Many documents produced by the U.S. government are confidential and not released to the public for legitimate reasons of national security. Others, however, are kept secret for more questionable reasons. The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and reports that would reveal embarrassing or illegal activities.
I’ve been collecting the stories of unreleased documents for several years. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations.
1. Obama Memo Allowing the Assassination of U.S. Citizens
When the administration of George W. Bush was confronted with cases of Americans fighting against their own country, it responded in a variety of ways. John Walker Lindh, captured while fighting with the Taliban in December 2001, was indicted by a federal grand jury and sentenced to 20 years in prison. José Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and held as an “enemy combatant” until 2006 when he was transferred to civilian authority and, in August 2007, sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to support terrorism. Adam Gadahn, who has made propaganda videos for al-Qaeda, was indicted for treason in 2006 and remains at large.
After he took over the presidency, Barack Obama did away with such traditional legal niceties and decided to just kill some Americans who would previously have been accused of treason or terrorism. His victims have included three American citizens killed in Yemen in 2011 by missiles fired from drones: U.S.-born anti-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, an al-Qaeda propagandist from North Carolina, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.
Obama justified his breach of U.S. and international law with a 50-page memorandum prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Attorney General Eric Holder argued that the killing of Awlaki was legal because he was a wartime enemy and he could not be captured, but the legal justification for this argument is impossible to confirm because the Obama administration has refused to release the memo.
2. The Obama Interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act
Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FBI, in pursuit of spies and terrorists, to order any person or entity to turn over “any tangible things” without having to justify its demands by demonstrating probable cause. For example, a library can be forced to reveal who borrowed a book or visited a web site. According to Section 215, the library is prohibited from telling anyone what it has turned over to the FBI.
The Obama administration has created a secret interpretation of Section 215 that goes beyond the direct wording of the law to include other information that can be collected. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was briefed about this secret interpretation, urged the president to make it public. “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon,” he said. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, also a Democrat, have implied that the Obama administration has expanded the use of Section 215 to activities other than espionage and terrorism. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Wyden and Udall wrote that “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.” 3. 30-page Summary of 9/11 Commission Interview with Bush and Cheney
You would have thought that, in the interests of the nation, the Bush administration would have demanded a thorough investigation of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the deadliest assault ever on U.S. soil. Instead, they fought tooth and nail against an independent investigation. Public pressure finally forced President George W. Bush to appoint a bipartisan commission that came to be known as the 9/11 Commission. It was eventually given a budget of $15 million…compared to the $39 million spent on the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton investigation. When the commission completed its work in August 2004, the commissioners turned over all their records to the National Archives with the stipulation that the material was to be released to the public starting on January 2, 2009. However, most of the material remains classified. Among the more tantalizing still-secret documents are daily briefings given to President Bush that reportedly described increasingly worried warnings of a possible attack by operatives of Osama bin Laden.
Another secret document that the American people deserve to see is the 30-page summary of the interview of President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney conducted by all ten commissioners on April 29, 2004. Bush and Cheney refused to be interviewed unless they were together. They would not testify under oath and they refused to allow the interview to be recorded or transcribed. Instead the commission was allowed to bring with them a note taker. It is the summary based on this person’s notes that remains sealed.
4. Memos from President George W. Bush to the CIA Authorizing Waterboarding and other Torture Techniques
Four days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a “memorandum of notification” (still secret) that authorized the CIA to do what it needed to fight al-Qaeda. However the memo did not address what interrogation and torture techniques could be used on captured suspects. By June 2003, Director George Tenet and others at the CIA were becoming worried that if their seemingly illegal tactics became known to the public, the White House would deny responsibility and hang the CIA out to dry. After much discussion, Bush’s executive office handed over two memos, one in 2003 and another in 2004, confirming White House approval of the CIA interrogation methods, thus giving the CIA “top cover.” It is not known if President Bush himself signed the memos.
5. 1,171 CIA Documents Related to the Assassination of President Kennedy
It’s been 49 years since President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, yet the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) insists that more than one thousand documents relating to the case should not be released to the public until NARA is legally required to do so in 2017…unless the president at that time decides to extend the ban. It would appear that some of the blocked material deals with the late CIA agent David Phillips, who is thought to have dealt with Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City six weeks before the assassination.
6. Volume 5 of the CIA’s History of the Bay of Pigs Fiasco
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CIA historian Dr. Jack B. Pfeiffer compiled a multi-volume history of the failed US attempt to invade Cuba in April 1961. In August 2005, the National Security Archive at George Washington University, citing the Freedom of Information Act, requested access to this history. The CIA finally released the information almost six years later, in July 2011. However it refused to release Volume V, which is titled “CIA’s Internal Investigation of the Bay of Pigs Operations.” Although more than 50 years have passed since the invasion, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Volume V is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act because it “is covered by the deliberative process privilege” which “covers documents reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.”
7. National Security Decision Directives with Classified Titles
The day before he left the White House on January 20, 1993, President George H. W. Bush issued National Security Directive (NSD) #79, a document so secret that even its title remains classified almost 20 years later. The same goes for National Security Directive #77, issued a few days earlier, as well as four others issued in 1989 (#11, 13a, 19a and 25a). If the “a”s are any indication of the subjects, it is worth noting that NSD 13 dealt with countering cocaine trafficking in Peru; NSD 19 dealt with Libya and NSD 25 with an election in Nicaragua.
President Ronald Reagan also issued six NSDs with classified titles, and President Bill Clinton issued 29. President George W. Bush issued two such NSDs, presumably shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President Barack Obama has issued at least seven Presidential Policy Directives with classified titles.
8. Major General Douglas Stone’s 700-Page Report on Prisoners Held in Afghanistan
Marine Corps General Douglas Stone earned positive reviews for his revamping of detention operations in Iraq, where he determined that most of the prisoners held by the United States were not actually militants and could be taught trades and rehabilitated. Based on his success in Iraq, Stone was given the task of making an evaluation of detainee facilities in Afghanistan. His findings, conclusions and recommendations were included in a 700-page report that he submitted to the U.S. Central Command in August 2009. According to some accounts of the report, Stone determined that two-thirds of the Afghan prisoners were not a threat and should be released. However, three years after he completed it, Stone’s report remains classified.
9. Detainee Assessment Briefs for Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr
In 2011, WikiLeaks released U.S. military files known as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), which describe the cases of 765 prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay. However, there were actually 779 prisoners. So what happened to the files for the other fourteen? Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, has noted that two of the fourteen missing stories are especially suspicious: those of Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr.
Tabarak, a Moroccan, was allegedly one of Osama bin Laden’s long-time bodyguards, and took over bin Laden’s satellite phone in order to draw U.S. fire to himself instead of to bin Laden when U.S. forces were chasing the al-Qaeda leader in the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001. Captured and sent to Guantánamo, Tabarak was mysteriously released, sent back to Morocco in July 2003, and set free shortly thereafter.
Abdurahman Khadr, the self-described “black sheep” of a militant family from Canada, was 20 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan and turned over to American forces. He has said that he was recruited by the CIA to become an informant at Guantánamo and then in Bosnia. When the CIA tried to send him to Iraq, he refused and returned to Canada. His younger brother, Omar, was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of killing an American soldier, Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, during a firefight. He was incarcerated at Guantánamo for almost ten years until he was finally released to Canadian custody on September 29, 2012.
10. FBI Guidelines for Using GPS Devices to Track Suspects
On January 23, 2012, in the case of United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that attaching a GPS device to a car to track its movements constitutes a “search” and is thus covered by the Fourth Amendment protecting Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” But it did not address the question of whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies must obtain a warrant to attach a GPS device or whether it is enough for an agent to believe that such a search would turn up evidence of wrongdoing.
