1.
The CIA and the JFK Assassination, Pt. 1
By Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.
http://flagpole.com/news/news-features/ ... ion-part-1Photo Credit: Jeff Dean/Wikimedia Commons
One month to the day after the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, TX, former President Harry Truman
recommended that the U.S. abolish the Central Intelligence Agency… In
an op-ed column published in the Washington Post on Dec. 22, 1963,
Truman never linked the CIA to President Kennedy’s murder, but the
timing of the explicit and strongly worded column and complaint
implied a connection.
—Joseph Lazzaro
The evidentiary record of the JFK assassination is so contaminated
by pervasive misconduct on the part of the… CIA that the good faith of
senior government officials simply [cannot] be assumed.
—Jefferson Morley
If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us
anything, it’s that you can kill anyone.
—The Godfather Part II
I’m not privy to who struck John.
—James Angleton, head of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff,
1954-75
The assassination by hidden sniper fire of President Kennedy on Nov.
22, 1963 was a gigantic security failure by the Secret Service. (The
best book on the unbelievable blundering by JFK’s protectors is
Vincent Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the
Failure to Protect President Kennedy [2013].) The assassination was
also a colossal intelligence failure by the Central Intelligence
Agency, then the principal (and lavishly funded) government
intelligence organization. As Jefferson Morley, former Washington Post
reporter and now a leading authority on the assassination, observes:
“[I]t seem[s] indisputable that the killing of a democratically
elected chief of state in broad daylight constituted some kind of
intelligence failure. It wasn’t supposed to happen and lots of people
were paid good money to make sure it didn’t happen. But it did.”
At the time President Kennedy was gunned down, the CIA could not
possibly have been unfamiliar with the alleged assassin, ex-Marine Lee
Harvey Oswald. Unless it was comatose, Oswald must have been a person
of interest to the agency long before the assassination. In 1957–58,
Oswald had been stationed as a radar operator at the Atsugi Naval Air
Base in Japan, where there was a major CIA station and from which the
agency’s U2 spy planes flew high-altitude missions over the Soviet
Union; in 1959, the CIA knew, Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union,
announced he had secrets to turn over to the Soviets, and attempted to
renounce his American citizenship. In late September/early October
1963, six weeks before JFK’s murder, Oswald had been under CIA
surveillance when he visited Soviet and Cuban diplomatic facilities in
Mexico City multiple times, supposedly to arrange a return to the
Soviet Union (or to visit Cuba, or both).
For years, critics have accused the CIA of suppressing information
relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy. The agency, they
allege, even withheld pertinent information from both the Warren
Commission (which investigated the assassination in 1963–64) and the
U.S. House of Representatives Assassinations Committee (which
reinvestigated the assassination in 1976–79).
These critics, we now know, were right.
What for many years seemed unthinkable has turned out to be true after
all.
There was a CIA cover-up. The CIA did suppress information. The CIA
did stonewall both of the official government investigations of the
JFK assassination. And as a consequence of this agency misconduct,
both investigations were compromised in important
respects—particularly in regard to the fundamental issues of whether
the assassination resulted from a conspiracy and whether Lee Harvey
Oswald (alleged to be the sole assassin in the Warren Report and
alleged to be one of multiple assassins in the Report of the House
Assassinations Committee) was affiliated with the CIA.
The CIA’s enormous intelligence failure, combined with the Agency’s
appalling concealment of information from the officials in charge of
investigating the murder of an American president, raises a number of
issues. This Article will address two: (1) whether the CIA was
involved in the assassination, and (2) whether Lee Harvey Oswald
worked for or with the CIA. This Article will then examine two
brand-new, bombshell revelations about CIA suppression of information
on the assassination. The first revelation was on Sept. 16, barely two
months ago. The second occurred last month, on Oct. 6. Finally, the
reasons that the Agency concealed its CIA-Mafia murder plots from the
Warren Commission will be explored.
Possible CIA Involvement in the Assassination
Almost from the moment JFK succumbed to his bullet wounds, there have
been suspicions that, officially or unofficially, directly or
indirectly, employees or operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency
might have been involved in the assassination.
