"Hundreds of piglets are on the loose in Ohio after a trailer carrying them overturned... Police, firefighters, local parks and recreation officers and farmers will all drafted in to help rescue the tiny piglets, forming a human chain to pass them across the highway." | The Daily Bell - Hungry FBI Creating Fake Terrorists: "These operations, which are usually led by an informant, provide the means and opportunity, and sometimes even the idea, for mentally ill and economically desperate people to become what we now term terrorists." | The FBI is terrified of encryption | Even protesting the Keystone XL pipeline could land you on an FBI watch list - PRI | FBI Misuse of Patriot Act Authority. “Anyone can be Spied on ...by Stephen Lendman | Just say 'no' to FBI spying on Americans - Minneapolis Star Tribune - | U.S. response to terrorism is weakened by lapses in communication: ""The biggest impediment," the commission warned, "is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information." Intelligence "should be processed, turned into reports and distributed according to the same quality standards, whether it is collected in Pakistan or in Texas." In response to 9/11, officials created Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, where federal, county and city police work together to gather, analyze and act on intelligence." - FBI News Review
Counter-terrorism is supposed to let us live without fear. Instead, it's creating more of it
How many ‘terrorism plots’ initiated by FBI informants will the agency interrupt before Congress finally performs some oversight?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/26/fbi-surveillance-counterterrorism-entrapment-terror-documentary-sundance
fbi obama
The FBI is a less impressive the closer you look. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe for Creative Time Reports
Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe's film, (T)ERROR, is currently screening at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Monday 26 January 2015 07.52 EST Last modified on Tuesday 27 January 2015 12.42 EST
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People think that catching terrorists is just a matter of finding them – but, just as often, terrorists are created by the people doing the chase.
While making our film (T)ERROR, which tracks a single counter-terrorism sting operation over seven months, we realized that most people have serious misconceptions about FBI counter-terrorism efforts. They assume that informants infiltrate terrorist networks and then provide the FBI with information about those networks in order to stop terrorist plots from being carried out. That’s not true in the vast majority of domestic terrorism cases.
Since 9/11, as Human Rights Watch and others have documented, the FBI has routinely used paid informants not to capture existing terrorists, but to cultivate them. Through elaborate sting operations, informants are directed to spend months – sometimes years – building relationships with targets, stoking their anger and offering ideas and incentives that encourage them to engage in terrorist activity. And the moment a target takes a decisive step forward, crossing the line from aspirational to operational, the FBI swoops in to arrest him.
The targets of FBI stings are almost exclusively Muslim men between the ages of 15 and 35. They also tend to be angry, isolated and impoverished – in other words, eager for companionship and easy to manipulate. Many of the informants are well-remunerated con men with criminal histories, whom the FBI cannot guarantee won’t coerce targets into plots in order to secure their own paychecks. The stakes are high: informants stand to make as much as $100,000 over the course of a single investigation, not to mention considerable bonuses in the case of successful convictions.
A recent example: on 14 January, the FBI announced that it had interrupted an Isis-inspired terrorist plot in the United States. Christopher Lee Cornell, a 20-year-old recent Muslim convert from Cincinnati, was allegedly plotting to attack the US Capitol with pipe bombs and gun down government officials. Cornell was arrested after purchasing two semiautomatic weapons from an Ohio gun store because the man that Cornell thought was his partner was actually an FBI informant. His plot was foiled by the FBI, after they ensured the cooperation of the store owner.
Advertisement
We see the same story repeated over and over: of the domestic terrorism plots interrupted by law enforcement over the past decade, all but four were initiated by an informant-provocateur acting under FBI supervision. Conveniently for the FBI, network news anchors choose to parrot FBI press releases and herald suspects’ alleged associations with radical Islam, and the steady stream of “interrupted plots” provides the government with ample evidence that the terrorist threat is ever-present and that expanded surveillance is essential to national security.