A month later, at a symposium at the University of San Francisco, FBI lawyer Andrew Weissman announced that the FBI was issuing two memoranda to its agents to clarify how the agency would interpret the Supreme Court decision. One memo dealt with the use of GPS devices, including whether they could be attached to boats and airplanes and used at international borders. The second addressed how the ruling applied to non-GPS techniques used by the FBI.
The ACLU, citing the Freedom of Information Act, has requested publication of the two memos because they “will shape not only the conduct of its own agents but also the policies, practices and procedures of other law enforcement agencies—and, consequently, the privacy rights of Americans.”
11. U.S. Paper on Negotiating Position on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
The subject of international trade negotiations is one that makes most people’s eyes glaze over. So why is the Obama administration fighting so hard to keep secret a one-page document that relates to early negotiations regarding the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), an accord that was proposed 18 years ago and about which public negotiations ended in 2005? All we know is that the document “sets forth the United States’ initial proposed position on the meaning of the phrase ‘in like circumstances.’” This phrase “helps clarify when a country must treat foreign investors as favorably as local or other foreign investors.”
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Center for International Environmental Law, DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to release the document, but the Obama administration has refused, claiming that disclosure “reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security” because all the nations involved in the failed negotiations agreed to keep all documents secret until December 31, 2013…“unless a country were to object to the release of one of its own documents at that time.” Judge Roberts ruled that the USTR has failed to present any evidence that release of the document would damage national security.
Most likely, the Obama administration is afraid that release of the document would set a precedent that could impede another secret trade negotiation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, which seeks to establish a free trade zone among the U.S., New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and possibly Canada, Mexico and Japan.
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FBI employees, entrusted with stopping computer crimes, commit them too
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Net providers begin warning of illegal downloads
A Police State ‘Example’ being set, with Raw Milk drinkers…
Tip of the day- for the parents: Teach your child the importance of applying their knowledge, and critical thinking abilites to solving of Social Problems
TRACK: Beast 1333 Mad World feat K-Rino, Space Age Slaves
What the FBI Doesn’t Want You To Know About Its “Secret” Surveillance Techniques
Vibration, Synchronicity, Energy Healing, Holographic Universe
Cannabis & the Pineal Gland?
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Developer Sacked for Outsourcing His Entire Job to China
*Apologies for Mis-communicating the correct DATE of broadcast, January 11th (not 10th)
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BEN SWANN – MSM’s lone voice of reason AT IT AGAIN!! DESTROYS the GUN CONTROL AGENDA’s ARGUMENT
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RAPID DNA analyzers coming to Police Stations & TSA Checkpoints NEAR YOU
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Posting Truth,Info,Questions or not believing official story Related to Mass Shooting In Newtown Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School will result in arrests and prosecutions of perpetrators of WHISTLEBLOWING.
If you pay attention to what he says, he’s not talking about people impersonating the killer, he said “in any form” posting what he considers disinfo. This is a pathetic last ditch attempt to clamp down on info and try to salvage their official story.Will these guys prosecute themselves for violating First Amendment’s Rights Of The U.S. Contitution?
Now Come And Get Us Or Expect US.1-(800)-575-6330 Is how you can reach the offices of Lt J Paul Vance.
Real or imagined- reasonable or grandiose, I think we can all agree that things that Barrett Brown has recently said leading to his recent arrest and indictment were on the solid side of stupid. People who hate him figured it was about time they nailed him on something, and people who… don’t hate him as much… have defended him under the banner of “Freedom of Speech” and pointed to his claims of being harassed and goaded by the FBI and alleged informants, which, according to Brown, have included the Feds threatening to arrest his mother who he said has had nothing to do with his Anonymous hactivism and crowd-source-style-journalism ProjectPM activities.
As I mentioned in my previous post about the Kelly Thomas killing, the functions and execution of government powers and the legal system are by default biased heavily in favor of the powers that be and such powers have great potential to be, and many times have proven to be, corrupt as hell. That said, before we all collectively tell Barrett Brown to shut up regardless of whether such a pleading would tip a hat to his right to free speech, I think it is fair to acknowledge that Brown’s paranoid ramblings and associated “threats” may have been his only recourse to defend himself from the fears he professed were true: Agent Robert Smith is corrupt; the FBI is corrupt; the Zetas are out to get him; the FBI is in on it with the Zetas; and if armed men charged in on his home, Brown would feel justified in assuming it was a Zeta assassination attempt coordinated in conjunction with the FBI.
…THAT said, and in addition to Brown’s own confession of heroin addiction and issues with Suboxone withdrawal at and around the time of the “threats” and other tweets listed in the indictment, I think we can at least give the government credit for allowing a mental competence hearing for Brown before the trial against him proceeds. This should especially be appreciated by Constitution enthusiasts as the evidence of actus reus of Brown’s alleged crimes primarily revolves around a combination of arguably- and absolutely- protected speech.
As for that “conspiracy” charge? Well, look at the indictment: he was soliciting others to find “Restricted” information on Agent Robert Smith, which has been dubbed a “conspiracy” due to another’s attempt to find such “RESTRICTED” information with what is only described as an “Internet search”. Because you know, when I want to get down and dirty on a Federal Agent’s RESTRICED information, forget unauthorized access to a security clearance-protected Federal Database, I’m all about the old-fashioned Google stalk. For this charge, maybe we should give the FBI a mental competency hearing while we’re at it….
If you haven’t taken a peek at the Federal indictment against Barrett Lancaster Brown, I implore you to do so. Then, I invite you on a First Amendment adventure where I explain to you why we should all be offended and worried by the United States’ Prosecutor’s attack on our Right to Speech. The tale I shall tell will not necessarily defend Brown completely or successfully, but it will point out the fallacy of this indictment against him, which is supposed to contain “essential facts of the case”, but really just reveals the Government’s fear of our right to voice dissent and grievance against them.
Join me…
Count 1: Knowingly and Willfully transmitting in interstate commerce communications containing threats to injure the person of another. 18 USC Section 875(c).
While Brown does make vague and conditional threats against others such as @AsherahResearch and @_Dantalion, the indictment count doesn’t seem to care much about them, citing only “threatening to shoot and injure agents of the FBI” – specifically Robert Smith.
So let’s take a look at the first few useless items in this indictment:
Item 5) f. is a conditional threat made on Brown’s twitter against twitter user @_Dantalion in which Brown warns he will shoot if @_Dantalion comes near Brown’s home in Texas. Brown adds that such an act of self-defense of self and property is legal. Which it is. When I went to check @_Dantalion’s profile on October 5, 2012, on of the first tweets I came across was @_Dantalion explaining to another twitter user, “I am not an FBI agent”. So Brown made a conditional threat, the condition being an act that would trigger a legal right to defend oneself, against someone who is not an FBI agent. This cited evidence in the indictment does not lend to Count 1. At all.
Something I will say now that will apply across all of my arguments is that my belief, which may or may not be held up in a criminal law context in court, is that a threat that is not imminent does not constitute Assault. I base this on my understanding of the civil Tort offense of Assault which defines the intent behind Assault as an intention to cause imminent harm or apprehension of imminent harm. The above conditional threat Brown made to @_Dantalion does not detail imminence, and, as you will see as this story unravels, NONE of the threats made by Brown were imminent. Moving on…
Item 8) c. Is a vague, conditional threat toward renowned Anonymous foe, @AsherahResearch. Talk about my momma again and “see what happens”. So… what’s gonna happen? And what is it about this tweet that implies or infers the requisite intent for a threat against an FBI agent?
