Why is the FBI Manufacturing Reasons to Arrest Occupy Protesters While Ignoring White Supremacist Violence?

A sign in Foley Square at the Community/Labor
march in suport of Occupy Wall Street

A recent Rolling Stone article raises troubling questions about FBI entrapment schemes and their targets

May 18, 2012

This story originally appeared in Salon.

Writing in Rolling Stone this week, Rick Perlstein looks at how the FBI regularly entraps and creates “terrorists” out of anarchists and activists, while comparatively ignoring violent white supremacist groups.

Using some recent examples, Perlstein paints a startling picture. He notes the arrest this month of a small group of self-identified anarchists, participating in Occupy Cleveland, who — strung along in an FBI sting — planned to blow up a large Ohio bridge. The target was suggested and (fake) C-4 explosives were provided by an FBI infiltrator. As Perlstein put it, the episode was one among numerous law enforcement schemes since 2001 in which “the alleged terrorist masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage.”

Perlstein contrasts the Ohio arrestees with another recently arrested group: The American Front, a “known terrorist group” of Florida-based white supremacists who — without FBI encouragement — “took a break from training with machine guns for a race war in order to fashion weapons out of fake ‘Occupy’ signs which they planned to use to assault May Day protesters in Melbourne, Florida.” While anarchists, animal rights activists and Muslims pass muster as federal targets, organized hate groups do not.  READ MORE

Las Vegas real estate scam goes bust

As Las Vegas’s housing supply exploded, so did
competition among lawyers and contractors to
represent new homeowner associations in
construction-defect lawsuits. It was in this
environment that a shadowy
outfit cooked up a brazen scheme.

Before the market crashed and home prices tumbled, before federal investigators showed up and hauled away the community records, before her property managers pled guilty for conspiring to rig neighborhood elections, and before her real estate lawyer allegedly tried to commit suicide by overdosing on drugs and setting fire to her home, Wanda Murray thought that buying a condominium in Las Vegas was a pretty good idea. 

At first glance, Murray doesn’t look much like the type of person who would arrive in Las Vegas only to get tangled up in and eventually help unravel a complex criminal conspiracy. At 65, she stares out at the world through thick glasses. She is legally blind. Her eyes never quite seem to focus on any one thing. On a recent Friday morning, she sits at her dining room table wearing a zip-up leopard-print sweatshirt and recounts how she helped to foil a group of lawyers and contractors running amok in Sin City. “They didn’t think there would be four old ladies who wouldn’t put up with their stuff,” says Murray. “They really pissed me off.”   READ MORE

Bloomberg Businessweek: California, Nevada join forces in mortgage fraud probes

Bloomberg Businessweek: Real estate agent gets 20 months for mortgage scam 

Bloomberg Businessweek: Las Vegas sees Japan casinos as Diet seeks quake relief

Fbi: 9/11 Truthers Should Be Treated As Possible Terrorists

In the last few weeks the FBI, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, have sent out 25 flyers that label normal everyday activities as possible terrorist indicators.

These flyers also specifically target political speech and the belief that the CIA and others had a part in 9/11 in order to justify, among other things, multiple foreign wars.

That’s right, our government is teaching state and local law enforcement nationwide that 9/11 truthers should be immediately looked at as possible terrorists.

In an FBI, Bureau of Justice document on spotting potential sleeper cells within the United States it specifically states that someone may be a terrorist sleeper agent if they believe that the CIA had a hand in 9/11. (A fact that has been heavily documented by thousands of experts. Rogue elements does not mean the entire CIA)  READ MORE

Revealed: the men with stolen identities

September 23, 2001, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

Four Found Alive

Their names were flashed around the world as suicide hijackers who carried out the attacks on America. 

But yesterday four innocent men told how their identities had been stolen by Osama bin Laden's teams to cover their tracks. The men - all from Saudi Arabia - spoke of their shock at being mistakenly named by the FBI as suicide terrorists. 

None of the four was in the United States on September 11 and all are alive in their home country. The FBI released the list of 19 suicide terrorists three days after the attacks. The Saudi Airlines pilot, Saeed Al-Ghamdi, 25, and Abdulaziz Al-Omari, an engineer from Riyadh, are furious that the hijackers' "personal details" - including name, place, date of birth and occupation - matched their own.  

The other two men accused of being terrorists are Salem Al-Hamzi and Ahmed Al-Nami. Mr Al-Hamzi is 26 and had just returned to work at a petrochemical complex in the industrial eastern city of Yanbou ... when the hijackers struck. Mr Al-Nami, 33, from Riyadh, an administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Airlines, said that he was in Riyadh when the terrorists struck.  

