FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE

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see link for full story
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/22/59583.htm


Monday, July 22, 2013
DOJ Starts Post-Snowden Defense of NSA Communications Dragnet
The Department of Justice filed what seems to be its first legal defense of the National Security Agency's controversial data collection practices since Edward Snowden leaked details of the operation to the public.
The Justice Department on Friday sent a letter to Judge William Pauley that reveals some strategies that the Obama Administration might use as it defends the NSA program against a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"This case concerns a highly sensitive and, in many respects, still classified intelligence-collection program that is designed to assist the U.S. government in discovering whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, including persons and activities inside the Untied States," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara wrote in a four-page letter to the Manhattan-based judge.
A phone call and email placed with the ACLU late Monday night seeking comment were not immediately returned.
In its lawsuit, the ACLU claimed the "dragnet" collection of phone records for the secret surveillance program "is akin to snatching every American's address book," adding that it "gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations."
The Justice Department's letter seems to defend the practice of culling data. The FBI obtains authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect telephony metadata from certain telecommunications service providers," Bharara wrote. "The National Security Agency, in turn, archives this information; queries the data, when strict standards are met, to detect communications between foreign terrorist organizations and their potential operatives located in the United States; and provides leads to the FBI or others in the Intelligence Community for counterterrorism purposes."
He described the program as an "intelligence gap" that was "repeatedly reauthorized by multiple judges" as lawful.
"The program has contributed to the disruption of multiple potential terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad," he wrote.
In his explanation of the procedure, Bharara wrote that via the court orders, the government is not allowed to listen to or record just anyone's phone calls, and that the information cannot include cell-site location data or the names, addresses or identities of the parties to any communication.
"It is limited to telephony metadata, such as originating and terminating telephone numbers and the date, time and duration of each call," he wrote, adding that the collected data is only "associated with a specific foreign terrorist organization previously identified to and approved by the court."
He says only "a very small fraction of the records acquired under this program is ever reviewed by intelligence analysts."
He says that in 2012, for example, fewer than 300 unique identifiers were authorized for query.
The ACLU argued in its June 11 lawsuit that the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments, and requests an injunction barring the government from querying the database "using any phone number or other identifier associated" with them. The ACLU also wants the data.
Bharara urged the judge to dismiss the complaint because "the requested injunction is irreconcilable with the public interest."
Bharara also defended the activity as legal and for the public's best interest.
"These data allow the government to make connections related to terrorist activities over time and can assist counter-terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, including persons and activities inside the United States," he wrote.
He added that if the data were not collected, "it may not be possible to identify telephony metadata records that cross different telecommunications networks."
Bharara added: "In short, because the telephony metadata must be available in bulk to allow the government to identify the records of terrorist communications, there are 'reasonable grounds to believe' that the data are relevant to authorized investigations to protect against international terrorism."
Bharara also defended the practice against the ACLU's Fourth Amendment claims.
"Most fundamentally, the program does not involve 'searches' of plaintiffs' persons or effects, because the collection of telephony metadata from the business records of a third-party telephone service provider, without collecting the contents of plaintiffs' communications, implicates no 'legitimate expectation of privacy' that is protected by the Constitution," he wrote.
Bharara asked to file a combined motion to dismiss sooner than Sept. 16, even though defendants' response to the complaint is due Aug. 23.
"We make this request because the presentation of our arguments may be influenced by an ongoing, multi-agency declassification review that will determine whether and, if so, to what extent additional pertinent information about the metadata program may become available."

[fruhmenschen]

LINK DE JOUR

http://www.infowars.com/army-conducts-n ... n-chicago/


see link for full story
http://www.mainjustice.com/2013/07/24/d ... nvictions/


DOJ Waives Procedural Bars in FBI Review of Hair Analysis Convictions
July 24, 2013 9:20 am
The Department of Justice has made the unusual decision to waive procedural bars to re-open more than 2,000 criminal investigations so that the FBI can perform microscopic hair analysis of crime scene evidence.
“Many stakeholders in the system are beginning to accept the reality that we need to make it possible for inmates to raise their claims so that they can be decided on the merits,” said Peter Neufield, co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, an organization focused on exonerating individuals who have been wrongfully convicted.
In 1996, the FBI began to rely on DNA evidence in addition to microscopic hair comparison analysis. The hair analysis had previously been used alone to determine a positive association between known hair samples and crime scene evidence.

“There are standards for science [that have] to do with the ability to recreate the results you get,” said Sean D. O’Brien, a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
“Microscopic hair analysis often involved faulty conclusions,” he said.

see link for full story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alissa-es ... 45114.html
An Uncomfortable Silence: James Comey, the FBI and Racial Profiling
07/24/2013

On Thursday, July 18th, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve the nomination of James Comey as FBI director. The nomination will now be voted on by the entire Senate. Unlike other confirmations in recent memory Comey's has advanced smoothly, and he is almost certain to be confirmed in the coming week.

Comey's confirmation will come amid a vigorous national debate around racism and racial profiling in law enforcement. Unfortunately, though Comey has made public comments that suggest a tacit endorsement of racial profiling, neither the media nor the Senate has asked him to address these issues. Those who believe in civil liberties and racial justice should find this troubling.

With dual credentials as a seasoned prosecutor and supposed civil liberties hero, Comey has inspired confidence on both sides of the aisle. Still, many Judiciary Committee senators used his confirmation hearing two weeks ago to probe questionable aspects of his background and push for reforms within a secretive federal agency. As a result, Comey has now said on record that he considers waterboarding an illegal form of torture, that his private-sector background will not discourage him from fighting white-collar crime, that he will work for greater transparency around Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court decisions, and that he is committed to protecting government whistleblowers. These discussions will set the tone of Comey's tenure as FBI director following his (likely) confirmation, and his answers will be crucial tools for future civil liberties advocacy.

And so it was disconcerting to hear the complete silence in the confirmation hearing around issues of racial profiling by the FBI, and by agencies Comey has led in the past. It was especially uncomfortable at several moments in the hearing when Comey and the senators started talking about racial profiling -- without acknowledging or perhaps even realizing it. Let's read between the lines of a few of those conversations:

Senator Cruz: "I have been concerned about the current administration's balance of the rights of law-abiding citizens on the one hand, and the willingness to pursue serious terrorist threats on the other... Do we have your commitment that you would not let political correctness impede efforts to connect the dots and prevent terrorism?"

Mr. Comey: "Certainly."

From the context of his comments, it's clear that Cruz was really asking: will Comey maintain, and even scale up, the profiling of Muslims? The FBI is hardly known for paralyzing political correctness; on the contrary, reports about FBI profiling of Muslims abound. Using informants and ethnic mapping, the FBI has performed broad, warrantless surveillance of communities and institutions, including mosques and student organizations. It has also engaged in what many view as entrapment of vulnerable Muslim individuals, providing them with ideas and weapons for terrorist acts with the aim of arresting them for those acts. These tactics threaten Muslim Americans' first amendment rights, and have caused a broad mistrust of law enforcement in Muslim communities.

