WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wants two US states, Florida and Massachusetts, to open their own investigations into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shooting death of a Chechen immigrant acquainted with one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
“A person was shot and killed at the hands of law enforcement in Florida. That alone should require Florida officials to investigate, and explain to the public what happened,” said Howard Simon, Florida Executive Director for the nonprofit civil liberties organization, in an ACLU press release.
The FBI and the Department of Justice are conducting an internal inquiry into the death of 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, who was shot and killed by a Boston-based FBI agent during an interrogation with several different law enforcement agencies at his Orlando, Florida apartment on May 22.
Todashev was being questioned about a triple murder in the Boston area and his link to suspected marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during a shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown four days after the bombings.
There have been varying reports about exactly what happened when Todashev was killed.
“Florida officials are simply deferring to the FBI, allowing the FBI to investigate itself, but it is difficult to accept the FBI’s honesty in this matter,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to Commissioner Gerald Bailey of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, adding, “Now, more than eight weeks later, the public has very little information about this incident… Officials in both states should conduct their own investigations.”
In a similar letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, the ACLU of Massachusetts (ACLUM) pointed to a New York Times analysis that found “FBI shooting reviews… virtually always clear the agency of wrongdoing.”
Last week the FBI blocked the release of Todashev’s autopsy by the Florida medical examiner’s office.
Carol Rose, ACLUM executive director, wrote, “It seems unlikely that the FBI investigation will meaningfully inform Massachusetts residents about what happened.”
Coakley’s office does not plan to open a new investigation.
“While the use of deadly force by law enforcement should be appropriately investigated, this particular incident happened in another state, which is outside our jurisdiction,” Coakley spokesman Brad Puffer told RIA Novosti.
Officials in Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment from RIA Novosti.
July 24, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | American Civil Liberties Union, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ibragim Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev |
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The FBI apparently wanted Ibragim Todashev to sign a false witness statement implicating the Tsarnaev patsies. Todashev refused, presumably because he (like everyone else who knew the brothers) was convinced of their innocence. So the FBI murdered Todashev, execution-style, as a message to others involved in the case: “Cooperate with our frame-up of the Tsarnaevs, or else…”
The US government wants us to believe its tales about the deaths of Boston bombing witness Ibragim Todashev and terror boogieman Osama Bin Laden. So why is it hiding key information about both cases?
Yesterday the Boston Globe reported, “A Florida medical examiner’s office said Tuesday that the FBI has ordered the office not to release its autopsy report of a Chechen man fatally shot by a Boston FBI agent in May…”
Why would the FBI cover up the Todashev autopsy report? Because it showed that FBI agents murdered Todashev in cold blood, execution style.
Todashev’s father has obtained sixteen detailed photographs of his son’s body. They show six gunshot wounds to the torso – and an execution-style blowout to the back of the head.
Why would FBI agents stage the execution-style murder of an important witness in the Boston bombing case? If they were trying to solve the bombing, they would obviously do everything humanly possible to keep all witnesses alive. When the FBI starts killing witnesses – or helping other agencies and criminal organizations kill witnesses, as in the JFK cover-up – it means they are trying to cover up the crime, not solve it.
What is the FBI covering up? The truth. The Boston bombing was obviously a poorly-executed false-flag operation.
Prior to the bombing, the authorities repeatedly announced that a terror drill was taking place. They told participants not to worry, it was only a drill.
Rooftop “spotters” were running the bombing. Witnesses report that suspicious figures, apparent paramilitary professionals, were overseeing the bombing from neighboring rooftops. These “spotters” were captured in photographs, as reported by Science Times in the article “Mystery Man On Roof Sparks Boston Marathon Explosion Conspiracies.”
The spotters were giving orders to the Craft International operatives who planted the bombs, as proved beyond a reasonable doubt by photographic evidence.
The FBI apparently wanted Ibragim Todashev to sign a false witness statement implicating the Tsarnaev patsies. Todashev refused, presumably because he (like everyone else who knew the brothers) was convinced of their innocence. So the FBI murdered Todashev, execution-style, as a message to others involved in the case: “Cooperate with our frame-up of the Tsarnaevs, or else…”
The FBI’s lies about the Todashev killing are similar to US government lies about the alleged killing of Osama Bin Laden. In both cases, it seems that critically-important witnesses were murdered rather than kept alive – which makes absolutely no sense.
If the US government was really trying to solve the crimes of 9/11, and if it really believed that Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist mastermind, it would have done everything possible, including sacrificing the lives of as many soldiers as necessary, to take Bin Laden alive.
If he was really an al-Qaeda mastermind, Bin Laden would have possessed critically important information about his terrorist network. If government conspiracy theories are true, Bin Laden’s organization might even have obtained WMD and targeted American cities. By killing Bin Laden rather than taking him alive and interrogating him, the US might have condemned hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans to death by al-Qaeda WMD attack. And even if this were only a 1% possibility, as Dick Cheney tells us, the government would have to treat it as if it were definitely going to happen.
So when the US government tells us it made no real effort to capture Bin Laden alive, but instead just staged an execution-style killing of the most important terror witness in history, it is obviously lying.
The story of the alleged Bin Laden killing is full of contradictions and absurdities. First we were told that Obama and his cabinet watched the killing as it happened; we were even shown photos of Hillary Clinton shrieking in pleasure at the sight. Then we were told that this never happened.
We were shown a fake photo purporting to show Bin Laden’s corpse. It turned out to be a bad photoshop hoax.
In fact, there are no photos of Bin Laden’s body. There was no autopsy. There was no positive identification that it was Bin Laden, no transparent, public DNA evidence with a chain of custody, no witnesses… no evidence at all, in fact. And nobody saw the body being thrown into the ocean, “in accordance with Islamic burial custom” !
