FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:21 am

see link for full story
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... to_re.html


Ex-FBI agent doesn't have to register as sex offender for peeping Tom incidents in Hershey, elsewhere, court says


on July 11, 2014
A former FBI agent who admitted sneaking into bathrooms to watch girls and women use toilets doesn't have to register as a sex offender, the state Superior Court has ruled.

The decision, issued this week in response to a plea by Ryan Seese, comes nearly four years after the Derry Township man was sentenced to 1 to 23 months in Dauphin County Prison, plus 3 years of probation, for committing the crimes at the Hershey Middle School and a private gym.

In its ruling, the Superior Court concluded that Seese isn't subject to sex offender registration because of amendments the state Legislature made to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which took effect two years after his sentencing.

Seese pleaded guilty and no contest in 2010 to three charges of invasion of privacy and pleaded guilty to additional counts of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. Police said two adult women were the victims in the incident in the women's locker room at the private gym and that Seese spied on two teens in a girl's bathroom during a concert at the middle school.

Seese left the FBI in 2007 after being convicted of another peeping Tom incident in a women's restroom at the University of Arizona.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:46 pm

a smart criminal justice consumer you are now able
to smell the sulphur everytime mainstream media sends
out a public relations story about the FBI.
You also know there is a backstory as in the case of
very special FBI supervisor James Bernazzini.
Couple of years ago I contacted the Office of Special Counsel
and asked them to investigate and prosecute FBI supervisor James Berazzini for violating the Hatch Act by appearing on television as a FBI agent to run for political office. I was assigned a case number by the Office of Special Counsel and was told they would investigate very special FBI Supervisor James Bernazzini.
THe Back Back way back Story....
Within a couple of weeks after filing my complaint FBI agents raided the Office of Special Council arresting the Director Scott Bloch; FBI Director Robert Mueller allowed his friend Bernazzini to take early retirement and collect his full pension; and the Office of Special Counsel notified me they were dropping their investigation of Bernazzini.


You do kbow what to do?

Nah..../


couple of reads



1st read

http://m.ksla.com/#!/newsDetail/26000209


Killer Ride: Federal sources say van designed to kill
By Rob Masson
Updated: 07/11/2014 7:03 pm EDT

A traffic stop led officers to a bizarre discovery. It happened on a quiet area of Old Metairie two months ago.

According to a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office report, a deputy received a tip about two men driving a van with a stolen license plate. He spotted the van driving on Metairie Road and followed it to a home in the 200 block of E. William David Parkway. The report states that as the deputy approached the van, he saw both the passenger and the driver exit the vehicle.

While the stop was for a stolen license plate, the report details that Jefferson Parish deputies found much more. The van was more than it seemed at first glance."This is a classic unsophisticated vehicle that can be used for assassination," said James Bernazzani, a retired FBI special agent.

2nd read
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008 ... _post.html

N.O. FBI chief loses post
Colley Charpentier By Colley Charpentier
on April 25, 2008 at 10:09 PM, updated April 25, 2008 at 11:01 PM
Photo by Susan Poag/The Times-PicayuneJames Bernazzani, the head of New Orleans' FBI office, left, and US Attorney Jim Letten arrive at the Federal Courthouse in New Orleans in November, 2007.

James Bernazzani, the head of New Orleans' FBI office, a silver-maned, tough-talking, Harvard-educated, larger-than-life crimefighter sent to squash public corruption in a jurisdiction notorious for it, was reassigned to the agency's national headquarters Friday after he publicly flirted with a run for mayor.

The abrupt transfer marks the end of Bernazzani's three-year tenure in New Orleans, a tumultous period during which he carved out a prominent niche as the face and voice of a very public war on corruption.

The FBI confirmed the move in a statement sent Friday in response to queries from The Times-Picayune.

"The recent media attention regarding a possible run for mayor could create the appearance of a conflict of interest," the statement read. "Even the appearance of a conflict must be avoided for the public to have the highest confidence in the FBI."

Bernazzani, meanwhile, said late Friday he's not sure if he'll return to Washington, hinting that his political ambitions in New Orleans are still alive.

"The FBI director and myself spoke at length about the circumstances surrounding my comments relative to my contemplation of public office, and it was decided I would better serve the FBI in Washington," he said. "I have not made a decision. But I love the city of New Orleans and I have to decide whether I want to serve the United States in New Orleans or serve the United States in Washington."



3rd read

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008 ... tires.html

Former FBI chief Jim Bernazzani retires from agency
Gordon Russell, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Gordon Russell, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Follow on Twitter
on May 09, 2008 at 8:13 PM, updated October 21, 2009 at 10:55 PM

Jim Bernazzani, the tough-talking face of the FBI in Louisiana, retired from the bureau Friday, two weeks after he was ordered back to the agency's Washington headquarters for publicly flirting with a run for mayor of New Orleans.

Bernazzani's decision to stay in New Orleans -- and end a 24-year career with the FBI rather than return to Washington -- does not signal a continuing interest in running for mayor, however.

"I will not run for political office," he said Friday afternoon. "Absolutely not."

Two weeks ago, the FBI announced it had removed Bernazzani from his post as special agent in charge of the New Orleans office and offered him a transfer to Washington. The ouster came swiftly in response to Bernazzani's two television interviews several days earlier, in which he said he was considering a run for mayor.

The federal Hatch Act prohibits certain federal officials, including FBI agents, from campaigning for office. While it wasn't clear that Bernazzani had violated the act, the flirtation with politics by a man who supervises investigations of corrupt public officials created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

4th read

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90223448

FBI Raids Special Counsel Office, Seizes Records

by
May 06, 2008 4:44 PM ET
Scott Bloch has been special counsel since 2004.
U.S. Office of Special Counsel

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistle-blowers. The agents seized computers and shut down e-mail service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, as first reported by NPR News.

A grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas for several OSC employees, including Bloch, according to NPR sources who spoke on condition their names not be used. Bloch's home was also searched.

Those developments came about on a Tuesday morning that had seemed no different from any other weekday in the Washington headquarters of the Office of Special Counsel. But at 10 a.m., the OSC's national e-mail system went down, and the FBI arrived.

A half-dozen FBI agents swarmed into the OSC's Washington offices, grabbing documents and seizing computers. By 1 p.m., more than 20 agents had arrived in the agency's D.C. bureau.

One official close to the investigation said that today's action was "significant" and that other field offices would also be included in the investigation.

The focus of the probe appears to be Special Counsel Bloch, who was appointed by President Bush in 2004. Bloch has been a controversial figure ever since taking over the Office of Special Counsel, which, among other things, ensures that federal whistle-blowers get the protection they need.

One of Bloch's first official actions was to refuse to investigate any claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. When the news of his refusal was leaked to the press, career employees in his office say, Bloch blamed them for the leak. He retaliated, the employees said, by creating a new field office in Detroit and forcing them either to accept assignments there or resign.

This morning, FBI agents in Washington took Bloch into a separate room at OSC to interview him, while additional investigators searched his office. They also arrived at his home in Alexandria, Va., with a search warrant.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Jul 12, 2014 10:09 pm

Abusive Surveillance Is an LGBTQ Rights Issue
07/12/2014
Government Surveillance
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 8:00am

This piece originally ran at Slate's Outward blog.

Barred from employment with the federal government. Considered mentally ill by the psychiatric profession. Seen as criminals under state laws. Subjected to invasive surveillance and targeting by the FBI.

This hostile backdrop of the "Lavender Scare" in the 1950s gave rise to some of the earliest organized advocacy efforts on behalf of LGBTQ equality.

J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and its "Sex Deviate" program worked feverishly to ruin the lives of untold numbers of gay men and lesbians and to intimidate members of groups like the Mattachine Society, which dared to agitate for the basic dignity of gay people.

A half-century later, this history has not been lost on the nation's leading LGBTQ equality organizations, which yesterday joined allies in the civil liberties and human rights community in sending a letter to President Barack Obama, raising serious concerns over revelations that the FBI targeted leaders of the Muslim community for yearslong secret surveillance.

The letter notes that this appears to fit a disturbing pattern, both past and present, of the government engaging in discriminatory and abusive surveillance against individuals, based not on what they have done but what they believe or who they are.

We know from history and experience that discriminatory surveillance and profiling by law enforcement agencies has had a disproportionately negative impact on LGBTQ people, particularly people of color. The largest national survey of transgender people to date found 22 percent of respondents who have interacted with police reported experiencing bias-based harassment, with substantially higher rates reported by respondents of color.