Comey's straightforward "certainly" is especially troubling in an era when the Department of Justice's 2003 Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, which directs the behavior of FBI agents, contains large loopholes that fail to protect Muslims and other groups commonly perceived as potential "terrorists." The FBI needs a leader who acknowledges the pervasiveness of religious and ethnic profiling, and who reins in this destructive practice instead of condoning it.

Senator Klobuchar: "I know one of the things that hasn't come out is the work that you did in Richmond when you started Project Exile, a successful program that involved federal, state, and local partnership... Can you talk about that work and how that will inform your work as head of the FBI?"

Comey: "Richmond, Virginia, had a horrific violent crime problem, isolated especially in the minority community. And the idea behind Project Exile was, what if we used the federal penalties that came with gun possession offenses -- possession by a felon, possession by a drug user, drug dealer, stiff penalties -- what if we use those to try and change criminal behavior and make the gun a liability in the eye of a criminal? ... As we talked about earlier in response to other questions, the FBI has a vital role to play in criminal enforcement."



http://thetrialofwhiteybulger.com/a-sho ... ase-10337/
The Trial of Whitey Bulger
Whitey Bulger, the FBI and the Justice System




see link for full story

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/24/59628.htm


Wednesday, July 24,

Bickering and Infighting at the FBI
An FBI agent sued the Department of Justice, claiming superiors sabotaged his career with false accusations - including publishing false profiles of him and his wife on adult websites - as revenge for a complaint he made against a fellow agent.
Sean E. Edwards sued Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department in Federal Court.
Edwards claims the DPJ demoted him and discriminated against him because he is a man, to appease a female agent, whom he calls Agent X.
Edwards says in the lawsuit that the problems began around October 2010, when his wife anonymously made a complaint against Agent X, claiming X was violating FBI rules by driving with her children in an FBI vehicle.
Edwards claims Agent X immediately blamed him for the complaint.
"Thereafter, she would regularly complain to her superior, the same 'SSA' (Supervisory Special Agent) as plaintiff's and also up the local chain of command including the Special Agent In Charge of the Kansas City Office ('SAC') about plaintiff," the complaint states. "She accused the plaintiff of inappropriate conduct directed at her. She attributed false, damaging and misleading conduct to him, made unfounded, false and unverifiable claims against plaintiff. She also claimed to be the victim of these allegations and acts which she attributed to the plaintiff; all to his further damage and detriment.
"Agent 'X' succeeded in persuading her superiors that she was the actual victim of
plaintiff's alleged conduct when she falsely and frequently claimed that plaintiff was personally responsible for her OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility], that he had and was following her; that he had and was stalking her; that he refused to leave her alone and had displayed violent propensities while in her presence. She even claimed that acts that plaintiff took to advance his career were hostile conduct and part of plaintiff's plan to harm her. She advised management of her fears which influenced plaintiff's superior's negative and adverse conduct towards him, while providing preferential treatment to Agent 'X'."
(The phrase "that plaintiff was personally responsible for her OPR" apparently means: for the complaint to the OPR.)
Edwards claims that Agent X was relentless with her unfounded complaints.
"These false and unsubstantiated claims continued almost on a weekly basis; and each time a false allegation was made, SSA accused plaintiff of having committed the act," the complaint states. "In each instance the allegations were factually unsupported and only based on 'feelings.' Yet, each time they were made, SSA seem to accept as truthful Agent 'X' claim asserted and always confronted and challenged the veracity of the plaintiff who always denied the false allegations of wrongdoing. During each episode, plaintiff would first deny the claim, then indicate that these were acts of harassment and insist that SSA or upper management investigation [sic] the basis of the claims against him. Each of these denials and request for investigation by plaintiff were separate protected acts and based on information and belief, were never acted on by the defendant. These accusations and the failure to investigate the same, as plaintiff had requested, discriminate against the plaintiff based on his gender when compared with hers and denied plaintiff the equal treatment that he had a right to expect."
Edwards says he applied for a promotion in January 2011, then was told the position was being reposted because he was the only applicant. He claims he was told not to resubmit his application.
"The SSA made it clear that he preferred someone other than plaintiff for the positions [sic] and stated that '... the timing would not be good' if plaintiff would be selected," the complaint states. "Plaintiff agreed not to resubmit his application during the reposting so as not to further antagonize SSA or Agent 'X' and as an aide to having the issue behind him. The reposting of the position and the discouraging of plaintiff from submitting an application was done to specifically appease and serve the interests of Agent 'X' and to discriminate against the plaintiff based on his gender when compared with hers and denied plaintiff the equal treatment that he had a right to expect." (Ellipsis in complaint.)
Edwards claims the situation escalated in June 2010 after Agent X's former husband discussed with FBI co-workers his concerns about Agent X's new boyfriend, as the ex's children would be in the boyfriend's company.
Edwards says his own wife was also friends with Agent X's former husband.
Unknown to Edwards, he says, his wife sent the former husband a text saying he had a right to be concerned about the boyfriend.
Edwards says Agent X immediately demanded that he be transferred off the squad.
"Based on information and belief, Agent 'X' retaliated against plaintiff and his wife by posting or causing the posting on adult website 3 false profiles of plaintiff and his wife," the complaint states. "When plaintiff learned of these derisive profiles he reported them to the security officer of the FBI local office as well as his SSA and ASAC. Plaintiff also reported that he suspected that Agent 'X' was responsible for these postings on an adult website. SSA promptly notified Agent 'X' of plaintiff's allegations and while she denied any knowledge of the same the false profile postings were taken down shortly thereafter. Whatever inquiry or investigation defendant performed was not disclosed to the plaintiff but to the best of plaintiff's knowledge nothing came of the efforts of the defendant."
On June 30, 2011, Edwards claims, he was transferred and grounded as a pilot and leader of the aviation department in Kansas City. He claims the FBI used his wife's text as the final basis for the demotion.
Edwards claims the harassment continued after his transfer. He says his department was subjected to a surprise inspection, which it passed, in order to appease Agent X.
"After being transferred to the downtown headquarters of the defendant, executive management and other personnel deliberately subjected plaintiff to retaliation and reprisal when they committed wrongful acts designed to undermined [sic] plaintiff's career in addition to permitting false and demeaning rumors to be spread throughout the workplace. Management even authored and published several false and erroneous electronic communications ('EC') that attributed emotional issues to the plaintiff which claimed he was hostile and combative and implied that plaintiff may not be fit for duty as an FBI agent. They actively sought to oust plaintiff from his position with the FBI by submitting these false EC's to other branches of the FBI. First, they sent a copy of a libelous EC to Employee Health Care Program Unit ('HCPU') where plaintiff's fitness for duty would be evaluated and a permanent file would exist on plaintiff. Executive management's schemed for HCPU to make a determination that plaintiff was not fit to be a Special Agent of the FBI and thereby justify the termination of plaintiff. In addition, these EC's were also submitted to the Analysis and Investigation Unit ('AIU'), the unit which investigates, among other things, traitors and spies. The referral to AIU had the ability of being a career ender but had the immediate effect of preventing plaintiff from having unsupervised access to the secure work area ('SCIF') where plaintiff had been reassigned to work at his new duty assignment. This caused plaintiff to be held in a lower esteem by his new coworkers. Of a more lasting consequence, the referral to AIU would in the future serve as a barrier to subsequent advancement in the FBI, and also taint employment opportunities in the law enforcement field when plaintiff was to leave the FBI."
Edwards claims he was ordered to undergo a routine counterintelligence polygraph exam at 2 p.m. on July 7, 2011. Three hours before the polygraph test, he says, he found out his mother was having emergency heart surgery in St. Louis. Despite asking for the test to be postponed or rescheduled so he could get to his mother, Edwards says he was forced to wait until 3:30 to take the test.
When he returned to work on July 13, 2011, his SAC discussed the polygraph that Edwards had taken and passed, but it showed he was under a great deal of stress. Edwards said he told the SAC about his mother's circumstances and that the delay of the test increased his stress. He claims the SAC told him that because of the stress, the FBI's Health Services unit was asked to determine if Edwards was fit to carry a weapon.
"On July 18, 2011, while reviewing his local personnel file, plaintiff found an electronic communication ('EC'), a document referred to as serial #44, prepared by ASAC 3 and approved by the SAC, dated July 11, 2011 but containing information from both July 12 and July 13, 2011. (This verified that the SAC and ASAC 3 were plotting the Fit for Duty evaluation prior to the meeting of July 13, 2011)," the complaint states.
"This document was a request to have plaintiff evaluated and determine if he were Fit for Duty. It was also filled with false and untrue assertions designed to damage plaintiff. Many of these allegations were attributed to the EAP counselor who had no legal authority to even disclose any of the information attributed to her. When the EAP counselor was asked about the allegations, she vociferously denied staying what was attributed to her and also claimed that they were 'made up' by ASAC 3. Upon finding this false and misleading EC in his local personnel file, plaintiff made a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a complete copy of his personnel file."
EAP is not defined in the lawsuit.
Edwards claims the Justice Department deliberately misled him about why he wasn't allowed access to the secure work area. He claims he was told that his access problem was due to a paperwork issue, though it actually stemmed from the open investigation caused by the false document known as serial #44.
He claims that a second Fit for Duty evaluation request containing the same false allegations as serial #44 was submitted on Sept. 27, 2011.
"Even though plaintiff successfully passed the polygraph examination, by denying him access to the SCIF defendant intentionally brought plaintiff's plight to the attention of all of his new coworkers in his new unit, many of whom, based on information and belief, were told of the Agent 'X' rumors as to why plaintiff was no longer a pilot with the offsite unit, why he had been transferred and why he did not have a security clearance to enter the SCIF," the complaint states. "Plaintiff was also not assigned any work responsibilities and had to create work for himself so that his periodic evaluation would at least meet expected levels of performance. In October, 2011, HCPU determined plaintiff did not require a Fit for Duty evaluation, and in November, 2011 plaintiff was finally cleared by AIU to have access to the SCIF without supervision, a full 4 months after having been pretextually transferred to his new duty assignment."