More importantly, why doesn’t Count 1 even mention that people who were not FBI agents were also “threatened”? Poor Dantalion and Asherah.
Where Brown is in trouble on Count 1, albeit with room for a defense, are items 12) c. and d.
The Greatest Incriminating Hits from the infamous “last video” by a disheveled, suboxone-withdrawn Brown include “Robert Smith’s life is over”, “I’m gonna look into his kids”, and “I will shoot and kill [the FBI] if they come.”
This is where we should all yell a hearty “Shut up, Barrett Brown” in the general direction of Texas. Don’t threaten a federal law enforcement agent, you guys. It’s enumerated in a Federal statute and is one of the few types of threats out there that does not need to be imminent to be illegal. It is contingent upon whether the threat is made in regards to LE carrying out their official duties.
But there is still a defense. Maybe. The “threats” regarding Robert Smith and his kids aren’t threats of injury. Brown even states “By ruin his life, I don’t mean kill him”. As for shooting and killing the FBI? I point to the “knowingly” sub-element of intent for this particular statute. The threat is conditional on whether or not the FBI comes. Brown never indicates that he knows the FBI is coming. He says in the item 12. video that the FBI has held onto his seized computers for months and has yet to allege Brown of a crime based on the evidence from a previous raid. In fact, as the worst evidence against Brown is this singular video, the FBI probably didn’t even know whether or not they were going to raid Brown at the time that this conditional threat was made. Admittedly, this is a tight defense to make, but I will come back to it for Count 3.
Further defense? Mental and emotional instability: persisting paranoia issues plus suboxone withdrawal. Although a finding of Brown’s allegation of FBI corruption would probably not happen, there is a question of self-defense. And if there was no real reason for self-defense, see: delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecutions, paranoid psychosis. In other words, possible insanity defense (and the thresholds for the insanity defense may be lowered when there was no action taken beyond speech).
Count 2: knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with other persons known and unknown to Grand Jury … to make restricted personal information about an FBI agent and immediately family publicly available with intent to threaten and intimidate the agent and to incite commission of violence against the agent. 18 USC Section 371 and 18 USC Section 119.
…How much more element-loaded can a charge get?
The “with intent” and the all-elements-must-be-fulfilled-indicative “and” ‘s of the latter part of this Statute combo are hard for the Government to corroborate with the facts of this indictment. They’re doing pretty good up to “incite commission of violence against” Robert Smith. We’ve got solicitation which, upon the cited agreement Brown made with another to gather Smith’s personal information, merges into conspiracy. We have immediate family members. We have intent to threaten and intimidate. But incite violence? That’s where the prosecution stretches it. Look through the indictment closely, and there is never a threat or suggestion of committing violence against Smith. Only the hypothetical FBI raiders, generally.
But I think this Count specifically is why the indictment tries to pancake all of Brown’s tweets together. Actually, the majority of this indictment is an attempt to build a criminal, violence-inciting profile of Brown out of several non-criminal tweets. This compilation is why I say we should be afraid for our Right to Speech.
It is clear in several tweets, that Brown is soliciting and possibly conspiring to gather restricted information on Robert Smith for the purpose of publicly releasing it. None of these tweets suggest violence toward Smith.
Non-exhaustively: 6) a. 8) a., 11, and 13. Although it legally doesn’t matter for conspiracy, it should be noted that no evidence is listed in the indictment that Brown succeeded in obtaining the sought restricted information on Smith.
One memorable case from my Criminal Law class (at the moment I cannot find the case, but will likely come back to revise this paragraph when I find it) is a case where a drunk driver was acquitted on appeal because evidence levied against him included, basically, pro-drinking propaganda bumper stickers the driver had. These bumper stickers were used as evidence toward the defendant’s intent. It simply didn’t work. Pro-drinking speech didn’t help the prosecutors in adding to the defendant’s intent for criminal drunken behavior. Similarly to this decision, I argue anti-government speech not directly associated with the accused behavior for the alleged crime of conspiracy shouldn’t lend to intent for the conspiracy.
In fact, this is nearly exactly what was held in California State Appellate courts in People v. Huss regarding the instruction of including picketing sign slogans as evidence for conspiracy to incite a riot as being an invalid, unconstitutional instruction. 241. Cal.App.2d 361. Although a California Appellate court decision doesn’t serve as precedent over the Federal District Court that Brown will face trial in, Huss borrows its reasoning from Federal Supreme Court case Terminiello v. City of Chicago. 337 U.S. 1. (How do you like them apples?)
…which should also hold for the next count…
Count 3: knowingly and willfully threaten to assault a federal law enforcement officer with intent to impede, intimidate, and interfere with such federal law enforcement while engaged in the performance of official duties and with the intent to retaliate against such federal law enforcement officers on account of performance of official duties. 18 USC Sections 115 (a)(1)(B) and (b)(4).
…and some of my favorite highlights of the Free Speech-protected tweets that shouldn’t lend to the intent of Counts 2 and 3 are…
2) c. “Do you know how to shoot? You have five years to learn. Maybe less.” Links to a short video of Brown doing some shotgun practice in an open field.
My assumption for this tweet is that in saying “You have five years to learn” how to shoot is a reference to a conspiracy such as FEMA camps where conspiracy theorists believe the government will raid us all and send us to “FEMA concentration camps”. Or something like that. But isn’t self-defense against a corrupt government the heart and soul of the Second Amendment? Otherwise, there is no specific (or even general) mentioned target for the suggested self-defense nor is there an imminence of the assumed threat posed by Brown’s pro-arms propaganda.
3) a. “Kids! Overthrow your government lol” Link? Get this- the link is to a Blondie music video, “Rapture”. A political satire on how the government and media has zombified us all. OH NOES! DISSENT AND GRIEVANCE!
The tweet itself reeks of satire. See: “Kids!” and “lol”. Before heading to the music video link, I thought maybe the link would lead me to something that would really rile me up with a fervent violent fire if I were susceptible to do so. Maybe a conspiracy theory that pulled at revolutionary heart strings? Maybe excerpts from the Anarchists’ Cookbook?
No. It’s a Blondie music video. Not exactly speaking to an incitement of violence nor an intent to retaliate against a raid.
Similar anti-government, pro-self-defense-against-a-corrupt-government comments include “Don’t Wait. Retaliate.” and 10) b.’s vague threat by Brown that he will use “other means at [his] disposal” to ‘wipe out the government’… the “wiping out” he promises to do includes more specific, non-violent threats of using courts, media, and his investigative journalism at ProjectPM.
And 2) e. “Have a plan to kill every government you meet.” in which there is no specific or general threat to any human being, but an abstract entity and with such an abstract entity being the object of the threat, “kill” could be interpreted as a non-violent version of the verb such as “stop” or “get rid of”.
Moving on…
The not-physical, non-injurious, cyber threats….
5) a. “…the net will give us revenge.”
5) c. “Nothing restrains me from my real work. #ProjectPM”
5) e. “Help #ProjectPM plan, execute further attacks … #PantherModerns”
For the record, the Panther Moderns are a FICTIONAL hacking group from the work “Neuromancer” who simulated a CYBER terrorist attack on a media conglomerate called “Sense/Net”
The ReTweeted threat that is actually a threat to himself:
7) “A dead man can’t leak stuff… Illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” Brown is comparing himself to the object and victim of this retweeted threat, Julian Assange. The presumed subject of the tweet instructed to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch” would be a LE officer who should act as a due process-depriving judge jury and executioner for Assange (comparatively, Brown).
Well, at least they’re giving Brown due process so far…
Not even threats and I don’t even know why they were included in the indictment:
2) a. “Don’t be a pussy. Call up every fascist and tell them you’re watching.” Links to a weird music remix featuring harmless sound clips that include Brown.
