Bonus Read
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... iciencies/Federal Insider
Senate report hits ‘inferior’ FBI whistleblower procedures, citing ‘numerous deficiencies’
June 2 at 7:00 AM
The irony is the FBI relies on informants to fight crime.
Yet when it comes to in-house wrongdoing, the nation’s most celebrated law enforcement agency too often punishes its own whistleblowers.
Legislation approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee aims to fix that. A committee report issued last week outlines how an agency charged with capturing the bad guys can take action against employees who expose bad deeds within the organization.
“Whistleblowers play a critical role in keeping our government efficient and honest, yet they also risk retaliation from their employers, sometimes being demoted, reassigned, or fired as a result of their actions,” says the report issued in support of the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
The legislation seeks to expand reporting opportunities for whistleblowers, improve what the committee calls “the lengthy and opaque adjudication process” and strengthen protection for employees who expose agency waste, fraud and abuse. They need protection from managers seeking revenge.
The uninitiated can be excused if they think managers always welcome those disclosures. While Uncle Sam talks a good game about combating waste, fraud and abuse in his operations, stories about management reprisals against those who report internal wrongdoing abound across the government. The situation at the FBI is compounded because its limited list of appropriate and protected places for employees to report issues includes the attorney general, but not their own supervisors. In a rational world, they would be the first to be told.
“This has left protections for FBI whistleblowers inferior to those of other Execu
Link du jour
http://chippewa.com/news/local/state-an ... 413b1.htmlRecords show vet called FBI before his
death at Tomah VA
CHRIS HUBBUCH Lee Newspapers
http://www.fox9.com/news/150961646-storyhttp://triblive.com/mobile/10517636-96/ ... my-jessica1.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... tion_.htmlJune 1, 2016
Who helped Barack Obama avoid the taint of Chicago corruption?
By Lee Cary
How did Barack Obama emerge from Chicago in 2008 untainted by political corruption?
His rise to power began at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention when Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was catapulted onto the national stage by the alluring force of his oratory.
Four years later, in December 2008, Rod Blagojevich, the fourth governor in recent Illinois history to be imprisoned, was arrested by the F.B.I. culminating a long investigation led by the U.S. Attorney (USA) in Chicago. “Blago’s” arrest came just as he was about to meet with someone to negotiate a bribe in exchange for appointing then-U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. to complete President Obama’s senatorial term.
On the day Blago was arrested, the agent in charge of the Chicago F.B.I. Office said, “If [Illinois] isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it is certainly one hell of a competitor.”
Jackson, Co-Chair of President-Elect Obama’s campaign, was later arrested, along with his wife, and sentenced, in August 2013, to 30 months in jail for stealing $750,000 from his own campaign fund.
One year before Obama was inaugurated President, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a key fundraiser for both Obama and Blagojevich, and one of three core members of Obama’s 2004 senatorial campaign finance committee, was arrested by F.B.I. agents acting on evidence gathered by the USA in Chicago. Three years later, Rezko was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison.
There’s no need here to rehash Rezko’s and Blago’s criminal transgressions in detail, or document the many Illinois politicians, from both major parties, who, over the years, traded their business suits for jump suits. It is common knowledge that Chicago is the center of political corruption in a widely corrupt state.
Yet, somehow, the 44th President of the United States emerged from that toxic cauldron called “Crook County” untainted by the maelstrom of high-profile corruption cases that engulfed several of his closest, political associates. The question is…
How did that happen?
Was he an example of sharing no guilt by mere association – a petunia in an onion patch?
Was he blessed by divine intervention, or dumb luck?
Or did others, positioned in the Department of Justice to help him, plot a course that safely navigated him through the fraudulent waters of Chicagoland political corruption, thereby enabling him to cruise untarnished into the White House?
If such a route from Chicago to Washington, D.C. was prepared for Barack Obama, it was done by more than one official of the Department of Justice (DoJ). And, it was accomplished with the coerced assistance of, at least, three F.B.I. moles that helped the Bureau build cases against Blago and Rezko – cases that would not implicate the man who would be President.