Remember the police raids and harassment that led to the eruption of a rebellion at the Stonewall Inn 45 years ago? How about the unlawful sting operations targeting gay and bisexual men and the profiling of transgender women as sex workers from our own decade? The harms of ineffective and un-American profiling—regardless of the communities it is directed against—are of clear concern and importance to the LGBTQ community.

So what can be done? The most important step that the government can take to curb abusive surveillance and profiling is to update existing guidance banning racial profiling by federal law-enforcement agencies. The guidance must be amended to explicitly ban profiling on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, as well as close existing loopholes that permit all forms of racial profiling in the national security and border contexts.

We must learn from past abuses. Minority communities cannot enjoy the equality and dignity afforded them by the Constitution when they can be routinely subjected to discriminatory profiling for things like "driving while black," "praying while brown," or "walking while trans." As a country, we can and must do better.

Learn more about government surveillance and other civil liberties issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jul 18, 2014 1:58 pm

http://www.executivegov.com/2014/07/dra ... -comments/




Cyber Command Leads Exercise to Test Interagency Cybersecurity Coordination; Michael Rogers Comments
Anna Forrester · Jul 18th, 2014 · 0 Comment

cybersecurityThe U.S. Cyber Command recently concluded the Cyber Guard 14-1 exercise in partnership with government, academia and industry to demonstrate operational coordination and information sharing between agencies in performing measures against domestic cyber incidents.





According to a Cybercom news release posted Thursday on the Defense Department website, participants used simulations of critical infrastructure networks to exercise protection, prevention, mitigation and recovery operations against cyber attacks.

“Citizens of our nation are counting on us to generate the necessary capacity and capability to meet the challenges of this problem set,” U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, Cybercom commander and NSA director, said during the exercise.

The National Guard, reserves and National Security Agency joined more than 500 participants at the two-week event held at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Highlighting the “whole-of-nation” effort, Cybercom indicated the different roles the agencies take in handling cyber incidents, led and coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security with support from DoD.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jul 18, 2014 7:36 pm

see link for full story


http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/18/senat ... imination/


Senator: FBI Retaliates Against Women Reporting Gender Discrimination
4:04 PM 07/18/2014


Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is retaliating against female whistleblowers that reported gender discrimination at the agency.

Eight FBI employees that reported gender discrimination, including seven women, said that the FBI uses a secretive method of punishment against whistleblowers that deprives them of due process and a right to appeal punitive measures.

One of the female whistleblowers was disciplined for allegedly being “emotionally unstable” and “unable to work with others” for asserting that her hazardous materials suit did not fit women, The Daily Caller has learned. Another whistleblower claimed that she was denied a job for which she was most qualified out of six candidates because management said she was “emotionally fragile” after experiencing a divorce.

“At a hearing on May 21, 2014, I brought to your attention the cases of three female whistleblowers at the FBI,” Grassley wrote to Comey in a letter obtained by TheDC. Grassley was referring to a Judiciary Committee hearing that was completely whitewashed by the mainstream media. “Each one previously worked as a supervisor in FBI offices where their colleagues were predominantly male. These women alleged that they suffered gender discrimination and that they were retaliated against when they reported these abuses through the Equal Employment Opportunity process or other means.”

Grassley noted that Comey pledged to cooperate with an inspector general review of the allegations and to ensure that no further retaliation occurred. But the FBI has not lived up to its promise.

“However, the above-referenced whistleblowers have raised more pressing concerns of retaliation from their immediate supervisors,” Grassley wrote. “For example, one whistleblower reports that her current, male supervisor is a friend of the man who was the subject of her initial complaint of gender discrimination. On behalf of this friend, the whistleblower’s current supervisor is reportedly perpetrating subtler forms of retaliation against her.”

“In addition, since the May 21, 2014 hearing, five additional FBI whistleblowers have contacted my office,” Grassley wrote. “Four of them are women who claim that they were retaliated against after reporting gender discrimination. The fifth is a male coworker who allegedly suffered reprisal when he spoke out against the alleged discrimination.”

Grassley wrote that the FBI uses so-called “Loss of Effectiveness,” or LOE orders to retaliate against whistleblowers. FBI managers can use LOE orders to hand out punishments without going through the Office of Professional Responsibility.

“Unlike an OPR review, an LOE does not provide the employee in question a right of appeal,” Grassley wrote, noting that FBI managers use LOE orders as basis for demotion.

The FBI is not the only Obama administration agency suffering claims of workplace discrimination and whistleblower reprisal. A Department of Labor employees union recently alleged racial discrimination within the department. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is currently investigating claims of whistleblower reprisal at the Department of Veterans Affairs from nineteen different states.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:36 pm

News
Discredited ex-FBI agent hired back as a private contractor years later
http://nypost.com/2014/07/21/discredite ... ars-later/

July 21, 2014 | 5:26am

Discredited ex-FBI agent hired back as a private contractor years later
The entrance of the FBI building in Washington, DC. Photo: Shutterstock

WASHINGTON – A discredited ex-FBI agent whose “unreliable” testimony helped put away defendants later found innocent was hired back by the agency as a private contractor years after his misdeeds were uncovered, The Post has learned.

Michael Malone, a former forensics expert specializing in hair and fiber analysis, retired from the FBI in 1999 — two years after a 1997 inspector general’s report found he had testified falsely in an important criminal case.

But in its third review of bungling at FBI labs, the Justice Department’s Inspector General found that Malone had been performing background check investigations for the FBI as an “active contract employee of the FBI” since 2002.

In fact, he was still indirectly on the FBI payroll two months ago, as the IG wrapped up its report on “scientifically unsupportable analysis and overstated testimony by FBI Lab examiners” in a long series of criminal prosecutions.

After the IG raised the issue with the FBI, the agency reported back that Malone’s “association with the FBI was terminated” as of June 17.

Justice Department and FBI officials didn’t answer questions from The Post about how many background checks Malone performed or why he was re-hired.

Although he was never disciplined and got to retire with a pension, Malone’s criminal forensics work has come under heavy scrutiny by investigators – including his involvement in a case that sent former DC resident Donald Gates to prison for 28 years for a murder he didn’t commit.

“Malone’s faulty analysis and scientifically unsupportable testimony contributed to the conviction of an innocent defendant” and at least five other convictions that were later reversed, the IG wrote in its report, released last week.

Malone testified at trial that one of Gates’ hairs scientifically matched one found on the body of Georgetown University student Catherine Schilling, 21. DNA evidence later proved him to be wrong.

His testimony before a judicial inquiry of Florida federal Judge Alcee Hastings was also found to be off base. Malone testified that he conducted a “tensile” test on a piece of evidence – a purse strap. It was later revealed he didn’t do the test.

Independent scientists found 96 percent of Malone’s caseload to be “problematic” for reasons such as making statements that “had no scientific basis.” Contrary to normal standards, Malone produced lab notes that were “in pencil and not dated.”

The prior IG investigation found Malone testified “outside his expertise and inaccurately” and cited him for misconduct.

Malone denied any wrongdoing.

“The whole time I was in the lab I got nothing but exceptional and superior ratings,” Malone told the St. Petersburg Times in 2001. “This is going to sound like bragging, but we were the best in the world for hairs.”

Attempts to contact him last week were unsuccessful.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable considering what the FBI knows about this individual that he’s been allowed to continue as an FBI contractor,” whistleblower Fred Whitehurst, a former top FBI explosives expert, told The Post.

Early on, the FBI appears not to have considered looking into more systemic problems in its hair and fibers unit. Investigators uncovered a 2002 memo from DOJ’s criminal division to Michael Chertoff, then assistant attorney general, raising concerns about “the specter that the other examiners in the [Hairs and Fibers] unit were either as sloppy as Malone or were not adequately conducting confirmations [of his work]. This issue has been raised with the FBI but not resolved to date.”

A footnote in the report states that the agency “did not produce” a response to investigators’ request for old FBI manuals. But investigators “located on the Internet” an FBI manual from 1977, the report notes.