5) b.: “Fuck you.” -directed at the feds for apparently depriving Brown of his opiates, somehow.
5) d. “Journalists allow the guilty to escape. #ProjectPM ensures the guilty will be known to their children as they are, forever.
10) a. “This is part two of why I’m so fucking angry.” BB mad.
Here, I’ll repeat my defense for Brown’s intent. Knowledge is requisite for Count 3. Brown did not know that the FBI would raid him and his threat was contingent on a raid that he wasn’t even certain would occur based on a lack of the FBI’s ability to charge him with anything from the first raid of Brown.
And once again: insanity or diminished mental capacity due to Suboxone withdrawal. The worst and most incriminating of Brown’s threats from item 12 were coupled with Brown’s admission that he was a Heroin addict and hadn’t taken his Suboxone. In addition, Brown thinks he’s entitled to get his stuff back from the first raid months ago where the FBI took and held his computers. (Non-exhaustively: Items 8) b and 2, 10) b.) He also thinks he deserves an apology [10) b.]. Grandiose and possibly delusional. I almost wonder why the FBI didn’t go for a discrediting involuntary psych ward hold.
Or you know, just give him his stuff back, which as we are learning from recent developments in the PayPal 14 case, he may have very well had the right to after 60 days of the FBI holding it. (But I think feeling entitled to an apology is still a bit delusional.)
In Conclusion…
With and indictment riddled with constitutionally-protected speech, my fear is that the US Prosecutors and FBI wanted to put an attack on anti-government dissent and critique at the forefront of this issue. They wanted to scare us all into shutting up and watching what we say when it comes to speculating government conspiracies and suggesting we consider the possibility of an increasingly corrupt government and promote the intention behind the Second Amendment which is to protect ourselves from a worst-case scenario resulting from such corruption.
Watch your televisions. Click on those targeted advertisements tailored by our tracking of your Google searches. Did somebody tell you that non-violent protesters were beat and shot at by Riot Cops? Don’t worry. We did it for National Security reasons. And don’t mind the surveillance cameras in every retail store and on every street corner. They’re just livestreaming and storing your every move for TrapWire.
“The restructuring of media in the United States is creating forms of censorship that are as potentially damaging as overt censorship.”
“Media corporations have been undergoing a massive merging process that is realigning our sources of information in America,”
The 11 largest or most influential media corporations in the United States – General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. and the Times Mirror Co. – represent the interests of corporate America, and that the media elite are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the parameters of news and information content and the general use of media resources. Your Mainstream Media is manipulating the news you are allowed to see.
Project Censored has been documenting inadequate media coverage of crucial stories since it began in 1967 at Sonoma State University.
Each year, the group considers hundreds of news stories submitted by readers, evaluating their merits. Students search Lexis Nexis and other databases to see if the stories were underreported, and if so, the stories are fact-checked by professors and experts in relevant fields.
.” Project Censored Director Mickey Huff told us the idea was to show how various undercovered stories fit together into an alternative narrative, not to say that one story was more censored than another.
Here’s Project Censored’s Top 10 list for 2013:
1. Signs of an emerging police state
President George W. Bush is remembered largely for his role in curbing civil liberties in the name of his “war on terror.” But it’s President Obama who signed the 2012 NDAA, including its clause allowing for indefinite detention without trial for terrorism suspects.
Obama promised that “my administration will interpret them to avoid the constitutional conflict” — leaving us adrift if and when the next administration chooses to interpret them otherwise.
Another law of concern is the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order that Obama issued in March 2012. That order authorizes the president, “in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements.”
The president is to be advised on this course of action by “the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with the National Economic Council.” Journalist Chris Hedges, along with co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, won a case challenging the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause on Sept. 1, when a federal judge blocked its enforcement, but her ruling was overturned on Oct. 3, so the clause is back.
People who get their information exclusively from Mainstream Media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election.
But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s (George Bush)overreaching approach to national security, such as Obama signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
2. Oceans in peril
Big banks aren’t the only entities that our country has deemed “too big to fail.” But our oceans won’t be getting a bailout anytime soon, and their collapse could compromise life itself. In a haunting article highlighted by Project Censored, Mother Jones reporter Julia Whitty paints a tenuous seascape — overfished, acidified, warming — and describes how the destruction of the ocean’s complex ecosystems jeopardizes the entire planet, not just the 70 percent that is water.
Whitty compares ocean acidification, caused by global warming, to acidification that was one of the causes of the “Great Dying,” a mass extinction 252 million years ago.
Life on Earth took 30 million years to recover. In a more hopeful story, a study of 14 protected and 18 non-protected ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea showed dangerous levels of biomass depletion.
But it also showed that the marine reserves were well-enforced, with five to 10 times larger fish populations than in unprotected areas. This encourages establishment and maintenance of more reserves.
3. U.S. deaths from Fukushima
A plume of toxic fallout floated to the U.S. after Japan’s tragic Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found radiation levels in air, water and milk that were hundreds of times higher than normal across the United States.
One month later, the EPA announced that radiation levels had declined, and they would cease testing. But after making a Freedom of Information Act request, journalist Lucas Hixson published emails revealing that on March 24, 2011, the task of collecting nuclear data had been handed off from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry lobbying group.
And in one study that got little attention, scientists Joseph Mangano and Jeanette Sherman found that in the period following the Fukushima meltdowns, 14,000 more deaths than average were reported in the U.S., mostly among infants. Later, Mangono and Sherman updated the number to 22,000.
4. FBI agents responsible for terrorist plots
We know that FBI agents go into communities such as mosques, both undercover and in the guise of building relationships, quietly gathering information about individuals.
This is part of an approach to finding what the FBI now considers the most likely kind of terrorists, “lone wolves.” Its strategy: “seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity,” writes Mother Jones journalist Trevor Aaronsen.
The publication, along with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, examined the results of this strategy, 508 cases classified as terrorism-related that have come before the U.S. Department of Justice since the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. In 243 of these cases, an informant was involved; in 49 cases, an informant actually led the plot.
And “with three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.” facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
5. Federal Reserve loaned trillions to major banks
The Federal Reserve, the U.S.’s quasi-private central bank, was audited for the first time in its history this year. The audit report states, “From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars … in emergency loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system.” These loans had significantly less interest and fewer conditions than the high-profile TARP bailouts, and were rife with conflicts of interest. Some examples: the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served as a board member of the New York Federal Reserve at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. William Dudley, who is now the New York Federal Reserve president, was granted a conflict of interest waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time the companies were given bailout funds. The audit was restricted to Federal Reserve lending during the financial crisis. On July 25, 2012, a bill to audit the Fed again, with fewer limitations, authored by Rep. Ron Paul, passed the House of Representatives. H.R. 459 was expected to die in the Senate, but the movement behind Paul and his calls to hold the Fed accountable, or abolish it altogether, seem to be growing.
6. Small network of corporations run the global economy
Reporting on a study by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich didn’t make the rounds nearly enough, according to Censored 2013. They found that, of 43,060 transnational companies, 147 control 40 percent of total global wealth. The researchers also built a model visually demonstrating how the connections between companies — what it calls the “super entity” — works. Some have criticized the study, saying control of assets doesn’t equate to ownership. True, but as we clearly saw in the 2008 financial collapse, corporations are capable of mismanaging assets in their control to the detriment of their actual owners. And a largely unregulated super entity like this is vulnerable to global collapse.