FBI names Vincent Lisi as special agent for the Boston office

July 24, 2013 -



http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/ ... ton-Chief/



BOSTON — The FBI's Boston office has a new leader.
Vincent Lisi (LEE'-see) will succeed Richard DesLauriers as special agent in charge of the Boston office. DesLauriers announced last month he was retiring after more than 26 years with the FBI. The appointment was announced Wednesday by FBI director Robert Mueller.
Lisi has been with the FBI since 1989, serving most recently as deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division in Washington, D.C.
In 2001, Lisi helped lead the investigation of the 2001 Anthrax letter attacks.
He also served as a legal attache in Yemen



Subject: The City of Dallas' Anti-Conspiracy Conspiracy - Page 1 - News - Dallas - Dallas Observer


see link for full story

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/201 ... chief.html

New Central Ohio FBI Chief Says Cyber Threats Will Eventually Surpass Terrorism Dangers
Wednesday July 24, 2013 Terrorism currently is the No. 1 threat here in central Ohio, but cyber crimes are a close second.

That's the opinion of the new head of the FBI in central Ohio, Kevin Cornelius who has been named the Special Agent in Charge.

Cornelius used to run the Southern Ohio Joint Terrorism Task Force ten years ago. He said cyber threats will no doubt surpass terrorism dangers someday.

"We're losing data. We're losing money. We're losing innovative ideas, and that's something that we see across America. The intrusions outstrip what we have seen in the past, and it's time for us to take a look at it as a community, as a network, to prevent intrusions," Cornelius said.

Cornelius spoke to the group InfraGard - security specialists in the public and private sector who share cyber threat information with the FBI.




http://www.dallasobserver.com/2013-07-2 ... onspiracy/
or
http://tinyurl.com/kckmnfw

[fruhmenschen]

We brought investigative reporter Greg Flannery and Leonard Gates to speak at our conference dealing with crimes committed by FBI agents in the early 1990's. Here is a new article written by him.
see link for full story

http://article25news.wordpress.com/2013 ... -long-ago/

Privacy Died Long Ago
06/03/2013

The great forgotten Cincinnati wiretap scandal

By Gregory Flannery

Americans no longer assume their communications are free from government spying. Many believe widespread monitoring is a recent change, a response to terrorism. They are wrong. Fair warning came in 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when evidence showed that wiretapping was already both common and easy.

Twenty-five years ago state and federal courtrooms in Cincinnati were abuzz with allegations of illegal wiretaps on federal judges, members of Cincinnati City Council, local congressional representatives, political dissidents and business leaders.

Two federal judges in Cincinnati told 60 Minutes they believed there was strong evidence that they had been wiretapped. Retired Cincinnati Police officers, including a former chief, admitted to illegal wiretapping.

Even some of the most outrageous claims – for example, that the president of the United States was wiretapped while staying in a Cincinnati hotel – were supported by independent witnesses.

National media coverage of the lawsuits, grand jury hearings and investigations by city council and the FBI attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

As Americans wonder about the extent to which their e-mails, cell-phones and text messages are being monitored, they would do well to look back at a time before any of those existed. Judging by what was revealed in Cincinnati, privacy died long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Q’aeda.

Turbulence

In 1988 Leonard Gates, a former installer for Cincinnati Bell, told the Mount Washington Press, a small independent weekly, that he had performed illegal wiretaps for the Cincinnati Police Department, the FBI and the phone company itself.

A week after the paper published his allegations, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony.

Gates claimed to have performed an estimated 1,200 wiretaps, which he believed illegal. His list of targets included former Mayor Jerry Springer, the late tycoon Carl Lindner Jr., U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin, U.S. Magistrate J. Vincent Aug, the late U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the Students for a Democratic Society (an anti-war group during the Vietnam War), then-U.S. Rep. Tom Luken (D-Cincinnati) and then-President Gerald Ford.

A second former Cincinnati Bell installer, Robert Draise, joined Gates, saying he, too had performed illegal wiretaps for the police. His alleged targets included the Black Muslim mosque in Finneytown and the General Electric plant in Evendale. Draise’s portfolio was much smaller than Gates’s, an estimated 100 taps, because he was caught freelancing – performing an illegal wiretap for a friend.