Less than a day after Cornell’s arrest, House Speaker John Boehner praised NSA spying for uncovering the plot – even though the FBI asserts that it learned of Cornell’s alleged activities through the informant. When pressed for details, Boehner refused to elaborate, saying only, “We’ll let the whole story roll out”. He added that lawmakers need to consider this particular plot when discussing amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Although then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales released guidelines governing the FBI’s use of confidential informants in 2006, there is no congressional oversight of these activities. Even though Attorney General Eric Holder recently revised federal law-enforcement guidelines to limit racial profiling, and despite evidence that the FBI engages in profiling when identifying persons of investigative interest, the FBI will be exempt from these revised guidelines in the interests of national security.
As recently as 2011, FBI counter-terrorism training materials explicitly stated that most moderate Muslim Americans support terrorism and erroneously identified Islamic dress, prayer and even speaking Arabic as indicators of potential radicalization. The FBI is also no bastion of employee diversity: of the 13,766 special agents it employs, only 17% are “minorities,” reducing the opportunities for shifts in the bureau’s thinking on Muslims and other minorities.
The cumulative effects of FBI surveillance and entrapment in communities of color have been devastating. Mosques have reported declines in membership as individuals choose to worship at home rather than risk monitoring. Imams have expressed reluctance to discuss the complexities of jihad, a frequently misunderstood tenet of the Islamic faith, for fear that their words may be misconstrued. Many Muslims are wary of donating to Islamic charities, both domestic and foreign, for fear of raising government suspicions. And on campuses across the country, Muslim student associations have banned discussions of politics, terrorism and the “war on terror.” It is unthinkable that a diverse and vibrant American community inundated with agents provocateurs should be prevented from engaging in vigorous and open dialogue. It is also unconscionable that $1.2bn of our tax dollars are being funneled every year into these misguided tactics.
After a recent screening of our film at a New York City mosque, a young African-American convert to Islam, sporting a brown full-body covering with matching hijab, confessed to us that she feels uncomfortable discussing aspects of her identity. She does not speak about her religious conversion in public, for fear of attracting or encouraging informants.
The stated purpose of the FBI’s counter-terrorism mission is to enable Americans to go about their daily lives without fear. But in addition to imprisoning hundreds of Muslim men caught up in the FBI’s informant-led traps, the agency has actively created and encouraged a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion among Americans exercising their constitutional right to freedom of religion. In fact, the FBI’s tactics have profoundly impacted law enforcement’s ability to maintain a relationship of trust with Muslim American communities, much to the detriment to our collective national security. Authorities must rein in the informant program, and institute immediate congressional oversight, if they sincerely aim to defend the liberty and security of all Americans, regardless of race or religion.
• This piece was published in coordination with Creative Time Reports. Read it here.
• This article was amended on 26 January 2015 to reflect that $1.2bn of US tax dollars is spent on these tactics, not $1.2m.
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How many ‘terrorism plots’ initiated by FBI informants will the agency interrupt before Congress finally performs some oversight?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/26/fbi-surveillance-counterterrorism-entrapment-terror-documentary-sundance
fbi obama
The FBI is a less impressive the closer you look. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe for Creative Time Reports
Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe's film, (T)ERROR, is currently screening at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Monday 26 January 2015 07.52 EST Last modified on Tuesday 27 January 2015 12.42 EST
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+
Shares
2,117
Comments
149
People think that catching terrorists is just a matter of finding them – but, just as often, terrorists are created by the people doing the chase.
While making our film (T)ERROR, which tracks a single counter-terrorism sting operation over seven months, we realized that most people have serious misconceptions about FBI counter-terrorism efforts. They assume that informants infiltrate terrorist networks and then provide the FBI with information about those networks in order to stop terrorist plots from being carried out. That’s not true in the vast majority of domestic terrorism cases.
Since 9/11, as Human Rights Watch and others have documented, the FBI has routinely used paid informants not to capture existing terrorists, but to cultivate them. Through elaborate sting operations, informants are directed to spend months – sometimes years – building relationships with targets, stoking their anger and offering ideas and incentives that encourage them to engage in terrorist activity. And the moment a target takes a decisive step forward, crossing the line from aspirational to operational, the FBI swoops in to arrest him.
The targets of FBI stings are almost exclusively Muslim men between the ages of 15 and 35. They also tend to be angry, isolated and impoverished – in other words, eager for companionship and easy to manipulate. Many of the informants are well-remunerated con men with criminal histories, whom the FBI cannot guarantee won’t coerce targets into plots in order to secure their own paychecks. The stakes are high: informants stand to make as much as $100,000 over the course of a single investigation, not to mention considerable bonuses in the case of successful convictions.
