Suppression of Dissent in the U.S.- A Snitch Emerges

[American Dream]

http://www.defenestrator.org/defbeta/byond_bullets

Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States

Review by James Generic

The history of the United States is filled with stories of government repression of dissenters. While we know about the violent means of suppressing dissent, the more subtle means are harder to get a grasp on. In “Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States”, author Jules Boykoff lays out his theory on how dissent is suppressed and backs it up with historical and current examples, mostly from 20th century United States history. In many places in the world—and even here in the US—the crushing of dissent by the state is the pure violence we imagine, but overall, in “rich” countries like the US, the suppression of dissent requires a lot more cooperation from the larger population and the media. There are no tanks rolling through neighborhoods enforcing subjugation in most places in the US, but the near universal media complicity and an omni-present police force, coupled with all sorts of extra-legal rules targeting dissidents do the job.

How does suppression work? Boykoff describes the methods and gives examples. He starts with the obvious one: Direct Violence, most often used against people of color in groups like the Black Panthers, AIM, the Young Lords, and others. This involves direct assassinations and attacks, like the killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago by the Chicago police or the attack by FBI agents at Pine Ridge that Leonard Peltier was framed for. The next method he examines is Public Hearings and Prosecutions, like those used against dissidents in the 1950s to frame any radicals as “Communists.” These hearings mainly targeted labor activists who had just initiated a huge strike involving 2 million people in 1946 and Hollywood intellectuals and workers involved in the film industry. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a crusade against anyone who dared speak out against the Cold War or capitalism, framing the hearings so that only friendly witnesses were allowed to speak and dissident witnesses were routinely cut off. These hearings were a way to whip up support for the Cold War and squelch the rising labor movement by blaming it on the tiny Communist Party USA. Part of the same routine is to deny employment, or blacklist dissidents, as occurred when Angela Davis was fired from UCLA in 1970 in response to the demand of Governor Ronald Reagan. Arresting dissidents on trumped up or rarely enforced charges also saps the energy of activists. They are put on the defensive in the courtroom where resolution can take years. For example: the mass arrests of global justice demonstrators outside of the World Bank meetings in September 2002 tied hundreds of people to the courts for years, a tactic that intimidates people from expressing their opinion and puts a black mark on their criminal record.

Surveillance and Break-ins rank high in the bag of dirty tricks to suppress dissent, especially during the FBI-run COINTELPRO program which operated until the mid 1970s to smash the “New Left” . Martin Luther King and the Southern Poverty Leadership Conference were targeted as Communist-groups for neutralization to prevent the rise of “a black messiah”. From there, they turned on any Communists (active or not members) in close company with King, taped evidence of King’s affairs, and sent threatening letters demanding that King commit suicide. The FBI broke into Civil Rights organization offices many times to plant warrentless wiretaps. In general, Civil Rights leaders always knew that the FBI, with its “red” obsessed director Edgar Hoover, was watching them closely.

Actually infiltrating groups with Agent Provocateurs and trying to steer their direction, placing informants in groups, and trying to make people think that leaders of groups are actually FBI agents, a process known as “Badjacketing”, stand out as more direct ways that the FBI used and uses to suppress dissent. Douglas Durham infiltrated the American Indian Movement (AIM), and steered it towards aggressive violence, opening fighting with other left-wing groups. Within two years, Durham’s actions had fragmented AIM as a group. In the case of Anna Mae Aquash, Boycoff shows, the loss of trust by her AIM group because of FBI badjacketing directly led to her suicide. Even further, “Black Propaganda”, or false hostile mail sent by the FBI in the name of one group to another with the intent to raise conflict between the two groups, led the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves (a black nationalist cultural organization) to actually start attacking each other, leading to the deaths of several members in both groups. The FBI also mailed a fake cartoon to a mostly Black political group in DC supposedly from a mostly white group, telling them to “suck my banana, you monkeys.”

The final piece of suppression of dissent is the way the media, closely tied with corporations and the state, marginalizes and minimizes dissident movements. Most recently, protesters in 1999 against the World Trade Organization and subsequent anti-corporate globalization found that their views became news in a way that didn’t focus on the issues (as Boykoff shows in a study of major newspapers and television news). Instead, stories reported that organizers only got a few hundred people (even in cases where the number was much higher), that freaks and weirdos showed up to protests, that the message wasn’t clear, and that protesters practiced uninformed violence and often didn’t know anything about the issues (as portrayed by the media, anyway). Boykoff moves into examples of suppression of dissent in recent years, such as the “Green Scare” in which anti-terrorism laws are used against militant environmental dissidents, even to the point of having an FBI infiltrator (“Anna”) lead a group to almost bombing a cell phone tower and then giving one of the participants, Eric McDavid, a draconian prison sentence of 20 years for a crime that never happened.

Anyone interested in being informed instead of paranoid should pick up this book, because this could happen to anyone who speaks out against the state and capitalism.