The Associated Press and the London Daily Mail recently published an article headlined:
“Pentagon DELETES files about Osama bin Laden raid after transferring them to CIA where they can’t be made public
– Military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout have been purged from Pentagon computers
– Associated Press requested information on the raid some 20 times in 2011 but requests were rejected
– A line in an inspector general’s draft report states the files were purged from the defense department to another government department to prevent certain information about the raid being made public
– The sentence was removed from the final report released weeks ago”
If the government account is true, the secrecy makes no sense. If they really killed Bin Laden, every scrap of information about the raid – every second of video, every photograph, every memo, every DNA test, every autopsy file, every debriefing – would be proudly waved before the world.
If the government account were true, there would be no need to “prevent certain information about the raid being made public.”
So what are they covering up? Did they kill a Bin Laden double rather than Bin Laden himself, who (according to numerous reports) died in December, 2001? Or was the whole raid just a drill – a theatrical staged event like the Boston bombings… and like 9/11 itself?
July 19, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Bin Laden, Death of Osama bin Laden, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama Bin Laden, Todashev, United States |
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The FBI has reviewed thousands of criminal cases and suspects that 27 death penalty convictions may have been secured by using faulty and exaggerated testimonies that may have wrongfully linked defendants to crimes.
A joint review by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department was launched after the Washington Post last year reported that flawed forensic work by FBI hair examiners might have led to the convictions of innocent people. The article suggested that Justice Department officials knew of the flaws, but failed to acknowledge them.
Last July, federal officials announced that they would investigate old criminal cases to see if faulty testimonies influenced death penalty convictions. More than 21,700 FBI Laboratory files are being examined, and at least 120 convictions have already been identified as potentially suspicious. Of these, about 27 were death penalty convictions, the Post reports.
Investigators suspect that these convictions may have been influenced by FBI hair examiners who exaggerated the significance of their findings. These experts linked defendants to crimes based on “matches” from microscopic analysis of hair found at crime scenes. Many of these experts claimed that their hair analysis tests definitively confirmed the identity of the offender.
But such statements were often misleading: since the 1970s, FBI reports have usually stated that hair tests are not adequate proof to link a suspect to a crime, since these tests can be flawed.
In cases where solely a hair analysis led to a suspect’s conviction, US courts may have mistakenly locked up innocent people – or in some cases, sentenced them to death.
“One of the things good scientists do is question their assumptions,” David Christian Hassell, director of the FBI Laboratory, told the Post. “No matter what the field, what the discipline, those questions should be up for debate. That’s as true in forensics as anything else.”
The federal review of convictions has raised awareness about the problems that hair tests can pose when there is no other evidence to prove a suspect’s guilt. Texas executes more inmates than any other US state, and its Forensic Science Commission on Friday decided to scrutinize hair cases at all labs under its jurisdiction.
The review also led to a stay of execution in May. Willie Jerome Manning, a 44-year-old man convicted of murdering two college students in 1992, was scheduled to die by lethal injection in Mississippi. But the Justice Department discovered flaws in the forensic testimony that led to his conviction, which halted the execution pending further investigation.
It is unclear how many inmates are on death row or may have been executed already as a result of faulty hair tests, but the FBI says it will announce partial results of its examination later this summer. The review is currently prioritizing cases in which defendants can be punished by execution. Once that review is complete, the agency will examine cases in which defendants are currently imprisoned.
July 19, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Capital punishment, Criminal law, FBI, FBI scandal, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Forensic science, Science, Security, United States Department of Justice, USA |
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The FBI has ordered a Florida medical examiner’s office not to release the autopsy report of a Chechen man who was killed during an FBI interview in May over his ties to one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.
The autopsy report for Ibragim Todashev, 27, killed by an FBI agent during an interrogation which took place in his apartment on May 22 was ready for release on July 8. However, the FBI barred its publication, saying an internal probe into his death is ongoing.
“The FBI has informed this office that the case is still under active investigation and thus not to release the document,” according to a statement by Tony Miranda, forensic records coordinator for Orange and Osceola counties in Orlando.
The forensic report was expected to clarify the circumstances of Todashev’s death. The Bureau’s statement issued on the day of the incident provided no details of what transpired, saying only that the person being interviewed was killed when a “violent confrontation was initiated by the individual.”
Back in May Ibragim Todashev’s father showed pictures of his dead son’s body at a press conference in Moscow, revealing he had been shot six times.
“I only saw things like that in movies: shooting a person, and then the kill shot. Six shots in the body, one of them in the head,” Abdulbaki Todashev said .
The medical examiner’s office promised to check on a monthly basis whether the FBI is ready to grant permission for release of the autopsy report.
Todashev was interrogated by the FBI several times following the Boston Marathon bombings, with the final interview resulting in a fatal altercation. He was supposedly questioned over his alleged role in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, which bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been implicated in. Todashev was reportedly about to sign a written statement which would have tied him to the murders when he allegedly attacked an FBI agent.
Investigators, most of them speaking anonymously, would later offer conflicting accounts of what happened in Todashev’s final minutes, with some claiming the man brandished a knife and others insisting he was unarmed
Despite the FBI’s promise to look into the case, civil rights activists have called for an independent investigation.
The US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division announced on Monday it was overseeing a federal inquiry into the shooting incident.
“Federal prosecutors will review the evidence and make an independent determination whether a federal criminal investigation is warranted,” the Boston Herald cites a letter by US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy L. Austin as saying.
Todashev’s widow, Reniya Manukyan, welcomed news of the federal inquiry.