Charged by the FBI, Draise claimed he had gone to his “controller” at Cincinnati Bell, the person who directed his wiretaps, and asked for help. If he didn’t get it, he said, he’d tell all. When the case went to federal court, Draise didn’t bother to hire an attorney. He didn’t need one. In a plea deal, federal prosecutors dropped the charge to a misdemeanor. Found guilty of illegal wiretapping, his sentence was a $200 fine. The judge? Magistrate J. Vincent Aug.

If Gates and Draise had been the only people to come forward, they could easily be dismissed as cranks – disgruntled former employees, as Cincinnati Bell claimed. But some police office officers named by Gates and Draise confirmed parts of their allegations, insisting, however, that there were only 12 illegal wiretaps. Other officers not known to Gates and Draise also admitted to illegal wiretaps. Some of the officers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Others invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.

“Due to the turbulent nature of the late ’60s and early ’70s, wiretaps were conducted to gather information,” said a press release signed by six retired officers. “This use began in approximately 1968 and ended completely during the Watergate investigation.”

The press release, whose signers included former Police Chief Myron Leistler, listed 12 wiretaps, among them “a black militant in the Bond Hill area” and a house on either Ravine or Strait streets rented by “the SDS or some other radical group.”

The retired cops’ lawyer said there were actually three Cincinnati Bell installers doing illegal wiretaps, but declined to identify the third.

The retired officers denied knowledge of “any wiretaps involving judges, local politicians, prominent citizens and fellow law enforcement officers or city employees.”

Getting rid of Aug

Others had that knowledge, however.

Howard Lucas, former security chief at the Stouffer Hotel downtown, said he caught Gates and three cops trying to break into a telephone switching room shortly before President Gerald Ford stayed at the hotel.

“I said, ‘Do you have a court order?’ and they all laughed,” Lucas told the Mount Washington Press.

The four men left. But they returned.

“A couple days later, in the back of the room, I found a setup, a reel-to-reel recorder concealed under some boxes,” Lucas said.

Ford stayed at the Stouffer Hotel in July 1975 and June 1976 – two years after the Watergate scandal, when Cincinnati Police officers claimed the bugging ended.

Then there was the matter of a former guard at the U.S. Courthouse downtown. He said he had found wiretap equipment there in 1986 and 1987, just a year before the wiretap scandal broke.

“I heard conversations you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I heard a conversation one time. they were talking about getting rid of U.S. Magistrate Aug.”

The wiretapping started with drug dealers and expanded to political and business figures, according to Gates. In 1979, he testified, he was ordered to wiretap the Hamilton County Regional Computer Center, which handled vote tabulations. His handler at the phone company allegedly told Gates the wiretap was intended to manipulate election results.

“They had the ability to actually alter what was being done with the votes. … He was very upset through some of the elections with a gentleman named Blackwell,” Gates testified.

J. Kenneth Blackwell is a former member of Cincinnati Council, and 1979 was an election year for council.

Something went wrong on Election Night, Gates testified. His handler at the phone company called him.

“He was panicking,” Gates testified. “He said we had done something to screw up the voting processor down there, or the voting computer.”

News reports at the time noted an unexpected delay in counting votes for city council because of a computer malfunction.

Cincinnati Bell denied any involvement in illegal wiretapping by police or its own personnel. Yet police officers, like Gates, testified the police received equipment – even a truck – and information necessary to effectuate the wiretaps. The owners of a greenhouse in Westwood even came forward, saying the police stored the Cincinnati Bell truck on their property.

‘Say it louder’

Gates claimed that his handler at Cincinnati Bell repeatedly told him the wiretaps were at the behest of the FBI. He named an FBI agent who, he said, let him into the federal courthouse to wiretap federal judges.

Investigations followed – a federal grand jury, which indicted no one; a special investigator hired by city council, the former head of the Cincinnati FBI office; the U.S. Justice Department, sort of.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon asked then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to look into the Cincinnati wiretap scandal. Federal judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States had allegedly been wiretapped. Simon’s effort went nowhere. His press secretary told the Mount Washington Press that it took three months for the Attorney General to respond.

“The senator’s not pleased with the response,” Simon’s press secretary said. “It didn’t have the attorney general’s personal attention, and it said Justice (Department) was aware of the situation, but isn’t going to do anything.”

The city of Cincinnati settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegal wiretapping, paying $85,000 to 17 defendants. It paid $12,000 to settle a second lawsuit by former staffers of The Independent Eye, an underground newspaper allegedly wiretapped and torched by Cincinnati Police officers in 1970.

Cincinnati Bell sued Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, accusing them of defamation. The two men had no attorneys and represented themselves at trial. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cartolano refused to let the jury hear testimony by former police officers who had admitted using Gates and Draise and Cincinnati Bell equipment. In a 4-2 vote, the jury ruled in the phone company’s favor, officially adjudging the two whistleblowers liars.

During one of the many hearings associated with the wiretap scandal, an FBI agent was asked what the agency would do if someone accused the phone company of placing illegal wiretaps. He testified the FBI would be powerless; it needed the phone company to check for a wiretap.

“It would go back to Bell,” the agent testified. “We would have no way of determining if there was any illegal wiretapping going on.”

The FBI agent was the person Gates had accused of opening the federal courthouse at night so he could wiretap federal judges.

One police sergeant offered no excuses for the illegal wiretapping. Asked why he didn’t bother with the legal niceties, such as getting a warrant, as required then by federal law, he said, “I didn’t deem it was necessary. We wanted the information, and went out and got it.”

At one point, covering the scandal for the Mount Washington Press, I received a phone call from a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department. He invited me to the station at Mount Airy Forest, where he proceeded to wiretap a fellow police officer’s phone call. I listened as the other officer talked to his wife.

“Say hello,” the sergeant told me.

I did. There was no response.

“Say it louder,” the sergeant said.

I did. No response.

“You can hear them, but they can’t hear you,” the sergeant said. “Any idiot can do a wiretap. You know that’s true because you just saw a policeman do it.”

Privacy is dead. Its corpse has long been moldering in the grave.

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story
http://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-held-sex- ... d=19759512

Teen Held Sex Slave and Called FBI Daily, Agent Says

July 26, 2013

A New York teenager who allegedly kidnapped a woman and held her as a sex slave for more than two weeks called the FBI almost daily during the woman's captivity to tell them he was involved in sex trafficking and had recently "recruited" a woman, according to court documents.

Despite his calls to the FBI, the woman escaped on her own when she faked an asthma attack and was taken to a hospital.

The suspect then called the FBI again to ask for help in locating her, telling an agent he had developed feelings for her.

The allegations and the bizarre string of phone calls are detailed in an affidavit filed in a federal court on July 9 by FBI Agent Barry Crouch, who said he received most of the phone calls from the suspect.

Brandon Todd, 19, was arrested on July 10 and charged with kidnapping across state lines, which has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The FBI, after repeated calls, declined to comment on the case beyond what was stated in the affidavit.