The Justice Department, in its formal response to the inquiry, wrote that Justice and the FBI in 2012 “initiated a comprehensive review of microscopic hair comparison analysis or testimony provided in more than 20,000 cases prior to December 31, 2009,” when DNA testing became routine.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:26 pm

FBI pushed Muslims to plot terrorist attacks: rights report

July 21 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-pushed-muslim ... 25158.html



File picture shows Muslim men praying on Madison Avenue in New York just before the 27th annual Muslim Day Parade in New York on September 23, 2012
.

.
.

Washington (AFP) - The FBI encouraged and sometimes even paid Muslims to commit terrorist acts during numerous sting operations after the 9/11 attacks, a human rights group said in a report published Monday.

"Far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism, the policies documented in this report have diverted law enforcement from pursuing real threats," said the report by Human Rights Watch.

Aided by Columbia University Law School's Human Rights Institute, Human Rights Watch examined 27 cases from investigation through trial, interviewing 215 people, including those charged or convicted in terrorism cases, their relatives, defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

"In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report said.

In the cases reviewed, half the convictions resulted from a sting operation, and in 30 percent of those cases the undercover agent played an active role in the plot.
US attorney general Eric Holder speaks at the …
US attorney general Eric Holder speaks at the US ambassador's residence in Oslo on July 8, 2014 …

"Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US," said Andrea Prasow, the rights group's deputy Washington director.

"But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts."

US Attorney General Eric Holder has strongly defended the FBI undercover operations as "essential in fighting terrorism."

"These operations are conducted with extraordinary care and precision, ensuring that law enforcement officials are accountable for the steps they take -– and that suspects are neither entrapped nor denied legal protections," Holder said July 8 during a visit to Norway.

The HRW report, however, cites the case of four Muslim converts from Newburgh, New York who were accused of planning to blow up synagogues and attack a US military base.
This booking photo courtesy of the US Department …
This booking photo courtesy of the US Department of Justice shows suspect Rezwan Ferdaus on October …

A judge in that case "said the government 'came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,' and had, in the process, made a terrorist out of a man 'whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope,'" the report said.

The rights group charged that the FBI often targets vulnerable people, with mental problems or low intelligence.

It pointed to the case of Rezwan Ferdaus, who was sentenced to 17 years in prison at age 27 for wanting to attack the Pentagon and Congress with mini-drones loaded with explosives.

An FBI agent told Ferdaus' father that his son "obviously" had mental health problems, the report said. But that didn't stop an undercover agent from conceiving the plot in its entirety, it said.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Tue Jul 22, 2014 12:19 am

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.1874646





Feds aim to take Staten Island politician Michael Grimm to trial in October
U.S. Rep Grimm (R-NY) wasn’t present for Monday’s status conference in court over charges of fraud, tax evasion and perjury. He remains under investigation for alleged fund-raising violations.

Monday, July 21, 2014,

NYC PAPERS OUT. Social media use restricted to low res file max 184 x 128 pixels and 72 dpi Jesse Ward/for New York Daily News U.S. Michael Grimm (R-NY) is seen leaving Brooklyn Federal Court in May. He could go to trial as soon as October.

Federal prosecutors are pushing for a trial in October — before Election Day — for indicted Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm.

Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorney James Gatta said Monday that alleged evidence of fraud, tax evasion and perjury was "fairly straightforward" and that all of it had been turned over to Grimm.

The Republican’s recent move to replace his attorneys with former Florida federal prosecutor Daniel Rashbaum didn't cut him any slack with U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen, who said she didn't agree that he was starting his defense from scratch.

But she granted Rashbaum two weeks to decide whether an October trial date would be doable for the defense.

Grimm has had difficulty raising money for his reelection bid since he was indicted in April — and he’s also been financially shunned by the Republican Party.

The Staten Island pol remains under investigation by the feds for alleged fund-raising violations. After his arrest, Grimm ranted that his indictment — which inlcuded charges that he hid profits from his Manhattan health food business and hired illegal aliens before he was elected to Congress — was politically motivated.

Grimm, who’s also a former FBI agent, was excused from appearing in Brooklyn Federal Court for Monday’s status conference. But Chen said he must appear Aug. 8, which is when the parties are expected to set a trial date.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:36 pm

see link for full story


http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/s ... -bilked-us


The Spies Who Bilked Us
Mike German
June 25, 2014

Intelligence funding and oversight

Crossposted in The American Conservative.

When Russian military forces seized Crimea in March, Sen. John McCain blasted the U.S. intelligence community for not predicting Vladimir Putin’s aggressive reaction to the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, calling it “another massive failure.” House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers echoed McCain’s concerns and vowed to hold hearings to examine what went wrong with our intelligence analysis.

The U.S. annually invests over $70 billion in intelligence operations whose mission is to gather and analyze information necessary to protect the nation’s security. But intelligence failures remain common. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars in counterterrorism and military operations, completely reorganizing our homeland defense infrastructure, changing our laws, and establishing a domestic surveillance apparatus J. Edgar Hoover could have only dreamed of. Yet a joint Inspectors General analysis of the inadequate response to the 2011 Russian warning about future Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev reveals that despite the construction of sophisticated information sharing systems—like the National Counterterrorism Center, more than 70 state and local law enforcement intelligence fusion centers, and the expansion of FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces—federal agencies still disseminate critical counterterrorism information with “sticky notes.”

Sen. Tom Coburn’s 2012 investigation of intelligence fusion centers, which wasted as much as $1.4 billion in counterterrorism resources with no demonstrable benefit, should have been a warning that such breakdowns were inevitable. And our foreign intelligence services show similar deterioration. Despite their intense focus on the Middle East, intelligence officials admitted missing the 2011 Arab Spring, the largest revolutionary social movement to reshape the political landscape in the region, which largely unfolded openly over social media.

At the same time, massive public leaks of intelligence information—not to mention losses to hostile foreign hackers and spies—show that our spy agencies can’t adequately protect their own data, much less the entire Internet we all depend on. Was intentionally weakening encryption standards really the best decision for establishing long-term U.S. cyber security?

Conservatives don’t typically put their trust in a sprawling, unaccountable government bureaucracy, but the intelligence and national security enterprise has become just that. There are now more than 5 million government employees and contractors holding U.S. security clearances. While the vast majority of these are undoubtedly hard-working and dedicated to our national security goals, can we be so naïve as to believe there isn’t another Robert Hansen or Aldrich Ames lurking among them? And this is not to mention a proliferation of garden-variety waste, fraud, and abuse that inevitably exists in any government endeavor, and is all but ensured in one that operates in near-total secrecy?

Yet even when Congress identifies wasteful and ineffective security programs, it can’t seem to summon the courage to shut them down. In 2010, at the request of Congress, the Government Accountability Office audited the Transportation Security Agency’s behavioral detection program, which purported to identify terrorists through subtle behavioral cues. GAO found the TSA implemented the program, at a cost of $200 million per year, without ever having validated the methodology it uses. Not surprisingly, despite sending tens of thousands of air travelers to secondary screening each year, the program has never detected a terrorist or other threat to aviation. The GAO recommended that Congress cut funding for the program, as it has each year in regular updates to the report, with no effect. At a hearing last year, Rep. Mark Sanford criticized the TSA program for spending “a billion dollars with no result.” An amendment to defund the program failed again.

Americans didn’t know how dysfunctional our intelligence agencies had become before September 11, 2001. But the repeated failures since amply demonstrate that simply expanding their power and inflating their budgets hasn’t made them more effective.

We shouldn’t have to wait for another massive failure before Congress starts a thorough examination of the entire intelligence enterprise; one designed to weed out wasteful and abusive programs and establish sustainable policies that resolve and reduce threats rather than aggravate them. Demanding efficiency and accountability doesn’t impose an unnecessary burden on our intelligence agencies; it is the only way to ensure they are properly focused and effective, and our policies sound. The current piecemeal, post-hoc oversight approach clearly isn’t working. These agencies aren’t going to reform themselves, and one more “how-they-failed” report won’t help.

Our Constitution gives Congress ample authority to act on matters of national security and foreign policy, and to investigate and regulate executive branch activities. But in the decades since World War II, as the intelligence community has swelled in power and scope, Congress has, with rare exceptions, steadily abdicated its responsibility to properly check this most secretive part of our government. There are many explanations for this forfeiture of power, from rising partisanship—where members of Congress increasingly see their role as supporting or opposing the president in power rather than defending the independent authority of their own branch of government—to simple fear that tinkering with national security policy would expose them to blame in the event of another intelligence failure.