The FBI admitted that there was some doubt about the identities of some of the suspects. A spokesman said: "The identification process has been complicated by the fact that many Arabic family names are similar. It is also possible that the hijackers used false identities." The spokesman declined to say whether the FBI would apologise but added: "If we have made mistakes then obviously that would be regrettable."

Note: The deceptions in the official story of 9/11 are nowhere more clearly shown than in this important story. The FBI never revised its list of alleged hijackers, and these four are all later listed in the official 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this, click here. For an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here. For other revealing news articles on 9/11, click here.

FBI: Paying Cash For a Cup of Coffee a ‘Potential Indicator of Terrorist Activity’

 Infowars.com

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

An FBI advisory aimed at Internet Cafe owners instructs businesses to report people who regularly use cash to pay for their coffee as potential terrorists.

The flyer, issued under the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism (CAT) program, lists examples of “suspicious activity” and then encourages businesses to gather information about individuals and report them to the authorities.

“Each flyer is designed for a particular kind of business,” writes Linda Lewis, a former policy analyst and planner for the U.S. government. “For example, this list was prepared for owners of internet cafes. 

Unquestionably, someone planning a terrorist attack has engaged in one or more of the “suspicious” activities on that list. But so, too, have most of the estimated 289 million computer users in this country.”

Indeed, the flyer aimed at Internet Cafe owners characterizes customers who “always pay cash” as potential terrorists.

Of course, the vast majority of people who visit Internet Cafes use cash to pay their bill. Who uses a credit card to buy a $2 dollar cup of coffee? A lot of smaller establishments don’t even accept credit cards for amounts less than $10 dollars.  READ MORE

Ex-Goldman Sachs Director to Face Criminal Charges

Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director,
Rajat Gupta, 03/09/08. (photo: Reuters)

By Basil Katz and Moira Herbst, Reuters

26 October 11

Rajat Gupta will surrender to FBI Wednesday - was named an unindicted co-conspirator of Raj Rajaratnam. Gupta's lawyer has no comment on possible charges, reiterates that Gupta committed no wrongdoing.

A former Goldman Sachs director, who also was once the global head of elite consultancy McKinsey & Co, will surrender to the FBI on Wednesday to face criminal insider trading-related charges, a person familiar with the investigation said.

Rajat Gupta, one of the most prominent business executives to be caught up in the government's wide-ranging insider-trading probe, had been named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal case against hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam earlier this year.

The person familiar with the investigation, who declined to be identified because the charges have not yet been made public, said Gupta had agreed to surrender to authorities.  READ MORE

Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race

The ACLU uncovers an FBI program that pairs Census data with "crude stereotypes" to map ethnic communities. 

 

October 24, 2011

This story originally appeared at Salon.

New documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to “map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit certain types of crimes.

Much is still not known about the apparent large-scale effort in racial profiling, partly because the documents the ACLU obtained through public records requests are heavily redacted.

The FBI maintains that the mapping program is designed to “better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats,” but the ACLU says it is plainly unconstitutional.

To learn more about the FBI program, its implications for civil liberties and the questions that remain unanswered, I spoke to Michael German, policy counsel at the ACLU’s Washington office and a former FBI agent.

What is the new information that has come to light here?  READ MORE

The King of All Vegas Real Estate Scams

LAS VEGAS

A twisted tale of how homeowners were bilked by those they least suspected: their neighbors

 By Felix Gillette 

Before the market crashed and home prices tumbled, before federal investigators showed up and hauled away the community records, before her property managers pled guilty for conspiring to rig neighborhood elections, and before her real estate lawyer allegedly tried to commit suicide by overdosing on drugs and setting fire to her home, Wanda Murray thought that buying a condominium in Las Vegas was a pretty good idea.

At first glance, Murray doesn’t look much like the type of person who would arrive in Las Vegas only to get tangled up in and eventually help unravel a complex criminal conspiracy. At 65, she stares out at the world through thick glasses. She is legally blind. Her eyes never quite seem to focus on any one thing. On a recent Friday morning, she sits at her dining room table wearing a zip-up leopard-print sweatshirt and recounts how she helped to foil a group of lawyers and contractors running amok in Sin City. “They didn’t think there would be four old ladies who wouldn’t put up with their stuff,” says Murray. “They really pissed me off.”  READ MORE

FBI tracking videotapers as terrorists?

Video provided by the United States Humane Society shows a Chino, Calif., slaughterhouse worker prodding a downer cow with a forklift, an act that helped spur an overhaul of the state's animal welfare laws. Animal rights groups are under attack for using such images as part of their investigations into alleged animal abuse. New documents suggest that some such investigations may violate animal enterprise terrorism laws. (AP/Humane Society of the United States)

 

By Dean Kuipers

December 29, 2011, 2:12 p.m.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has recommended for many years that animal activists who carry out undercover investigations on farms could be prosecuted as domestic terrorists.

New documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by activist Ryan Shapiro show the FBI advising that activists – including Shapiro – who walked onto a farm, videotaped animals there and “rescued” an animal had violated terrorism statutes.

The documents, which were first published on Will Potter’s website, Green Is the New Red, were issued by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2003 in response to an article in an animal rights publication in which Shapiro and two other activists (whose names were redacted from the document), openly claimed responsibility for shooting video and taking animals from a farm.

The FBI notes discuss the videotaping, illegal entry and the removal of animals, then concludes with “there is a reasonable indication that [Subject 1] and other members of the [redacted] have violated the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, 18 USC Section 43 (a).”  READ MORE

Are You Being Tracked? 8 Ways Your Privacy Is Being Eroded Online and Off

A series of ongoing battles delineate the boundary of what, in the digital age, is personal, private life and information.

December 28, 2011

In a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Al Franken reminded his fellow Americans, “People have a fundamental right to control their private information.” At the hearing, Franken raised an alarm about Carrier IQ’s software, CIQ.

Few people have ever heard about CIQ. Running under the app functions, CIQ doesn't require the user’s consent (or knowledge) to operate. On Android phones, it can track a user’s keystrokes, record telephone calls, store text messages, track location and more. Most troubling, it is difficult to impossible to disable.

Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of venture capitalists. Its software is installed on about 150 million wireless devices offered through AT&T, HTC, Nokia, RIM (BlackBerry), Samsung, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. It runs on a variety of operating systems, including the Apple OS and Google’s Android (but not on Microsoft Windows).

At the hearing, Sen. Franken questioned FBI director Robert Muller about the FBI’s use of CIQ software. Muller assured the senator that FBI agents “neither sought nor obtained any information” from Carrier IQ.

Following Muller’s Senate testimony, Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ’s VP of marketing, told the Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency to contact them for data. The FBI has yet to issue a follow-up “clarification.”  READ MORE

FBI Finally Revises Its Definition of "Rape" After 84 Years

The FBI’s official definition of rape, via its Uniform Crime Report, has remained unchanged since 1927: “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Obviously, this is problematic on a number of levels–basically, every word except for “the” and “of.” 1. the carnal knowledge – excluding any assault with fingers or foreign objects, on any orifice but the vagina 2. of a female – excluding anyone not a cis female (the definition actually explicitly classifies male rape victims as 3. forcibly – excluding any assault involving drugs or coercion 4. and against her will – excluding statutory rape Correction–the words “a” and “and” also seem pretty square. We can’t know exactly how many rapes have gone uncounted to date, because the government doesn’t track figures on we-don’t-consider-it-rapes. And so we can’t know how much funding has been withheld based on the not-real-number of rapes counted. But in the interest of clearer accounting, the FBI’s UCR subcommittee has voted unanimously to put forward a new definition for vote by the advisory board: Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration of a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. Now, this change doesn’t directly affect rape arrests, charges, or convictions–this is about records and reporting. But this can help keep the number of reported rates more closely in line with the number of actualrapes, meaning that federal resources can be directed to prosecution ofactual rapes. So it’s progress, 84 years in the making. FROM THE SITE

FBI Library and Online Training Resources Stocked With Islamophobic Material

Photo Credit: Quinn Ryan Mattingly on Flickr

A recent article reveals that the work of well-known Islamophobes permeates the FBI's training culture and the internal reference resources available to FBI agents.
September 23, 2011

Spencer Ackerman’s reports on Islamophobic training sessions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sent the Bureau into damage control mode. On Thursday, the FBI held a conference call with Muslim civil rights groups to apologize for the offensive training materials, which Ackerman has published over the past week.

The FBI has promised a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials,” but Ackerman, in an article published today, reveals that the work of well-known Islamophobes permeates the FBI’s training culture and the internal reference resources available to FBI agents.
READ MORE

Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers?

New evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.

September 22, 2011

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.
READ MORE

9/11: A Conspiracy Theory In 5 Minutes

Here's a website, operated by Pilots, where you can read and discuss all things 911: READ MORE

Former Senator Bob Graham Urges Obama to Reopen Investigation into Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks

Former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham is calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks after new information has emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 plot. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. The FBI was tipped off about the couple but never passed the information on to the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks, even though phone records showed the couple had ties to Mohamed Atta and at least 10 other al-Qaeda suspects. Graham joins us to discuss the news he’s called "the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years." As the former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a post he held on September 11, 2001, Graham chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks. He’s just written a novel called "Keys to the Kingdom,” which follows a fictitious former senator and co-chair of the 9/11 congressional inquiry who is murdered near his Florida home after he uncovers an international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Graham says he chose to write the novel after his 2004 non-fiction book, "Intelligence Matters," was heavily censored. [includes rush transcript]