7. The International Year of Cooperative
Can something really be censored when it’s straight from the United Nations? According to Project Censored evaluators, the corporate media underreported the U.N. declaring 2012 to be the International Year of the Cooperative, based on the co-op business model’s stunning growth. The U.N. found that, in 2012, 1 billion people worldwide are co-op member-owners, or one in five adults over age 15. The largest is Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, with more than 80,000 member-owners. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, worker-owned co-ops will be the world’s fastest growing business model. Worker-owned cooperatives provide for equitable distribution of wealth, genuine connection to the workplace, and, just maybe, a brighter future for our planet.
8. NATO war crimes in Libya
In January 2012, the BBC “revealed” how British Special Forces agents joined and “blended in” with rebels in Libya to help topple dictator Muammar Gadaffi, a story that alternative media sources had reported a year earlier. NATO admits to bombing a pipe factory in the Libyan city of Brega that was key to the water supply system that brought tap water to 70 percent of Libyans, saying that Gadaffi was storing weapons in the factory. In Censored 2013, writer James F. Tracy makes the point that historical relations between the U.S. and Libya were left out of mainstream news coverage of the NATO campaign; “background knowledge and historical context confirming Al-Qaeda and Western involvement in the destabilization of the Gadaffi regime are also essential for making sense of corporate news narratives depicting the Libyan operation as a popular ‘uprising.’”
9. Prison slavery in the U.S.
On its website, the UNICOR manufacturing corporation proudly proclaims that its products are “made in America.” That’s true, but they’re made in places in the U.S. where labor laws don’t apply, with workers often paid just 23 cents an hour to be exposed to toxic materials with no legal recourse. These places are U.S. prisons. Slavery conditions in prisons aren’t exactly news.
It’s literally written into the Constitution; the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, outlaws “slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” But the articles highlighted by Project Censored this year reveal the current state of prison slavery industries, and its ties to war.
The majority of products manufactured by inmates are contracted to the Department of Defense. Inmates make complex parts for missile systems, battleship anti-aircraft guns and landmine sweepers, as well as night-vision goggles, body army and camouflage uniforms.
Of course, this is happening in the context of record high imprisonment in the U.S., where grossly disproportionate numbers of African Americans and Latinos are imprisoned, and can’t vote even after they’re freed. As psychologist Elliot D. Cohen puts it in this year’s book: “This system of slavery, like that which existed in this country before the Civil War, is also racist, as more than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color.”
10. H.R. 347 criminalizes protest
H.R. 347, sometimes called the “criminalizing protest” or “anti-Occupy” bill, made some headlines. But concerned lawyers and other citizens worry that it could have disastrous effects for the First Amendment right to protest. Officially called the Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act, the law makes it a felony to “knowingly” enter a zone restricted under the law, or engage in “disorderly or disruptive” conduct in or near the zones.
The restricted zones include anywhere the Secret Service may be — places such as the White House, areas hosting events deemed “National Special Security Events,” or anywhere visited by the president, vice president and their immediate families; former presidents, vice presidents and certain family members; certain foreign dignitaries; major presidential and vice presidential candidates (within 120 days of an election); and other individuals as designated by a presidential executive order.
These people could be anywhere, and NSSEs have notoriously included the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Super Bowls and the Academy Awards. So far, it seems the only time H.R. 347 has kicked in is with George Clooney’s high-profile arrest outside the Sudanese embassy.
Clooney ultimately was not detained without trial — information that would be almost impossible to censor — but what about the rest of us who exist outside of the mainstream media’s spotlight?
The ranking Republican on a Senate panel on Wednesday accused the Department of Homeland Security of hiding embarrassing information about its so-called “fusion” intelligence sharing centers, charging that the program has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars while contributing little to the country’s counterterrorism efforts.
In a 107-page report released late Tuesday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said that Homeland Security has spent up to $1.4 billion funding fusion centers — in effect, regional intelligence sharing centers– that have produced “useless” reports while at the same time collecting information on the innocent activities of American Muslims that may have violated a federal privacy
The fusion centers, created under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama, consist of special teams of federal , state and local officials collecting and analyzing intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country. They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as “one of the centerpieces” of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts.
But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the panel, charged Wednesday that Homeland Security had tried to bury evidence of problems at the centers.
“Unfortunately, DHS has resisted oversight of these centers,” he said. “The Department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion centers and broader intelligence efforts. When this subcommittee requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe.”
A spokesman for Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News Tuesday that the Senate report was “out of date, inaccurate and misleading.” Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Napolitano, said the Senate panel “refused to review relevant data, including important intelligence information pertinent to their findings.” Another Homeland Security official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that the skills of officials working in them are “evolving and maturing.”
The American Civil Liberties Union also issued a statement saying the report underscores problems that it and other civil liberity groups have been flagging for years. “The ACLU warned back in 2007 that fusion centers posed grave threats to Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and that they needed clear guidelines and independent oversight,” said Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel. “This report is a good first step, and we call upon Congress to hold public hearings to investigate fusion centers and their ongoing abuses.”
In addition to the value of much of the fusion centers’ work, the Senate panel found evidence of what it called “troubling” reports by some centers that may have violated the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. citizens. The evidence cited in the report could fuel a continuing controversy over claims that the FBI and some local police departments, notably New York City’s, have spied on American Muslims without a justifiable law enforcement reason for doing so. Among the examples in the report:
One fusion center drafted a report on a list of reading suggestions prepared by a Muslim community group, titled “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” The report noted that four of the authors were listed in a terrorism database, but a Homeland Security reviewer in Washington chastised the fusion center, saying, “We cannot report on books and other writings” simply because the authors are in a terrorism database. “The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that something in the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity.”
A fusion center in California prepared a report about a speaker at a Muslim center in Santa Cruz who was giving a daylong motivational talk—and a lecture on “positive parenting.” No link to terrorism was alleged.
Another fusion center drafted a report on a U.S. citizen speaking at a local mosque that speculated that — since the speaker had been listed in a terrorism data base — he may have been attempting “to conduct fundraising and recruiting” for a foreign terrorist group.
“The number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write into this (form),” a Homeland Security reviewer wrote after analyzing the report. The reviewer noted that “the nature of this event is constitutionally protected activity (public speaking, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion.)”
The Senate panel found 40 reports — including the three listed above — that were drafted at fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns the documents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they mentioned.”
Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a year or more after they had been canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so.
The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a document should not be retained, “The U.S person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately.”
The investigation was led by the Republican staff of the subcommittee but the report was approved by chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich and Coburn. It stated that much basic information about the fusion centers – including exactly how much they cost the federal government — was difficult to obtain. Although the fusion centers are overseen by Homeland Security, they are funded primarily through grants to local governments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although Homeland Security “was unable to provide an accurate tally,” the panel estimated the federal dollars spent on the centers between 2003 and 2011 at between $289 million and $1.4 billion.
The panel’s criticism of the fusion centers was shared in part by Michael Leiter, the former director of the National National Counter-Terrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst. “Since 9/11, the growth of state and local fusion centers has been exponential and regrettably in many instances it has produced an ill-planned mishmash rather than a true national system that is well-integrated with existing organizations like the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces,” Leiter wrote in an email when asked about the report.
In its response to the Senate panel , Homeland Security said that the canceled reports could still be retained “for administrative purposes such as audit and oversight.”
The report cited multiple examples of what it called fusion center reports that had little if any value to counterterrorism efforts.
One fusion center report cited described how a certain model car had folding rear seats to the trunk, a feature that it said could be useful to human traffickers. This prompted a Homeland Security reviewer to note that such folding rear seats are “featured on MANY different makes and model of vehicles” and “there is nothing of any intelligence value in this report.”