***
http://www.defenestrator.org/defbeta/br ... rby_snitch

A Snitch Emerges
01/18/2009


An Austin-based activist named Brandon Darby has revealed he worked as an FBI informant in the eighteen months leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby has admitted to wearing recording devices at planning meetings and wearing a transmitter embedded in his belt during the convention. He is expected to testify on behalf of the government later this month in the trial of two Texas activists who were arrested at the RNC on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails. Darby had recruited them and pushed them towards building the fi rebombs. Darby had been wearing a wire for years and had been known as a disruptive element in countless different radical projects including Common Ground relief effort in New Orleans post Katrina.

Darby is just one of many deep surveillance efforts targetting radical social justice organizers lately. Included in the discovery for the RNC 8 cases were photos taken of defendents in Philly during their RNC tour. It includes Philly activists who they met and some of our houses.

Check out http:// brandondarby.com for the lowdown

[StarmanSkye]

What a perfectly fetid, cleverly unaware, obliquely-antiselfconscious turd this no-class lumpkin Darby is. An excellant example of the kind of souless sellout the rightwing policy-enforcers depend on to quash principled expression, challenge and resistance by citizens who take the duty of sociopolitical obligation seriously. It never seems to occur to agent provocateurs that their 'targets' are usually in the vanguard of movements, the very motivated and principled championing of democracy and constitutional rights, that their rat-fuck bosses are by law and honor required to protect, serve and defend.


I would probably never get through or even make much headway in 'Beyond Bullets' because the history would fill me with anguish -- tho certain to be incredibly inspiring.

( :

[American Dream]

http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Co ... id%3A49882

JANUARY 26, 2009
Brandon Darby- FBI Informant & Common Ground co-founder
A cofounder of the Katrina relief organization Common Ground is revealed as an FBI informant, leaving members angry — and wary.

BY DAVID WINKLER-SCHMIT


Brandon Darby, who helped found Common Ground with Malik Rahim and Scott Crow, confirms he is an FBI informant. This photo was taken in 2006.


Brandon Darby is proud of his work in New Orleans. As one of the cofounders of the organization Common Ground, formed in the days after Katrina and the levee failures, he and the group's volunteers were among the first to distribute water, food and essential supplies. In the months after the storm, Darby, along with hundreds of Common Ground organizers and volunteers, established health clinics in the city, provided legal services and gutted homes.

  And, at some point, Brandon Darby — once a self-proclaimed anarchist who advocated for overthrow of the U.S. government — became an informant for the FBI.

  That much is public record. But when Darby became an informant — and whether he was keeping tabs on Common Ground for the federal government — is still a mystery.

When Malik Rahim found out Brandon Darby was an FBI informant, "It broke my heart," he says. Rahim, a New Orleans community organizer, former Black Panther and recent Green Party candidate for the U.S. Congress, formed Common Ground with Darby and Scott Crow, activists from Austin, Texas, on Sept. 5, 2005, less than a week after the levee failures. Headquartered in Rahim's house in Algiers, Common Ground became one of the first large-scale, nongovernmental relief efforts and has had more than 22,000 volunteers work for it since.

  Darby, who says he was "very radical" when Common Ground started, served as the organization's interim director, but left when he became disillusioned with some of the group's anti-government leanings. According to him, he was approached by the FBI in late 2007 and asked to infiltrate a group of Austin activists planning to disrupt the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Minneapolis, Minn. Based on information Darby provided, FBI agents arrested and charged two men in a plot to firebomb a parking lot. One of the suspects, Bradley Crowder, has pleaded guilty, and the other suspect, David McKay, is scheduled for trial this month. (In an article by David Hanners in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Darby said he contacted the FBI because activists were planning violence; however, in a more recent interview with The Gambit, Darby claimed the FBI approached him and insisted "The investigation wasn't into a threat of violence."

  Darby says he didn't start working with the FBI until November 2007, but Rahim and Crow suspect his spying began as early as the founding of Common Ground. Darby denies this, and says Common Ground has never been the focus of an investigation, though he adds, "However, because (Common Ground) is a large organization and there are a lot of people who have sometimes come through — just like any other organization — who may or may not be wrapped up in a separate investigation, then it's not like investigating on [sic] Common Ground people."

Darby had an off-again, on-again history with the group he helped found. When he first arrived in New Orleans from Austin, he was an anarchist and believed in the overthrow of the government. His views changed, he says, as the community began to acccept the organization and he started to feel he could work with the government and not against it. When he left New Orleans for Austin in early 2006, he was at odds with some of those in Common Ground, but says he was asked to return in November 2006 as the group's interim director.

  His tenure didn't last long. Lisa Fithian, an Austin activist and early Common Ground organizer who left the group in October 2006, says she began hearing numerous complaints from personnel about Darby in December, only weeks after he took his new position. Fithian says many volunteers described Darby as a divisive force — pitting people against one another, carrying guns, verbally abusing women and purging the volunteer ranks of those who didn't agree with his methods — and the organization started to fall apart.

  Fithian returned to New Orleans in January 2007 for an emergency meeting of Common Ground leaders. She says Darby screamed at her and Crow during the meeting and accused them of conspiring against him.

  "Man," Fithian recalls telling a friend, "this guy's not only crazy, but this is COINTELPRO."