Whatever the justification, congressional inaction in this area upsets the careful balance of powers the Framers considered “essential to the preservation of liberty.” The result is an open contempt for congressional oversight and public accountability by intelligence officials today. They regularly neglect to inform Congress of intelligence activities, delay responses to investigative committee inquiries, and even boldly lie without concern for being fired, much less prosecuted.

Senator Feinstein intended to expose CIA obstruction of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of its interrogation practices, but has instead revealed how weak her committee’s oversight has become. She alleges the CIA didn’t inform the full committee about the program for years after its implementation, then repeatedly provided false information about its efficacy. Only after the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogations in 2007 did committee staff finally begin reviewing CIA documents. Yet even after determining that the records showed the program was more brutal than the agency indicated, senators allowed the CIA dictate the terms of their access to the files.

After several years of what appears to have been a Herculean effort by congressional staff in the face of CIA obstruction, and the expenditure of an estimated $40 million, the Committee produced a 6,000 page report that the American public will likely never see. Congress agreed to release only the executive summary, but is still waiting for its declassification to be authorized. Issuing a sanitized summary of an investigative report more than a decade after a program’s implementation isn’t oversight, it’s merely critique.

And congressional supervision of the government’s post-9/11 surveillance practices has fared no better. No piece of legislation received as much public scrutiny and congressional attention as the USA Patriot Act, parts of which required reauthorization in 2005, 2009, and 2011. Yet it took an unauthorized leak of information about its implementation to alert many members of Congress to the government’s secret interpretation of its scope, which allowed the bulk collection of virtually all Americans’ telephone metadata, among other things. No less an authority than the bill’s author, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, confirmed that the government’s distorted interpretation far exceeded Congress’s intent when passing the statute.

While the administration likes to say that all three branches of government approved its secret interpretations of the law, it has become clear that intelligence officials have made false and misleading statements to both Congress and the courts regarding the scope and effectiveness of its programs. The Snowden leak proved false Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s flat denial that the government was collecting data on millions of Americans while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee months earlier. And NSA claims regarding the program’s effectiveness in stopping terrorist attacks, which seem to have been uncritically accepted in the closed confines of the Intelligence Committees and the FISA Court, were quickly debunked once exposed to public scrutiny. The government even misled the Supreme Court during arguments to dismiss a constitutional challenge to its surveillance authorities.

Clearly, Congress can’t perform its constitutional obligations without timely access to accurate information. Government officials who obstruct or mislead congressional inquiries, whether over allegations of torture or illegal surveillance, must be held accountable in order to protect the integrity of the legislative process.

It is crucial for Congress to become more assertive, as the intelligence agencies are increasing the stakes in these inter-branch disputes. The CIA’s request for a criminal investigation of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff conducting the review of its interrogation practices demonstrates remarkable hubris, particularly because the internal CIA report it claims staff obtained and handled illegally apparently contradicts official CIA reporting to Congress. The CIA’s effort to bury the internal review appears to be an admission that the agency was using classification and privilege claims to cover false statements to Congress.

Clapper has also issued new intelligence community directives that appears designed to ensure Congress and the American public will get even less information from the intelligence agencies in the future. ICD-119 prohibits intelligence community employees from having any unauthorized contact with the media, even discussions involving only unclassified intelligence matters. The directive uses an expansive definition of ‘media,’ moreover, to include anyone “engaged in the collection, production or dissemination to the public in any form related to topics of national security.” Obviously many advocacy organizations that routinely interact with Congress on national security issues could fit under this broad definition, if not the congressional committees themselves.

The directive is part of the intelligence community’s “insider threat” program, which was initiated in the aftermath of the Wikilea
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jul 24, 2014 12:31 pm

http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/12002 ... lower-news

Insider Threat Program' an Affront to Whistleblowers: Daily Whistleblower News
Michael Riley, July 24, 2014

Washington Post: Intelligence Security Initiatives Have Chilling Effect on Federal Whistleblowers, Critics Say

This article shows how the federal Insider Threat Program – a monitoring initiative quietly started by the Obama administration after significant whistleblower disclosures – is threatening to federal whistleblowers. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and a growing number of lawmakers and whistleblower advocates warn that the program's monitoring of government computers and employee behavior risks workers’ ability to report wrongdoing without retaliation.

Key Quote: In early April, Sen. Charles E. Grassley summoned FBI officials to his Capitol Hill office. He said he wanted them to explain how a program designed to uncover internal security threats would at the same time protect whistleblowers who wanted to report wrongdoing within the bureau.

The meeting with two FBI officials, including the chief of the bureau’s Insider Threat Program, ended almost as soon as it began. The officials said the FBI would protect whistleblowers by “registering” them. When Grassley’s staff members asked them to elaborate, the FBI officials declined to answer any more questions and headed for the door.

“We’re leaving,” said J. Christopher McDonough, an FBI agent assigned to the bureau’s congressional affairs office, said Senate staff members who attended the meeting.

The episode infuriated Grassley (Iowa), a leading advocate for whistleblowers in Congress and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Any effort to register whistleblowers, he said, would “clearly put a target on their backs.”



Grassley said the episode with the FBI illustrates how federal agencies are setting up internal security programs without giving careful consideration to whether they could dissuade whistleblowers from coming forward.

“The Insider Threat Program has the potential for taking the legs out from underneath all of the whistleblower protections we have,” Grassley said in a recent interview.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Jul 24, 2014 11:56 pm

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/do-the ... ts-private



Do the FBI's Drones Invade Your Privacy? Sorry, That's Private

July 24, 2014 // 12:55 PM EST

UPDATE, 7:50PM EST: When asked to clarify the wholesale redaction of the privacy impact assessment, the FBI cited its litigation with CREW as a block on responding. "Unfortunately this matter is pending litigation," wrote Christopher Allen of the FBI Office of Public Affairs, "so I will not be able to comment."

The FBI has been flying drones since 2005, according to a trickle of documents released over the last eight months. Agents called in a small surveillance drone on a hostage situation in Alabama in February 2013, and to monitor a dog-fighting scheme in August 2011.

But despite a mandatory process designed to mitigate privacy concerns, the question of how FBI drones may be impacting Americans' privacy rights remains unanswered.

Federal law requires the FBI to assess its own surveillance technologies for potential privacy and civil liberties snags. While these technology assessments are typically prepared for public consumption, the FBI has refused to release its privacy reviews on drones.

The E-Government Act of 2002 obliges federal agencies to conduct a privacy impact assessment (PIA) prior to deploying any information technology that collects personal information. Per Department of Justice guidelines, the PIA process ensures that privacy protections “are built into the system from the start—not after the fact,” in order to “promote trust between the public and the Department by increasing transparency of the Department’s systems and missions.”

In keeping with their fundamentally public function, privacy impact reports must be “clear, unambiguous, and understandable to the general public” under DOJ guidelines. The default is for agencies to complete a given privacy impact assessment with enough lead time for it to be evaluated, approved and posted online before any testing or piloting of the given technology.

Last July, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote a letter to the FBI expressing concern that privacy protections around surveillance drones "could be undercut by the Bureau's interpretation of what constitutes a 'reasonable expectation of privacy.'"

An audit of the DoJ's use of drones released in September determined the FBI had not addressed the danger to privacy posed by unmanned vehicles, and recommended implementing drone-specific guidelines to protect privacy rights. One of the report’s footnotes highlighted that the FBI’s Office of General Counsel was "conducting a privacy review" of its drone program as of June 2013, but any documents relating to this review have not been released.

An internal FBI slideshow released in December aimed to justify the constitutionality of the FBI's use of UAV domestically, but rests on legal precedent involving manned aircraft.

The Justice Department PIA template walks agencies through the necessary steps to justify data collection, account for potential privacy threats and mitigate such risks. This includes listing out all potential threats along with steps taken to hedge against abuses.

Per these guidelines, the FBI was required to conduct a privacy assessment prior to establishing its unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance program in 2005, or at least before conducting its first operational deployment in October 2006.

Responding to a hard-fought FOIA request and lawsuit from watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Bureau has appeared to have completed at least one review (and possibly two) of its drone surveillance program, but all documents have been redacted in full.

The FBI website has a dedicated page for privacy impact assessments. Since 2003, the agency has posted more than 30 assessments for such tools as a database of its agents’ firearms training, an application to detect fraudulent property flipping schemes and a university partnership to develop facial recognition technology. Nary a mention of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, though.