These suspicions are not without foundation. Appalled by various
abuses and excesses committed by the CIA, embittered by CIA endeavors
to deceive and manipulate him, JFK had fired a director of the CIA in
1961 and was struggling to rein in the agency until the day of his
death. After the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961, Kennedy is reported to
have vowed that he would “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and
scatter it into the winds.” Conversely, top-ranking CIA officials
despised JFK’s policies and politics. That the agency, which
specializes in deception, disinformation and plausible deniability,
and which in those heady days was operating like a secretive criminal
syndicate—covertly carrying out political assassinations (“executive
actions”), successfully scheming to overthrow or destabilize foreign
governments, and even plotting with the Mafia to commit murder—might
have had something to do with the JFK assassination is not an
unreasonable supposition.
Those who suspect the CIA was somehow behind the assassination reject
the lone assassin theory and believe the assassination was the result
of a conspiracy. They disagree as to whether Lee Harvey Oswald was one
of the conspirators. Many think he was the patsy.
The first book by a serious researcher to suggest the likelihood of
CIA connections to the JFK assassination was the late Harold
Weisberg’s Oswald in New Orleans: Case of Conspiracy with the CIA
(1967). Weisberg was one of the most prominent of the first generation
of Warren Commission critics and published nine books on the
assassination.
The researchers who believe the CIA might have been involved in the
assassination tend to think the involvement was unofficial. The
assassins, they suggest, probably were lower or mid-level CIA
employees (or ex-CIA employees) acting on their own and without the
knowledge or approval of the CIA leadership. This was the view, for
example, of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (now
deceased), who carried out his own official investigation of the
assassination and authored two key books on the JFK assassination.
(Garrison also believed that, to avoid embarrassment to the agency,
upper-level CIA officials not involved in the assassination conspiracy
nevertheless knowingly participated in a cover-up designed to prevent
the CIA-connected murderers from being identified.) Under this view,
the assassins presumably murdered Kennedy because they were right-wing
military hawks who hated JFK’s liberal politics and foreign policy.
Other researchers who suspect CIA involvement are convinced that the
assassination was arranged in the utmost secrecy by an entirely
different set of right-wing, militaristic CIA employees—a small clique
of high-ranking, JFK-hating CIA officials who acted in order to
eliminate a president they firmly believed posed a dangerous threat to
the national security. Mark Lane, author of Last Word: My Indictment
of the CIA in the Murder of JFK (2011), espouses this view.
Under either theory of CIA involvement, it is accepted that the
CIA-affiliated plotters might have permitted a few outsiders,
including organized crime figures and right-wing extremists, to join
the conspiracy.
The fact that the CIA obstructed government investigations of the JFK
murder does not, of course, prove that the agency was involved in the
murder; on the other hand, it hardly tends to exculpate the agency.
Institutionally, the CIA thrives on secrecy and smoke and mirrors; it
masterfully practices deceptiveness, chicanery and mystification; and
it revels in dirty tricks, clandestine devious activities, and
surreptitious surveillance and infiltration. Even if agency officials
or operatives did assassinate JFK, there probably would have been no
CIA documents revealing this; and if such documents did ever exist,
they would have been destroyed long ago. Thus, even if it was true
that the agency was responsible for killing JFK, it would not be
possible to prove this satisfactorily from official CIA records.
Moreover, because of the code of silence among intelligence personnel,
CIA employees having knowledge of agency involvement in the
assassination almost certainly would never reveal it, even under oath.
In overview, the view that the CIA was involved in the JFK
assassination is not proven—and probably is unprovable. On the other
hand, claims of agency involvement are not facially preposterous and
might be true even if incapable of proof.
Was Oswald a CIA Operative?
Regardless of whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a sole assassin, a
conspirator or a patsy, it would be helpful to know if he worked for
or with the CIA. Did he?
The two official investigations of the assassination decided he did
not.
The 1964 Warren Report concluded that “there was nothing to support
the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee or informant of the
CIA.” It accepted in its entirety the testimony of both the director
and the deputy director of the CIA that “no one connected with the CIA
had ever interviewed Oswald or communicated with him in any way.” It
swallowed whole the director’s sworn affidavit that “Oswald was not an
agent, employee, or informant of the CIA, that the agency never
communicated with him in any manner or furnished him with any
compensation, and that Oswald was never directly or indirectly
associated with the CIA.”