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover started the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in 1956. It was intended to undermine dissident political organizations by using covert operations to, as Hoover's directive stated, "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize." Bureau agents used the tactics against groups including the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, women's liberation organizations and Vietnam War protest groups — and used counterintelligence techniques in order to degrade members, spread false rumors, harass and prevent exercise of the First Amendment rights of speech and association.

  The program's activities were exposed in 1971, and the U.S. Senate's Church Committee, named for chairman Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), held hearings on COINTELPRO. After studying more than 20,000 pages of FBI documents and testimony from agents and the program's targets, the committee concluded in its report: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order."

  Although COINTELPRO was officially terminated in 1971, many activists, including Crow, Rahim and Fithian, believe the FBI still employs similar tactics.



Scott Crow (left) and Brandon Darby were photographed together on Nov. 3, 2007, at a party in Austin hosted by KUT Radio.

  (The Gambit asked the FBI's New Orleans field office if Common Ground Relief was being investigated. Spokesperson Sheila Thorne says the FBI will not announce an investigation until there is something in a public record, or until a suspect has been charged.)

  Crow and Fithian now believe Darby was an FBI informant since at least early 2006, a charge he denies. Darby dismisses Fithian's accusations of undermining Common Ground, and says he worked as an FBI informant for less than two years. He won't elaborate on whom he's informed, but he offers a rationale, which ironically uses the First Amendment to justify the FBI's involvement: "Any time a group of people get together and organize with an expressed intent, a publicly expressed intent, to prevent other people from exercising their constitutional right to assemble and say they're going to stop it by any means necessary, it is the responsibility of the federal government to look into it."

Fithian and Crow are members of the Austin Informant Working Group, an Austin-based group of community organizers. The group has examined 74 pages of FBI documents pertaining to Darby's informing, and Fithian says the documents prove Darby reported on conversations she and Darby held while they both still worked with Common Ground. She adds she was involved in the RNC protests, but did nothing illegal.

  When accusations of Darby's involvement first surfaced, Crow confronted Darby, who said he didn't want to talk about it. When Crow asked again, Darby admits he lied and said the rumors were false. Today, he won't say whether or not he informed on Crow, but he does say his former friend was indirectly involved in the RNC protest.

  "I don't have that much to say about him," Darby says. "Some of his views are a little concerning, but I don't consider him a violent person."

  Now that Darby's role in the arrests of Browder and McKay has been confirmed, Crow is looking back at the three years since Hurricane Katrina and says he finds it unusual that he — a self-proclaimed anarchist for 20 years — wasn't considered a public threat until he became a part of Common Ground. He points to a specific example.

  For a number of years, Crow was on the approved visiting list for Herman Wallace, who, along with two other prisoners, was accused in the 1972 stabbing of an Angola guard. Wallace was convicted and has spent three decades in solitary confinement. In September 2006, Crow received a letter from the prison saying his name had been removed from the approved visitors list because of information from an outside law enforcement agency.

  Nick Trenticosta, Wallace's attorney, says there was a hearing that month about Wallace's incarceration, and due to security concerns, a judge decided to hold the hearing in the prison instead of a Baton Rouge courthouse. Prior to the hearing, Trenticosta says, he was shown a document stating the FBI provided information of potential trouble at the hearing. The reason given was that Crow had recently purchased a rifle. When the hearing was held, supporters weren't allowed in and SWAT teams were posted outside, something Trenticosta believes is directly related to Darby's informing: "There's not a chance that the ATF (U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) would have flagged Scott Crow buying a rifle," Trenticosta says. "Somebody had to do that."

Fithian says she will make Freedom of Information Act requests to determine when Darby became an informant. With so much information redacted because of ongoing investigations, though, she says uncovering the truth will be a challenge. As for Common Ground, she feels Darby's behavior as interim director had long-term consequences for the organization and made it less effective.

  Darby maintains it is only because of his association with the FBI that his associates in Common Ground have turned against him and tainted his reputation there. Besides, he hints, he may not have been the only the one supplying the FBI with information:

  "I will also say if you are called a 'reliable source' by the bureau, that means that info you have given has been crosschecked by other sources."

(The Gambit called Darby on Tuesday for a follow-up interview. His phone had been disconnected, and there was no forwarding number.)

[crikkett]

An Austin-based activist named Brandon Darby has revealed he worked as an FBI informant in the eighteen months leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention. ...He is expected to testify on behalf of the government later this month in the trial of two Texas activists ...Darby had recruited them and pushed them towards building the fi rebombs.

Recruiting and pushing activists into criminal acts is not what an 'informant' does.

Isn't what Darby did called 'entrapment'?

[American Dream]

crickett wrote:

Isn't what Darby did called 'entrapment'?

Yes, it is entrapment.

Let us hope that the victims of these sorts of tactics vigorously oppose them, insisting that the full story be publicly revealed and "guilty" verdicts rejected.

Only that, in combination with massive public education, can prevent these kinds of things from happening again and again...

[crikkett]

Only that, in combination with massive public education, can prevent these kinds of things from happening again and again...

Agreed.

I feel compelled to say to the youngsters who may be reading this:

Don't be stupid, don't listen to some asshole who tries to talk you into doing something you can be charged with terrorism over. Civil disobedience wins where violent criminality loses.