What follows is the story of one of those moles: Bernard Barton; also known as John Thomas.
Much of the information herein is distilled from multiple Chicago media sources – most often the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune. Those outlets, plus a few lesser known Chicago business news sources, published bits-and-pieces of the Barton-Thomas story as it unfolded. But they, collectively, fell short of providing a comprehensive overview of his role as a mole for the F.B.I.
Bernard Barton’s transition to John Thomas began in the late 1990’s when investigators in the USA’s Long Island office in the Eastern District of New York caught Barton and a partner defrauding customers of their billboard leasing company by charging them $350,000 in rental fees for billboard space. It was fraud; they never intended to deliver on their contractual obligations. Barton also charged $140,000 on an American Express card using his father’s Social Security number.
To avoid a 15-20 months jail sentence, Barton agreed to help federal prosecutors gather evidence against organized crime families trying to penetrate the billboard business in New York.
Barton apparently did that job well because his adjudication was delayed – for what would total about a decade.
As he awaited his eventual fate before a federal judge, there was more DoJ undercover work awaiting him in Illinois.
In 2000, he moved to Chicago, legally changed his name to John Thomas (to avoid recognition as the federal billboard mole?), and opened a real estate brokerage, plus another billboard company.
Bernard Barton, aka John Thomas (photo credit: Chicago Tribune)
On its face, it looks like the DoJ set him up there to aid an on-going investigation conducted by the USA for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, targeting corrupt Chicagoland pols. Among those targets was Rod Blagojevich – former U.S. Representative (Il 5th Dist., 1997-2003) and later Governor of Illinois (2003-2009). The feds maintained their leverage over Barton-Thomas by delaying adjudication of charges against him back in New York.
He was a fish hopelessly hooked on the line, but not yet reeled into the courthouse boat.
Sometime between 2000 and October 2003, according to a May 4, 2007 article by Thomas A. Corfman entitled “Real estate exec plays mole in Fed probe” posted in a Crain’s Chicago Business real estate site, Burton-Thomas became a confidential informant (C.I.) for the USA in Chicago. This was confirmed in an announcement from the Long Island office of the Eastern District of New York.
“Federal prosecutors in Long Island disclosed Mr. Thomas’s cooperation in October 2003, when Mr. Thomas entered his guilty plea in New York. ‘We just want to put on the record that the defendant has approached the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago to cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago,’ an assistant U.S. attorney said, according to an Oct. 27, 2003, transcript of the hearing in New York.
And in an unusual move, prosecutors asked for a court order allowing Mr. Thomas to commit crimes during the investigation, a tell-tale sign that Mr. Thomas was part of an undercover ‘sting operation’. The court granted the request.
‘It is contemplated that in connection with his work with law enforcement, Barton may be asked to engage in criminal activity, that is, activity that may violate a federal, state and/or local criminal law…but that is undertaken with the prior knowledge and consent of federal law enforcement…for purposes of furthering the ongoing grand jury investigation’ in Chicago according to a document filed by prosecutors in New York on October 29, 2003.’”
The assertion from the USA’s Long Island office for the Eastern District of New York that Barton-Thomas “approached the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago to cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago” is, at least, odd. At most, the notion that he volunteered to be a mole is incredible. It’s more plausible that he didn’t have a choice whether to “cooperate” or not with the Chicago USA’s “sting operation.”
According to a May 5, 2007 article by Chicago Tribune staff reporter David Jackson, in 2004 Barton was convicted of the fraud charges originating in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York from the late 1990’s. But his sentencing was delayed – for six more years.
Burton-Thomas is now in the boat, but with an uncertain fate. Leverage over him remains in place. Does he go in the frying pan, or back into the lake?
In his article cited above, Jackson also reported:
“When a Tribune reporter discovered that Thomas was acting as a federal operative in May 2006, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald took the unusual step of asking senior editors at the paper to refrain from publishing a report that would expose the ongoing probe. Fitzgerald offered no specifics but said an article would derail an important investigation and put people in serious danger of harm.”
