Following last week’s hyped up media reports on the arrest of a Mississippi man for mailing poisonous letters to US President Barack Obama, a senator and a judge, the FBI has announced that it has not found any poison-making materials at his home.
“There was no apparent ricin, castor beans or any material there that could be used for the manufacturing, like a blender or something,” FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Agent Brandon Grant testified Friday at a preliminary hearing at a federal court in Oxford, Mississippi, according to local press reports on Monday and Tuesday.
Paul Kevin Curtis was arrested and charged last Wednesday on suspicion of mailing three letters tainted with ricin, a fatal biological poison, to Obama, Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker and a state judge just a day after the deadly Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, prompting growing fears across the US that the country may be under another major attack, reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 incidents in New York and Virginia that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Meanwhile, Curtis’ attorney, Christi McCoy, has insisted that “There is absolutely not a shred of evidence to link this poor guy” to an attempted poisoning.
“That’s the truth!” McCoy said. “He is the perfect scapegoat, the perfect patsy, and it’s really sad because at first everybody’s like, you know, he’s kind of crazy, maybe he did it. But as the searches continued, there’s just nothing on this guy. Nothing on his computers, in his car, in his house.”
US authorities first insisted that the letters tested positive for containing the deadly bio agent but then announced that more accurate examination of the mailings must be conducted at specialized FBI laboratories to confirm earlier tests.
This is while the FBI announced on Wednesday that is was still waiting for a “final word on whether the letters to Obama and Wicker definitely contained ricin.”
“The initial tests can be inaccurate,” a Washington Post report emphasized on Thursday, adding that in 2004 a letter sent to a top US senator was initially believed to contain ricin but additional tests proved it was harmless.
The letters sent to Obama and Wicker were reportedly similar in content and the origin of their postmark, Memphis, Tennessee. They read, “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both of them were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”
According to local reports last Thursday, at least five other senators were reportedly forced into an emergency mode for receiving “suspicious” packages at their offices in Washington or their home states, “prompting evacuations of their staff and lock downs of many more.”
Furthermore, US police ordered thousand of congressional staffers and aides not to leave their offices after a bag was reportedly sighted at the entrance way of a Senate office building, as a bomb squad raced towards the Capitol Hill. Two hours later, however, the package, as well as two letters delivered to the officers of two senators was cleared as not harmful.
Curtis, according to US press reports, held a “morbid” theory that the American government was involved in an organ-selling conspiracy after observing body parts in the freezer of the hospital where he used to work in 1999.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US confronted a series of alleged ‘anthrax attacks’ that were never formally solved. A former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, was falsely and publicly implicated and later exonerated by way of several lawsuit settlements. Officials later focused on Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself in 2008, though the case against him was also met with doubts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI has been manufacturing fake terror plots only to later claim that they foiled the same plots that they created. This is a historical fact. They have been doing this for decades and have greatly accelerated these programs following the 9/11 attacks and the official launch of the so-called war on terror. Is it any surprise that the FBI was in close contact with at least one of the two Russian brothers who have been accused by the FBI of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings? It shouldn’t be when you also consider that the FBI actually allowed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to go forward and did nothing to stop it. Accusations have even been made by Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols that a high level FBI source had been directing Tim McVeigh in the plot to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. So not only does the FBI have a track record of creating fake terror plots but they have a track record of allowing real terror plots to take place. With this in mind, the FBI has no credibility with their alleged on-going investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings.
Let’s first take a look back at the FBI’s involvement in the events that led up to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The FBI actually had foreknowledge of the bombing through one of their informants Emad Salem. Salem was embedded amongst a group of Muslims who the FBI believed were preparing to launch terrorist attacks. The group included Ramzi Yousef and others who would eventually be sentenced to prison in connection with the bombing.
In 1992 roughly a full year before the attack, Salem told his handlers at the FBI that the group was building a bomb. The original plan was for Salem to substitute harmless powder for the explosives but the plan was called off by an FBI supervisor who claimed Salem could be used better in other ways. Not trusting his FBI handlers, Salem recorded many hours of their conversations. The transcripts of these conversations clearly reveal that the FBI knew about a real terrorist plot but did nothing to stop it. The news of these transcripts was reported in media outlets including CBS News and the New York Times.
Moving on to the Oklahoma City bombing, below is an excerpt from a 2007Salt Lake Tribunearticle regarding Terry Nichols statement claiming that Tim McVeigh was being directed by the FBI.