(A friend's kid once was reckless enough to light firecrackers on school property. It wasn't in protest of anything but to celebrate his graduation - his friends talked him into it. Well if you do that in fire season in CA, you go to jail, you get billed for the honor of being arrested, and you spend your next two vacations from school picking trash off the side of the road from 7am - 4pm. Then you get to spend the next 5 years at least explaining your arrest record to prospective employers.)

[Joe Hillshoist]

I agree with the "don't listen to people tell you to do stupid stuff" idea.

And if you do light firecrackers in fire season you probably deserve a criminal record, or at least a big kick in the back side

[StarmanSkye]

--quote--
"Any time a group of people get together and organize with an expressed intent, a publicly expressed intent, to prevent other people from exercising their constitutional right to assemble and say they're going to stop it by any means necessary, it is the responsibility of the federal government to look into it."

***
Even when the intent of the group organizing to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights ARE the Federal Gummint?

Seems, guys like Darby lean towards the idea that the Gummint is not only free to but has the express right and duty to break the law and commit terror and human rights and civil rights abuses in order to serve the law and prevent terror and guarantee civil/human rights.

It's hard to believe Darby wouldn't have been under compulsion to perform and produce results while working in a leadership position at Common Ground -- if for no other reason than community self-help and self-empowerment are such dangerous, subversive threats to the PTB.

When Darby states that some of Crow's ideas were 'concerning' --

He'd already decided who he serves -- and it ain't We, The People. He has to be willingly dumb about what the FBI is and has always been about. Prob. loved the 'secret agent' flair, romantic/dramatic buzz he got being an undercover 'asset'.

A cautionary tale Kiddies; The guy on the levee or in the trenches wih you doesn't necessarily share your social consciousness or sense of engaged public duty as a concerned citizen.

[American Dream]

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?st ... 1002307699

Between the State and a Hard Place: Statement on David McKay's Plea
Wednesday, April 01 2009


On March 17, 2009 David McKay plead guilty to possession of unregistered Molotov cocktails, charges stemming from his involvement in the protests against the Republican National Convention last September. Those of us following the case were shocked and saddened to learn of this development.

The State and, in particular, the FBI reached into their bag of dirty tricks to make examples of McKay and his co-defendant Brad Crowder.

Between the State and a Hard Place: Statement on David McKay's Plea
from the Austin Informant Working Group

The Austin Informant Working Group is an ad hoc collective of interested and affected individuals that formed to do research and media and legal work around the exposure of an FBI informant in the Austin radical community. The group is also helping to uncover the lessons about community accountability and security that must be learned from this debacle. It is not a prisoner support group and does not speak for Brad Crowder or David McKay.

On March 17, 2009 David McKay plead guilty to possession of unregistered Molotov cocktails, charges stemming from his involvement in the protests against the Republican National Convention last September. Those of us following the case were shocked and saddened to learn of this development.

The State and, in particular, the FBI reached into their bag of dirty tricks to make examples of McKay and his co-defendant Brad Crowder. It is also apparent to us that if this had gone to trial again, the lies of the State's primary informant in the case, Brandon Darby, would have embarrassed the FBI and the prosecution. This would have ruined their case against David and called into question the reliability of informants in past and future litigation. This is the question the prosecution has feared all along.

Before David’s first trial in January the prosecution filed a motion to change the definition of entrapment in the case. However the judge refused to overturn years of legal precedents for the mere convenience of the prosecution in this case. The first trial ended in a hung jury. We have reliable information indicating that it was hung 6-6, with the crucial issue being the question of entrapment. A couple weeks before the March 16 retrial, in another attempt to cover for their informant’s misconduct, the prosecution filed a motion to exclude information about Darby's violent tendencies and his history of using firearms in inappropriate situations. This motion also failed.

During the intermission in proceedings, David’s defense compiled additional testimony that confirmed Darby’s history of problematic and manipulative behavior. Through grassroots appeals, reliable witnesses came out of the woodwork to attest to Darby's repeated incitements to violence, his disruptive behavior and promotion of illegal activities in every organization he infiltrated. As the case of the defense solidified, so escalated the prosecution’s intimidation of both David and Brad. The State was determined to prevent both the exposure of its misconduct in utilizing and supporting a violence-prone provocateur to entrap two young activists, and the precedent of being called out and held accountable for their repressive tactics. The State knew that Darby’s testimony was questionable, if not completely lacking credibility.

The months since David and Brad’s arrest have been hard for both of them, their families and the community. Days before the trial, the prosecution subpoenaed Brad to testify. Brad had no interest in testifying against David. The State then threatened to add two years to Brad’s sentence if he failed to cooperate. The FBI has contacted and intimidated others, including potential defense witnesses, over the past few months in an attempt to disrupt David’s legal defense.

It is likely that David did not want Brad, his close friend, to be forced to choose between testifying and enduring harsher sentencing. Neither did he want his family and loved ones to have to go through the turmoil of a second trial. David’s father has spent large amounts of money, bankrupting his business, to pay David’s legal fees.

The State has never been above entrapping and manipulating activists. As many of us well know, radical movements have long been the targets of these tactics in an effort to criminalize and suppress our dissent. Based on our interactions with Brad, David and the unabashed snitch, Brandon Darby, and through a rigorous examination of the court and FBI documents that emerged during this case, we believe strongly that this is once again the situation.