The 1979 Report of the House Assassinations Committee “confirmed the
Warren Commission testimony” of the CIA’s two top officials. “There
was no indication in Oswald’s CIA file that he had ever had contact
with the Agency,” the Report concluded, and “taken in its entirety,
the items of circumstantial evidence that the committee had selected
for investigation as possibly indicative of an intelligence
association did not support the allegation that Oswald had an
intelligence agency relationship.”
The conclusions reached in both the Warren Report and the House
Assassinations Committee Report to the effect that Lee Harvey Oswald
was not in any way affiliated with the CIA, based as they are largely
on denials by the CIA itself, may be wrong. As stated above and as
explained in more detail below, both the Warren Commission and the
House Assassinations Committee were deceived by the agency with
respect to its dealings with Oswald. And, as the late university
professor Philip H. Melanson observed in his invaluable book Spy Saga:
Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence (1990), “there is extensive
circumstantial evidence that Oswald was in fact [a CIA] agent.”
Between 1959 and 1963 Oswald was frequently in the company of persons
with known or suspected CIA ties. During these years Oswald was, in
the words of Melanson, “shadowed by persons with demonstrable or
probable CIA connections.” A few examples:
While living in Texas in 1962–63, Oswald had a bizarre close
friendship with the Russian-born, cultured, aristocratic, enigmatic
George DeMohrenschildt, who was nearly 30 years older than Oswald.
DeMohrenschildt undoubtedly had CIA affiliations and has been aptly
described as one of Oswald’s “spookiest” acquaintances. The
international-traveling DeMohrenschildt spoke several foreign
languages and received a master’s degree from the University of Texas
and a doctorate from the University of Liège in Belgium; his
intelligence cover was that he was a “petroleum geologist.” As Jim
Garrison once scoffingly remarked: “Here you have a wealthy, cultured
White Russian émigré who travels in the highest social circles—he was
a personal friend of Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy’s
mother—suddenly developing an intimate relationship with an
impoverished ex-Marine like Lee Oswald. What did they discuss—last
year’s season at Biarritz, or how to beat the bank at Monte Carlo?”
The most realistic explanation for DeMohrenschildt’s weird odd-couple
relationship with high school dropout Lee Harvey Oswald is that he was
the CIA’s “babysitter” for Oswald (in intelligence community parlance,
a “babysitter” is an agent assigned to protect or watch over another
agent or a person of interest to an intelligence agency).
DeMohrenschildt’s involvement in espionage went back long before he
met Oswald. In 1941 he was detained in Texas by FBI agents who caught
him photographing or sketching a Coast Guard station and suspected he
was spying for the Axis. In 1957 he was expelled from Yugoslavia based
on suspicions he was engaged in espionage. DeMohrenschildt testified
at length before the Warren Commission. On Mar. 29, 1977, he committed
suicide shortly before he could be interviewed by the House
Assassinations Committee.
In New Orleans in 1963, Oswald associated with CIA assets David Ferrie
(an expert pilot who flew airplanes for both the CIA and the Mafia),
Guy Banister (a former FBI agent, former Naval Intelligence officer,
rabid segregationist and founder of the “Anti-Communist League of the
Caribbean”), and Clay Shaw (a former head of the International Trade
Mart in New Orleans and the only person ever criminally charged with
plotting to murder JFK).
On Sept. 17, 1963, when Oswald applied for a visa at the Mexican
consulate in New Orleans, the visa immediately preceding his in
numerical sequence was issued to William Gaudet, a “former” CIA
employee.
Numerous books and articles by reputable scholars or reliable
researchers suggest that Oswald was either an operative or a contract
agent of the CIA. Melanson’s Spy Saga marshals an array of evidence
concerning Oswald’s frequent and unusual interactions with CIA
operatives and operations, and reaches the conclusion that Oswald was
a “U.S. intelligence agent-provocateur.” Melanson’s book not only
demonstrates that Oswald must have been some sort of United States
intelligence operative, but also convincingly argues that “Oswald’s
links to CIA-related persons, projects, and contexts appear far
stronger than do those to any other U.S. intelligence agency…”
Another weighty book is Oswald and the CIA (1995; new ed. 2008), by
university professor and former military intelligence officer John
Newman, which presents a large body of evidence that prior to the
assassination the CIA had a keen operational interest in Oswald.