A recent example: on 14 January, the FBI announced that it had interrupted an Isis-inspired terrorist plot in the United States. Christopher Lee Cornell, a 20-year-old recent Muslim convert from Cincinnati, was allegedly plotting to attack the US Capitol with pipe bombs and gun down government officials. Cornell was arrested after purchasing two semiautomatic weapons from an Ohio gun store because the man that Cornell thought was his partner was actually an FBI informant. His plot was foiled by the FBI, after they ensured the cooperation of the store owner.
Advertisement
We see the same story repeated over and over: of the domestic terrorism plots interrupted by law enforcement over the past decade, all but four were initiated by an informant-provocateur acting under FBI supervision. Conveniently for the FBI, network news anchors choose to parrot FBI press releases and herald suspects’ alleged associations with radical Islam, and the steady stream of “interrupted plots” provides the government with ample evidence that the terrorist threat is ever-present and that expanded surveillance is essential to national security.
Less than a day after Cornell’s arrest, House Speaker John Boehner praised NSA spying for uncovering the plot – even though the FBI asserts that it learned of Cornell’s alleged activities through the informant. When pressed for details, Boehner refused to elaborate, saying only, “We’ll let the whole story roll out”. He added that lawmakers need to consider this particular plot when discussing amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Although then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales released guidelines governing the FBI’s use of confidential informants in 2006, there is no congressional oversight of these activities. Even though Attorney General Eric Holder recently revised federal law-enforcement guidelines to limit racial profiling, and despite evidence that the FBI engages in profiling when identifying persons of investigative interest, the FBI will be exempt from these revised guidelines in the interests of national security.
As recently as 2011, FBI counter-terrorism training materials explicitly stated that most moderate Muslim Americans support terrorism and erroneously identified Islamic dress, prayer and even speaking Arabic as indicators of potential radicalization. The FBI is also no bastion of employee diversity: of the 13,766 special agents it employs, only 17% are “minorities,” reducing the opportunities for shifts in the bureau’s thinking on Muslims and other minorities.
The cumulative effects of FBI surveillance and entrapment in communities of color have been devastating. Mosques have reported declines in membership as individuals choose to worship at home rather than risk monitoring. Imams have expressed reluctance to discuss the complexities of jihad, a frequently misunderstood tenet of the Islamic faith, for fear that their words may be misconstrued. Many Muslims are wary of donating to Islamic charities, both domestic and foreign, for fear of raising government suspicions. And on campuses across the country, Muslim student associations have banned discussions of politics, terrorism and the “war on terror.” It is unthinkable that a diverse and vibrant American community inundated with agents provocateurs should be prevented from engaging in vigorous and open dialogue. It is also unconscionable that $1.2bn of our tax dollars are being funneled every year into these misguided tactics.
After a recent screening of our film at a New York City mosque, a young African-American convert to Islam, sporting a brown full-body covering with matching hijab, confessed to us that she feels uncomfortable discussing aspects of her identity. She does not speak about her religious conversion in public, for fear of attracting or encouraging informants.
The stated purpose of the FBI’s counter-terrorism mission is to enable Americans to go about their daily lives without fear. But in addition to imprisoning hundreds of Muslim men caught up in the FBI’s informant-led traps, the agency has actively created and encouraged a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion among Americans exercising their constitutional right to freedom of religion. In fact, the FBI’s tactics have profoundly impacted law enforcement’s ability to maintain a relationship of trust with Muslim American communities, much to the detriment to our collective national security. Authorities must rein in the informant program, and institute immediate congressional oversight, if they sincerely aim to defend the liberty and security of all Americans, regardless of race or religion.
• This piece was published in coordination with Creative Time Reports. Read it here.
• This article was amended on 26 January 2015 to reflect that $1.2bn of US tax dollars is spent on these tactics, not $1.2m.
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U.S. response to terrorism is weakened by lapses in communication
Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team investigate the crime scene outside of the Curtis Culwell Center on May 4, 2015, after a shooting in Garland, Texas.