The Austin Informant Working Group concludes that there is much more to the story than any of us know. From what information we do have, we stand by the statements we have previously made about the entrapment of Brad and David. There are many reasons innocent people plead guilty, including intimidation, fear and exhaustion. The evidence suggests these factors, rather than the truth, controlled the outcome in this case.

This battle has been a hard one. In the end, the State once again had more resources and time than those of us who stood in solidarity with the defendants. Rather than let this hinder our hopes and overwhelm our movements we must learn from this experience and stick together to build stronger and more just communities. We must also recognize our continued resistance, solidarity, and resilience in the face of the forces of misery as victories in and of themselves.

We respectfully submit this statement as a Call to Action to all communities of conscience in support of the struggle against all forms of government repression, and in opposition to all the travesties (named and unnamed) carried out on a daily basis under the guise of the “criminal justice system”.

In solidarity,
Austin Informant Working Group
Texas.solidarity@gmail.com

[82_28]

The left is harder to get at. And this is what this whole charade is about. And I mean the whole charade. You know what I mean.

Lefties, such as myself, can change tunes no matter what the scenario, but our morals never change with them (right?). We can fit in with UFC watching idiots (who are also friends), cheer on and become involved in NFL soap opera (hello Broncos ), see the plight of both the soldier and the token terrorist dude. We can recognize the imbecile TSA employee in the airport line and also the fact that there may just very well be a dude in there who warrants suspicion. But not for suspicions's sake, but because he his seriously a creepy motherfucker. A UFC dude say. Creepy as all get out -- UFC people are. But they aren't terrorists. Naw.

But we see all sides and yet take no sides, except that of the innocent. And normally, the "innocent" tend to be just about everybody. I myself, felt bad for dubya a number of times just because of the stress I believed he must have been under. I winced at some of his faux pas. Yet in interest of a motherfucker I have qualitatively hated since day one, whose hatred grew by the day, culminating in utter sobbing on the day of "shock and awe". I wonder, how terribly, sadly, "unprepared" we as humans are, prepared for this job of managing this leviathan of interests, networks, misery and euphoria. As a "rig-int" leftist, I don't get why all this has fallen into "my lap" to figure out. I feel like a living stop gap measure that doesn't fully exist. I feel like I need to reach out to those who's morals are shuddering and also those who's morals I agree with, but whose actions are rote and robotic.

It took a long time for the "left" in America to get here. But it is finally here. The left is now no different than the "right". No difference. The basic fears are now the same. The substance that the "left" made as it's seedbed, is now all "monsanto seeds" with a micro laser etching on each seed of Barack the saviour -- if you catch my drift. And little did I ever think it once in all my life possible, but I am beginning to see more eye to eye with "real" conservatives than any "penny ante" progressive these days. Arguing with Obama people a few weeks after the election and getting absolutely no sense of independent mind control, told me "I think we're dealing with the new fascists". Yes, that's what I said to myself.

And then I realized that there is no distinguishing characteristic between my arguments about the bullshit "HOPE" of Obama and that of an inveterate racist who hates him for his "skin color". It is seriously a fiasco in the making!

The snare here is very obvious as one who has always been fiercely anti-racist, sexist and blah blah blah. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. But I don't buy this shit no mo.

Like I've said since "day one" to people I know, and thus have to explain the idiosyncrasy of it to them, but: SOMEBODY SET OBAMA UP THE BOMB. As well as, somebody set up the bomb for both the "left" and African Americans tied to the probable fall of Obama in some form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_b ... long_to_us

[Penguin]

An Austin-based activist named Brandon Darby has revealed he worked as an FBI informant in the eighteen months leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention. ...He is expected to testify on behalf of the government later this month in the trial of two Texas activists ...Darby had recruited them and pushed them towards building the fi rebombs.

Recruiting and pushing activists into criminal acts is not what an 'informant' does.

Isn't what Darby did called 'entrapment'?

Yeah. In my part of the woods, that would be incitement to a crime, and that is always a more serious crime than the crime itself. Inciting, forcing, suggesting or cajoling someone to do something criminal. Thou in later years now the cops have a right to make false drug buys. Id call that entrapment too - I think thats how it got started in your parts as well and spread from that insidious "war on drugs".

[StarmanSkye]

"Yeah. In my part of the woods, that would be incitement to a crime, and that is always a more serious crime than the crime itself. Inciting, forcing, suggesting or cajoling someone to do something criminal. Thou in later years now the cops have a right to make false drug buys. Id call that entrapment too - I think thats how it got started in your parts as well and spread from that insidious "war on drugs".