By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has completed two drone PIAs and posted them in full online: the first for Predators operated by Customs and Border Patrol, the second for a project to evaluate small unmanned vehicles for emergency responders.

The Predator assessment, completed in September 2013, identifies a handful of potential privacy liabilities for CBP drone operations, particularly the relative difficulty of detecting drones given their small relative size and ability to hover at length at high altitudes:

But the report also specifies the number of Predators flown by CBP, the specific regions and altitudes at which they fly and the particular sensors they carry. Sensor payloads include still and video cameras enabled for both daytime and infrared collection, plus a Wide Area Surveillance System (WASS) radar sensor for sweeping six kilometer swaths along the Mexican border.

Broad as they are, the DHS privacy assessments posted online allow for some measure of public vetting and accountability. Each PIA outlines granularity for collected data, as well as the procedures for sharing, processing and storing that data. The same basic privacy flags presumably apply to FBI drones, but the agency has so far refused to disclose basic PIA documents and the concerns that might be contained within them.

Justice Department agencies may withhold PIAs if publication would “reveal classified, sensitive, or otherwise protected information (e.g., potentially damaging to a national interest, law enforcement effort, or competitive business interest).” The FBI has claimed to both FOIA requesters and members of Congress that it is “not in a position to disclose publicly more detailed information concerning the Bureau’s specific use of UAVs,” and that releasing details regarding its drone inventory, policies or deployment procedures would jeopardize “the effectiveness of this capability in law enforcement and national security matters.”

If an agency chooses to withhold publication, the Justice Department guidelines require that the agency publish a separate justification for keeping PIA findings from the public. In response to the CREW document request, the FBI withheld the assessment in full as well as documents justifying the decision not to post drone privacy reviews online.

The FBI's withholding of documents follows a pattern of obscurity surrounding its drone surveillance operations: the FBI has redacted everything from basic invoice details to congressional correspondence already posted in full online. "Reckless use of drones by the FBI could threaten the constitutional right to privacy of every American, yet we have still not seen documents explaining FBI policies and how they intend to protect privacy rights," CREW wrote in a blog post.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:21 pm

http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/20 ... /13155481/



Missouri FBI agent faces misdemeanor charge
:21 a.m. CDT July 25, 2014

FULTON, Mo. A Fulton man who is an FBI agent will appear in court next week on a misdemeanor assault charge alleging that he put a teenager in a choke hold and caused the boy to temporarily lose consciousness.

Thirty-seven-year-old Scott A. Armstrong was charged with misdemeanor third-degree assault after the March 1 incident. He pleaded not guilty on June 24.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in Callaway County Court.

The Fulton Sun reports a probable cause statement says Armstrong admitted to placing his arm around the teen's neck and that the boy lost consciousness. The statement did not explain why Armstrong used the chokehold on the teenager.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:17 pm

see. link for full story or google title

http://assassinationofjfk.net/looking-a ... ent-angle/

Greg Burnham+
Looking at the Tippit Case from a Different Angle
A Theory

by Staffan H Westerberg and Pete Engwall

The killing of Dallas police officer JD Tippit is one of the undying questions in the JFK research community. To think one could solve the murder is perhaps a bit optimistic after all these years. Tippits death has always been surrounded with mystery and disinformation: Did a jealous husband kill him, or was it a random killing that happened by accident? JD Tippit as a narcotics dealer or a getaway driver for Oswald to the Red Bird Airport? The murder on 10th and Patton is not short of theories, but we think that the Dallas policeman had an important function that day – he was scheduled to die with the sole purpose of becoming the vehicle with which JFK’s killer was to be caught. As it were, before Tippits death the Dallas Police didn’t have any hard evidence to be able to explain to the American people how they were able to arrest Oswald for the murder of the President.

We believe the conspirators planned the details and the chain of events. Nothing happened by accident. Young intelligence officer Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, had secretly been chosen to be the patsy. It’s easy to see traces of how they used him and how they set him up to take the fall for both murders of John F. Kennedy and police officer JD Tippit. The Warren Commission’s final image of Oswald was that of a loner, a communist and arrogant radical and these characteristics had been skillfully crafted and planted together with the evidence to match the crime. Many astute researchers will say this was a plot created by hardcore professionals who had experience in the demise of various heads of state around the world.
J.D. Tippit's Car After His Shooting

J.D. Tippit’s Car After His Shooting
Fake Reality

The events that took place before the actual killing of JFK were likely very carefully planned and executed. However, there must also have been an escalation of intensity as soon as JFK was shot and until they arrested the patsy – the time between 12:30pm and 1:51pm. After the shots in Dealey Plaza, many things had to fall into place and properly work to cover up the crime. A new reality, a fake reality, had to be created, one that was good enough to fool all the observers and a shocked nation. Just think about it, they had killed the President but not yet completely gotten away with it.
“Operation Control Oswald”

First of all, they had to be able to control Lee Harvey Oswald, and they had to control him the entire time and then at the exact moment, apprehend him. With Dallas Police under their control, the men behind the coup could always fix the time on events to fit the final verdict. For instance, if Tippit was killed at 1:04 in reality, they could easily change it to 1:16 without any real opposition. But Oswald running around the streets and perhaps being seen by a bus full of senior citizens three miles away could be very hazardous to the chain of events, not to mention the fact that he could get into a random accident or disappears altogether. For those reasons alone, they had to control him every step of the way.

So when Deputy Sheriff Roger Dean Craig told the Warren Commission he saw Oswald get into a Nash Rambler station wagon on Elm Street at 12:40-45 outside the Book Depository, that’s when the moment of final control started. From then on they made sure they knew Oswald’s exact position and even took him to the place of his arrest. Consequently Oswald couldn’t be allowed to remain in the Book Depository. The murder of JFK lacked hard evidence against him; it didn’t materialized until the following Monday. Because of this we will argue that Officer Craig most certainly saw Oswald leave in the Rambler.
Patsy No 2

Meanwhile, since they had to create the image of a fleeing killer, they set up police officer JD Tippit to be ambushed in Oswald’s neighborhood. Right after Kennedy was killed, Tippit drove to the Oak Cliff area, which was not his regular patrol area. That means Tippit was directed to go to an area closely connected to Lee Harvey Oswald, where he would soon meet his death. The President was killed outside of Oswald’s work place and 30 minutes later a police officer killed near his home, this would pave the way to an open and shut case – one that would of course never go to trial.

JD Tippit didn’t know what was coming. He had been ordered to be on the lookout for Oswald. Later his wife, Marie Tippit, would learn this from a fellow policeman, according to author Joseph McBride in the book “Into the Nightmare”. This would actually mean that Tippit looked for Oswald before the Dallas Police arrested him and officially knew who Oswald was. Most likely Oswald wasn’t the only patsy that day. JD Tippit was sacrificed and his wife was financially well taken care of.
Which Oswald?

Oswald got out of the Nash Rambler at the Texas Theatre; a building owned by Howard Hughes, who had close ties to the CIA – and even used Robert Maheu, a major CIA operator as his chief of security. Oswald walked into the foyer around 1:00-07pm and bought a ticket, according to ticket collector Warren ”Butch” Burroughs.

Wait a minute, what about Oswald going home and being seen by his landlady Mrs. Earlene Roberts at approximately 1:00-04pm? Both these can’t be right since it was a mile apart between Oswald’s rented room and the theatre.

We are convinced that Butch Burroughs kept time well since the movie “War is Hell” started at 1:20, and keeping track of time was part of his job. Therefore we don’t think Mrs. Roberts saw the real Oswald. After reading the Warren Commission testimony of Earlene Roberts, we are even more certain of this as a plausible scenario. It is abundantly clear that she was heavily exposed to leading questions when confronted by people from the Secret Service and the FBI. The whole interrogation was about “Oswald’s revolver and the fact he changed into a jacket with a zipper”. Then in June of 1964 Joe Ball of the Warren Commission did much of the same thing and wouldn’t let go of the jacket and revolver that she had told them over and over again she never saw. Mrs. Roberts had not either seen a holster in Oswald’s room. Still Ball kept pounding on it.

Mr. Ball: Then, when you saw him, did you see any part of his belt?
Mrs. Roberts: No.
Mr. Ball: There is some suspicion that when he left there he might have had a pistol or a revolver in his belt; did you see anything like that?
Mrs. Roberts: No, I sure didn’t.