(Ben Torres / Getty Images / May 4, 2015) |
Reporting from WASHINGTON—
When FBI agents realized Elton Simpson had slipped away from his north Phoenix apartment last month, they immediately became concerned. Their worries grew when they learned after he vanished that he had been surfing the Internet using the hashtag "attacktexas."
According to FBI Director James Comey and other top federal officials, the bureau immediately warned Garland, Texas, police that the avowed jihadist, inspired by Islamic State militants, might be headed there to attack a cartoon contest designed to mock the prophet Muhammad.
But local law enforcement officials in Garland, including the police chief, insist they were never warned and that only with the luck of some quick-acting officers managed to stop Simpson and an accomplice from storming the event with assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Both men were shot dead, and a terrorist attack was averted.
Left unanswered from that May 3 confrontation and the subsequent finger-pointing are questions raised years earlier by the 9/11 Commission and at numerous hearings on Capitol Hill: Are federal and police agencies doing enough to share intelligence information with each other and cooperating to keep the country safe from terrorism?
The commission concluded that a key failure in stopping the 9/11 hijackers was rooted in the resistance by intelligence and law enforcement agencies to trade crucial information. Weeks after the terrorist attacks, a communications lapse between federal and local agencies was blamed by some lawmakers for slowing the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.
"The biggest impediment," the commission warned, "is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information." Intelligence "should be processed, turned into reports and distributed according to the same quality standards, whether it is collected in Pakistan or in Texas."
In response to 9/11, officials created Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, where federal, county and city police work together to gather, analyze and act on intelligence.
The Garland case has emerged as one of the biggest tests of that system, and although the attack was foiled it revealed that communication lapses and distrust continue to complicate the fight against terrorism.
The FBI maintains it alerted the Garland police representative on the Dallas-area joint task force about Simpson and suggested the cartoon convention might be at risk.
"We developed information just hours before the event that Simpson might be interested in going to Garland," Comey said at a May 7 news briefing.
He said the FBI quickly issued a bulletin to the Garland police warning them that Simpson or his accomplice, Nadir Soofi, might show up there.
But Garland police say they never received an immediate warning from the FBI and that their task force also was not alerted. Garland police Chief Mitch Bates said reports that his department received word that an attack might be imminent "are not accurate."
"No one," the chief said. "Not the Garland Police Department, the FBI, the Texas Department of Public Safety, nor any other agency had the information prior to the event that either suspect may target this event. No information was missed or ignored."
Bates said an FBI bulletin was issued two days earlier, on May 1. But he said it indicated "no known, credible threats" and simply said "what we already knew: that the event was a potential target."
He added, "the identities of the two suspects were not known to us until many hours after the shooting."
The questions of who knew what and when, and whom they told, loom large, as does the issue of how the FBI lost track of Simpson. According to FBI officials, federal agents are working 100 or more active terrorism investigations and do not have the manpower or equipment to provide 24-hour surveillance on all of them.
Federal officials say the threat of "lone wolf" attacks like the one in Texas is only growing.
Comey and others pointed to the explosion of social media that makes it easier for foreign terrorist groups to recruit jihadists in this country. "I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there," the director said.
Michael B. Steinbach, the FBI's assistant director for its Counterterrorism Division, testified at a June 3 House Homeland Security Committee hearing that about 200 Americans had traveled to Syria or tried to reach that region to join Islamic State. All of them, he said, "potentially pose a significant threat to the safety of the United States."
To combat that growing threat, federal agents are hosting training exercises with community leaders to heighten public awareness of suspicious activity, said John Mulligan, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, during the hearing. "We need to effectively engage it before it manifests in violence."
Francis Taylor, undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged at the hearing that the Garland incident had "reinforced the importance of close collaboration and information-sharing."
For instance, Taylor said, authorities enhanced their information-sharing when they became aware in late May of a planned rally where anti-Muslim protesters, many carrying weapons, gathered outside a Phoenix mosque. Taylor said police security was beefed up and, at the urging of federal officials, officers spoke with community and faith leaders to gauge the threat level.
Taylor said it was all done "in real time to help ensure local leadership and law enforcement have the necessary information to protect their communities and cities."