So who were “the people” put “in serious danger,” from whom, and why?
On February 10, 2010, David Roeder of the Chicago Sun Times reported:
Thomas wouldn't discuss details of his work for the FBI. But sources said that, for more than two years when he was giving information to agents, Thomas provided a fly-on-the-wall look inside Rezko's real estate operations and his desperate attempts to keep his projects afloat. Sources said Thomas also logged frequent visits to Rezko from Gov. Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). [bolded in the original] Blagojevich and Obama were among the many politicians for whom Rezko raised campaign cash. Neither has been charged with any wrongdoing. Thomas had good reason to help. He hopes to get probation for his own felony fraud conviction in a New York case. And he said he wants to redeem himself in the eyes of business associates and his family. Sources said Thomas helped investigators build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner
2.
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index ... _batt.htmlFBI, terrorist fantasizer battle over release of texts with undercover ...
MLive.com-May 31, 2016
Preying on his loneliness, FBI agents manufactured a fake bride and heartache to manipulate a young Muslim into making alleged
3.
http://www.roseanneworld.com/blog/2014/ ... en-report/From Wayne Madsen Report
June 20-22, 2014 — SPECIAL REPORT. FBI killed Franklin scandal investigator
WMR can exclusively report that it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation that placed a bomb on the private airplane that killed state of Nebraska chief investigator Gary Caradori and his 6-year old son “AJ” on July 11, 1990. Caradori had been hired by the Nebraska unicameral legislature to investigate allegations that a number of Nebraska youth had been sexually abused and transported over state lines in a scandal centered around the Franklin Credit Union, headed by rising GOP African-American star Lawrence King.
A very knowledgeable source involved with what became known as the “Franklin Scandal” told WMR that Caradori flew to Chicago ostensibly to attend the All Star game on July 10 at Wrigley Field. In reality, the trip to the game was a cover for Caradori to meet with a source who handed him photographs that proved that Nebraskan children, some from the famed Boy’s Town orphanage, were being used for the sexual gratification of important political leaders in Washington, including Vice President and President George H W Bush.
Caradori phoned his wife and another investigator shortly before the All-Star game and told them the same thing: “I got what I came after. I got ’em by the balls. I’ve got pictures. I will take them to the game and bring them back to Nebraska.”
When Caradori began to follow the money behind the Franklin scandal, he discovered two things: the Franklin Credit Union was being used by the White House and CIA to launder money for the Iran-contra affair and King and his associates were given a free ride to sexually traffic in and molest children, including many procured from Boy’s Town.
One of those implicated in the Franklin scandal was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Sam Pierce. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, King held a $1 million reception for Pierce. However, King’s salary at the time was $14,000 a year and the actual cost of the reception was $300,000. The difference, $700,000, went into a slush fund that was laundered by the Franklin Credit Union for various “activities” sponsored by the CIA and White House.
On July 11, Caradori took off in his private plane from Chicago en route to Nebraska. Witnesses on the ground said they saw a flash in the sky followed by an explosion. Initial news reports stated that Caradori’s aircraft exploded in flight and then crashed. However, subsequent news reports were altered and claimed the aircraft exploded upon impact with the ground. Caradori and his son were killed in the crash. The local Sheriff’s office reported that scattered in the wreckage were child pornographic photographs. The FBI arrived and began systematically removing the photographs, debris, and Caradori’s briefcase. Meanwhile, FBI agents in Lincoln, Nebraska entered Caradori’s office and seized his files. Another FBI agent showed up at the office of a Nebraska state official investigating the Franklin case and demanded he turn over his files. The state official told the FBI agent to “get the hell out.”
The Bush White House immediately began covering up the Franklin scandal and put pressure on the remaining Nebraska state investigators. The FBI used the Kansas City mob to intimidate high-level witnesses and investigators of the Franklin scandal. One of the lead investigators also told WMR, “the FBI killed Caradori . . . they put the bomb on his airplane.”