Newman says that Oswald’s mysterious trip to Mexico City only weeks
before the assassination “may have had some connection to the CIA…”
In his 2008 book, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden
History of the CIA, as well as in numerous articles, Jefferson Morley
details the agency’s extensive surveillance and monitoring of Lee
Harvey Oswald’s activities.
Based on his extensive research, Morley has concluded that the notion
that in the weeks preceding the assassination high officials in the
CIA’s counterintelligence section were running “a closely held
operation involving Oswald” can no longer be deemed implausible.
Morley believes that a cable sent from CIA headquarters to the CIA’s
Mexico City office on Oct. 10, 1963, six weeks before the
assassination, which deceptively withheld requested information about
Oswald and absurdly claimed Oswald was “maturing,” is suggestive of
the possibility the agency “may have had some kind of relationship
with Oswald that it was trying to protect.” The cable originated from
the special affairs staff of the CIA’s covert operations division and
was signed by four CIA officials involved in counterintelligence or
covert operations, indicating what Morley calls a “a strong CIA
interest in Oswald.” That same day, before the cable was dispatched,
Morley has discovered, “six senior CIA officials in the
Counterintelligence Staff” whose “primary responsibility was running
covert operations” discussed Oswald among themselves. Morley plausibly
suggests that the fact that “six senior operations officers” were
interested in the supposedly “lowly, pathetic… ex-Marine” indicates
that “he was part of a covert [CIA] operation.”
However, neither Newman nor Morley has been able to confirm that
Oswald himself participated in or was even aware of any CIA operation
that might have involved him.
In 1978, in an astonishing break with the code of silence adhered to
in the intelligence community, a former CIA finance officer appeared
before the House Assassinations Committee and testified that he
believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a “regular employee” of the CIA,
and that he believed Oswald received “a full-time salary for agent
work for doing CIA operational work.” He also testified that he had
been told by another agency employee that CIA money had been disbursed
for “the Oswald project or for Oswald.” Other agency employees
interviewed by the Assassinations Committee, however, disputed his
testimony, which the Assassinations Committee chose not to believe.
It is improbable that any CIA records showing that Oswald worked for
the agency would still exist or, if they do exist, would ever be
disclosed.
That Lee Harvey Oswald ever worked for the
2.
How The FBI Invents Terror Plots To Catch Wannabe Jihadis
Terrorism prosecutions are rife with signs of entrapment by law
enforcement, according to a new study provided to BuzzFeed News. FBI
critics say the bureau is trampling civil liberties based on flawed
ideas about radicalization.
posted on Nov. 17, 2015, at 8:46 p.m.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/fbi-entrapmentFrom left, Stories Seldom Seen LLC, New York Daily News via Getty
Images, courtesy Marlene Jenkins
Nobody would describe James Cromitie as a terrorist mastermind.
Certainly not U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who in June
2011 sentenced him to 25 years for his part in a plot to attack Jewish
targets and shoot down military aircraft.
Cromitie was “bigoted and suggestible,” with a profound hatred of
Jews, McMahon told the court in New York City. But she believed that
he would have posed no serious threat if left to his own devices:
“Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie,
a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearian in its scope.”
By the time they were arrested in May 2009, Cromitie and his three
fellow plotters from Newburgh, New York, thought they had planted car
bombs outside two synagogues in the Bronx, and were in possession of
what they had been told were Stinger surface-to-air missiles.
But the bombs and missiles were fake, provided by the FBI. The entire
plot was driven by Cromitie’s accomplice, Shahed Hussain, a
criminal-turned-informant who went to great lengths to entice the four
others — all impoverished black Muslim converts — to take part. Among
other inducements, Hussain offered Cromitie $250,000 and a BMW.
It sounds like a classic case of cunning entrapment by law
enforcement. But under federal law, it’s a legitimate strategy so long
as a suspect is already “predisposed” to commit a similar crime —
which means that courts must judge suspects’ intentions. And since
9/11, juries have seemed unwilling to accept that anyone could get
involved with a terrorist plot if they were not already motivated to
do so. Cromitie’s lawyers mounted an entrapment defense, to no avail —
despite the judge’s comments about the way in which the FBI had acted.