[fruhmenschen]

2 reads


1st read

see link for full story

http://www.highlandnews.net/articles/20 ... 451237.txt


JUNIOR SPECIAL AGENTS RECEIVE CREDENTIALS

July 26, 2013
Los Angeles, CA – The FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office hosted the Junior Special Agent Mentor Program graduation ceremony July 26 for children at the Salvation Army Westwood Transitional Village in Los Angeles.

Approximately 30 children, ages 7 to 13 years old, went through the academy in two sessions, some graduating last week. Approximately 10 children from the transitional housing center in the Westwood area of Los Angeles will receive their junior special agent badges and credentials.

The mentor program curriculum focused on a variety of subjects, including the history of the FBI; anti-bullying; conflict resolution; civil rights; abstinence from drugs and gangs; and internet safety, among others.

Students met SWAT Team members, FBI canines and their handlers, as well as FBI special agents assigned to the Evidence Response Team, Bomb Technician Program, and the Hazardous Evidence Response Team, who taught the students the importance of using science and mathematics to solve crimes.

FBI volunteers helped students to understand, appreciate, and develop a positive perspective of the FBI and law enforcement in general. In addition to the guest speakers and presentations, the program consisted of a variety of field trips to foster relationships between the FBI mentors and the children.



2nd read
I tested links and they work

see link for full story


The Franklin Cover-up
http://www.whale.to/b/the_franklin_cove ... _ebook.pdf

Quotes
"What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. This is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face."--- Former CIA director and Cercle member William Colby giving advice to his friend senator John DeCamp, urging him to quit his investigations into the Franklin child abuse affair and to write a book about his experiences (The Franklin Coverup, 2nd edition, foreword).

Court documents and a book publication by Paul Bonacci’s attorney, ex-senator John de Camp, state that Larry King organized groups of children to sexually blackmail and compromise politicians and businessmen while he served as Manager of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska. King had political ties that reached the presidency of the United States and he sang at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans.
Paul Bonacci, who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder), stated that as a youth, he had been transported across the U.S., and was forced to have sex with various people, forced to deliver drugs, and forced to participate in satanic snuff films, where Larry King was present. He identified the Bohemian Grove in Northern California, a well known gathering/meeting site for politicians, as the location of a satanic murder, and he had inside knowledge about many satanic ritual abuse cases around the country that he claimed to have been present at. These include a case in Jordan, Minnesota, in which Jim Rud was the only defendant charged, and in Bakersfield, California, another case in which several individuals were criminally charged for the sexual abuse of children within the context of ritual abuse.
The Omaha police chief, Robert Wadman and publisher of the local newspaper Harold Anderson, were implicated in the sexual abuse allegations. The FBI refused to investigate the child abuse allegations because the local FBI representative, Nick O’Hara, claimed that Robert Wadman was his “friend.” A Grand Jury was convened which labeled the children’s allegations as a “hoax,” apparently due to the high-profile nature of the alleged perpetrators, the ritual abuse allegations, and after one witness, Troy Boner, recanted his statements about abuse. John de Camp states that his retraction was a key factor in the Grand Jury’s findings that all the children had lied. Troy Boner later claimed that the FBI threatened him into recanting.
One sexual molest victim, Alicia Owen, was charged with perjury due to naming the police chief, Robert Wadman, as one of her abusers. She served prison time for this charge but was released in the year 2000. Paul Bonacci claimed that the sex ring that plunged him into Satanism and mind control was centered at Offutt U.S. Air force Base, near Omaha. The main investigator assigned to this case, Gary Cadiori, died in a suspicious plane crash shortly after he took statements from the children.
Larry King was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzlement, conspiracy, and making false financial record entries. The Credit Union was missing 40 million dollars and there were allegations that funds were used to finance the Contras, and other clandestine operations by the CIA.
John de Camp linked Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, leader of the satanic group, the Temple of Set, to mind control operations and writes:
“Child victims gave evidence in depth of the role of Lt. Col Michael Aquino in this depravity. Aquino…was long the leader of an Army psychological warfare section which drew on his expertise and personal practice in brainwashing, Satanism, Nazism, homosexual pedophilia and murder.”

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see link for full story
http://www.windsorstar.com/entertainmen ... story.html

Did an FBI agent fire the shot that killed JFK? Killing of Kennedy to be re-examined in cable docudrama
Jul 29, 2013
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Weeks before the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination this fall, ReelzChannel will take another look at the killing in a docudrama that suggests a Secret Service agent fired one of the bullets that felled Kennedy.

"JFK: The Smoking Gun" is based on the work of retired Australian police Detective Colin McLaren, who spent four years combing through evidence from Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963.

The two-hour docudrama airs Nov. 3 in the U.S., Canada and Australia. It suggests that agent George Hickey fired one of the bullets that hit Kennedy. Hickey, who is now dead, was riding in the car behind Kennedy's limo that day.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-2 ... -2001.html


see link for full story





Senate Confirms Comey as FBI’s First New Head Since 2001
Jul 29, 2013


The U.S. Senate confirmed James B. Comey Jr. to be the next director of the FBI, giving the agency its first new head since before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, was confirmed 93-1. Once sworn in, he will take over for Robert Mueller, who has led the agency since days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

“We need strong, principled, ethical leaders who steadfastly adhere to the law,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said on the Senate floor. “I’m confident that James Comey is such a leader.”

Comey, 52, will lead a law enforcement agency that has been changing to address increased threats posed by cyber attacks and domestic terrorism, at a time of heightened public concerns over the reach and scope of classified surveillance programs disclosed by a former intelligence contractors.

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he’d hold up the nomination until he received answers from the FBI about the agency’s domestic use of unmanned aerial vehicles. He voted against Comey’s confirmation.

The agency, in a response to Paul, said in a letter that it didn’t require a warrant to use the drones to conduct surveillance on specific investigations.

Paul said in a statement that while he disagreed with the FBI’s interpretation, he would release the hold on Comey.
Drones Unarmed

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a letter from its congressional affairs office, said it has used the vehicles to conduct surveillance in eight criminal cases and two national-security cases.

The vehicles aren’t armed and aren’t used to conduct general surveillance, Stephen D. Kelly, the assistant director for congressional affairs, said in a July 19 letter to Paul.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, said Comey gave him assurances that he’d review policies that guide the FBI’s use of domestic drones.

Paul is among the lawmakers who have expressed concern about expanding government surveillance. Two programs, one that collects domestic phone records and another that targets the Internet use of foreigners suspected of having ties to terrorism, were disclosed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
‘Valuable Tool’

Comey said during his confirmation hearing that while he wasn’t aware of the details of the current programs, he found bulk collection of data -- a method used by the National Security Agency to gather the phone records of millions of Americans -- a “valuable tool.”

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SEE LINK FOR FULL STORY

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

Growing use of FBI screens raises concerns about accuracy, racial bias
July 29 2013
Employers are increasingly turning to the FBI’s criminal databases to screen job applicants, sparking concerns about the accuracy of the agency’s information and the potential for racial discrimination.

Many of the FBI’s records list only arrests and not the outcomes of those cases, such as convictions. Consumer groups say that missing information often results in job applicants who are wrongfully rejected. A lawsuit filed against the Commerce Department by minorities alleges that the use of incomplete databases means that African Americans and Hispanics are denied work in disproportionate numbers.


