of the 1982 rape-murder of a Caucasian college coed, was released on the basis of new DNA evidence.
Donald Eugene Gates, a 58 year-old African American wrongfully convicted in 1982 of the rape-murder of Caucasian college coed Catherine Schilling, was freed by the D.C. Superior Court after a DNA test revealed that he could not be the culprit.
The prosecution of Gates was heavily dependent on the testimony of F.B.I. Crime Lab analyst Michael P. Malone, who testified that two hairs found on Schilling’s body came from an African American male. Schilling, who was a student at Georgetown University, was murdered in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. in 1981.
Gates, who has always maintained that he was innocent of the crime, had been imprisoned for nearly 30 years until ordered release by Senior Judge Fred B. Ugast. Ugast had overseen his trial back in 1982.
In 1988, Ugast had ordered a DNA test of the evidence used to convict Gates, but DNA testing a generation ago was primitive. The more sophisticated DNA testing of the 21st Century proved that Gates was right: He was innocent.
Crime Lab Corruption
Since the Gates trial, former F.B.I. agent Michael Malone has become notorious as an unreliable and unethical expert witness who likely committed perjury in hundreds of trials. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst of the National Whistleblower Center’s Forensic Justice Project first revealed the widespread corruption at the F.B.I. Crime Lab back in 1993, when he, too, was an F.B.I. employee.
Whitehurst charged that Malone and other F.B.I. Crime Lab employees were not only manufacturing evidence to support prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, but were engaged in providing perjured testimony at trials using their evidence. Malone had a profitable sideline in providing expert testimony favorable to the prosecution.
A 1997 report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General validated Whitehurst’s charges, and cited Malone as one of 14 F.B.I. Crime Lab that conducted inaccurate tests and made false reports. Whitehurst had revealed that Malone had perjured himself and falsified evidence when testifying during the impeachment proceedings against federal judge Alcee Hastings (now a U.S. Representative from Florida’s 23rd Congressional District).
Facing Bureau discipline for his conduct in the Hastings case, Malone was allowed to retire. The Bureau apparently did not take any adverse action against him.
In contrast to the Bureau’s treatment of Malone, Whitehurst — the man who blew the whistle on Crime Lab corruption and illegal activities by Lab employees — was harassed by the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice. Whitehurst’s wife, who also worked for the Bureau, also was a victim of the F.B.I.’s smear campaign against her husband.
In a classic case of the king killing the messenger bearing unwanted news, Dr. Whitehurst was driven from the F.B.I. After years of litigation, the government settled lawsuits targeting its unlawful conduct against Whitehurst for $1.46 million.
Outrageous
Speaking from the bench, Judge Ugast termed the prosecution’s conduct in the Gates trial as “outrageous.” He demanded to know why it took the Office of the U.S. Attorney so long to investigate the use of phony evidence in the Gates case, in light of the knowledge that former Crime Lab analyst Malone has been revealed to be a serial perjurer who fabricated evidence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joan Draper defended the government by claiming that the Office of the U.S. Attorney had begun looking into the situation “as soon as it was brought to our attention.”
Ugast ordered that all convictions in the District of Columbia that were obtained with testimony from Malone be reviewed.
Righting a Wrong
“We are trying to right a wrong,” Ugast explained when he ordered that Gates be freed. Ugast’s order gives Gates his freedom, but does not exonerate him. The U.S. Attorney may decide to try him again, though in the light of the new DNA evidence, that seems unlikely.
Defending their conduct in the Gates case, federal prosecutors claimed that their case was based on more than Malone’s hair testimony. The government’s case included the use of a jailhouse informant, who was paid for his testimony that Gates has confessed that he had raped and murdered Schilling.
Jail-house confessions are among the most notorious, underhanded methods by which prosecutors seek to gain a conviction. Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose case provided the basis for the TV series and movie The Fugitive, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, Ohio in 1954. The perpetrator of the murder was left-handed while the 30 year-old Sheppard, a highly respected osteopathic physician, was right-handed.
Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by an intruder, whom he had tried to subdue but who had beaten him. The doctor had suffered injuries on the night of his wife’s murder which his defense attorney claimed, during his trial, could not be self-inflicted.
Sheppard was convicted of murder and sentenced to life-in-prison. The case became notorious, and by the late 1950s, it was widely suspected that Cuyahoga County court had convicted an innocent man, who was imprisoned for life.
In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal district court decision on a writ of habeas corpus that had ordered that the State of Ohio to either release Sheppard or grant him a new trial. It is important to understand that Sheppard’s conviction was not overturned on the basis that he was innocent, which was irrelevant, but on the fact that there had been a great deal of negative, pre-trial publicity attacking Sheppard in the press that likely had led to his prosecution.