The front page of the Daily News on May 22, 2009 showing Onta
Williams, David Williams, Laguerre Payon and James Cromitie. New York
Daily News / Getty Images
The Newburgh Four case is just one of several high-profile
prosecutions that critics claim involve entrapment of Muslims who
posed little independent threat. In his 2011 book The Terror Factory,
journalist Trevor Aaronson accused the FBI of waging a “manufactured”
war on terror using some 15,000 paid informants. Among 158 defendants
charged after FBI sting operations, Aaronson found that 49 were snared
in plots instigated by an agent provocateur controlled by the FBI.
Now a new study has quantified signs of entrapment in a database of
post-9/11 terror prosecutions. Out of 580 cases, 317 involved an
informant or undercover agent, and most of those showed signs of
entrapment, the study found.
The leader of the study, Jesse Norris, a legal scholar at the State
University of New York (SUNY) at Fredonia, told BuzzFeed News that he
was disturbed at how often questionable tactics were employed.
“I didn’t know if I’d find it was a small handful of what you might
call bad apples,” he said. “But instead what I found was that facts
supporting an entrapment defense were pretty widespread.”
What’s more, Norris and Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, a sociologist at the
University at Buffalo, found that these methods have been deployed
more often to target jihadi and left-wing extremists than to ensnare
those on the extreme right. Their study will be published in the
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.
The FBI rejects the study’s findings. “This is a topic that’s been
well reviewed by the courts and there’s not been a single case where
the court has said the FBI has entrapped an individual,” Michael
Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division,
told BuzzFeed News. “We don’t put into somebody’s head the intent.”
Steinbach justifies the agency’s approach, saying that it’s the best
way to stop terrorists before they can cause harm. “It would be
irresponsible of us to just sit back and wait. I don’t have the time
or the resources to follow that individual and let him act at a time
and place of his choosing.”
Although critics have been complaining about the FBI’s tactics for
years, Norris wanted to produce a detailed, quantitative description
of how the government has pursued terrorism prosecutions since 2001.
He coded each case for 20 signs of entrapment. These included six
“core” indicators: The defendant had no previous involvement with
terrorism; the government proposed the crime; the defendant had to be
pressured or persuaded to take part; cash or other incentives were
offered; the defendant was reluctant to become involved; and the
government directed the criminal acts, rather than letting matters
take their course once the ball was rolling.
Cromitie checked all six of these boxes. So, too, did Tarik Shah. And
in his case, there were no bombs, and no missiles.
Shah is a jazz bassist who honed his skills with the Duke Ellington
Orchestra and once toured Europe with the singer Betty Carter. He is
also a master of karate who taught martial arts. In May 2005, he was
arrested for conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Tarik Shah is seen performing in this undated handout photo. Courtesy
Marlene Jenkins
Prosecutors charged that Shah had pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and
agreed to provide martial arts training to terrorists for $1,000 a
week. Shah pleaded guilty in 2007, and is currently held in the
Petersburg Low federal prison in Virginia. He’s due for release in
2018.
Mohamed Alanssi, the first FBI informant sent after Shah, made little
progress. But in 2003, Theodore Shelby, aka Saeed Torres, befriended
Shah, asking for bass lessons. At the time of Shah’s arrest, Shelby
was in the process of moving into a building in the Bronx owned by
Shah’s mother, where Shah was the live-in building manager. Over more
than two years, Shelby recorded their conversations and introduced
Shah to someone he said was an al-Qaeda recruiter — but who was
actually an FBI agent, Ali Soufan.
Shah’s guilty plea meant the case against him was never argued in
court, but details of what he said emerged in the 2007 trial of his
friend Rafiq Sabir, a doctor charged with offering medical assistance
to al-Qaeda. Shah came across as a “boastful, albeit somewhat
bumbling, man,” the New York Times reported, adding that the plot “was
almost entirely talk.” No martial arts training was ever provided, the
newspaper noted.
Shah’s mother, Marlene Jenkins, who converted to Islam in the 1950s
after studying under Malcolm X, is adamant that her son is not a
terrorist. “He’s never been violent. He’s never been in a fight,”
Jenkins told BuzzFeed News.