The FBI’s background checks “might be considered the gold standard, but these records are a mess,” said Madeline Neighly, staff lawyer at the National Employment Law Project.

NELP is slated to release a report Tuesday showing that the FBI processed nearly 17 million employment background checks last year — six times more than it did a decade ago. The advocacy group estimates that as many as 600,000 of those reports contain incomplete or inaccurate information.

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see link for full story
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175482/go ... l-fbi-file

The Gore Vidal FBI File
Jon Wiener on July 29, 2013


ALSO SEE http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... l#document


The first page of Gore Vidal’s FBI file, released by the bureau after his death a year ago on July 31, is not about his political activism, his critique of the National Security State or even about his homosexuality. The first page, from 1960, says he made disparaging remarks about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

The problem: Vidal’s play The Best Man (a satire of Washington politics with characters loosely based on real political figures) had just opened on Broadway, and the assistant special agent in charge of the New York City office sent a memo to Cartha DeLoach, Hoover’s right-hand man, informing him that the play contained “an unnecessary, quite unfunny and certainly unfair jibe [sic] at J. Edgar Hoover”—according to a show-biz columnist for a daily newspaper.

The bureau snapped to, informing DeLoach that “a Special Agent will attend this performance tonight” and that his report would be transmitted promptly. Indeed it was the supervisor of the New York FBI Office who was sent out on this mission. After seeing the play and taking notes, he filed his report: “The only reference to the Director [always capitalized] is when one play character—presumably Vice President Nixon—says to another—presumably Harry Truman, ‘J. Edgar Hoover considers you to be one of the most moral and religious men ever to be in the White House.’ The man replies with a sarcastic inflection, ‘I’ll reserve my opinion of J. Edgar Hoover for a posthumous memoir.’ ”

That is the disparaging remark that inspired the FBI to open a file on Gore Vidal. The agent assured the director that “the crack came out fast and fell very flat,” and that at an earlier performance, “the audience booed.” On a routing slip, the report was checked off by Clyde Tolson and seven other high officials of the FBI. It was initialed by the Director himself.

Who was this Gore Vidal? DeLoach is informed that he seemed to be “a male homosexual.” The source of this information may surprise some: The Daily Worker, the official publication of the Communist Party USA. FBI Agents were obsessive readers of The Daily Worker. The relevant story was The Daily Worker’s 1948 review of Vidal’s novel The City and the Pillar—actually a hostile, a bitter attack on the book as “crude” and “primitive” in its portrayal of “the ‘delights’ of homosexuality.”

The Vidal FBI file totaled thirty-five pages, many of them letters from right-wingers complaining to Hoover about political statements Vidal made in print or on TV. Hoover replied to most of those with a polite brush-off. But there is one apparently innocuous letter with a fascinating back story: a 1967 “request for a name check” from “Mrs. Mildred Stegall.” Mildred Stegall was a key aide to President Lyndon Johnson. She’s best known, in the words of the Austin Statesman, as the person who “secured his secret White House telephone recordings in a West Wing vault only she could open.” (Lady Bird overruled her after Watergate, which is why we have the tapes now.)

Requesting an FBI “name check” was a serious move, invoking an official procedure established in the 1950s by presidential Executive Order 10450, issued by Dwight Eisenhower. Even today Name Check (capitalized by the bureau) has its own FBI webpage. A Name Check request requires “a search of the FBI’s Central Records System Universal Index.” FBI Name Checks are used for security clearances and also for immigrants’ applications for green cards, among other things.

Of course in the age of metadata, when billions of phone calls and e-mails are collected by the NSA, the FBI’s Universal Index of the J. Edgar Hoover era seems laughably small. But it was state-of-the-art at the time. When Mildred Stegall submitted an FBI Name Check request in 1967, LBJ was basically asking J. Edgar Hoover, “What have you got on Gore Vidal?”

Why was LBJ asking—and why on May 4, 1967? “Apparently Vidal appeared on the ‘Today’ show this morning,” FBI agent Sterling B. Donahoe explained to Cartha DeLoach, “and made some vicious remarks” about LBJ and the Vietnam war. Vidal now “detested” LBJ, in the words of biographer Fred Kaplan. Vidal had written a few weeks earlier about “what a disaster it was for the country to have that vulgar, inept boor” as president. The White House request said “no active investigation is desired but…as much detailed data as is available…should be furnished. If necessary the office covering his place of residence should be contacted…and we should be particularly alert to any public statements he has made.”

Those particular “vicious remarks” of Vidal’s have apparently been lost to history. I couldn’t find any tape of The Today Show from 1967 (although Vidal’s archives at Harvard include three folders labeled “fan mail” he received in response to that appearance). At the time, Vidal was on a book tour promoting his new best-selling novel Washington, D.C., which included a barely veiled critique of Kennedy. The previous fall Vidal had done a lecture tour of campuses, including seventeen in California, where he talked about the war and about America as an imperial nation. The campus audiences, Kaplan reports, “were astoundingly large, irrepressibly enthusiastic, especially in California, where he realized… that he was immensely popular with college students.”

Although LBJ would withdraw from his own re-election campaign, that would not happen for another year. At this point, May 1967, everyone assumed he would be running again. So LBJ wanted to find out what the FBI had on this Gore Vidal.

The FBI Search Slip for the Name Check indicates that twenty-five different files were checked. Several were marked with the result “NP”–“not pertinent”–and several with the menacing initials “SI” (Security Index—people considered by the FBI to be potentially dangerous to US national security). The bureau’s findings were summarized in two pages, starting with a crucial statement: “Mr. Gore Vidal…has not been the subject of an investigation by the FBI”—the most important single sentence in Vidal’s FBI file. He had a file, but that contained only clippings and correspondence about him.

LBJ was informed that Vidal was “a writer and author of several books as well as a contributor of articles to various nationally distributed magazines,” as well as “a Democratic-Liberal candidate for the US Congress in 1960.” So far, all true—and no doubt also known to LBJ’s people. Next came The Daily Worker quote describing The City and the Pillar as a book about “the physical adventures of a male homosexual.” Then came another quote, from the left-wing National Guardian, reporting that Vidal was scheduled to speak in 1961 at a New York City “rally to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee,” which he had “severely criticized” in a column for the New York Herald Tribune. Then the news that a “confidential source” reported six years earlier, in 1961, that Vidal “was associated with the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

The FBI also provided LBJ with a brief version of the story of Vidal’s relationship with Bobby Kennedy, based on “recent information coming to our attention,” which “tends to indicate that he has developed an antagonistic attitude” toward the Kennedy family. The source of this “recent information”? Vidal’s own writings. The bureau report describes a review Vidal wrote of William Manchester’s book Death of a President, quoting his line describing the Kennedys as “ruthless and not very loveable after all.” The FBI report also refers to the just-published article in Esquire magazine “in which Gore Vidal attacks the Kennedy family, particularly Senator Robert Kennedy.” No doubt the Vidal-Kennedy story was well known to LBJ, as it was to many Americans at the time.