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official “apparently” was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.
The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government “in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma,” Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.
Needless to say, the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing is littered with unanswered questions. The documentary film A Noble Lie goes over the mountain of evidence proving that the government had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing and participated in a massive cover up.
Worse yet, there is a substantial amount of evidence indicating that the government was involved in the attacks themselves. The ATF had offices in the Alfred P. Murrah building but ATF personnel were conveniently told not to come into work the day of the bombing. There were also eyewitness accounts and local media reports confirming that there were in fact multiple bombs inside the building. The only way bombs of such sophistication could have been put inside a secure federal building would be if the people placing them in the building were doing so under some sort of official capacity. This in of itself proves that the Oklahoma City bombings couldn’t have happened unless high level people in the government green lit such an operation. Amazingly, this just represents a small fraction of the evidence proving government involvement in the Oklahoma City bombings.
Since the 9/11 attacks the FBI has been involved in manufacturing a number of terror plots by entrapping a myriad of idiots and bizarre characters. What is significant about this is that these so-called terror plots would not have happened if it weren’t for the activity of undercover FBI informants. There are so many cases of this that it would be almost impossible to include them all in a single article. A book entitled The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism written by Trevor Aaronson details several cases of the FBI creating terror plots so they can later make arrests and claim they are making progress in the fake terror war.
Here are just a few of the articles that detail the FBI busting terror plots that they created in the first place.
From the FBI manufacturing fake terror plots to the FBI allowing real terror events to take place, the connection between the FBI and the now allegedly deceased Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is highly suspicious. The odds that he and his brother were setup by the FBI are quite high considering the FBI’s historical track record in dealing with such matters. The FBI has still yet to provide any real evidence proving that these two young men were solely responsible for the bombings. All they have going for them is the mockingbird media repeating generalizations and lies that are not backed up with any facts or logic.
It is painfully obvious that the establishment is struggling to link these two men to known terrorist groups or offer a reasonable motive as to why they would use bombs against innocent people. The official narrative is falling apart and the FBI along with the assorted establishment agencies and corporate media outlets are losing more and more credibility the longer they try to sell this ridiculous story to the public.
The investigation into Monday’s deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon has officially gone international: law enforcement officials from Israel have been sent to the United States to assist in the probe.
Israel Police Chief Yohanan Danino says he has dispatched officials to Boston, Massachusetts, where they will meet with Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and other authorities, the Times of Israel reports.
Citing an earlier report published by the newspaper Maariv, Times of Israel writes that Danino has dispatched police officers to participate in discussions that “will center on the Boston Marathon bombings and deepening professional cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of both countries.”
The paper reports that Israeli law enforcement planned the trip before the deadly pair of bombings on Monday that has so far claimed three lives, but the discussions will now shift focus in order to see how help from abroad can expand the investigation.
In an address made Tuesday, Israel President Shimon Peres said that tragedies such as this week’s incident in Boston, sadly, bring people together from across the world.
“When it comes to events like this, all of us are one family. We feel a part of the people who paid such a high price. God bless them,” Peres said. “Today the real problem is terror, and terror is not an extension of policy: Their policy is terror, their policy is to threaten. Terrorists divide people, they kill innocent people.”
Around 20 hours after two bombs detonated near the finish line of the annual race, United States President Barack Obama went on record to condemn the tragedy as a terrorist attack.
“This was a heinous and cowardly act,” said Obama from the White House, “and given what we now know the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism.”
But even as officials come to assist from as far away as Israel, authorities are still in the dark as far as finding any leads in the case. Pres. Obama has directed the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security to assist in the investigation, but no agencies have identified suspects or motives at this time.
Pres. Obama has also said that his administration has been directed to implement “appropriate security measures to protect the American people,” but details as to what that could mean remain scarce. Meanwhile, at least one leading lawmaker is asking for the US to respond to the terrorist attack by increasing the scope of the ever-expanding surveillance program already growing across the United States.
“I do think we need more cameras,” Rep. Peter King (R-New York) told MSNBC after Monday’s attacks. “We have to stay ahead of the terrorists and I do know in New York, the Manhattan Security Initiative, which is based on cameras, the outstanding work that results from that. So yes, I do favor more cameras. They’re a great law enforcement device. And again, it keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also confirmed that he has dispatched law enforcement officers from the Big Apple to assist in the investigation by meeting with agents at a Boston fusion center, one of the DHS-funded data facilities that collects surveillance camera footage and other evidence in order to analyze events like Monday’s attack.