However, Mrs. Roberts did say Oswald didn’t speak to her when he came home that day. (Maybe that was due to the simple fact that the imposter knew he did not sound like Lee.) Oswald paid the rent on time, sure, but he hardly ever said a word. According to Mrs. Roberts’s testimony, Oswald was not a nice person, more of a loner who used the false name of OH Lee.

Oswald getting home to his rented room, passing Mrs. Roberts, is a scene almost carved in stone. There are not many – if any – researchers who question it.

We do, because we think this could be a staged scene with an imposter acting the part of Oswald – a second Oswald. All the imposter had to do was to make a fast entry, (just like Mrs. Roberts remembered it), pass behind her back while she was occupied with watching the news about the shots in Dealey Plaza, (just like Mrs. Roberts remembered it), then either stand silent outside Oswald’s door for a minute, or go in with a key and then after 30 seconds to 4 minutes return out and pass by Mrs. Roberts back, (just like she remembered it) and proceed out to the bus stop, (just like Mrs. Roberts remembered it). The jacket could have been under the imposter’s shirt while he went in. Hours later the two plain-clothes men from Will Fritz office could have planted the holster in Oswald’s room, if the second Oswald couldn’t do it.

We suspect that many researchers can have a problem with this scene. But just think of how easy it would be to fool an old lady who was nearly blind, worked up over the shocking news from Dealey Plaza and preoccupied with a TV screen that gave her constant trouble. For the conspirators to get a key to Lee’s room cannot have been a difficult task.

No, the planners had way too much that depended on Lee being perceived to have picked up a gun and a jacket in his room. Picking up the jacket made it possible to sneak out with the gun, tossing the jacket made it clear that the murderer wanted to change appearance in order to not be recognized. This was in reality not a hard scene for the imposter to pull off: All he had to do was to make sure he didn’t show his face clearly to Mrs. Roberts. Considering her poor eyesight, with only one functioning eye, together with the chocking news on TV that consumed her attention; it is very possible she didn’t get a good look at him. Had he been recognized as someone else than Oswald, we are sure that would never have been known to the public. Mrs. Roberts never signed her testimony, so we don’t really know whether her statement was subject to alteration or not.
Why Oswald Didn’t Go Home

So what was needed for this scene, why was this important? Well, it gave the impression of a fleeing Oswald who was in a hurry to arm himself and pick up a jacket to hide the gun –
exactly what you would expect from a man who just committed murder and was about to kill anybody who got in his way. An innocent man had no need to change clothes and get a weapon. If Oswald was seen at his rented room and Mrs. Roberts was right, then that would definitely incriminate him and put him close to the spot where Tippit was killed, and could thus be accused. Tippit was shot with a revolver or a pistol. He was not killed by rifle. In order to become Tippits murderer Oswald therefore had to have a revolver or a pistol. The Dallas Police later found a jacket tossed between the murder scene and the Texas Theatre. So they created five things that pointed to Lee Harvey Oswald as the killer:

Tippit was shot dead in Lee Harvey Oswald’s neighborhood.
Mrs. Roberts confirmed that Oswald was in the area at the critical time.
Oswald picked up a revolver that could have been used to kill Tippit.
Oswald changed clothes – got a jacket with a zipper that the police later found tossed along the way to the Texas Theatre.
Oswald was already a killer since he had killed the President.

But today we know all evidence shows Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. Thus all this had to be a deception, a creation of the plotters. About the jacket that the Dallas Police found: It was a white cotton jacket. No one had ever seen Oswald in a white cotton jacket. About the revolver: Researcher John Armstrong has proven that Lee Harvey Oswald did not own the revolver in question.
Staged Killing

Officer JD Tippit had to die in order to create a false logical chain of events that eventually would lead to the arrest of Oswald in the theatre. Tippit was shot dead execution style with four shots. It happened on 10th Street and Patton Avenue around 1:04-06pm, according to reliable witnesses and Deputy Roger Craig who looked at his watch when he heard over the police radio of what had happened. At the time Craig was in the Book Depository in search for a weapon.

Many witnesses claimed they saw someone in the area who looked like Oswald. But all those witnesses had in some way ties to Jack Ruby, according to Joseph McBride. McBride felt there were two sets of witnesses since he also points out that several other witnesses said the killer didn’t look like Oswald at all – and that there actually were two shooters.

If there were two shooters, then it’s hard to imagine it could have been anything but a planned contract killing. A planned hit strongly indicates that Tippit was meant to be sacrificed. Jim Marrs is in on the same line of thinking:

“Whatever he (Tippit) was told, it appears his real role was to be killed to point suspicion at Oswald and make him a target as a ‘cop killer’.”

Joseph McBride reveals another stunning fact about the witnesses:

“Dallas oil and gas attorney Dick Loomis had his office in the same building as Lamar Hunt. Within ninety days of the assassination, Loomis bought the five houses on East 10th Street, the same side of the street where Tippit was shot, and immediately east of the driveway where the shooting occurred. This would have had the effect of removing possible witnesses from the neighborhood. It must have taken some doing to get everybody to agree to sell within such a short time. Loomis had the homes razed, and built an apartment complex in their space.”

Was this purchasing a vital part of the overall plot? One can’t help but wonder if it was. Buying up real estate could mean one would never be able to recreate the physical murder scene in search for the truth. Not to mention the legal effect it could have on attempts to re- open the murder case. Maybe this form of action-strategy is similar to the one of taking out

witnesses? The same MO can be seen in all the assassinations of political leaders in the 1960s: In Dealey Plaza they didn’t buy the entire area, but they moved lampposts and traffic signs to change the landmarks. In Memphis they turned the Lorraine Motel into a Civil Rights Museum and sold off the estate across the street where the sniper’s firing position most likely was. In Los Angeles they tore the entire Ambassador Hotel to the ground and built a school for children with special needs, named after Robert F. Kennedy. It definitely looks suspicious and part of a thought out plan.
“Operation Second Oswald”

If they were going to create a patsy – as we all believe they did – then they couldn’t rely on Oswald’s actions to promptly play the part; they must have had an imposter to follow a script. That’s the only way to be sure they could blame Oswald for the crime. So, if the imposter stepped outside Oswald’s rented room at 1:01-04 and Oswald walked into the theatre at 1:00- 07, while Tippit was killed at 1:04-06, there are ample (circumstantial) evidence of three simultaneous scenes a mile apart.

Let’s follow the imposter. His identity is not really important, but besides suggested imposters such as Larry Crafard, Michael Paine, Thomas Masens and others, there was one who looked surprisingly much like Lee Harvey Oswald and who went by the name of Don Norton.

(By the way: We are not sure about Armstrong’s idea of one Harvey and one Lee who were created by the CIA in the early 1950s, only to grow up looking very much the same thru the years. How CIA would know how to pick two boys who they knew would grow up to look the same thru the years is beyond our comprehension. We simply think that evidence points to a naval intelligence operation that perhaps was created in conjunction with CIAs defector program in the late 1950s.)

When researcher John Judge met Don Norton, he asked what he did on the 22nd of November 1963. Norton mysteriously said he wasn’t going to talk about that. Instead he was satisfied with sponsoring JFK researcher Mae Brussells radio program. Norton called it his “conscious money”.

We don’t know if Don Norton was the guy who went into Oswald’s rooming house, or if he was the person Bernard Haire and Butch Burroughs saw being arrested on the balcony and brought out in the back of the theatre shortly after Oswald was taken into custody? Whoever it was, we think it was the same man who a little later was spotted by auto mechanic TF White outside of Mack Pate ́s garage at a time when the real Oswald was interrogated. We do think the imposter was one and the same thru all these events; also the same person that later was seen by Sergeant Robert G Vinson on a military flight out of Dallas. Given the fact that Norton easily could be mistaken for Oswald, and considering the answer he gave John Judge, it is entirely possible that Norton was in Dallas that day. And if he was there, it sounds like he was used and felt bad about it.