“We are glad that DOJ started. Hopefully it will bring more attention of the public and everybody will question the FBI and why they are not releasing anything,” she said.
July 18, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | FBI, FBI shooting, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States, USA |
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In the past two weeks Congress has introduced a slew of bills responding to the Guardian‘s publication of a top secret court order using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to demand that Verizon Business Network Services give the National Security Agency (NSA) a record of every customer’s call history for three months. The order was confirmed by officials like President Obama and Senator Feinstein, who said it was a “routine” 90 day reauthorization of a program started in 2007.
Currently, four bills have been introduced to fix the problem: one by Senator Leahy, Senator Sanders, Senators Udall and Wyden, and Rep. Conyers. The well-intentioned bills try to address the Justice Department’s (DOJ) abusive interpretations of Section 215 (more formally, 50 USC § 1861) apparently approved by the reclusive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) in secret legal opinions.
Sadly, all of them fail to fix the problem of unconstitutional domestic spying—not only because they ignore the PRISM program, which uses Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and collects Americans’ emails and phone calls—but because the legislators simply don’t have key information about how the government interprets and uses the statute. Congress must find out more about the programs before it can propose fixes. That’s why a coalition of over 100 civil liberties groups and over half a million people are pushing for a special congressional investigatory committee, more transparency, and more accountability.
More Information Needed
The American public has not seen the secret law and legal opinions supposedly justifying the unconstitutional NSA spying. Just this week the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported that the secret law includes dozens of opinions—some of which are hundreds of pages long—gutting the Fourth Amendment. The special investigative committee must find out necessary information about the programs and about the opinions. Or, at the very least, extant committees like the Judiciary or Oversight Committees must conduct more open hearings and release more information to the public. Either way, the process must start with the publication of the secret legal opinions of the FISA Court, and the opinions drafted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
Why the Legislation Fails to Fix Section 215
Some of the bills try to narrow Section 215 by heightening the legal standard for the government to access information. Currently, the FBI can obtain “any tangible thing”—including, surprisingly, intangible business records about Americans—that is “relevant”
to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a US person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities
with a statement of facts showing that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the tangible things are “relevant” to such an investigation. Bills by Rep. Conyers and Sen. Sanders attempt to heighten the standard by using pre-9/11 language mandating “specific and articulable facts” about why the FBI needs the records. Rep. Conyers goes one step further than Sen. Sanders by forcing the FBI to include why the records are “material,” or significantly relevant, to an investigation.
By heightening the legal standard, the legislators intend for the FBI to show exactly why a mass database of calling records is relevant to an investigation. But it’s impossible to know if these fixes will stop the unconstitutional spying without knowing how the government defines key terms in the bills. The bills by Sen. Leahy and Sens. Udall and Wyden do not touch this part of the law.
Failure to Stop the Unconstitutional Collection of “Bulk Records”
Sens. Udall, Wyden, and Leahy use a different approach; their bills mandate every order include why the records “pertain to” an individual or are “relevant to” an investigation. Collectively this aims—but most likely fails—to stop the government from issuing “bulk records orders” like the Verizon order. Senator Sanders travels a different path by requiring the government specify why “each of” the business records is related to an investigation; however, it’s also unclear if this stops the spying. Yet again, Rep. Conyers’ bill provides the strongest language as it deletes ambiguous clauses and forces all requests “pertain only to” an individual; however even the strongest language found in these bills will probably not stop the unconstitutional spying.
Legislators Are Drafting in the Dark
Unfortunately, legislators are trying to edit the statutory text before a thorough understanding of how the government is using key definitions in the bill or how the FISA Court is interpreting the statute. For instance, take the word “relevant.” The “tangible thing” produced under a Section 215 order must be “relevant” to the specific type of investigation mentioned above. But the Verizon order requires every Verizon customer’s call history.
The New York Times confirmed the secret FISA court was persuaded by the government that this information is somehow relevant to such an investigation. The Wall Street Journal (paywall), quoting “people familiar with the [FISA Court] rulings” wrote: “According to the [FISA Court], the special nature of national-security and terrorism-prevention cases means ‘relevant’ can have a broader meaning for those investigations.” Obviously, only severely strained legalese—similar to the Department of Justice’s re-definition of “imminent“—could justify such an argument. And the Fourth Amendment was created to protect against this exact thing—vague, overbroad “general warrants” (.pdf).
If “relevant” has been defined to permit bulk data collection, requiring more or better facts about why is unlikely to matter. Even Sen. Sanders’ approach—which would require “each” record be related to an investigation—could fall short if “relevance” is evaluated in terms of the database as a whole, rather than its individual records. This is just one example of why the secret FISA Court decisions and OLC opinions must be released. Without them, legislators cannot perform one of their jobs: writing legislation.
Congress Must Obtain and Release the Secret Law
The actions revealed by the government strike at the very core of our Constitution. Further, the majority of Congress is unaware about the specific language and legal interpretations used to justify the spying. Without this information, Congress can only legislate in the dark. It’s time for Congress to investigate these matters to the fullest extent possible. American privacy should not be held hostage by secrecy. Tell Congress now to push for an special investigative committee, more transparency, and more accountability.
July 15, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Human rights, Justice Department, National Security Agency, NSA, United States, United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court |
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As Washington officials continue to grapple with the fallout from the NSA scandal, it has been revealed that the US Postal Service photographs the outside of every piece of mail it processes each year – around 160 billion pieces annually.
At the request of law enforcement agencies, postal workers take pictures of the letters and packages before they are delivered, the New York Times reported.
The information is then stored for an indefinite period of time in the event a law enforcement official requests it. Each year, tens of thousands of pieces of mail are subjected to further scrutiny.