But the FBI agent Soufan, who now runs a security and intelligence
company based in New York, argues that Shah and Sabir were targeted
with good reason. “There was intelligence that these individuals were
trying to reach al-Qaeda,” Soufan told BuzzFeed News. “I feel very
confident that we did the right thing, and it’s better for them to be
stopped.”
While Cromitie’s and Shah’s cases stand out for their high number of
entrapment indicators, Norris’s study found that at least some of
these indicators showed up in most of the prosecutions he examined.
Just 53 of the 317 prosecutions involving an informant or undercover
agent were free of any signs of entrapment. The remainder averaged 5.3
of the 20 indicators per case, including 2.5 of Norris’s six core
signs.
What’s more, these indicators were more common in cases involving
jidahis than in cases involving defendants from the extreme right.
Indicators of Entrapment in Terrorism Prosecutions
Table shows the average number of indicators in cases of each type. /
Via Peter Aldhous for BuzzFeed News / Data via Jesse Norris
The threat from Islamic terrorism is real, but the far right is
arguably just as dangerous. A 2012 report from the Combating Terrorism
Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point described “a
dramatic rise” since 2007 in attacks and plots from the extreme right.
The New America think tank, meanwhile, is keeping a tally of killings
by violent extremists since 9/11. So far it has recorded 48 killings
by right-wingers and 26 by jihadis.
Norris’s findings reinforce criticisms of the FBI made by a former
insider. Michael German, now at New York University’s Brennan Center
for Justice, served as an FBI agent until 2004, often working
undercover to infiltrate extremist groups. German argues that the FBI
has engaged in fishing expeditions within Muslim communities since
9/11, while neglecting the threat from the political right.
FBI assistant director Steinbach denied this accusation. “When we
decide how to prioritize the threats, it is based on a yearly review
of what the intelligence is telling us,” he said.
German also questions the wisdom of relying on confidential informants
with checkered pasts. “I’m concerned about the use of informants who
have lengthy criminal records, particularly criminal records for
fraud, which demonstrates an ability to manipulate people,” he told
BuzzFeed News.
“I think the new study is extremely helpful,” German said. “It helps
make the discussion much more objective and fact-based, rather than
just pointing at particular cases.”
German believes that the FBI’s pursuit of Islamic terrorists is based
on the flawed assumption that once someone starts to express radical
Islamic views — such as supporting the application of Sharia law —
they are on an inevitable path toward committing acts of violence. “So
once those ideas have been expressed, it’s incumbent on the government
to push them along that pathway,” German said.
However, a 2010 study from the British think tank Demos, which
compiled profiles of 58 Islamic terrorists and conducted interviews
with 20 radical Muslims from across Europe and Canada, painted a more
complex picture.
The study found some differences between violent and nonviolent
extremists. Among those who went to college, for instance, violent
extremists were more likely to have studied technical subjects than
arts or humanities. But the Demos researchers could find no simple
predictors of violence, and they warned against assuming that all
Islamic radicals are terrorists-in-waiting.
“What is clear is that there is no such thing as a typical terrorist,
and no such thing as a typical journey into terrorism,” the Demos
report concluded. “[T]argeting the wrong people can breed resentment
and alienation, and erode the very freedoms Western governments want
to preserve.”
Other critics contend that entrapment is just part of a wider problem.
In May 2014, Project Salam, which provides legal representation to
Muslims charged with terrorism-related offenses, released the report
Inventing Terrorists. It argued that the vast majority of recent
terrorism cases were “pre-emptive prosecutions,” directed at Islamic
radicals based on their ideology.
FBI Special Agents and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force
prepare to arrest a suspect in Pittsburgh on March 15, 2012 in this
still from the documentary (T)ERROR. Stories Seldom Seen LLC
Some of these cases involved entrapment in FBI-directed plots, Stephen
Downs, an attorney in Albany, New York, and a founding member of
Project Salam, told BuzzFeed News. “But a larger group had to do with
criminalization of things no one thought were illegal before,
including things like free speech,” Downs said.