“We are certainly engaged in the information flow with the FBI through our Joint Terrorism Task Force. We have two New York City police officers, police sergeants, who are in the Boston Regional Intelligence Center,” Bloomberg said on Tuesday. “They’re up there, they’ve been up there since last evening.”
But in a study conducted last year by the Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, lawmakers found that those fusion centers have been more or less unhelpful in assisting with terrorism probes.
The Department of Homeland Security’s work with state and local fusion centers, the subcommittee wrote, “has not produced useful intelligence to support federal counterterrorism efforts.” Instead, they added, so-called “intelligence” shared between facilities consisted of tidbits of shoddy quality that was often outdated and “sometimes endangering [to] citizen‘s civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.”
“More often than not,” the panel added, information collected and shared at DHS fusion centers was “unrelated to terrorism.”
According to a new report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the President and CEO of biometrics firm SmartMetric posits that the industry will be worth $10 billion by 2018.
SmartMetric, of course, “stands to capitalize significantly on this very large and fast growing market,” so perhaps that projection should be taken with a grain of salt.
But specific figures aside, the industry is undoubtedly booming, and in large part due to US military and law enforcement biometrics programs.
If you are worried about how powerful biometrics technologies might be used in your city or state, click here to find out how to get involved at the local level to ensure police transparency and democratic accountability.
WASHINGTON – The FBI refuses to provide information on a massive biometric identification database that can identify noncriminal civilians through iris scans, DNA, and facial and voice recognition, a watchdog claims in court.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, sued the FBI in Federal Court, claiming that the bureau identified more than 7,000 pages of responsive records, but won’t release them.
EPIC claims the FBI began posting details on its website about its biometric identification system, known as Next Generation Identification (NGI), in 2009.
“When completed, the NGI system will be the largest biometric database in the world,” EPIC says in its complaint. “The vast majority of records contained in the NGI database will be of U.S. citizens.”
EPIC claims the NGI system will be able to identify people through fingerprints, iris scans, DNA profiles, voice identification profiles, palm prints and photographs, and will through facial recognition.
“The NGI database will include photographic images of millions of individuals who are neither criminals nor suspects,” the complaint states.
The Department of Homeland Security has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” into the system, and wants to integrate it into state and local surveillance systems that may use other surveillance technology, giving the government the capability of real-time matching of live feeds from surveillance cameras, EPIC claims.
There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States, but not all of them will be used for law enforcement purposes, EPIC says in the complaint.
It claims private entities will also have access to the system.
EPIC claims the Orwellian system already is up and running in New York City, where police have been scanning irises of arrestees since 2010 and using a handheld device that “allows officers patrolling the streets to scan irises and faces of individuals and match them against biometric databases.”
At least 11 other states participate in the program: Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to the complaint.
EPIC claims it submitted two FOIA request in 2012, seeking records on the FBI’s contracts with private contractors Lockheed Martin, IBM, Accenture, BAE Systems Information Technology, Global Science & Technology, Innovation Management & Technology Services, Platinum Solutions, the National Center for State Courts, and any other entities involved with the program.
The FBI said it found 7,380 pages of potentially responsive records but has failed to disclose a single agency record, the complaint states.
EPIC wants to see the records, and wants its FOIA fees waived.
On January 31, 2013 the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy hosted a public education event just north of Apollo Pennsylvania. Author Grant F. Smith discussed key findings from his 2012 book, “Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of US Weapons-Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program” at the Parks Township Volunteer Fire Hall.
Smith’s talk covered the corporate histories of NUMEC and Apollo Industries, how regulators dealt with the plant’s massive losses of bomb-grade nuclear material, the FBI’s investigation of NUMEC’s joint venture with a front for Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the ongoing clandestine interactions of NUMEC executives with Israeli intelligence and covert nuclear weapons program operatives.
Smith also unveiled a major new effort to declassify all remaining CIA, NSA, Justice Department and National Security Council files revealing how American presidents quietly grappled with NUMEC as a proliferation and safeguards issue from the LBJ to the Carter administrations.