Reading the contents of a letter requires a court-ordered warrant, but in the case of ‘mail cover’ requests, law enforcement agencies submit a letter to the Postal Service, which “rarely denies a request.”
Although the ‘mail covers’ program has been around for nearly a century, its updated successor, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program, was created in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers.
MICT requests are separated into two categories: those related to possible criminal activity and those that are meant to protect national security. Requests based on suspected criminal activity average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, unnamed law enforcement officials told the Times.
The number of requests for mail covers related to the fight against terrorism has not been made public.
Although law enforcement officials must have warrants to open private correspondence, former President George W. Bush signed off on a document in 2007 that gave the federal government the authority to open mail without warrants in “emergencies or in foreign intelligence cases.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigations revealed the existence of MICT last month in the course of an investigation over ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barack Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
News of the US Postal Service’s surveillance program comes as Washington is facing heated criticism over a formerly covert surveillance program that gave the National Security Agency (NSA), in cooperation with nine of the world’s largest internet companies, sweeping powers to collect data on telephone calls and internet habits of billions of people both at home and abroad.
The information was made public after former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, blew the whistle on the activities.
Officials in the Obama administration, meanwhile, are attempting to justify the NSA’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as examining the outside of a letter. At the very least, the program shows that traditional mail is held up to the same kind of scrutiny that the NSA has given to phone calls, e-mail and internet services.
“It’s a treasure trove of information,” James J. Wedick, a former FBI agent told The New York Times. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.”
But, he added: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.”
Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, called the program an invasion of privacy.
“Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he told the US newspaper.
The surveillance requests on mail covers are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days.
July 6, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, Obama, United States, USA |
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Next Tuesday, James Comey will have his first job interview for succeeding Robert Mueller as director of the FBI.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will not only have the chance to determine whether Comey is qualified for the job—and we have our concerns—but an opportunity to examine what the FBI has become since 9/11 and whether it needs to change course over the next decade.
Over the past 12 years, the FBI has become a domestic intelligence agency with unprecedented power to peer into the lives of ordinary Americans and secretly amass data about people not suspected of any wrongdoing. The recent revelation about the FBI using the Patriot Act’s “business records provision” to track all U.S. telephone calls is only the latest in a long line of abuse stemming from the expanded powers granted to the bureau since September 2001.
These abuses and bad policies, however, do not get the attention they deserve, despite serious violations of people’s civil rights and liberties. Since 9/11, the ACLU has learned of persistent FBI abuses, including domestic spying, racial and religious profiling, biased counterterrorism training materials, politically motivated investigations, abusive detention and interrogation practices, and misuse of the No-Fly List to recruit informants.
We hope Congress and the new FBI director, whoever it is, will use the information provided as a starting point to conduct a thorough evaluation of the FBI’s post-9/11 authorities, policies, and practices to identify and curb any and all activities that are illegal, ineffective, or prone to misuse.
The choice between our civil liberties and our security is a false one: we can be both safe and free.
In the interest of highlighting the worst abuses that have occurred over the last 12 years, the ACLU has put together a factsheet:
The Ten Most Disturbing Things You Should Know About the FBI Since 9/11
USA Patriot Act Abuse
The recent revelation about the FBI using the Patriot Act’s “business records provision” to track all U.S. telephone calls is only the latest in a long line of abuse. Five Justice Department Inspector General audits documented widespread FBI misuse of Patriot Act authorities (1,2,3,4,5), and a federal district court recently struck down the National Security Letter (NSL) statute because of its unconstitutional gag orders. The IG also revealed the FBI’s unlawful use of “exigent letters” that claimed false emergencies to get private information without NSLs, but in 2009 the Justice Department secretly re-interpreted the law to allow the FBI to get this information without emergencies or legal process. Congress and the American public need to know the full scope of the FBI’s spying on Americans under the Patriot Act and all other surveillance authorities enacted since 9/11, like the FISA Amendments Act that underlies the PRISM program.
2008 Amendments to the Attorney General’s Guidelines
Attorney General Michael Mukasey re-wrote the FBI’s rulebook in the final months of the Bush administration, giving FBI agents unfettered authority to investigate people without any factual basis for suspecting wrongdoing. The 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines created a new kind of intrusive investigation called an “assessment,” which required no “factual predicate” before FBI agents could search through government or commercial databases, conduct overt or covert FBI interviews, and task informants to gather information about people or infiltrate lawful organizations. In a two-year period from 2009 to 2011, the FBI opened over 82,000 “assessments” of individuals or organizations, less than 3,500 of which discovered information justifying further investigation.
Racial and Ethnic Mapping
The 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines also authorized “domain management assessments” which allow the FBI to map American communities by race and ethnicity based on crass stereotypes about the crimes they are likely to commit. FBI documents obtained by the ACLU show the FBI mapped entire Chinese and Russian communities in San Francisco on the theory that they might commit organized crime, all Latino communities in New Jersey and Alabama because a street gang has Latino members, African Americans in Georgia to find “Black separatists,” and Middle-Eastern communities in Detroit for terrorism investigations. The FBI’s racial and ethnic mapping program is simply racial and religious profiling of entire communities.
Unrestrained Data Collection and Data Mining
The FBI has claimed the authority to secretly sweep up voluminous amounts of private information from data aggregators for data mining purposes. In 2007 the FBI said it amassed databases containing 1.5 billion records, which were predicted to grow to 6 billion records by 2012, or equal to “20 separate ‘records’ for each man, woman and child in the United States.” When Congress sought information about one of these programs, the FBI refused to give the Government Accountability Office access. That program was temporarily defunded, but its successor, the FBI Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, currently has 360 staff members running 40 separate projects. Records show analysts are allowed to use data mining tools to establish “risk scores” for U.S. persons. A 2013 IG audit questioned the task force’s effectiveness, concluding it “did not always provide FBI field offices with timely and relevant information.”