An attempt to hire former CIA director William Colby to lead a state of Nebraska investigation of the Franklin scandal failed in a legislative committee 4 to 3 vote. Instead, the committee appointed attorney Kirk Naylor as its chief investigator. A major figure involved in investigating Franklin told WMR that Naylor was the most incompetent person the committee could have found to lead the investigation. Colby was a Vietnam War colleague of Nebraska state Senator John De Camp, one of major investigators of the Franklin scandal. Colby reportedly was ready to expose the CIA’s own involvement in the use of child prostitutes for the purposes of political and diplomatic blackmail. Colby died in a suspicious canoeing accident on the Chesapeake Bay on April 27, 1996.
Monsignor Robert Hupp, the Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Omaha, a former Navy chaplain, and, in 1976, the first-ever clergy member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, had reported in the early 1970s to his bishop that there was sexual abuse at Boy’s Town that even involved a priest murdering a boy. Hupp was later named the head of Boy’s Town, ostensibly to keep him quiet. Hupp was in charge of Boy’s Town until the late 1980s, when the Franklin scandal first hit the front pages. Eventually, even after stepping down as the head of the orphanage, Hupp was forced to leave Boy’s Town altogether. WMR has learned that in 2003 a longtime supporter of Boy’s Town allowed Hupp to move into his cabin in Mausten, Wisconsin after being forced to leave the facilities at Boy’s Town. A reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, a newspaper owned by Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett and which always had a skeptical view of the Franklin scandal, volunteered to drive Hupp to Wisconsin. Upon arriving at the cabin, the reporter prepared dinner for Hupp. The retired monsignor who broke the Catholic Church’s silence on its role in the Franklin scandal, died in his sleep that same night.
The iconic Washington Times front page that capped off the Franklin scandal’s sporadic and spotty news coverage.
Anyone who believes the Franklin Scandal and Cover-up is over and done with would be dead wrong. On January 20, 2012, Carol Stitt, the 29-year director of the Nebraska Foster Care Review Board, an individual who aggressively protected foster care children in Nebraska from sexual perverts and other undesirable foster parents, was dismissed by her own board of directors. The 11-member board had been stacked by loyalists of Republican Governor Dave Heineman whose goal it was to oust Stitt. As with the constant intimidation of witnesses involved in Franklin, Stitt also found herself investigated by the federal government’s Office of Special Counsel for allegedly violating the Hatch Act by attending a 2006 political campaign rally for Republican and football coach legend Tom Osborne. Although Stitt, a state employee, would not normally be subject to the rarely-enforced Hatch Act that bans political activity by federal employees, Stitt’s Foster Care Review Board received funds from the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The HHS’s initial complaint against Stitt, which arose from her attendance at the 2006 Osborne rally, began when current GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ben Sasse was serving as assistant secretary
4.
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/w ... /85241126/The brouhaha didn't matter to Boulhosa or MC-LEF President Edmond J. Boran, a Marine who served in Vietnam, and was an FBI agent for 25 years and later served as director of security for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
"We don't advertise, so this will really help raise our public profile," Boran said. "This is not unusual — Donald Trump has been a consistent supporter for years, and that's what's important to us. He's been a longtime supporter of veterans and law enforcement in general."
He said Trump donated $100,000 to the organization in March, matching the contribution he made to the group last year, when he was honored at the MC-LEF gala at the Waldorf Astoria.
5.
Family of Oakland muralist killed with stolen ICE gun files claim
SFGate-
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Fami ... 959703.phpAnd on Sunday, an FBI agent had his .40-caliber gun stolen during a car break in near Alamo Square in San Francisco. That gun was later recovered and a
6.
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/content/10 ... parts-ebayBorder Patrol Mechanic To Be Sentenced For Selling Official Vehicle Parts On eBay
By Michel Marizco
June 01, 2016
A Customs and Border Protection employee is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday after he sold parts from Border Patrol vehicles on eBay.