Another fusion center report, entitled “Possible Drug Smuggling Activity,” recounted the experiences of two state wildlife officials who spotted a pair of men in a bass boat “operating suspiciously” in the body of water off the U.S.-Mexico border. The report noted that the fishermen “avoided eye contact” and that their boat appeared to be low in the water, “as if it were laden with cargo” with high winds and choppy waters.
“The fact that some guys were hanging out in a boat where people normally do not fish MIGHT be an indicator of something abnormal, but does not reach the threshold of something we should be reporting,” a Homeland Security reviewer wrote, according to the Senate panel. “I … think that this should never have been nominated for production, nor passed through three reviews.”
In the Homeland Security Department’s response, spokesman Matt Chandler said the Senate subcommittee “refused to review relevant data, including important intelligence information pertinent to their findings.”
The senior Homeland Security official who spoke to NBC News said that, while the Senate panel reviewed fusion center reports from 2009 and 2010, a more recent June 2011 case in Seattle shows that a fusion center played a key role in helping to thwart a terrorist plot against a local U.S. military processing center.
Chandler added: “The (Senate) report fundamentally misunderstands the role of the federal government in supporting fusion centers and overlooks the significant benefits of this relationship to both state and local law enforcement and the federal government. Among other benefits, fusion centers play a key role by receiving classified and unclassified information from the federal government and assessing its local implications, helping law enforcement on the frontlines better protect their communities from all threats, whether it is terrorism or other criminal activities.”
It is hard for me to express how much I appreciate your letter, which is the first I have received here, along with the support I’ve reportedly gotten from others so far. Before I forget, let me request that you also send a tweet of support to Jenna, @ElviraXMontana on Twitter; as my girlfriend, she had to watch as the FBI crushed my ribs (which I believe will be healed in time even if I’ve had trouble acquiring medical attention due to me under Geneva; put in formal request for X-ray last night here at Mansfield, whereas last week at Lew Sterrett I was sent to medic by an officer Tamer before being instead re-directed to what is intended as a temporary holding cell for those about to be released on bond, this change of plan being instigated by an officer Roeun (sic?) whom I have since reported to the proper authorities. Despite my having explained her mistake politely twice over the course of the next seven hours, and despite my condition having been serious enough to have prompted other inmates to suggest I check for internal bleeding, I was screamed at and then later simply ordered to lay down, all of which was witnessed by two other inmates, one of whom promised to inform Tim Rogers of D Magazine that I was potentially dying and needed intervention ASAP as soon as he himself was released a few minutes hence (again, this was the temporary outgoing holding cell, not meant for housing inmates for anything longer than an hour or so as their bond is processed; as such, I was not fed, either, much less given my medication, suboxone. Note that none of the treatment I received at Lou Sterrit had anything to do with who I am or what I am accused of, – it is simply the natural result of the inhumane and degenerate mentality found within the Texas “corrections” system, something I first described in a 2005 article for Towards Freedom. It is something we will have to address more firmly over the coming years, just as we have addressed North Africa and the intelligence contracting industry since late 2010. And I note all of this not merely to complain—although to complain is among the few vices I have been left aside from bragging to my fellow inmates – but to illustrate the fundamental problem that so many of us have sacrificed or risked to combat. This problem, which even Richard Nixon recognized and spoke about on that famed evening at the Lincoln Memorial, is that a republic built with the blood of giants has since become a “wild animal.” – one that now feeds upon us all.
I try to avoid metaphors, which can illuminate but in practice are too often used to obscure. Like many aspects of language, the false metaphor kills and enslaves. And at any rate, there will be time to discuss these broader issues later. For now, I must ask you to publish this on pastebin, Anonpaste, piratepad.de, and all other available venues, and that you also send it to some of the journalists that have been kind enough to follow my work as well as the consequences thereof, particularly my friend Michael Hastings, Barry Eisler, Michael Riley (Bloomberg), Ryan Gallagher (Guardian), and Josh at Daily Caller (forgot his last name) – plus the former editor of The Yemen Times who’s now at Global Times or some such and who, along with a certain Washington Times correspondent known to Gregg Housh, plus one or two others that I know of, who are now looking into Romas/COIN due in part to my release of the NYT e-mails earlier this month. Along with others in both the mainstream and independent media, these are most likely to report accurately on this matter. Having been mischaracterized at least a hundred times by “professional” journalists since I first appeared on Fox News in January 2009 to denounce Obama’s association with the goofy fascist Rick Warren – and was introduced as being spokesman for the non-existent “American Atheist Society” rather than GAMPAC. This would be a good time to note, particularly for the benefit of certain journalists, that I am not and never have been the spokesman for Anonymous, nor its “public face” or, worse, “self-proclaimed” “face” or “spokesperson” or “leader” (as the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe called me last year when I felt compelled to “quit” the non-group that I’d never technically joined in the first place, but rather gradually attached myself to as Wikileaks and Tunisia went down in December of 2010). Anyone who cares to learn what happens to a person who decides to help deal with such issues at the request and with the knowledge of active Anons can search my name in conjunction with those terms, and then see the article “Barrett Brown is Anonymous” from April 2011 in which I explain clearly, as I have countless times since, that no one has the authority to designate me as such. It is known to some of those who worked out of Anonops or were otherwise particularly active in the beginning of 2011 that I wrote or edited a number of the press releases of that time, and that the al-Jazeera article written in the first few days of January and which appeared later that month under the title “Anonymous and the Global Correction” was also my work – something I revealed privately to the brilliant cyberpunk essayist Bruce Sterling after he openly speculated as to the author’s background in Wired, noting the sentiments to be that of a true revolutionary. Among those who now agree with him are the FBI, which has since responded accordingly – and unethically.
Contrary to the countless claims to the effect that I hold some official role in Anonymous, I can think of only one occasion in which any Anon has come close to actually deeming me as such, that being the day on which HBGary was hacked in retaliation for HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Baar’s claim – shown to be entirely false – that he had identified Anon’s “lieutenants” and “co-founder” and that he had been contacted by the FBI about this. In fact, he had conflated three different people including a professional gardener and, as shown in the notes Anon released along with the e-mails taken from HBGary Federal, had made a huge number of additional mistakes – something since confirmed by everyone concerned including Barr himself. (That the Financial Times writer who had bought Barr’s self-promotion would again essay to write about Anonymous months later, this time taking the claims of a Dutch kid at face value in the course of “reporting” various negative things about how the movement operates, is only one of numerous bizarre and depressing twists to this story; I myself would later encounter him on Canada television as a panelist during a discussion in which he accused Anon of being particularly anti-“American interest”, to which I responded that it is difficult to avoid stepping on the empire’s toes when one assists North Africans in fighting off dictatorships that the US has supported for years.) (Oh snap!) On that day, as recorded on pastebin from the discussion on the #OPHBGary channel at Anonops, I was referred to in passing as “our public face” to a journalist. I was on the phone to HBGary President Penny Hoglund at the time, apologizing that HBGary’s e-mails had been seized by Sabu in addition to HBGary Federal’s, instructing her on how to get on IRC in order to make her case directly to the hackers, and promising to remove the link I had put up to the 70,000 e-mails acquired in the operation, a link I had placed upon a Daily Kos post put up to explain the situation to the great many who would miss the “makeover” done to HBGary.com. Had I known that Penny was lying to me about what she and husband Greg Hoglund had known about Barr’s irresponsible attempt to save his own career at the expense of the innocent and heroic alike, I would have simply hung up. Instead, I was polite – but I recorded the call, just as I recorded the next call with Barr, the next call with HBGary exec Jim Butterworth, and finally the drunken call I received months later from Greg Hoglund himself. “Trust but verify,” as Reagan said in the context of a different set of villains.