Suppressing Internal Dissent: The FBI War on Whistleblowers
The FBI is exempt from the Whistleblower Protection Act. Though the law required it to establish internal mechanisms to protect whistleblowers, it has a long history of retaliating against them. As a result, a 2009 IG report found that 28 percent of non-supervisory FBI employees and 22 percent of FBI supervisors at the GS-14 and GS-15 levels “never” reported misconduct they have seen or heard about on the job. The FBI has also aggressively investigated whistleblowers from other agencies, leading to an unprecedented increase in Espionage Act prosecutions under the Obama administration, almost invariably targeting critics of government policies.
Targeting Journalists
The FBI’s overzealous pursuit of government whistleblowers has resulted in the inappropriate targeting of journalists for investigation, potentially chilling press freedoms. Recently, the FBI obtained records from 21 telephone lines used by over 100 Associated Press journalists, including the AP’s main number in the U.S. House of Representatives’ press gallery. And an FBI search warrant affidavit claimed Fox News reporter James Rosen aided, abetted, or co-conspired in criminal activity because of his news gathering activities, in an apparent attempt to circumvent legal restrictions designed to protect journalists. In 2010, the IG reported that the FBI unlawfully used an “exigent letter” to obtain the telephone records of seven New York Times and Washington Post reporters and researchers during a media leak investigation.
Thwarting Congressional Oversight
The FBI has thwarted congressional oversight by withholding information, limiting or delaying responses to members’ inquiries, or worse, by providing false or misleading information to Congress and the American public. Examples include false information regarding FBI investigations of domestic advocacy groups, misleading information about the FBI’s awareness of detainee abuse, and deceptive responses to questions about government surveillance authorities.
Targeting First Amendment Activity
Several ACLU Freedom of Information Act requests have uncovered significant evidence that the FBI has used its expanded authorities to target individuals and organizations because of their participation in First Amendment-protected activities. A 2010 IG report confirmed the FBI conducted inappropriate investigations of domestic advocacy groups engaged in environmental and anti-war activism, and falsified public responses to hide this fact. Other FBI documents showed FBI exploitation of community outreach programs to secretly collect information about law-abiding citizens, including a mosque outreach program specifically targeting American Muslims. Many of these abuses are likely a result of flawed FBI training materials and intelligence products that expressed anti-Muslim sentiments and falsely identified religious practices or other First Amendment activities as indicators of terrorism.
Proxy Detentions
The FBI increasingly operates outside the U.S., where its authorities are less clear and its activities much more difficult to monitor. Several troubling cases indicate that during the Bush administration the FBI requested, facilitated, and/or exploited the arrests and detention of U.S. citizens by foreign governments, often without charges, so they could be interrogated, sometimes tortured, then interviewed by FBI agents. The ACLU represents two victims of such activities. Amir Meshal was arrested at the Kenya border by a joint U.S., Kenyan, and Ethiopian task force in 2007, subjected to more than four months of detention, and transferred between three different East African countries without charge, access to counsel, or presentment before a judicial officer, all at the behest of the U.S. government. FBI agents interrogated Meshal more than thirty times during his detention. Similarly, Naji Hamdan, a Lebanese-American businessman, sat for interviews with the FBI several times before moving from Los Angeles to the United Arab Emirates in 2006. In 2008, he was arrested by U.A.E. security forces and held incommunicado for nearly three months, beaten, and tortured. At one point an American participated in his interrogation; Hamdan believed this person to be an FBI agent based on the interrogator’s knowledge of previous FBI interviews. Another case in 2010, involving an American teenager jailed in Kuwait, may indicate this activity has continued into the Obama administration.
Use of No Fly List to Pressure Americans Abroad to Become Informants
The number of U.S. persons on the No Fly List has more than doubled since 2009, and people mistakenly on the list are denied their due process rights to meaningfully challenge their inclusion. In many cases Americans only find out they are on the list while they are traveling abroad, which all but forces them to interact with the U.S. government from a position of extreme vulnerability, and often without easy access to counsel. Many of those prevented from flying home have been subjected to FBI interviews while they sought assistance from U.S. Embassies to return. In those interviews, FBI agents sometimes offer to take people off the No Fly List if they agree to become an FBI informant. In 2010 the ACLU and its affiliates filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 American citizens and permanent residents, including several U.S. military veterans, seven of whom were prevented from returning home until the suit was filed. We argue that barring them from flying without due process was unconstitutional. There are now 13 plaintiffs; none have been charged with a crime, told why they are barred from flying, or given an opportunity to challenge their inclusion on the No Fly List.
(Find a printable PDF version here.)
July 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Michael Mukasey, National security letter, Patriot Act, Robert Mueller, United States, USA-PATRIOT Act |
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President Barack Obama announced Friday afternoon that he’s selected James Comey to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Comey, 52, worked as the deputy attorney general for the United States under President George W. Bush and will replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller when he steps down later this year after he is confirmed by the Senate.
All three men were on hand at the White House Friday afternoon when President Obama formally made his pick after weeks of speculation suggested Comey would be the likely nominee.
Comey, said Obama, embodies the “core principals of fidelity, bravery and integrity” expected of FBI agents and applauded “his fierce independence and his deep integrity.”
In fact, that independence is the focus of perhaps the most widely reported instance from the Bush White House involving Comey. While serving as deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, Comey rejected the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program that has recently reemerged as the center of controversy.