So, while Oswald was under control and driven to the theatre, we believe the imposter did the following:

He went to 1026 North Beckley Avenue around 1:00pm and was seen by Mrs. Roberts, maybe he went there by bus and cab, maybe in a red Ford Falcon.
He then walked to the area near the Tippit scene, only to move in the direction of Jefferson Boulevard, Hardy’s Shoestore and the Texas Theatre.
He threw away the jacket on the way to the theatre.
He hid from the police in the shoe store and was noticed by Johnny Brewer, who closed the store and followed him. (We think Brewer could be an asset, since he, among other things, pointed out Oswald – the wrong man – to the police.)
The imposter then snuck into the theatre at 1:45pm without paying. (The real Oswald had already been there for 40 minutes.)
He then moved up to the balcony and kept a low profile.
After the commotion downstairs when Oswald was arrested, the imposter was brought out in the back of the theatre and was consequently seen by storeowner Bernard Haire, who said the man never wore a jacket.
Later, TF White saw the same man. (The imposter sat in a red Ford Falcon that had a license plate number which could be traced to a Carl Mather, a Collins Radio employee, who had close ties to – none other than JD Tippit.)
The red Ford brought him then to the Trinity River and the waiting military aircraft where Sergeant Vinson noticed him.

We could be wrong of course; these actions could have been the result of several imposters. Either way we can be sure it wasn’t the doings of an innocent man. Another indication of Oswald’s innocence was the alleged struggle with the revolver in the theatre. Did it really happened the way they said?
Oswald’s Arrest

There was something very peculiar going on when a ticket cashier 3 miles away from the crime scene could call the police at a moment when the phone lines to the Dallas Police must have been overloaded, only to have them send between 20-30 cops including the second assistant D.A. Bill Alexander to the movie theatre because a suspicious person walked in without paying for a ticket. Especially when the police modus operandi was totally different as they arrested three armed men in the railroad yard close to Elm Street at approximately the same time. That arrest was handled by two police officers that behaved extremely casual.

The day after, Dallas Chief of Police, Jesse Curry, described to reporters that several police officers had closed in on Oswald inside the theatre. At that moment Oswald had allegedly said: “This is it” or “Well, it’s all over now” and then pulled a revolver from his belt. We assume Chief Curry with this wanted to indicate that Oswald meant to kill one or more approaching officer. However, Officer Nick McDonald told a slightly different story: Oswald first hit McDonald with a right fist over the head. When McDonald then hit back, Oswald pulled a revolver from his pants, aiming to kill. As Oswald was about to fire, McDonald grabbed the gun over the cylinder and the hammer, with the part of his hand in the firing mechanism. As they fell into the seats Oswald pulled the trigger but the firing pin got stuck on McDonald’s hand – thus preventing a shot to be fired.

Seconds later four policemen apprehended Oswald, at which time he shouted out loud:

“I’m not resisting arrest! I’m not resisting arrest!”

The policemen had Oswald locked up in a firm grip. He had a black eye. Hours later when a reporter asked him about his injury Oswald looked sincerely upset: “A policeman hit me!” He definitely didn’t act like someone who had started the altercation.

What kind of logic is this? First consider committing suicide by going for “OK Corral” in the theatre. Then seconds later, shout out something that would prevent the police from killing him on the spot. To come up with this kind of solution, it had to have been on his mind before anyone moved in on him. Then complain about getting hit in the eye when he allegedly threw the first punch?

This indicates that Oswald never threw the first punch – or any punch at all. One could even question if he had a revolver in his hand. There is no way to really know if he had a gun or not. But since we believe he was innocent of both killings, why would he have a gun, a revolver John Armstrong have proven he never owned or got the way they say he got it? This entire episode had to be full of lies. And those types of lies could also be detected in Chief Jesse Curry’s poor acting the day after the murders.
Lee Harvey Oswald's Arrest

Lee Harvey Oswald’s Arrest
Weak Explanations

On Saturday morning on the 23rd of November Dallas Police Chief invited a group of reporters to a quick press conference in the hallway of the Court building. Here it became obvious that Jesse Curry lied thru his teeth. One reporter tried to get answers as to what lead the police to arrest Oswald. This reporter wanted to know what information the police had. It was the most important question any reporter could ever ask. The answer Curry gave was awfully thin; obviously the Chief didn’t know what to say, because there was no official information that would sound sufficiently logical. For a brief moment Curry tried to answer the question. In the middle of his stumbling he was saved by another reporter, Bob Clarke of the ABC, who cut in and asked a seemingly harmless question.

Reporter: Chief Curry, could you detail for us what lead you to Oswald?
Curry: Not exactly, except uh… in the building we… when we went to the building why he was observed in the building at the time, but the manager told us that he worked there… And the officer passed him on up then because the manager said he is an employee.
Reporter: Was that before the shooting or after the shooting?
Curry: After the shooting.

As we all know there were a lot of people that worked in the Book Depository and the description going out over the Dallas police radio was a general description and didn’t necessarily match Oswald’s description: “White slender male, dark hair, in his 30s, weight 165 lbs, height 5’10”, was of course a description that would fit a lot of people.

Later, they tried to say Oswald was missing from an employee head count held around 1:00pm. If this head count was ever held, there were many people missing from it; remember the building was sealed off at the same time. The next head count was held at 2:00pm, according to a reporter colleague of Jim Marrs. At that time the only one missing was Lee Harvey Oswald. That is of course a stupid argument since Oswald was arrested nine minutes prior to the count.

The reporter that asked the important question was not satisfied and asked again with a little different angle. Jesse Curry then used the killing of Tippit as the reason they caught on to Oswald. The problem is the witnesses that identified Oswald in the lineups, after they got Oswald into custody, surely couldn’t have told the police about Oswald before they arrested him. It is very much like the case of the buggy getting home before the horse.

Reporter: After this happened, what was done in terms of getting the trail back to Oswald?
Curry: The next thing we knew is when he turned up as a suspect in the murder of a police officer (JD Tippit). And then the connection was made between the two. Reporter: Chief, did anyone see him shoot the police officer?
Curry: Yes.
Reporter: Who was that?
Curry: I don’t know the name. I think there were three witnesses… I understand.

If Oswald was a suspect in the Tippit killing, that wasn’t something the Dallas Police could use in the pursuit of the Presidents killer, as we mentioned. What is essential is what information
they had after 12:30pm and before 1:51pm. So, this whole line of thinking is pure disinformation. It simply has to be. It all comes down to the ticket cashier Julia Postal’s phone call to the Dallas Police. Shoe salesman Johnny Brewer told her to call the police since the mysterious man who didn’t pay for a ticket did in fact fit the description. A big problem with that is that Oswald still didn’t fit any description. Another is that it wasn’t Oswald who entered the theatre at 1:45pm without paying, it was the “Oswald look-alike” that was arrested in the balcony after the real Oswald had been brought out to the police car in front of the theatre.

Reporter: What lead you to the theatre?
Curry: I understand it was the ticket taker from the theatre that called about the suspicious action of this person.

The reporter who asked the important question was not satisfied; he still couldn’t understand how they got to Oswald, no matter what Curry tried to explain. In order to be able to lie like Curry obviously did, he had to know the truth. Otherwise he couldn’t have given so many wrong answers, unless he knew the correct ones.

Reporter: Chief, can you tell us in summary what directly links Oswald to the killing of the President?
Curry: Well, the fact that he was on the floor where the shots were fired from immediately before the shots were fired, the fact that he was seeing carrying a package to the building, the fact that…
Reporter: Who could place him there in the building?
Curry: My officer could place him there at the time of the shooting.
Reporter: The officer (Marion Baker) who was told by the manager that he worked there?
Curry: Yes…

No one placed Oswald on the sixth floor. We know that today. And only Wesley Frazier and his sister claimed they saw Oswald carrying a package of “curtain rods” to work that morning. No, that is not quite right, refrigerator repairman Ralph Leon Yates drove a “hitch hiker” who looked like Oswald to the School Book Depository two days earlier with a package of “curtain rods”. Since Oswald only had one window in his room on Beckley it is perhaps one too many curtain rods for the story to be believed. Finally, Officer Baker had no clue if Oswald had shot anyone or not, how could he? If Chief Curry didn’t present a bunch of lies to the reporters, then he would have acted otherwise. For instance, an honest person who didn’t know the answer to a question, would likely say so and perhaps check it out and get back to the reporter with an answer. This never happened with Curry.
“Operation Killing Tippit”

If you think the killing of JD Tippit was not planned, it sure had a big pay off, since it was the crime that – officially – lead the police to arrest Oswald. Curry used the Tippit killing as the reason to get to Oswald, even if he – not even the next day – could tell the press what information had led to the arrest. But by then he must have known that Oswald missing from the 2:00pm head count could not be the reason to arrest him earlier than 2:00pm. The only way Curry would keep using that was if it was decided as the official reason why they picked him up. Clearly they messed up in the timing.