With the exception of the ten minute convo I released between myself and Aaron Barr, all of the other recordings – and plenty of others – are in the possession of the FBI, which raided my apartment as well as my mother’s home on March 6th. For more on those events, as well as the criminal conspiracy to which I have been subjected by elements of the FBI, HBGary, and paid informant/contractor Jennifer Emick (among other parties both known and undiscovered), please see the last 3 videos I uploaded to my YouTube account, as well as documents I linked to on my Twitter account @BarrettBrownLOL in the final days before my most recent (and dramatic!) arrest. Not everything is released; I was interrupted by armed, mediocre federal agents and DPD officers (“No complicity in assassination of a chief executive since 1963!”) before I could finish making my case, which was to be done over several days before the entirety would be sent to the FBI and the judge who signed my March search warrant. This was to be followed by the instigation of a civil suit against HBGary and other parties to be named in the next 2 months. My plan has been disrupted – plans often are, as history tells us – but it has not been rendered obsolete. It will evolve, just as ProjectPM itself has evolved steadily since 2009, when this war became evident to me, when I first realized that my future as a political satirist would have to be abandoned in favor of this dirty, grueling struggle.
But why was I arrested this time? I would love to tell you. But the prosecution wouldn’t like that. I, and everyone else in the court room, were ordered to refrain from discussing the complaint, affidavits, and warrant, all of which are sealed at the request of the author, one FBI special agent whom I shall not name lest I give him cause for fright (or pretend fright – I am allegedly a danger to one especially skittish special agent whom I shall be careful not to name again until such time as I am prepared to list him in the civil suit I’ve been preparing for weeks now). Frankly, I do not blame this other special agent for requesting that the document be sealed – if I had written something of such low quality and demonstrable untruth, I would burn it and ask forgiveness of every deity invented by man and the higher apes/dolphins/whales. Likewise, if I were the US attorney who signed the Motion for Detention dated September 13 2012 – the document that, after having been approved by Judge Paul D. Stickney, ensured I would not only be prevented from discussing what I’m being accused of but also made a prisoner of the state until such time as a trial or some such can be concocted out of the jurisprudential magick I struggle to follow, in my innocence. Apparently I am not just a danger to the fragile FBI agents who have taken to threatening my mother and fracturing my ribs in the course of heavily-armed raids on my uptown Dallas apartment, but must be prevented from explaining to my associates, followers, and even enemies why I have again been subjected to violence and indignity.
I explained the first raid against me (March 6th, 6:30 a.m. CST) and the second against my mother (about six hours later) in several pastebin messages at that time. It was not until 2 months ago that I learned how a judge had been tricked into permitting this raid on me – how the disgraced contracting firm HBGary hired the paid FBI informant Jennifer Emick to, in their words, “find something to get [me] picked up on,” even as this bizarre former Anon made public accusations against me under both her real name and her adopted contractor persona: “FakeGreggHoush” on Twitter (now “AsherahResearch”) and Asherah on IRC – particularly the 2600 server where she frequented the #jester channel alongside various ex-military men and current “security’ contractors who all found themselves inclined to associate with the admitted criminal hacker th3J35T3R, one of several parties who have taken credit for DoS attacks on Wikileaks. I should not have to remind anyone that 40 U.S. homes were raided in January 2011 due to a similar but less effective series of DDoS attacks on Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon which were clearly an act of protest against an unprecedented economic blockade ordered by the U.S. regime. 14 of the “criminals” in question are being charged such that they face up to 15 years in prison. Thanks largely to Jay Leiderman the California attorney and John Penley the NYC activist and veteran, many of them are being represented for free. Likewise, I will seek and accept only pro bono assistance from this point on, though with the stipulation that I will pay any such lawyers what I can from the defense funds that have been set up for me thus far by well-wishers. As of this writing I dismiss Tom Mills, whom I retained for $3,500 after receiving bad advice from a well-meaning person. I will also expect that money returned within 60 days of the publication of this missive online (ProjectPM participants, please ensure that he receives this message, which I have also delivered through my mother – whom he falsely claimed to be representing on the matter of the FBI threats against her despite having been paid by me, not her). And as I had noted both publicly and privately earlier this month, I am still seeking additional attorneys with skill in civil litigation to pursue at least two suits I’ll be filing by the end of the year. Those interested may write to me at my new home, Some Jail in Texas. I am able to arrange for phone conversations with any applicants (or anyone else who is either especially interesting or who is able to accept a collect call or contribute $5 to my commissary/phone fund, that being the cost of a 15-minute call instigated by me). Anyone who writes me without us having been formerly introduced, I will guarantee a response if you send self-addressed stamped envelope. Also I believe that only mail with a return address will be delivered to me, though I’m not sure.
I hate that I have spent so much time in conflict over the past two years, and that so much of this has involved my fellow American citizens rather than the Middle Eastern dictators that I got involved in this to combat. I feel sorrow at the lost opportunities, and as for the way it has changed me as a person… I like to think that I am wiser and less naïve than I was, but I know too well how foolish and unsophisticated I was to begin with. I cannot excuse the mistakes I myself have made on both the strategic and tactical levels in my short career. I shudder when I look back on some of the things I wrote or said when I got my first real taste of power at the dawn of 2011, and I continue to bring shame upon myself and upon my family and work by some of the things I say even lately. In particular I have made comments about the U.S. military that I do not mean and which are obviously not entirely accurate. Along with other nonsense I have said, felt, written throughout my life, many of these things originate from my own fears and weaknesses. I am humiliated at not being able to protect my own mother from the FBI, or to shield my own girlfriend from watching heavily-armed men step on my spine as I scream in pain. I cannot forget how my mom cried on March 6th after the FBI had left with my equipment and hers, and how she whispered through tears that she wanted to be able to protect me from prison but couldn’t; I will never forget the look on Jenna’s face as the federal thugs swept through my efficiency apartment with guns drawn and safeties off, in search of hidden assailants and non-existent weapons. That these things are unjust and increasingly insane does not change the fact that they are the result of my own behavior, my own miscalculations, my own choices.
Having said that, I regret nothing. For the last week I was denied opiates and thus forced to feel not just rage, hatred, all the primal things, but forced to endure them while sicker than most humans can imagine and in a jail that is overcrowded and filled with common criminals. I have gained something extraordinary in that process, which ended this morning when I was given the first of 30 days of suboxone. I will personally thank everyone on the outside who has helped me and this movement particularly at this critical time, when I have regained the freedom that I did nothing to lose. For now, and until that time, it is war, on paper as always, but war.
Barrett Brown Founder ProjectPM Prisoner #35047177 Mansfield Law Enforcement Center 1601 Heritage Parkway Mansfield, TX 76063
Postscript-
[redacted], if you are able to relay this message to the Anons, my ProjectPM people, journalists, etc, you will have done me a finer deed than most men ever have occasion to do for another. I am transmitting a copy of this to another individual to ensure that the FBI does not manage to silence me on this (incidentally, the local jail here in Mansfield has proven to be run by honorable, trustworthy, even friendly people, but it is nonetheless subject to the Yankee boot (no offense)). Tell journalists, etc that they may contact [redacted]. My future and that of ProjectPM depends on you and a handful of others. Thank you for your loyalty at this time. Finally, please include this PS when forwarding and ask people to see my original search warrant as published on Buzzfeed a few months back. Echelon2.org is part of the key to this affair, but not all. More to be revealed when all is prepared. Good luck to you.
For the second time this year, self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown was raided by the FBI.
The latest dramatic incident occurred late Wednesday evening while Brown and another woman identified by some as his girlfriend were participating in an online chat on TinyChat with other individuals.