“In a confrontation he has called the most difficult night of his career, [Comey] rushed to the hospital bedside of his boss, John Ashcroft, in 2004 to stop two senior Bush White House aides from getting the ailing attorney general’s approval to reauthorize a post-9/11 program that allowed government wiretaps to be used without warrants,” the Associated Press recalled this week.
Comey’s insistence in keeping the program off the books was made notwithstanding an earlier decision to favor the surveillance program, though. Glenn Greenwald reported for The Guardian last month that Comey “approved a legal memorandum in 2004 endorsing radical executive power theories and warped statutory interpretations, concluding that the Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program was legal, thus making it more difficult to prosecute the Bush officials who ordered it.”
The internal conflict within the administration that erupted years later over that program almost led to Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller offering their resignation, apparently. As Greenwald noted, though, the then-deputy attorney general declined to follow up on his threat after slight adjustments were made to the NSA spy program.
“But the reason they didn’t end up resigning ,” he wrote, “was because Bush officials ‘modified’ that NSA program into something those lawyers could and did endorse: the still-illegal, still-radical NSA eavesdropping program that spied on the communications of Americans without warrants and in violation of the law.”
Those practices have come under question in recent weeks after Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former intelligence contractor, leaked documents showing the size and scope of the surveillance programs. Mr. Mueller said those disclosures caused “significant harm” to the nation’s security and that the admitted leaker is the “subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.”
“One of the great vulnerabilities terrorists understand is their communications,” Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee last week. “If we lose our ability get their communications, we are going to be exceptionally vulnerable.”
After being picked by Pres. Obama to replace Mueller on Friday, Comey said, “I don’t know whether I can fill those shoes.” Mueller was FBI chief for 12 years, making him the second-longest serving official to ever head the bureau.
June 22, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Comey, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, James B. Comey, Obama, United States, USA |
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Thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden many more people in the US and world-wide are learning about extensive US government surveillance and spying. There are publicly available numbers which show the reality of these problems are bigger than most think and most of this spying is happening with little or no judicial oversight.
Hundreds of Thousands Subject to Government Surveillance
The first reality is that hundreds of thousands of people in the US have been subject to government surveillance in each of the last few years. Government surveillance of people in the US is much more widespread than those in power want to admit. In the last three years alone about 5000 requests have been granted for complete electronic surveillance authorized by the secret FISA court. The FBI has authorized another 50,000 surveillance operations with National Security Letters in the last three years. The government admits that well over 300,000 people have had their phone calls intercepted by state and federal wiretaps in the last year alone. More than 50,000 government requests for internet information are received each year as reported by internet providers. And, remember, these are the publicly reported numbers so you can be confident there is a whole lot more going on which has not been publicly reported.
Courts Almost Never Deny Government Requests for Surveillance
The second reality is that there is little to no serious oversight or accountability by the courts of this surveillance. Government spy defenders keep suggesting the courts are looking carefully and rigorously at all this and only letting a tiny number of really bad people be spied on. Not true. Despite thousands of requests by the federal government to look deeply into people’s lives, the secret federal FISA court turned down no requests at all in the last three years. The state and federal courts report on wiretap applications document over 2000 applications annually for surveillance which authorize the interception of hundreds of thousands of calls and emails. The courts have turned down the government two times in the most recent report. FBI national security letters do not even have to be authorized by a court at all. The lack of Congressional oversight is plain to see but the lack of any judicial review of many of these surveillance actions and the very weak oversight where courts do review should concern anyone who cares about government accountability.
Let’s break down the surveillance by the authority for spying.
In FISA Court Government Always Wins
The US government has tried to say the public should not worry about government scooping up hundreds of millions of phone calls and internet activities because no real information is disclosed unless it is authorized by what is called the FISA court. Therefore, you can trust us with this information.
The FISA Court, actually called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is made up of ten federal judges who deliberate and decide in secret whether the government can gather and review millions of phone and internet records. This court, though I know and respect several of its members, cannot, be considered an aggressive defender of constitutional rights and civil liberties.
Government lawyers go to these FISA judges in secret. Government lawyers present secret evidence in secret proceedings with no defense lawyer or public or press allowed and asks for secret orders allowing the government to secretly spy on people. Its opinions are secret. The part the public knows is a one paragraph report which is made every year of the number of applications and the number of denials by the court.
What is worse is that the judges in this secret court never turn the secret government lawyers down.
Over the last three years, the government has made 4,976 requests to the secret FISA court for permission to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. But the really big FISA number is zero. Zero is the number of government requests to conduct electronic surveillance the FISA court has turned down in the last three years.
In 2012, the government asked for permission from the judges of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) 1,789 times to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. There were zero denials. One time the government withdrew its request.
In 2011, the government asked FISA judges 1,676 times to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence services. There were zero denials. The government withdrew two requests.
In 2010, the government asked FISA judges 1,511 times to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. There were zero denials. The government withdrew five requests.
Not a bad record, huh? Nearly five thousand victories for those who want surveillance powers and no defeats is a record that should concern everyone who seeks to protect civil liberties.
FBI National Security Letters Scoop Up Information No Court Approval Even Needed
With a NSL letter the FBI can demand financial records from any institution from banks to casinos, all telephone records, subscriber information, credit reports, employment information, and all email records of the target as well as the email addresses and screen names for anyone who has contacted that account. The reason is supposed to be for foreign counterintelligence. There is no requirement for court approval at all. The Patriot Act has made this much easier for the FBI.
According to Congressional records, there have been over 50,000 of these FBI NSL requests in the last three years. This does not count the numerous times where the FBI persuades the disclosure of information without getting a NSL. Nor does it count FBI requests made just to find out who an email account belongs to.