Word. Some slippery slope indeed -- to where female cops act like walking, talking high-profile working-gal enticements, and cops stake-out street-corner drug-buys to ensnare drive-up dime-bag users, and recent legislation allows the IRS to operate strip-mall accounting-service businesses selling shady tax-avoidance 'advice' which when taken they will pounce on to assess fines and fees. In each case, the government is actively shaking-down the citizenry, mostly ordinary working stiffs and middle-lower class peeps, while the high-flying big-bizness crime-thug racketeers and financial cons are mostly hands-off, 'too big to fail' I guess, vital to the system of wealth and power reflecting REAL collusion between government and a corrupted economy operating above & beyond The Law. The distinguishing characteristic that defines what government has become over five decades of fraud, deceit and special-interest subversion is hypocrisy -- the shining examples of which are lucrative undeclared wars for 'peace & justice', repression in 'defense' of freedom, exploiting both sides and multiple angles of drug prohibition, openly pillaging the public treasury to save the economy from its own 'free market' efficiency, absolving itself of gross misfeasance, malfeasance, dereliction of duty and abuse of power thru fiat, justifying secrecy in defense of open transparency via appeals to 'National Security', and similiar idiocies.

We'reseeing the same kind of entrenched bureaucracy resistant to all resistance and opposition, denying the basis for criticism and critique of it, that was a major feature of the Soviet Politburo.

[American Dream]

http://www.fpif.org/articles/looking_at_fbi_entrapment

Looking at FBI Entrapment

By Rehanna Jones-Boutaleb, July 6, 2011



On August 28, 2008, two childhood friends from Midland, Texas, Bradley Crowder and David McKay, traveled north to join thousands of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC). In the company of six Austin activists, Crowder and McKay were ready for adventure, and prepared, in Crowder’s words, to protest to “change the world.” What began as a journey of hope, however, ended in sudden catastrophe. Crowder and McKay’s efforts to mark their opposition to the Republican administration and the U.S. involvement in Iraq resulted in multiple charges of domestic terrorism and a high-stakes entrapment defense in federal court. What the “Texas Two” hadn’t realized in Minnesota was that their trusted comrade, Brandon Michael Darby - the very activist to whom they had looked for inspiration and guidance - was in fact an FBI informant.

Tracing Crowder and McKay’s saga from its very origins, the 2011 documentaryBetter this Worldcunningly unveils the intricacies of the two protestors’ federal trials, as well as the media sensation they precipitated. The film, which is scheduled to air nationally on PBS’s “POV” series, not only provides a nuanced perspective of two alleged cases of domestic terrorism but also cuts to the heart of the “war on terror” and its effect upon civil liberties.

Aiming to go beyond the “nice-kids-turned-domestic-terrorists” narrative propagated by mainstream media sources, film-makers Kelly Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega have turned their attention to the viewpoints of the key players themselves: Crowder, McKay, and Darby. Although both directors are clearly sympathetic toward the convicted Texas youths, they take care to interview multiple FBI agents and prosecutors, providing viewers with conflicting approaches to the trials. The result is a documentary thriller that stands as both a compelling character study and a necessary reminder of the broader themes behind McKay and Crowder’s testimony, namely the post-9/11 security apparatus and the use, and abuse, of informants in the government’s “war on terror.”

David v. Goliath

Playing out against the backdrop of the RNC in St. Paul, Minnesota, Better this World opens with visceral footage from the 2008 protests. These recordings, alongside testimonies detailing McKay and Crowder’s involvement with Austin’s progressive scene, reveal that both youths were not only newcomers to the activist community but also indisputably shocked by what they encountered in St. Paul. There was, in Crowder’s words, a “pervasive sense of occupation...it was a war zone...a police state.” Indeed, police searched the group’s rented white van without a warrant on its arrival in St. Paul and seized their homemade shields constructed for the protests.

Unnerved by this illegal bust and inspired by Darby’s militant polemics, Crowder and McKay walked into a Walmart on August 31 and bought provisions to construct Molotov cocktails. Although they proceeded to make eight bottled gasoline bombs, the next morning the two protestors realized, in Mckay’s words, that they “didn’t know what they were doing.” Leaving the Molotovs behind, they joined other protestors in St. Paul only to be arrested soon after for disorderly conduct. Due to lack of identification on his person, Crowder was held in jail.

At this point, the narrative takes its tragic turn. Incensed that Crowder had not been released, McKay foolishly announced to Darby that he was planning to throw his homemade bombs on police cars in a nearby parking lot. His conversation with Darby, held in a moment of hotheadedness, was in fact being transmitted to the FBI through electronic surveillance gear. Although McKay and Darby agreed to meet once more at 2 a.m. to use the Molotovs, McKay decided against this plan and ceased contact with Darby. Nevertheless, several hours later, just before McKay was due to leave for the airport, the FBI arrested him at gunpoint.

When McKay took his case to trial, arguing that he’d walked into an FBI trap, he was facing up to 30 years in federal prison. As his father remarked in a phone conversation prior to his trial, the case was that of “David against Goliath.” An entrapment defense had no precedent of success in the United States. Crowder, in contrast, found himself in a more secure position; he had never conversed with Darby on employing firebombs. The prosecution offered him a two-year plea deal for accepting one charge of possession of unregistered firearms. In the belief that this would exempt him from testifying against McKay, Crowder agreed to these terms.