So the Gore Vidal FBI file didn’t tell LBJ anything about Vidal that wasn’t public information, and it doesn’t tell us anything new about him. It tells us LBJ turned to the FBI in search of dirt on one of his critics, but we already knew he (and the other presidents) did that. It tells us the FBI kept files on writers on the left, and that it functioned as the J. Edgar Hoover Admiration Society—but we already knew that.

The most interesting things in the file is those letters to J. Edgar Hoover from Vidal haters that the Director dismissed with a polite brush-off. The letters suggest something about the mind set of right-wingers in Cold War America. They all contain the same message: “Dear Mr. Hoover, I’m a loyal American, you’re a great American, and Gore Vidal is neither.” One 1961 correspondent, Fred Devine, went to the trouble of transcribing an interview of Vidal’s on a radio station in Philadelphia. J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t interested, but it’s probably the only source we have for what Vidal said on the Frank Ford Show. In 1964 somebody whose name has been withheld complains that Vidal on TV “was extremely critical of the Director.” The writer concluded, “May I now tell you that I thank God that you are in charge…. I feel all would be lost without your vigilance.” But from 1960 to 1970, the period covered in the file, there are only half a dozen letters complaining to the FBI about Vidal.

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story
http://rt.com/usa/fbi-lawsuit-michael-hastings-753/

FBI sued for keeping secret their file on journalist Michael Hastings
July 29, 2013 19:23


Two investigative journalists are suing the FBI after the government failed to respond on time to a pair of Freedom of Information Act requests filed for details on the death of reporter Michael Hastings.

Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro filed a joint suit on Friday after the Federal Bureau of Investigation neglected to respond to their FOIA requests within the 20-working day period required by law.

Leopold and Shapiro both sent FOIA requests to the FBI following Hastings’ untimely death last month, and are now taking legal action in an attempt to expedite pleas that have so far been ignored by the bureau.

Hastings, 33, died last month in Los Angeles, California after his Mercedes C250 Coupé crashed at a high rate of speed in the early morning hours of June 18. Hastings was widely-respected for his hard-hitting brand of national security reporting with outlets ranging from Rolling Stone to Buzzfeed.com, and has been credited with causing the resignation of Stanley McChrystal, the four-star general who headed NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan until a Hastings-penned expose in 2010 embarrassed him to the point of abandoning that role.

According to a friend, Hastings warned his colleagues over email just hours before his death that he was working on a big story and that the FBI would likely be investigating his associates.

“It alarmed me very much,” Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, a friend of Hastings, said of the email he received last month. “I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me,” he told KTLA News.

The anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks also claimed that Hastings made contact with an attorney for the group the night before his fatal car-crash, furthering speculation that he sought protection from a potential government investigation.

But now more than one month after Hastings passed away, little remains known about the night of the accident or what kind of investigation, if any, occurred in the days and weeks before the crash, which only further fueled the flames of conspiracy theories that developed in the wake of the accident. The FBI has formally denounced reports that it was involved in a probe focusing on Hastings, but Leopold and Shapiro still insist the government handle the FOIA request, which it was obligated to address after the 20-day mark passed earlier this month.

Screenshot from YouTube user LAnewsLOUDLABS

Screenshot from YouTube user LAnewsLOUDLABS

In a statement published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Leopold and Shapiro say they’ve retained attorney Jeffrey Light, who in turn filed the motion for summary judgment seeking expedited processing of the federal complaint last week.

"By suing the FBI for failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, [we] hope to obtain records pertaining both to the unusual circumstances of Michael Hastings's death and to the broader issue of FBI surveillance of journalists and other critics of American national security policy," Shapiro said.

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see link for full story
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilve ... ooges-act/
7/31/2013 @ 3:39PM |174 views
Is The FBI Becoming A Three Stooges Act?



A man calls a brokerage firm to say he is the Chief Operating Officer of Magnolia International Bank and Trust (MIBT). He assures the broker he speaks to that MIBT is not the Melbourne Institute of Business and Technology, as a Google GOOG -0.36% search returns, but the central bank for scores of Native American governments, including the Yamasee tribe, which the man on the phone says is a nation worth trillions of dollars, but which Wikipedia says ceased to exist in the 18th Century. The man requests that the brokerage firm lend him a sum total of $3 billion to build an oil pipeline across Siberia. He offers $5 billion in US Treasury notes as collateral, which he says will yield a 171% return, and sends a copy of the supposed T-notes in Word Pad form from an AOL AOL +0.77% account. The T-notes are assigned to the “Great Siberian Pipeline Company,” allegedly a “Republic of Wyoming Corporation,” but the caller claims he cannot produce the print notes, as they are hidden in Austria.

It just so happens that the broker has served as an informant for the FBI since they caught him in a fake vending machine route scam. He is inclined to write the Magnolia folks off as absurd, but he speaks to his FBI handler about it, who tells him to record his conversations with the claimed “Chief Operating Officer.” Before any money exchanges hands, the Feds arrest, charge and convict the fakers on mail and wire fraud charges.

Is this ridiculous story a pitch to Saturday Night Live? A Three Stooges skit? Or a description of the latest from the FBI and the Department of Justice? If you guessed the latter, you are correct.

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013 ... programmer


September 2013
Michael Lewis: Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

A month after ace programmer Sergey Aleynikov left Goldman Sachs, he was arrested. Exactly what he’d done neither the F.B.I., which interrogated him, nor the jury, which convicted him a year later, seemed to understand. But Goldman had accused him of stealing computer code, and the 41-year-old father of three was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Investigating Aleynikov’s case, Michael Lewis holds a second trial.



To Sergey Aleynikov’s new way of thinking, every American could benefit from some time in jail, but in the event that you are yourself actually arrested and sent away, “there are certain practical aspects to keep in mind.” First, dress warmly. Detention centers tend to be freezing cold, even in summer, and so if you happen to be wearing shorts or short sleeves you’re in for a spectacularly unhappy night. Second, carry no cash. “If you have money, they charge you a convenience fee,” he explains. “If you don’t have it, they don’t charge you. The less money you have on you, the better.” Third, memorize a couple of emergency contact phone numbers. On the night of his first arrest he discovered he didn’t actually know his wife’s cell-phone number. He’d always phoned her by name from his cell phone’s address book, but his phone was one of the first things they’d taken from him.

The fourth, and final, rule was by far the most important: Don’t say a word to government officials. “The reason you don’t,” he says, “is that, if you do, they can place an agent on a witness stand and he can say anything.”

On the night of July 3, 2009, as he came off a flight from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, he was totally unprepared, because he’d never imagined himself as the sort of person who might commit a crime. He worked too much and took only the vaguest interest in his fellow human beings, but, up to the moment of his arrest, Aleynikov had no sense that there was anything wrong with him or his situation. On the surface, his life had never been better: his third child had just been born, he had a new job at a hedge fund that paid him a million dollars a year, and he’d just moved into a big new house of his own design that he thought of as the perfect home. He’d come to America 20 years ago with little English and less money. Now he was living the dream.