These reported NSL numbers also do not include the very high numbers of administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI which only require approval of a member of the local US Attorney’s office.
In 2012, the FBI issued 15,229 national security letter requests for information concerning US citizens.
In 2011, the FBI made 16,511 national security letter requests for information concerning US persons.
In 2010, the FBI made 24,287 national security letter requests for information on US citizens.
Since there is no court approval needed, there are no denials. The NSL record is even better than the FISA record at 56,027 wins and no losses for Team Surveillance.
Thousands of Wiretaps Each Impacting Over One Hundred People Authorized Two Denied
According to the latest report to Congress by the US Courts, there were 2,732 applications for wiretaps submitted to all federal and to half of the state courts in 2011. Half the states did not report on their numbers, so these numbers are certainly quite much too low. Also, the term wiretap is out of date as this process currently covers providing information on conventional phone lines, cell phones, secret microphones, texts, fax, paging, and email computer transmissions.
For the year 2011, out of 2,732 applications, only two were denied. Two losses out of 2700 tries is a comparatively poor win loss record for the surveillance folks.
On average, each wiretap intercepted the communications of 113 people, thus over three hundred thousand people had their calls intercepted.
The most prevalent reason reported for the wiretaps was drug offenses. The average length of the wiretap was 42 days. One federal wiretap in Michigan resulted in intercepting over 71,000 cellular messages extending over 202 days. A New York state wiretap intercepted 274,210 messages over 564 days.
Company Reports on Spying Show Tens of Thousands of Requests
It is well known that user accounts at Google, Apple and others contain a treasure trove of information on the customer’s basic information including searches, likes and dislikes, purchases, friends, and the like. Government investigators seek this information tens of thousands times each year as the reports from the companies show.
Apple reported receiving 4,000 to 5,000 government requests for information on customers in just the last six months. From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013 Apple received law enforcement requests for customer data on 9-10,000 accounts or devices. Most of these requests are from police for robberies, missing children, etc.
Facebook reported that in a six month period ending December 31, 2012, it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from the US government for user data on 18,000 to 19,000 accounts.
Google reported it received over 15,000 requests for data by US government officials in 2012 for information on over 30,000 accounts. It produced some data 88% of the time.
Microsoft (including Skype) reported 75,378 law enforcement requests for information on 137,424 accounts world-wide for the year 2012. In over 11,000 cases, they could find no data to respond to the requests. Microsoft disclosed non-content information in 56,388 cases, mostly to the US, UK, Turkey, Germany and France. In the US, Microsoft received 11,073 requests from law enforcement for information on 24,565 accounts. Microsoft rejected 759 requests or 6.9% on legal grounds. Microsoft provided user content in 1544 cases and subscriber/transactional data in 7,196 cases.
Yahoo said that in the last six months of 2012 it received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for user data from law enforcement.
In a democracy, transparency and public participation are critical. This is not just about “the terrorists.” This is about civil liberty and government accountability. Hundreds of thousands of people are being spied upon every year by our own government’s public admissions. There is little oversight by judges and even less by Congress. If the government admits this much, you can certainly assume there is more to come out. It is time to wake up. These secret subpoenas and secret courts and secret processes should be abolished or fundamentally changed. Otherwise, change the slogan on the dollar to “In Secrecy We Trust.”
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Bill also works with the Center for Constitutional Rights. A longer version of this article with full sources is available. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com
June 20, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | FBI, FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, National Security Agency, National security letter, Patriot Act, United States, United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court |
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An American Muslim man has sued the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the State Department over the claim that he was subjected to torture at their behest while being held abroad.
On Thursday, Yonas Fikre, a Sudanese man of Eritrean descent, filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Oregon seeking USD 30 million in compensation as well as injunctions to prevent the US government from treating anyone else the way he was treated.
The plaintiff says that the FBI took an interest in him in 2009, when he decided to move from Portland, Oregon, to Sudan in order to open an electronics retail business in the North African country.
In April 2010, Fikre was summoned to the US embassy in Khartoum by a man claiming to be an official requiring advice on “how Americans might stay safe during a period of political turmoil in Sudan.”
Upon arrival, he was ushered into a small room and interrogated by FBI agents David Noordeloos and Jason Dundas for information on worshippers at Portland’s largest mosque, Masjid al-Saber.
The agents sought to recruit Fikre as an informant at the mosque, and were angered when he refused.
Fikre left Sudan in June 2010 and arrived in the United Arab Emirates in September 2010, where he obtained a residency permit.
He was apprehended by Emirati police in June 2011, when they “invaded” his house in Abu Dhabi.
Fikre was then incarcerated for 106 days in solitary confinement in a windowless cell, and was beaten repeatedly during the period.
Named in Fikre’s suit are US Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State John Kerry, FBI Director Robert Mueller, FBI Terrorism Screening Center Director Timothy Healy, and FBI agents Noordeloos and Dundas.
Fikre’s story echoes those of Naji Hamdan, Amir Meshal, Sharif Mobley, Gulet Mohamed, as well as Yusuf and Yahya Wehelie.
The six American Muslim men say that, while traveling abroad, they were arrested, questioned, and in some cases abused by local security forces at the behest of the US government.
June 2, 2013
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture | Abu Dhabi, Amir Meshal, David Noordeloos, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Gulet Mohamed, Jason Dundas, Naji Hamdan, Sharif Mobley, United Arab Emirates, US government, Yonas Fikre |
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Photos shown by the father of Ibragim Todashev, a young man who was killed by FBI agents during investigations into the Boston Marathon bombings, reveal he sustained six gunshot wounds, one in the crown of his head.