The two friends nonetheless found themselves pitted against each other as their cases played out. As Better this World critically reveals, when McKay’s trial resulted in a hung jury, the prosecution crawled back to Crowder, effectively blackmailing him for information on McKay. Although the latter still had a chance to prove entrapment, when he was offered a plea-deal of four years in prison, he accepted, thus allowing Darby and the FBI to wash their hands of the case. Faced with the decision to accept four years in prison, or risk 30 in proceeding with a second trial, McKay backed down.

As Crowder explained in an interview on June 23, he and McKay were simply “pawns in somebody else’s game.” A paid FBI informant -- once respected for his involvement with Common Ground Relief, the post-Katrina recovery effort -- directly influenced their progression to more radical activism. More importantly, the machinery of the U.S. judicial system constrained and shaped their decisions following arrest.

Broader Implications

Crowder and McKay’s experience serves as a crucial reminder of broader and more disquieting government trends, such as the tendency to amplify minor offences as cases of “homegrown” domestic terrorism and employ pre-emptive counterterrorism strategies on U.S. soil. “Going on the offense,” as former Attorney General John Ashcroft once dubbed it, has worked to push the boundaries of civil privacy to their limit. Since 9/11, Ashcroft and his successor Michael Mukasey have steadily weakened rights protections and relaxed appropriate checks put in place for FBI investigations. In recent years, the Attorney General Guidelines, first promulgated in 1976 to eradicate the forms of investigative abuse that marked the COINTELPRO program, have markedly eroded. As documented in a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Mukasey’s 2008 guidelines continue to permit the FBI to authorize intrusive surveillance techniques, such as the dissemination of untrained informants, without any factual predicates to suspected criminal conduct.

The relaxation of criteria required to engage in investigative activity has been a recurrent feature of the post-9/11 world. Mukasey’s Guidelines, for instance, allow the FBI to conduct preliminary “assessments” on the activities of individuals or organizations without any prior allegations indicating criminal activity or threats to national security. In these assessment stages that occur prior to preliminary investigations – which themselves can last up to six months! – FBI agents are also permitted to “assess individuals who may have value as human sources,” effectively enabling the premeditated recruitment of informants. Crucially, the Guidelines refrain from imposing “supervisory approval requirements in assessments.”

Taking advantage of this dearth of checks and balances, the U.S. Department of Justice has heretofore brought charges against just over 400 individuals in“terrorism-related investigations,” since 9/11. As noted by David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University, this figure is widely regarded as inflated in that it incorporates a vast number of cases that relate to minor offences, such as immigration fraud, rather than actual terrorism.

Entrapment and Surveillance

Brandon Darby’s recognized collaboration with the FBI also hints of a larger reality: government entrapment. As the FBI’s focus, in the counterterrorism context, has steadily shifted to a preventative model, it has increasingly emphasized the use of paid and untrained informants in the “fight against terrorism.” In 2009 alone there were the high-profile cases of Maher Husein Smadi, 19, and Michael Finton, 29, both of whom were convicted on charges of domestic terrorism when their crimes were, in no small part, shaped by the work of FBI informants. FBI agents posing as al-Qaeda members frequently approached Smadi, who was arrested for plotting to bomb a downtown Dallas skyscraper. Undercover U.S. agents also provided inert explosives to Finton, convicted of attempting to bomb the Paul Findley Federal Building and the offices of Congressman Aaron Schock in Illinois.

These cases are only two of hundreds that raise questions about the dividing line between covert operations and government entrapment. Have government informants been given too much leeway? In the eyes of James Weddick, one of several FBI veterans interviewed in Galloway’s film, the answer is yes: “Before 9/11 it was eyes and ears only. Now it’s eyes, ears, and the informant’s mouth.” In recent years, these surveillance techniques have become ominously extreme.

Indeed, one of the more shocking realities Better this World brings to light is the fact that the FBI was preparing for the 2008 RNC at least two years prior to its opening. In the words of one agent interviewed in the film, authorities treated the RNC as a 100% security threat. To that end, the FBI relied on informants in neighboring jurisdictions to track the activities of allegedly threatening activist groups, such as the RNC Welcoming Committee, which coordinated discussions and preparations for the 2008 protests. McKay and Crowder themselves had actually been on the FBI’s radar for more than a year when they travelled to St. Paul. Given the enormous funds spent on RNC security operations, the FBI was under considerable pressure to produce results, to effectively press charges against the alleged terrorists whom they had been tracking.

For those convicted on dubious charges of domestic terrorism, the probability of mounting a successful entrapment defense is slim to nil. According to the Center for Law and Security, from 2001 to 2007, ten defendants charged with “terrorism-related” crimes have formally issued an entrapment defense. None, however, has prevailed. Although Brandon Darby, currently a right-wing political commentator, now refers to Crowder and McKay as “American-hating Americans,” the reality is that the two boys’ progression to militant activism was undeniably influenced by his words and actions. In an effort to “better this world,” a phrase taken from Darby himself, government informants are taking suspects to the edge of the pooland pushing them in.



Rehanna Jones-Boutaleb is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

[American Dream]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/arts/ ... &emc=tha28

Film Is Skeptical About Domestic Efforts on Terrorism


Bradley Crowder, left, and David McKay protesting in 2008.