Well, there they go again. We’ve talked a bunch about how the FBI has gotten really good at stopping its own terrorist plots and they’ve gone and done it again. Right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the FBI has gleefully announced how they’ve stopped an attempt to bomb a Bank of America building in Oakland. The details are familiar: random guy with no actual connection to terrorists, and no actual way to build a connection with terrorists, is taken in by an FBI undercover agent who works with him to build a “bomb” that was never a bomb. In other words, there was no plot. There was no bomb. There was just a bunch of undercover agents playing dressup, and one Joe Schmo who thought it was all real. Maybe next time, the FBI can turn it into a reality TV show on Spike. Ralph Garmin as… a fake terrorist. I’d watch it.
This all comes just a week after On the Mediaprofiled a new book called Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War On Terrorism. That book appears to collect a bunch of these stories, talking about how this is a major effort in the FBI these days: making up fake terrorist plots in order to stop people they themselves convinced to take part in the “plots” and then generate big headlines around them:
The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror shows how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim victory in the war on terror.
Think of just how many resources are wasted in entrapping random people, rather than stopping real crime. I don’t see how this makes us any safer at all. Frankly, it makes me a lot more terrified.
Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), there was a concerted effort to subvert the will of the people to avoid the rise “of a black Messiah” that would mobilize the African-American community into a meaningful political force.
This documentary establishes historical perspective on the measures initiated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI which aimed to discredit black political figures and forces of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s.
Combining declassified documents, interviews, rare footage and exhaustive research, it investigates the government’s role in the assassinations of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King Jr. Were the murders the result of this concerted effort to avoid “a black Messiah”?
“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith
For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.
The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.
The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.
Or did it?
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”
The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).
The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”
Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.
On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”
In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.
And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.
But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.
Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”
As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.
The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”
The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.
You know. The real terrorists.
Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.
Sources
“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens” Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed at:
“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:
“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post. Accessed at:
“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:
Even on dry land, Americans should fear the stingray. Not the flat cartilaginous fishes related to sharks, but the secret government surveillance device that not only tracks suspected criminals but also intercepts the private information of law-abiding citizens who happen to be nearby. Now, because of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) against the FBI, the government is slowly releasing thousands of relevant documents that are already raising alarms among privacy and civil liberties advocates.
The stingray came to public notice in 2011 when the FBI used a “cell-site simulator” to track down a suspect. This portable device, also called an “IMSI catcher” or a “stingray,” sends out a signal that fools nearby wireless phones into connecting with a fake network. It can then capture all sorts of personal data from all of those phones, including location data that can then be used to track a person’s movements in real time. A stingray can be handheld or mounted on a motor vehicle or an unmanned surveillance drone.
As the FBI has admitted to EPIC, because the stingray fools all nearby wireless phones into connecting with its bogus network and uploading private data to it, its use would constitute a “search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and thus require a warrant. However, because the FBI argues that wireless phone users have no reasonable expectation to privacy, the agency says it does not need a warrant. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the privacy of cell phone calls.
In addition to (probably) violating the constitution, the use of stingrays is also prohibited by federal law. Although heavily redacted, the files reluctantly released by the FBI reveal snippets of internal Justice Department discussions of how to justify use of the stingray as compliant with the provisions of the Communications Act that prohibit “interference” with communication signals like those of wireless phones.
These documents demonstrate, according to EPIC attorney Alan Butler, that “there are clearly concerns, even within the agency, that the use of Stingray technology might be inconsistent with current regulations. I don’t know how the DOJ justifies the use of Stingrays given the limitations of the Communications Act prohibition.”
Nor is it just the FBI. According to a recent report, local police are “quietly” using stingrays in Los Angeles, Miami, Fort Worth, and Gilbert, Arizona. And likely other places, as well.
The U.S. is ramping up pressure on the American public to accept an attack on Iran, with not one but two stories in today’s news. It wasn’t enough to accuse Iran of producing nuclear weapons based on no evidence, now we’re throwing into the mix accusations of cyberattacks and hostage taking as well.In perhaps the more serious charge, an AP story accuses Iran of holding retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in 2007 on an Iranian island. Iran has repeatedly denied holding Levinson, which would seem reasonable on two counts — one, they never denied holding the three American hikers, nor journalist Roxanna Saberi; why would they deny holding Levinson? And two, considering they have made no demands for a “spy swap” or anything of the sort, to what end would they be holding him?