27-year-old Todashev was killed by the FBI while he was being questioned about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombing suspects who was killed by police on April 19.
Law enforcement sources initially said Todashev was armed with a knife and that he “went crazy” brandishing the knife and stabbing an FBI agent. However, unidentified sources said Thursday that Todashev was not armed when the FBI shot him dead.
At a press conference on Thursday in Moscow, Ibragim’s father showed photos of his son’s body which were taken by Ibragim’s friends after the FBI handed the body to them.
“I can show you the photos taken after the killing of my son. I have 16 photographs. I just would like to say that looking at these photos is like being in a movie. I only saw things like that in movies: shooting a person, and then the kill shot. Six shots in the body, one of them in the head,” said Ibragim’s father at the press conference.
On May 22, the day the FBI killed Ibragim, ABC News reported that he was “about to sign a statement” confessing he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were involved in a 2011 murder of three men in Massachusetts.
However, Ibragim’s father said that his son was questioned twice by the FBI about the Boston Marathon bombings but not about the 2011 murder.
Ibragim’s father also said that his son believed the April 15 Boston attack, in which three people were killed and more than 260 were wounded, was a “set-up.”
Moreover, investigative reporter Ralph Lopez revealed to The Digital Journal on Wednesday that the image released by the FBI as evidence that Tamerlan’s brother left a backpack at the scene of the Boston bombings was made with Photoshop.
- What would it take? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
May 30, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Todashev |
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“Officials: Man who knew Boston bombing suspect was unarmed when shot”
Just to give you a taste of the massive and elaborate lying involved, here’s the original reporting: “FBI agent fatally shoots man with suspected ties to Boston Marathon bomber: authorities” (my emphasis throughout in red):
“An FBI agent fatally shot a Florida man this morning, after questioning him about ties to Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, authorities said.
Feds, two Massachusetts state troopers and investigators from other agencies were questioning Ibragim Todashev, 27, shortly after midnight when he suddenly pulled a knife and stabbed an FBI agent, law enforcement sources told The Post.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the stabbed FBI agent was the same one who shot and killed Todashev. The wounded FBI agent was taken to the hospital and he was expected to survive his wounds, officials said.“
Also!: “Source: Friend of bombing suspect attacked agent with sword“:
“FOX 25’s Bob Ward was told by a confidential informant that the man, who was killed while being questioned by FBI agents in Florida, was in the process of confessing to a triple murder that occurred in Waltham when he suddenly attacked an agent with a sword.
…
During the interview, investigators took notes and everything appeared to be going well. Eventually, Todashev was asked to write down, in his own handwriting and in his own words, what he had been telling authorities about his role in the murders when in the words of one source – all hell broke loose.
Todashev allegedly began writing, but then flipped a table over, knocking the Boston FBI agent into the wall hitting his head.
FOX 25’s Bob Ward was told the agent looked up to see Todashev waving in his direction what was described as a Banzai ceremonial sword.
Fearing for his life, the FBI agent drew his weapon and fatally shot Todashev. The entire incident taking only seconds.”
There is an attempt to make this seem less outrageous by repeating the story that Todashev was just about to sign a confession implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the Waltham killings:
“Todashev became violent as he was signing a written statement based on his confession to the triple murder and attacked the agent with a knife, according to the FBI.”
But note:
“But sources say during questioning Tuesday night, Todashev implicated himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the killings. As investigators pushed at him towards a confession, he snapped, reported Orr.”
There’s a big difference between the usual police haranguing towards a confession (which means no confession), and having a written confession ready for him to sign, just as there is a difference between a knife wound which sends an agent to hospital (where ‘he was expected to survive his wounds’!!!), and no wound and no weapon. The lies are simply too specific and detailed to be mistakes or slips.
“Atlantic Wire on the Murder of Ibragim Todashev”
Seven times?!! (note the headline disparages the story by attributing it up front to one of those dastardly ‘Islamic groups’, and the article disparages the photograph by emphasizing its source): “Islamic group: Slain man was unarmed, shot by FBI agent 7 times”:
“An Islamic group Wednesday called for a federal civil-rights investigation of last week’s fatal shooting of an Orlando man by an FBI agent investigating his connection to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
And the Tampa director of that group said not only was 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev unarmed when he was shot by the agent May 22, he was hit seven times, including once in the head.
. . .
At a news conference Wednesday evening, Shibly showed what he said were photos of Todashev’s body after the shooting. The photos were taken at an Orlando funeral home after the Orange-Osceola County Medical Examiner’s office released the body to Todashev’s next of kin, he said.
The photographer was Khusen Taramov — a friend of Todashev’s who lives in Kissimmee — and photos show at least a dozen wounds, although some may have been exit wounds, Shibly said.”
The claim that one shot was to the ‘back of the head’ somehow didn’t make it into all of the stories.
I’m reading a lot of the usual nonsense of the supposed mental and psychological problems of conspiracy theorists, but I would like to ask a question of the Official Story believers. What would it take for you to entertain the notion that there might be a conspiracy here? Is there any set of facts of official wrongdoing that might cause you to have even the slightest doubt about what you are being told by official sources? If there is no possible set of facts which would cause you to start to have doubts, you have a serious mental and psychological problem of needing to believe what your ‘betters’ tell you.
May 30, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ibragim Todashev, Murder of Ibragim Todashev, Todashev, United States |
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President Barack Obama announced Friday afternoon that he’s selected James Comey to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Photos shown by the father of Ibragim Todashev, a young man who was killed by FBI agents during investigations into the Boston Marathon bombings, reveal he sustained six gunshot wounds, one in the crown of his head.
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