Two minutes into the recorded chat session, loud voices could be heard in the background of Brown’s residence in Texas while the woman in the room with him was in front of the computer screen. She quickly closed the computer screen, but the audio continued to capture events in the room as the FBI appeared to strong-arm Brown to put handcuffs on him. Brown could be heard yelling in the background.
A spokeswoman in the Dallas County sherriff’s office confirmed to Wired that Brown was raided last night and was booked into the county jail around 11 p.m. She said the FBI removed him from the jail this morning to take him to a different facility, but she did not know where he was headed.
California attorney Jay Leiderman, a member of Brown’s legal team, told Wired that Brown was scheduled to be arraigned today in Texas on making threats to a federal agent.
Asked if the FBI agents were aware that Brown was online at the time of their raid, Leiderman said, “They problaby would have preferred to raid him when he was not online.” He noted that the audio from the raid was “certainly less than flattering when they’re marching through these doors dropping F-bombs…. I imagine they would not want to have that captured if they could help it.”
A transcript of the TinyChat session has been posted online. Just moments before the arrest, there were jokes about whether one of the chat participants was real or just an animated GIF. Moments later, the chat participants faced a different conundrum: trying to figure out whether they’d just witnessed an FBI raid.
A voice that appeared to come from one of the arresting agents was heard saying something to the effect: “You’re going down! Get your hands down!”
Right as the noise began, another participant in the chat room showed up in a video window with a white handkerchief covering his lower face. “Is Barrett Browm getting fuckin’ raided by the FBI?” he appeared to say. “Holy shit!”
Brown’s latest raid came after he posted a long and rambling YouTube video in which he talked about taking drugs (though not today, he noted) and about retaliating against an FBI Agent named Robert Smith after he learned that his mother might be hit with obstruction of justice charges. The threat of charges was apparently related to a laptop of Brown’s that he apparently hid.
“So that’s why Robert Smith’s life is over,” Brown said in the video (beginning around minute 9:40). “When I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids. Because Aaron Barr did the same thing and he didn’t get raided for it. How do you like them apples?” he said, smiling.
The video, titled “Why I’m Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith Part Three: Revenge of the Lithe” was accompanied by a note apparently posted by Brown that reads: “Send all info on Agent Robert Smith to [email protected] so FBI can watch me look up his kids. It’s all legal, folks, Palantir chief counsel Matt Long already signed off on it when Themis planned worse.”
Brown also talked about being a target of the Zeta drug cartel and mentioned that he was heavily armed and was concerned that the cartel would come after him posed as federal officers.
“Any armed official of the U.S. government, particularly the FBI, will be regarded as potential Zeta assassin squads,” he said in the video. “As FBI knows … they know that I’m armed and I come from a military family and I was taught to shoot by a Vietnam veteran … and I will shoot all of them and kill them if they come and do anything…. I have reason to fear for my life.”
He signed off the video saying: “Frankly, it was pretty obvious I was going to be dead before I was 40 or so, so I wouldn’t mind going out with two FBI sidearms like a fucking Egyptian pharaoh. Adios.”
Asked about Brown’s comments, Leiderman said that he hadn’t seen the full video and wasn’t aware of everything Brown had said, but he noted that his client had a reputation for hyperbole and joking around, and that things he said might appear to be a threat when they weren’t really intended to be that way.
“It’s hard to understand the context [of what he said], Leiderman said. “But this is speech, so ordinarily we go to a First Amendment defense, but obviously there are lines that can be crossed where you can lose your First Amendment protection.”
An FBI spokeswoman had no comment to make on Brown’s arrest.
Greetings World — On September 3, 2012 our comrades in AntiSec released a Press Release here –> http://pastebin.com/nfVT7b0Z
In this release they disclosed the fact that they had hacked the laptop of an FBI agent in the Cyber-Crime division and among the booty taken was a file containing 12 million UDIDs from various Apple products owned by people in the USA. They released evidence of this in the form of 1 million partially redacted entries from the file. The media did their usual idiot dance, latched onto the story and ran without thinking. Then mid-week it was pointed out by their critics that Anonymous could have got that file from many sources. Of course the FBI denied they were hacked, did you honestly think that the FBI Cyber-Crime guys would be like yeah Anonymous hacked us and we are butthurt? Please. Then no sooner does the media turn to this idea that hey, Anonymous could have got this info from some app developer lo and behold an app developer mysteriously discovers that they have been hacked and the data belongs to them. Yeah right. And now the media has come full circle like baying dogs and is reporting this shit as the newest version of reality. Fucking jokers. We have strong reason to believe this company Blue Toad are liars. But even if their data matches the data set obtained from the FBI by AntiSec, this simply points to one possible source where the FBI might have obtained the data. As AntiSec themselves pointed out in their response to the FBI’s lies, no one ever said the FBI got this data from Apple.
Now that the main stream media is finally catching on that this so-called “Blue Toad” revelation proves nothing, everyone seems completely perplexed. Some tech journalists are demanding hard “proof”. Don’t be fools, that would land a bunch of us in prison and it ain’t going to happen. What AntiSec and Anonymous HAVE provided you is evidence that only has meaning to the FBI Cyber-Crime guys.
These partial IPs for instance:
206.112.75.XX
153.31.184.XX
Has any reporter asked the FBI Cyber-Crime division if these IPs have any meaning to them. No, of course not. They would only deny it or just not answer the question saying it was a “security issue”, right ? But it IS your job as a reporter to at least ask. In the initial Press Release, AntiSec provided the name of the Cyber Agent and the make and model of his laptop. “During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached.” Has even ONE reporter contacted Agent Stangl and asked him what make and model laptop he uses for work? Uhmmm, no of course not. You are all so quick to believe some strange company who conveniently pops up out of the mists (and who we have never even heard of ourselves until today). But what is REALLY incredible is that you would believe a group who is historically PROVEN to be pathological liars and criminals, namely the FBI. AntiSec also provided the method used, and most security “experts” (i.e. White Hat Scum) have grudgingly admitted the hack would be possible using the technique described. AntiSec has even provided the MAC addresses of all the hardware used in the new York office of the Cyber-Crime Division:
Has anyone asked the FBI if these MACS are real? And before you reply “they would just deny it or say no comment” – it is STILL your job as reporters to at least ASK and report their answer to your audience. You have asked for chat logs from the hack. AntiSec has indicated they may provide them after they have thoroughly scrutinized them and redacted shit that can get them V&ed, which will most likely include the forensic “proof” some of you crazy journos are clamoring for. But the bottom line is this. Anonymous and AntiSec have provided FAR more evidence for their side of the story than the FBI has with their two lousy tweets and then a steady stream of “no comments”. The FBI has not provided one shred of evidence for their lying denials. Anonymous and AntiSec have provided what they can, and may provide more in the future.
AntiSec hacked the FBI and found 12 million UDIDs from Apple products on the laptop of a special cyber agent of the FBI. Whether the FBI had these for some tracking scenario as AntiSec opines, or whether they had them to use to crack open Apple stuff they seize when the “suspect” won’t give them the passwords – or whether they had them for some completely un-known nefarious reason, they had them and Anonymous took them. We know this is true, and more importantly the FBI knows this is true. It is not our job to convince either the media or the masses. But the truth is there, if the journalists want to actually WORK for a living and dig for it. Also, that file wasn’t all that AntiSec obtained from Agent Stangl’s laptop. The FBI and all you media journos should….
EXPECT US.
SINCERELY
— Anonymous Anonymous Global — www.AnonymousGlobal.tk
For Messages From AntiSec Follow @AnonymousIRC on Twitter