Logic, of course, doesn’t deter the U.S. authorities who planted this story. And what exactly is their “evidence”? “The tradecraft used to send those items [videos and pictures of the hostage] was too good, indicating professional spies were behind them.” An example of that “professional tradecraft”? They used a cybercafe to send the video and never used that email address again! Oh, the amazing professionalism! The wondrous “tradecraft” of anyone who could pull off such a daring feat! Yes, you read right, this is the evidence on which “the U.S. government’s best intelligence analysis” says that Iran is holding Levinson.
The second story comes with an equal lack of significant evidence. The U.S. government (through the accommodating auspices of the New York Times) is accusing Iran of being behind recent DDoS attacks on American online banking sites. And here comes the “evidence”:
American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their claims, but computer security experts say the recent attacks showed a level of sophistication far beyond that of amateur hackers. Also, the hackers chose to pursue disruption, not money: another earmark of state-sponsored attacks, the experts said.
Again, two things. One, amateur hackers are pretty much capable of doing anything these days. And two, many amateur hacking attacks, probably most of them, are done for the purpose of disruption, not money.The most interesting aspect of this story is actually this admission:
American intelligence officials…claim Iran is waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for a series of cyberattacks on its own systems.
Needless to say, Iran would be perfectly justified in doing so, given that the U.S. is waging an all-out non-military war against Iran. It’s no accident that sanctions are referred to as “tightening the noose.” U.S. “officials” even admit that the sanctions are “designed to…threaten the country with economic collapse.” This is war, and Iran would be perfectly justified in retaliating by a lot more serious means than these cyberattacks. That said, it must be noted again that the “evidence” that Iran is behind these attacks borders on the laughable.But the U.S. government is not laughing. It is deadly serious in its intent to bring down the Iranian government, and remove from the world one more pole of independence from imperialism.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of prisoners behind bars for crimes they did not commit could prove their innocence with relative ease—if only prosecutors would let them. Although the American criminal justice system purports to create a level playing field, for example by requiring prosecutors to share relevant information with defense lawyers, only prosecutors have access to the DNA databases that more than 300 former prisoners have used to prove their innocence since 1989.
Operated and maintained by the FBI, the federal Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database contains data regarding 10 million offenders and 1.3 million arrestees, and is growing at an accelerating rate. At present, however, prosecutors have an iron grip on CODIS and only nine states—Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas—have laws granting defendants access to DNA databases.
According to defense attorneys and civil libertarians, legal reforms are needed to make the DNA databases equally available to defense lawyers. Steven Benjamin, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, called it “a national problem, a huge and recurring one,” because “juries expect the defense to be able to prove that if your client didn’t do it, who did? Science doesn’t belong to the government, but they act like it does. Unless the defense is given access to this information, the playing field remains uneven in criminal justice.”
Even some prosecutors say they agree: “We, as law enforcement and prosecutors, are obligated to seek the truth and follow the evidence, and DNA should be entered into CODIS,” said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association. “It seems like there should be laws for it, and I agree that the defense should be given the information.”
“You’d think there would be a federal rule or a statute in every state creating the clear obligation to do a CODIS search in any case where the defense wants it,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor of law at the University of Virginia.
However, as Garrett has also pointed out, when it comes to prisoners challenging their convictions, prosecutors “are attached to their convictions, and they don’t want to see their work called into question.”
Why must Jewish organizations be and be seen as the loudest drum-beaters of all? Why can we not bring ourselves to say that military intervention is not on the table at all? Why not stash it under the table, out of sight and mount instead a diplomatic assault? – Leonard Fein, Forward
Introduction
As the White House and Congress escalate their economic sanctions and military threats against Iran, top military commanders and Pentagon officials have launched a counter-offensive, opposing a new Middle East War. While some commentators and journalists, like Chris Hedges (Truthdig, November 13, 2007), privy to this high stakes inter-elite conflict, attribute this to a White House cabal led by Vice President Cheney, a more stringent and accurate assessment puts the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the center of the Iran war debate.
There is a great deal riding in this conflict – the future of the American empire as well as the balance of power in the Middle East. Equally important is the future of the US military and our already heavily constrained democratic freedoms. The outcome of the continuous and deepening confrontation between top US military officials and the Israel Firsters over US foreign policy in the Middle East has raised fundamental questions over self-determination, colonization, civilian primacy and military political intervention, empire or republic. These and related issues are far from being of academic interest only; they concern the future of the United States. … continue
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