Better cooperation between local and federal agencies weighed heavily in Boston last week, when a knife-wielding man who wanted to behead police officers was slain during a confrontation with an FBI agent and a Boston police officer.
Members of the local joint task force in Boston, including FBI agents and state and city police officers, were tracking the man for several weeks, and moved in on him when he purchased three large knives and began discussing plans to behead police officers.
In the end, a two-man team — comprised of a federal agent and a city police officer — worked together in confronting him. They fatally shot him when he reportedly threatened them with one of the knives.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security panel, said no one can say whether the Garland incident would have had a different outcome — without a gun battle — had the FBI bulletin gotten through.
"But I do think this illustrates we need to continue looking into information-sharing," he said, "and listening to the boots on the ground on how to recognize and prevent acts of homegrown violent extremism."
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In the 14 years since 9/11, you can count about six real terrorist attacks in the United States. These include the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, as well as failed attacks, such as the time when a man named Faisal Shahzad tried to deliver a car bomb to Times Square. In those same 14 years, the Bureau, however, has bragged about how it's foiled dozens of terrorism plots. In all, the FBI has arrested more than 175 people in aggressive, undercover counterterrorism stings.
These operations, which are usually led by an informant, provide the means and opportunity, and sometimes even the idea, for mentally ill and economically desperate people to become what we now term terrorists.
These informants nab people like Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh. Both are mentally ill. Abdul-Latif had a history of huffing gasoline and attempting suicide. Mujahidh had schizoaffective disorder, he had trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy. In 2012, the FBI arrested these two men for conspiring to attack a military recruiting station outside Seattle with weapons provided, of course, by the FBI. The FBI's informant was Robert Childs, a convicted rapist and child molester who was paid 90,000 dollars for his work on the case. This isn't an outlier. – Trevor Aaronson, TED Talk, March 2015
The FBI has a problem. Not enough terrorists are plotting to attack the United States, so agents find they must manufacture more of them. The method appears to be working, too. Dozens of FBI-appointed terrorists now sit safely in prison and no longer threaten the "Homeland."
Unfortunately, Trevor Aaronson's reporting suggests most of these people never threatened the Homeland in the first place. They had two problems. First, they suffer from serious mental illness. Second, they trusted the FBI's paid informants.
In an earlier era, we called this "entrapment" and law enforcement officials discouraged it. They weren't especially concerned about civil rights, but budgets were tighter and they had plenty of other low-hanging fruit.
All this changed after 9/11 when anti-terrorism became the FBI's top priority. The bureau found itself awash in cash and under pressure to deliver results. A national paranoia had citizens seeing potential terrorists behind every tree.
Something else happened, too. The number of people diagnosed with serious mental illness shot higher while the nation's capacity to care for them plummeted. Jails found themselves operating as de facto psychiatric wards, their cells filled with people who had tenuous connections to reality.
This neat coincidence helped the FBI solve its problem. Agents dangled cash to recruit informants who would then entice their "friends" into fictitious terror plots. The Bureau would then bust these plots open to great fanfare, allowing it to show success and keep the budget growing.
The strategy had the beneficial side effect of bolstering public fears. With terror plots in the headlines almost every month, voters gladly accepted loss of civil liberties and lavish anti-terror spending. News accounts routinely shaded over the missing connections to actual terrorists.
So, we are now in a "minority report" nation where the mere inclination to commit a crime, if given the opportunity, is enough to imprison people for life. How far will the FBI push this logic?
Practically everyone pushes the bounds of legality every day. We drive through intersections without making a complete stop. We drive 20 miles per hour over the limit when we don't see any police cars. We put liquids in our carry-on bags. Would we push the law even more if a trusted friend encouraged it? Probably so, but we would draw a line somewhere.
The FBI knows this. Targeting people with impaired judgment greatly increases their odds of "success." Mentally ill people often don't know when to stop. The strategy is working well, so it will likely continue.
As with most government programs, this one will probably expand far beyond its original intent. What else might we see? Maybe fake accountants advising people how to dodge taxes? Faux pharmacies dispensing drugs without prescriptions? Imitation taxidermists selling endangered species fur?
The possibilities are endless. So, apparently, is government's hunger for control.
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