Today we know Lee Harvey Oswald most likely was a completely innocent man. There is just too much evidence that exonerates him. The nitrate test, the FBI fingerprint test, the arrest report, the HSCA firearms tests, John Armstrong’s research on the revolver and the Mannlicher Carcano – it all show someone fabricated evidence against him. The evidence that was meant to finger Oswald actually points back to the conspirators. Fact is – a President killed outside of Oswald’s work place and then a police officer killed close to his home, are two circumstances that are very logical if Oswald was guilty, especially if they are timed so that the picture of an escapee emerges. But if he was innocent, those two murders become absurd in a logical sense.

Two shooters is the key to the murder of JD Tippit, we believe. If Aquila Clemons and several other witnesses are right in that they saw two culprits near Tippit, that would be the smoking gun that reveals “they” had already decided long before that Tippit was not meant to live thru the day.
So, Who Killed Tippit?

There has been talk about fellow officers Harry Olsen or Roscoe White, while other information suggests Jack Ruby and a rogue agent by the name of Gary Marlowe. The sad answer is nobody knows. How they guided him into an ambush on 10th Street could possibly be thru Collins Radio, perhaps controlled from a moving vehicle with communication onboard. Or maybe it was the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment who used its radio central in the Dallas Civil Defense Emergency Operation Center, situated in the basement under Science Place Planetarium Building in Fair Park. The leader of the 488th was Jack Crichton, a CIA associate with George Bush, who both recruited for Operation 40 – the unit first designed to assassinate Fidel Castro. We know there were many men from Operation 40 present in Dealey Plaza that day. Crichton’s 488th numbered a total of 100 men, 50 of them worked for the Dallas Police Department. On the other hand have we seen the shadow of Collins Radio when a Dallas reporter with the local FBI put a trace on the license plate number of the red Ford Falcon and found out its owner was a Collins Radio employee who was a friend of JD Tippit. It was of course Collins Radio who directed the radio communication from the White House to Air Force One going back to Washington and Bethesda Naval Hospital with the body of JFK.
Who Knows How the Murder was Organized

Most researchers are convinced Tippit was on a mission that day. It started minutes after Kennedy was killed; at 12.40pm Tippit acted with a sudden frenzy and drove fast to the local Gloco gas station in Oak Cliff. There he was intensely observing traffic coming from downtown Dallas via Houston Street. Ten minutes later he drove south on Lancaster Avenue. Soon he stopped off at a record store to borrow a phone. The employees at the store thought he didn’t get thru, that nobody answered Tippits call. After 1:00pm Tippit pulled over a James Andrews, only to take a quick look inside of Andrews car and then get back into the patrol car and continue west on West 10th Street. At 1:03pm the Dallas police radio operator tried to get in touch with Tippit, who didn’t answer.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Jul 28, 2014 7:57 pm

Can you name the former FBI agents who have worked for Motorola
since lretiring from the FBI?

nah, didn't think so....
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/07/28/ ... -sole.html

see link for full story
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/07/28/ ... -sole.html

Protest delays FBI’s huge sole-source deal with Motorola

By Greg Gordon

McClatchy Washington BureauJuly 28, 2014 Updated 4 hours ago
US NEWS MOTOROLA-EASTBAY 1 MCT

Some of the different radio systems available to public safety agencies on November 30, 2013. At left is the Motorola APX 6000

WASHINGTON — A protest by a small two-way radio manufacturer has stalled an FBI plan to hand a sole-source contract worth up to $500 million to emergency communications giant Motorola Solutions Inc., mainly to upgrade the bureau’s 30-year-old network.

FBI contracting officials contend that proprietary features embedded in their existing Motorola network preclude its interaction with non-Motorola products.

Citing a 15-year-old estimate that replacing the entire system from another vendor’s product would cost $1.2 billion, they said in a formal notice this month that they can save $300 million in equipment by continuing an exclusive relationship with Motorola.

The bureau circulated the proposal two weeks ago, just as three senior House Democrats asked the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog to investigate whether Motorola’s contracting tactics have led state and local governments to squander millions of taxpayer dollars on its pricey equipment.

RELM Wireless Corp., a Florida-based radio manufacturer with $30 million in annual revenues, promptly challenged the FBI proposal on grounds that it “unjustly bars competition” for the sale of radios.

The firm sells walkie-talkies with the same functions specified by the FBI for about $1,700, compared with Motorola’s average price of $4,200, said Ken Klyberg, RELM’s vice president for sales.

He said in a telephone interview that RELM is preparing to file a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office.
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Re: FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Jul 28, 2014 8:16 pm

see link for full coverup


when you are the law enforcement agency investigating the crime you just committed


http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/na ... bing_video


FBI defends search for Oklahoma City bombing videos
Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue holds a photograph of his holds a photograph of his dead brother showing his bruises and injuries during an interview Wednesday, July 16, 2014, in Salt Lake City.
Monday, July 28, 2014


SALT LAKE CITY — The FBI thoroughly searched its archives and found no evidence that more videos of the Oklahoma City bombing exist, agency employees told a judge Monday in a trial that has rekindled questions about whether any others were involved in the 1995 attack.

Additional searches for videos that Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes are being withheld would be burdensome and fruitless, FBI attorney Kathryn Wyer argued during the first day of a bench trial.

Trentadue says the agency is refusing to release videos that show a second person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people. The government says McVeigh was alone.

The 30 video recordings the FBI has released don't show the explosion or McVeigh's arrival in a rental truck.

"The plaintiff has refused to accept that the 30 tapes he got are the only tapes," Wyer said.

The FBI already has provided videos and paper documents that correspond with Trentadue's Freedom of Information Act request, she said.

But unsatisfied by the FBI's previous explanations and citing the public importance of the tapes, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has ordered the agency to explain why it can't find videos that are mentioned in evidence logs.

Linda Vernon, a longtime FBI employee who became the point person for the collection of evidence after the bombing, said she is "completely confident" the agency has found every video of the bombing that exists.

The trial continues Tuesday and will run at least through Wednesday before the judge makes a ruling. He could wait until a later date to decide.

Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect explains why his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to Oklahoma several months after the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell. Kenneth Trentadue bore a striking resemblance to a police sketch based on witness descriptions of the enigmatic suspect "John Doe No. 2," who was never identified.

Trentadue is acting as his own attorney and tried to show that the FBI has not adequately followed up on information that could lead to the discovery of other videos.

He asked Monica Mitchell of the FBI about why the agency had not done more to search for a tape mentioned in a Secret Service log. It describes security video footage of suspects — in plural — exiting the truck three minutes before the bomb went off.

"Didn't it come to your mind that that tape may exist?" Trentadue asked.

Mitchell said she didn't know the authenticity of the Secret Service document and that Vernon told her she didn't know of the existence of such a tape.

Trentadue asked if Mitchell had asked FBI headquarters about the tape, citing documents that show it had one tape and 300 pages of documents. She acknowledged she had not asked headquarters about those items as part of the FOIA request.

A Secret Service agent testified in 2004 that the log does exist, but its information was pulled from reports that were never verified, said Stacy A. Bauerschmidt, who was then the assistant to the special agent in charge of the FBI's intelligence division.

Several investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated Press in 2004 they had never seen video like that described in the Secret Service log.

Mitchell and Vernon described how employees searched automated systems and by hand. Vernon said she spent 85 hours searching three computer databases created to track all the evidence.

Trentadue wasn't the only one asking tough questions of FBI witnesses. The judge at one point asked Mitchell why the FBI never responded to a letter from Trentadue asking about a video that seemed to be incomplete.

"You basically did nothing?" Waddoups asked.

"We did nothing because we were confident in our search and what we located," Mitchell said.

Later, he questioned why Vernon neglected to send several documents to Trentadue that mentioned videos, despite her previous claim that she erred on the side of inclusivity if she wasn't sure whether something fell under his request.

Trentadue's 44-year-old brother, who was a convicted bank robber and construction worker, was brought to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City after being picked up for probation violations while coming back to the U.S. at the Mexican border, Jesse Trentadue said.

Kenneth Trentadue's death was officially labeled a suicide. But his body had 41 wounds and bruises that his brother believes were the result of a beating. In 2008, a federal judge awarded the family $1.1 million for extreme emotional dis
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