Soufan, the ex-FBI agent, argues that if we want to avoid incidents
like the 2013 Boston marathon bombing, the FBI has little choice but
to target people who seem to be on the road to violence and see how
far they are prepared to go. “This is a debatable issue and I
understand these concerns, but this is the only tool that’s
available.”
That said, Soufan would like to see greater efforts to rehabilitate
radicals ensnared in FBI-directed plots, rather than simply imposing
long prison sentences. “We should provide some kind of an off ramp,”
Soufan said.
Jenkins, meanwhile, worries that after her son gets out of prison in a
few years, he will remain a marked man. “He’s a musician. He still
3.
connect the dots..,
you do know what to do
couple of stories
1.
FBI Stymied By Islamic State’s Use of Encryption, Director Says
Law-enforcement officials seek greater access to encrypted communication
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-stymied ... 1447866592Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, speaking at an event Monday in New Haven, Conn., discussed the difficulties of Islamic State’s use of encrypted platforms during a cybersecurity conference Wednesday in New York. Photo: Associated Press
By Joe Palazzolo
Nov. 18, 2015 12:09 p.m. ET
2 COMMENTS
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said investigators have been stymied by Islamic State’s use of encryption.
FBI Director James Comey, speaking at a cybersecurity conference Wednesday at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the bureau has tracked Islamic State recruiting efforts on Twitter and reviewed private messages between sympathizers after obtaining court orders.
But when Islamic State commanders find a recruit willing to die for the cause, they move their communications over to encrypted platforms, “going dark,” he said.
Mr. Comey didn’t say whether the encryption was used in planning or executing the Paris attacks, but the massacre loomed large at the conference, which included law-enforcement officials from the U.S., U.K. and France.
His remarks were part of a public campaign by law-enforcement and intelligence officials for access to encrypted phones and communications, in the face of new software and devices promoted by companies as impervious to government surveillance.
The aftermath of the Paris attacks could bolster the argument in favor of such access after years of movement toward more customer privacy, fueled by revelations of U.S. surveillance programs.
U.S. counterterrorism officials haven’t determined whether terrorists used encrypted communications to plan or execute the Paris attacks, but they said they expect evidence to emerge as the investigation continues.
Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said after a briefing by senior intelligence officials Tuesday that the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks likely used “end-to-end” encryption. He said encryption was likely because no direct communication among the terrorists was detected.
Islamic State, which claimed credit for the bloodshed, has demonstrated its technological savvy in tutorials for sympathizers on how to evade electronic surveillance on the cheap, including an eight-minute video explaining the eavesdropping capabilities of hostile governments and how they track phones.
Other Islamic State bulletins have analyzed the vulnerabilities of brands of electronic equipment and messaging applications, ranking them based on their ability to foil surveillance.
In separate remarks Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.. said his office has been unable to access evidence on encrypted phones in 111 cases handled by his office. Newer operating systems on phones made by Apple Inc. and Google can’t be unlocked without the user passcode, even by the companies themselves.
Mr. Vance called for legislation that would mandate that mobile-phone companies have the capacity to unlock a customer device when presented with a search warrant. “We don’t want a ke
2.
Nichols says bombing was FBI op | Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/.../ ... p.html?p...
Feb 21, 2007 - A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt ... Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the ...
New OKC Revelations Spotlight FBI Involvement In Bombing
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/fe ... ations.htmFeb 22, 2007 - New claims by Oklahoma City Bombing conspirator Terry Nichols that ... Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the ...
Confirmed: FBI Got Warning Day Before OKC Bombing
redicecreations.com/article.php?id=14198
Feb 14, 2011 - Confirmed: FBI Got Warning Day Before OKC Bombing ... an astounding declaration from Nichols in which he fingered FBI agent Larry Potts as ...
Nichols claims FBI official directed bombing McVeigh cohort again ...
newsok.com/article/3016643
Feb 22, 2007 - Nichols, 51, claims an angry McVeigh identified Larry Potts as the high-ranking FBI official "who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb ...
Did Eric Holder Cover Up FBI's Role In '95 OKC Bomb Plot ...
americanfreepress.net/did-holder-cover-up-fbis-role-in-95-okc-bomb-plot/
Dec 31, 2011 - An affidavit from Oklahoma City conspirator Nichols about the ... Both were handled by FBI agent Larry Potts, a senior FBI official who had ...