By BRIAN STELTER
Published: September 4, 2011



LOS ANGELES — The film “Better This World” introduces itself with the frightening sounds of television anchors filtering the news of a terrorist plot against the Republican National Convention in 2008. “Disturbing news tonight about homegrown terror,” one of the anchors says, not for the first time and not for the last.

Through the eyes of Bradley Crowder and David McKay, who were accused of a firebombing plot at the convention, “Better This World” examines the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s controversial use of informants, an issue that receives far less attention than initial reports of suspected terrorism. Through interviews, telephone recordings and text-message transcripts the film leaves viewers with the impression that Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay were philosophically seduced by an informant. The two men admitted to making Molotov cocktails on their own, but the cocktails were not used.

The film had an Oscar-qualifying theatrical release here last week, but it will reach many more people when it has its television premiere on Tuesday night on “POV,” the PBSdocumentary series. Simon Kilmurry, the executive director of “POV,” said it was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“The legacy of 9/11 is something we’re all living with today, and these are some of the issues that I think tend not to get looked at very closely,” Mr. Kilmurry said.

In a pairing of sorts the next “POV,” on Sept. 13, will show “If a Tree Falls,” a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group that set fires and was labeled a domestic terrorist threat by the F.B.I. in 2001. One of its former members, Daniel McGowan, who pleaded guilty to arson charges, says in that film, “People need to question, like, this buzzword” — terrorist — “and how it’s being used and how it’s, like, just become the new ‘communist.’ ” He adds, “It’s a boogeyman word.”

The “Better This World” filmmakers, Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega, said they came away from their reporting with a recognition that use of the term “domestic terrorist” had broadened dramatically since the Sept. 11 attacks. “In the media and in the legal realm it’s marshaled for all sorts of political agendas, and it’s complicated,” Ms. Galloway said.

They included the TV sound bites to highlight that impression. “In this case the media trumped up the charges and said some pretty provocative things that would instill fear in the average American,” Ms. Duane de la Vega said.

Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay, angsty young men from Austin, Tex., say in the film that they looked up to Brandon Darby, an activist who co-founded a relief group in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Together, Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay say in the film, they made plans to protest the Republican convention in Minneapolis. Because the convention was treated as a possible target for terrorists, the F.B.I. was aggressive in its monitoring of protest groups; Mr. Darby was made an informant.

In a prison interview shown in the film, Mr. Crowder asks himself if the events that led to his incarceration would have happened if he had not met Mr. Darby, and he answers, “No, I don’t think they would have.” Mr. McKay says in the film, “I felt like Brandon Darby entrapped me,” though he admitted as part of his guilty plea that he had lied when he said he had been entrapped by Mr. Darby. Mr. Crowder was released from prison last year; Mr. McKay could be released this fall.

Mr. Darby, once hailed in leftist circles, is now a hero to some conservatives for his role in the case. He has denied any wrongdoing, and he has a pending libel lawsuit against The New York Times over its coverage of his activities as an informant.

Ms. Galloway noted that defendants in many cases like this one have accused informants of trapping them. “That’s a common situation,” she said. “You have the flashbulb headlines about a domestic terrorist case, and then, not long after, a counter allegation by the defendant about misconduct by a government agent or informant.”

The film also poses thorny questions about government prosecutions of cases like the one involving Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay, who were called terrorists but who were convicted of lesser charges. The filmmakers said that audiences on the festival circuit this year were “surprised by how far the government is allowed to go” in such prosecutions. When they screened the film for international audiences, Ms. Galloway said, “people were stunned by the amount of resources devoted to terrorism.”

Mr. McKay suggests in the film that the government “didn’t want two kids who made a mistake; they wanted two terrorists who were going to hurt people” because “it legitimizes everything that they’ve done.” But the film also gives substantial time to interviews with F.B.I. agents.

The sheer amount of evidence in the film lends itself to a subtheme about surveillance, also a hot topic on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The filmmakers retraced Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay’s attendance at convention protests, via surveillance-camera footage provided by the police. Other evidence in the film — text messages, interrogations, footage of the men shopping for supplies at a Wal-Mart — emerged during the trials. There is even a clip of Mr. Darby talking to his F.B.I. handler, as recorded by his own hand-held camera as he walked through one of the protests.

Ms. Duane de la Vega said Mr. Darby had spoken to her at length by telephone, but he ultimately decided not to participate. She said that he sent her a text message after the film started appearing at festivals and said: “Congrats. I don’t agree, but congrats.”

Ms. Duane de la Vega said she and Ms. Galloway see “Better This World” as one in a series of journalistic works that they hoped would “bubble up the issue” of informant use and domestic terrorism prosecutions.

The takeaway for viewers, she said, is to make sure that they understand the context of the alarming headlines about accused terrorist acts. She said, “When they read about domestic terrorism — keep reading.”

[StarmanSkye]

I'm kinda sorry we'll never get a chance to see the intimate details of deep-cover secret agencies engaging in months-long super-patient 'encouraging' the other to commit actionable offenses -- like when undercover DEA and FBI agents find they've been courting the other over months only to find they were each playing the entrapment game.

What a nutty society.

Meanwhile, the financial terrorists of Wall Street are conniving even greater heists to defraud the system which legitimizes and feeds them.

Even my cynicism is getting worn-out.