Herold Demes was a mechanic employed by the Border Patrol in Tucson. Last May, a federal grand jury indicted him on a
7.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/anti-defam ... ps/216909/The Anti-Defamation League’s Challenge To Pro-Peace & Justice Groups
By Grant F. Smith | AntiWar | June 2, 2016
Jonathan Greenblatt, left, incoming national director for the Anti-Defamation League, talks with Abe Foxman, former director of the ADL, during a reception for a special dinner in Foxman’s honor in New York.
On Monday morning NPR’s Tom Gjelten reported the Anti-Defamation League’s recent challenges interfacing with peace and justice groups in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson and Black Lives Matter movement. According to Gjelten, the Anti-Defamation League arose in 1913 to “put an end forever to unfair and unjust discrimination against…any sect or body of citizens.” ADL stood alongside the NAACP to end discrimination against African Americans in the South, which was the focus of NPR’s story. The ADL’s new President, Jonathan Greenblatt, a former special assistant to President Obama, wants to rekindle the spirit of solidarity encapsulated in a photo he frequently shows of Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy and the heads of the ADL and NAACP in a Rose Garden snapshot with LBJ just before the famous March on Washington.
The crux of the problem – according to Gjelten and the ADL – is that modern day movements like Black Lives Matter are more partial to advice from Palestinians living under perennial Israeli military occupation for tactics in dealing with heavily militarized police. The solution is to make the ADL “a consistently valued civil rights partner in a time of divided loyalties.” But how can the ADL accomplish that? Has it gotten too comfortable in the “suites” to ever march again in the “streets?” Does ADL have anything of value to offer in exchange for the “loyalties” of grassroots movements? Is that even the right question?
A review of the ADL’s unvarnished – yet little known – history may provide answers for how the organization could – but likely will not – become more relevant:
official MintPress sponsor
Stop throwing disenfranchised groups under the bus – especially when they inconvenience access to greater funding and power. The ADL’s moment of truth did not occur in Alabama of the 1960s, but rather California of the 1940s. The League had a genuine existential dilemma which resonates today. The ADL could have followed its principles and opposed the mass internment of West Coast Japanese-Americans during WWII. Or it could have supported the single most extremist anti-Japanese voice in America – John R. Lechner – and secretly prepared testimony to Congress about the threat still posed by interred but loyal Japanese Americans even as they languished in camps. Today the ADL likes to use Japanese American interment in its tolerance case studies and teaching materials. In reality – according to former Warner Brothers Studio Personnel Director Jack Holmes, the ADL secretly supported Japanese interment in order to temporarily divert Congressional investigations of alleged communist infiltration of Hollywood studios (PDF, page 32). At that time, a majority of ADL’s funding came from Hollywood studios, according to Holmes.
Stop infiltrating and subverting pro-peace & justice groups. In the 1960s the Organization of Arab Students was becoming too powerful, in the ADL’s view, by organizing large conferences to establish ties between students, scholars and activists interested in Pan Arabism in the Middle East. So it sent in two operatives, complete with cover stories as friendly journalists, to an OAS national conference to uncover exploitable weaknesses in order to take over and subvert the movement. A couple of decades later another ADL operative, Roy Bullock, was caught infiltrating and violating state privacy statutes collecting data on anti-Apartheid and pro-Palestinian groups operating in Northern California and elsewhere. Bullock popped up distributing Holocaust-denial literature at Palestinian conferences to smear the movement, operating undercover as a traveling art dealer sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. In reality, he was paid by the ADL through attorney Bruce Hochman, a conduit who allowed the ADL to also work closely with corrupt law enforcement officials. Although the ADL was caught holding classified information in the affair, Israeli pressure on the Department of Justice thwarted well-warranted espionage charges.