For much of the flight from Chicago he’d slept. Leaving the plane he had noticed three men in dark suits, waiting in the alcove of the Jetway reserved for baby strollers and wheelchairs. They confirmed his identity, explained they were from the F.B.I., handcuffed him, and walled him off from the other passengers. This last act was no great feat. Serge was six feet tall but weighed roughly 130 pounds: to hide him you needed only to turn him sideways. He resisted none of these actions, but he was genuinely bewildered. The men in black refused to tell him his crime. He tried to figure it out. His first guess was that they’d gotten him mixed up with some other Sergey Aleynikov. Then it occurred to him that his new employer, the legendary high-frequency trader Misha Malyshev, might have done something shady. Wrong on both counts. It wasn’t until the plane had emptied and they’d escorted him into Newark Airport that they told him his crime: stealing computer code owned by Goldman Sachs.

The agent in charge of the case, Michael McSwain, was fairly new to law enforcement. Oddly enough, he’d been a currency trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for 12 years. He’d ended his career on Wall Street the same year, 2007, that Serge was beginning his. McSwain marched Serge into a black town car and drove him to the F.B.I. building in Lower Manhattan. After making a show of stashing his gun outside, Serge says, McSwain led him into a tiny interrogation room, handcuffed him to a rod on the wall, and, finally, read him his Miranda rights.

Then he explained what he knew, or thought he knew: in April 2009, Serge had accepted a job at a new high-frequency-trading shop called Teza Technologies, but had remained at Goldman for the next six weeks, until June 5, during which time he sent himself, through a so-called “subversion repository,” 32 megabytes of source code from Goldman’s high-frequency stock-trading system. The Web site Serge had used (which has the word “subversion” in its name) as well as the location of its server (Germany) McSwain clearly found highly suspicious. He also seemed to think it significant that Serge had used a site not blocked by Goldman Sachs, even after Serge tried to explain to him that Goldman did not block any sites used by its programmers, but merely blocked its employees from porn and social-media sites and suchlike. Finally, the F.B.I. agent wanted him to admit that he had erased his “bash history”—that is, the commands he had typed into his own Goldman computer keyboard. Serge tried to explain why he had done this, but McSwain had no interest in his story. “The way he did it seemed nefarious,” the F.B.I. agent would later testify.

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/nyreg ... .html?_r=0


F.B.I. Agent Is Charged In Plot to Sell Documents
August 2, 2013



The former agent, Robert Lustyik, was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in late 2011 when he began plotting with a friend, Johannes Thaler, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday in Federal District Court in White Plains, N.Y.

“I will work my magic .... We r sooooooo close,” Agent Lustyik wrote in an exchange of text messages with Mr. Thaler, the complaint said.

“I know,” Mr. Thaler replied. “It’s all right here in front of us. Pretty soon we’ll be having lunch in our oceanfront restaurant.”

The Bangladeshi who had sought the materials, Rizve Ahmed, paid a total of $1,000 to Mr. Lustyik and Mr. Thaler for two F.B.I. documents concerning Mr. Ahmed’s political rival, the complaint said. One was a suspicious activity report; the other was a memo about the man that mentioned $300 million, the complaint said without elaboration. The men planned to seek tens of thousands of dollars in additional bribes for other confidential information, the complaint said.

[fruhmenschen]

a species that hires mercenaries to protect them looses the ability
to protect themselves and is doomed to extinction


see link for timeline of your extinction
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/355851


FBI allows informants to commit over 5,600 crimes

Aug 4, 2013
Over 5,600 crimes were carried out by informants belonging to the FBI, with the FBI's permission according to documents obtained by USA Today.
The information obtained related to the year 2011, with the FBI authorising at least 15 crimes a day.
Amongst the crimes that were carried out were bribing of political officials, as well as dealing drugs.
A spokeswoman for the FBI commenting on the revelations said that the crimes were "tightly controlled" when carried out and under Justice Department protocol.
It's not clear though if all crimes committed by the FBI informants were done in relation to a case under investigation, or whether a large number of these crimes were unrelated to an FBI case, and the informants were simply let off due their connection to the FBI.
In some cases, the FBI may allow an informant to continue their criminal enterprise, as long as the informant submits useful information to the Bureau, such as the case of gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger.
Bulger was allowed to continue to direct his criminal organisation in Boston during the 70's and 80's, while the FBI turned a blind eye to his activities, as well as assisting him in avoiding detection from local law enfor

[fruhmenschen]

see link for full story

http://www.patriotledger.com/blogs/mobi ... by-the-FBI
MATT CONNOLLY: A crime spee sponsored by the FBI
Print Comment
By Matt Connolly

When you read this report keep in mind that most of the handlers don't report when their informants are committing crimes and also that the FBI SACs, as we learned Friday from long time secretary, are in the habit of ordering reports that may be embarrassing destroyed. Some of this I talked about in my book, Don't Embarrass The Family.

Even admitting authorizing 5,600 crimes a year (which probably amount to in actuality tens of thousands) that in itself is a crime wave. These criminals are not only committing the crimes but are not being prosecuted and are protected.

How then can we deny the FBI is not a criminal organization which should be prosecuted under the RICO statute?

USA Today reports: Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied such issues commented on the number of crimes being committed by informants: "I'm sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be shocked."

Now here's something readers of this blog should not be surprised about.

"A spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to answer questions about the report. . . ."

"USA TODAY asked the FBI for all of the reports it had prepared since 2006, but FBI officials said they could locate only one, which they released after redacting nearly all of the details."

Then, of course, there is this from a member of Congress who has been waiting for a year for an answer as to why the FBI used a Mafia capo Mark Rossetti suspected of six murders as an informant after they said they discontinued doing those things in 2002.

Representative Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said "This is all being operated clandestinely. Congress doesn't even have the information," "I think there's a problem here, . . . " Representative Lynch to his credit has sponsored a bill that would require federal agencies to notify lawmakers about the most serious crimes their informants commit. That apparently is going nowhere.

We've fallen asleep. The Todashev investigation where he was killed by an FBI agent is coming up on being 3 months old. The FBI has barred Florida from releasing the autopsy report. Here's a report in May about some information on it. His girlfriend Tatiana Gruzdeva is being held incommunicado in ICE custody.

Can't you understand how foolish we look in the eyes of the world when we preach to other countries about human rights and a killing takes place by federal agents under the simplest of circumstances to investigate and for all anyone can see there's a massive coverup going on? Would you as a foreigner looking at America think that things were well when our Congressman can't get answers from the FBI about a terrorist bombing in America. Are you surprised that Russia gave Edward Snowden temporary asylum for a year? Can't you hear Vladimir Putin saying to his cohorts: "they kill a Russian citizen who they are supposed to be talking to and cover it up. Can we trust them not to kill Snowden? Do we want his blood to be upon our hands."

The FBI might not care what the American citizens think. But we American citizens should care what the world thinks of us. What do they think when our FBI aligns itself with criminals? How is it that we've let a person like Putin take the high ground? Will any one in the world seriously pay attention to us when we talk about values or will they snicker at us knowing how we let the FBI operate?
Matt ConnollyMatt Connolly is a former long-time deputy district attorney in Norfolk County under William Delahunt. He lives on Cape Cod. Read his blog, The Trial of Whitey Bulger. Check out our stories about Bulger