The High Court noted that the media campaign before and during Sheppard’s arraignment and trail created a “carnival” atmosphere that influenced the trial. It also cited the fact that the judge had failed to sequester the jury or insulate it from this ongoing media campaign against Sheppard. Furthermore, it cited the fact that the judge, on the first day of the trial, had said, “Well, he’s guilty as hell. There’s no question about it.”
The media-created “circus” atmosphere had poisoned his chances for a fair trial. The trial judge’s behavior and his failure to counter the effects of the anti-Sheppard media campaign violated his due process rights. The Supreme Court ruling effectively vacated his sentence, and granted a writ of habeas corpus that gave Sheppard his his taste of freedom in a dozen years. The state of Ohio improbably re-tried Sheppard for murder.
Sam Sheppard’s attorney, F. Lee Bailey, told the press during the second trial that he was going to have Sheppard take the stand in his own behalf. (Sheppard had testified at his first trial.) Bailey had learned that the Ohio prosecutors planned to use a jail-house informant as a rebuttal witness, after Sheppard took the stand. The informant would claim that the imprisoned Sheppard had confessed to him that he had murdered his wife.
Bailey did not let Sheppard testify, with the consequence that the Ohio prosecutors could not put the jail-house informant on the stand. While some saw this as a brilliant move on Bailey’s part, the fact was, Bailey revealed after Sheppard’s premature death in 1970, the wrongfully convicted doctor was in no shape, psychologically, to testify in court. Twelve years behind bars for a crime he did not commit had devastated him.
Within four years after being declared innocent at his second trial, Sam Sheppard was dead of liver failure due to acute alcoholism. He was 46 years old. Appearing on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson soon after winning his freedom at his second trial, Sheppard had confessed to Carson during a commercial break that if he had been convicted again, he would have committed suicide.
Freedom?
Donald Eugene Gates was released from the federal prison in Arizona where he was serving his sentence. He was given a ticket to Ohio, where he has family, a set of winter clothes, and $75. Whether he will remain a free man, or will – like Sam Sheppard – be retired, remains to be seen.
A hearing to determine whether Gates should be exonerated is scheduled for December 23rd. At the hearing, prosecutors will examine the DNA testing of the evidence. If Gates is not exonerated, he will have to register as a sex offender – for a crime he did not commit.
Malone’s Legacy
Dr. Frederic Whitehurst first revealed Michael Malone’s malfeasance at the F.B.I. Crime Lab back in the 1990s. Now executive director of the Forensic Justice Project, he provided relevant information about Malone’s conduct at the Lab obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to Gates’ attorney, Sandra Levick.
In the wake of the Office of the Inspector General report on F.B.I. Crime Lab corruption, the Department of Justice set up the Brady Task force to investigate all of the cases Malone and the other 13 lab examiners criticized in the OIG report. The testimony of Malone and the others resulted in hundreds of convictions, all of them suspect and many surely wrongful, like that of Eugene Gates.
The Brady Task force was terminated in 2002. No report was ever issued, and Congress was never informed of its findings of the Brady Task force. Apparently, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, the F.B.I. was given a “pass” by the George W. Bush Administration and a Republican-controlled Congress, despite the fact that the incompetence and criminality revealed by whistleblowers like Whitehurst and former F.B.I. translator Sibel Edmonds show that such behavior actually undermines national security.
Ironically, after he retired under threat of disciplinary action that never came, Malone continued his relationship with the Bureau. As an F.B.I. contractor, Malone conducts security clearance background checks. Clearly, the Bureau intended to reward him for his falsification of evidence and perjury.
The message the F.B.I.’s continued employment of Malone sends to other wrong-doers in the Bureau and the national security establishment is unmistakable. It also sends a warning to those whistleblowers, like Sibel Edmonds, to think before they reveal corruption. The safety of the United States suffers as a result.
The Future
Though has been known for over a decade that hundreds of convictions obtained by prosecutors depending on the evidence of Michael Malone and the other 13 suspect F.B.I. Crime Lab employees have been tainted, those convictions have been allowed to stand. The federal government has not reviewed them, a situation highlighted by Judge Ugast’s remarks from the bench when freeing Eugene Gates.
The National Whistleblower Center has filed a FOIA seat to obtain the Brady Task force records, which come dribbling in on a monthly basis. Dr. Whitehurst has long contended that Malone manufactured evidence and that all of the cases in which he was involved in must be considered suspect. However, until the Gates case, nothing was done to uncover the truth in those cases.
Judge Ugast’s order that all cases in the District of Columbia involving Malone should be reexamined may be the first step towards obtaining justice for innocent individuals wrongfully convicted by manufactured evidence and perjured testimony provided by F.B.I. Crime Lab employees
Sources:
Associated Press: “DNA testing clears man who served 28 years”
Washington Examiner: “Man freed after 28 years in prison by DNA testing”
Washington Post: “DNA sets free D.C. man imprisoned in 1981 student slaying”
Categories: News
Tags: Crime lab, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, fbi, FBI Whistleblowers, forensic fraud, Forensic Justice, Malone