Unwind the ADL’s “special relationship” with the FBI In 2012 the ADL was the second-largest Israel advocacy organization in America with a budget over $50 million, 409 employees and 3,500 volunteers. The ADL has pursued a “special relationship” with the initially resistant FBI since 1940 when it offered up its entire network of operatives as informants in exchange for access to FBI files in order to avoid “duplication” of investigatory efforts.Since then, FBI directors have ordered all field offices to liaise with their ADL regional “counterparts.” Despite a history of bogus ADL “criminal investigations” into targets such as Arab UN diplomats and intel on a Minnesota professor getting too close to African American political movements, (PDF) the FBI-ADL relationship has grown closer, with ADL operatives now training all special agents at Quantico and holding joint training sessions for local law enforcement officers. Whether this training plays any role in the raft of recent dubious prosecutions against mentally challenged would-be “Islamic terrorist” suspects coaxed by informants to plot violence against US targets is unknowable – the FBI refuses to release ADL training materials under FOIA. (PDF) While Gjelton noted the “ADL chapter in St. Louis assists the U.S. Attorney’s office in staffing” such non-adversarial ADL “insider” relationships with powerful law enforcement agents are likely seen as a problem rather than solution for many pro peace and justice movement members used to taking to the streets and not the suites.
Ditch Israel The ADL is a bit like the recently retired Most Interesting Man Alive portrayed by Jonathan Goldsmith. He didn’t always drink beer, but when he did, he preferred Dos Equis. A great many American social welfare organizations that today are unconditionally pro-Israel were not originally Zionist. But during the Nazi march across Europe, the Holocaust, upon the formation of Israel in 1948 and after their sources of communal funding were taken over by Zionist activists, most of the affinity organizations that today make up the Israel lobby eventually became unconditionally pro-Israel.However, today few informed American peace and justice movement activists believe Israel is a shining example of harmonious co-existence between differing peoples. No banning of accurate histories from textbooks, periodic pink washing campaigns and Sabra hummus commercials are likely to change that. Increasing numbers instead believe Israel is a poster-child for apartheid. Many have come to understand – correctly – that the fulcrum of massive unconditional US government support is a multi-billion-dollar system of Israel lobbying organizations paying off politicians, channeling payola to influential university regents and think tankers, while infiltrating operatives into key positions of influence. A tiny handful even speculate – as once did an FBI agent – that key lobbying organizations in such close ongoing coordination with the Israeli government should openly register as Israeli foreign agents – as required by law. They are as focused on their core issues as the ADL once was.
In its initial announcement the League stated clearly that the “defamation of Jews on the stage, in moving pictures” created “an untrue and injurious impression of an entire people and to expose the Jew to undeserved contempt and ridicule” as leading sources of prejudice in most immediate need of redress. The League claimed it would act openly to publicly pressure producers and managers of theaters prior to the staging of defamatory productions, thus correcting “evils before any harm is done.” Defamatory newspaper and magazine articles would also be met with “protest to the editor” and “subsequent articles upon the same subject matter, thereby reaching the same reading public and correcting errors.” An economic boycott would be then made “by appealing to the patrons and advertisers for co-operation” to confront the most egregious cases of willful abuse.
Like many within the universe of pro peace and justice organizations today, ADL was once a tiny operation. Its Chicago headquarters was originally housed within the law office of Sigmund Livingston and started out with “a $200 budget and two desks.” In its early days the ADL was open to all who would sign a membership card. By 1930, the ADL successfully persuaded Roget’s Thesaurus to remove a hateful entry equating the word “Jew” as synonymous with “cunning rich, usurer, extortioner, heretic.” But ADL has launched no similarly effective campaign on behalf of today’s most disenfranchised groups. It cannot. Once again funding is a major constraint. Many of the Israel lobby’s biggest donors actively and richly fund Islamophobia.
Today it is Muslims, Arabs and Persians in general (Palestinians, Iranians and the territories where they live in particular) that are under constant assault – not byRoget’s – but vastly more powerful forces such as the military-industrial-congressional complex, Hollywood, the mainstream media and not coincidentally, many Israel affinity organizations. Like the Japanese-American internees once secretly targeted by the ADL, such groups are judged to be weak, disorganized, disenfranchised and unable to tell their own stories – or even possess stories worth hearing. They serve
