Scientific Dictatorship

Washington DC: FBI Foils Own Terror Plot (Again)

Land Destroyer Report

FBI's nation-wide stable of patsies can be switched "live" at any moment.
by Tony Cartalucci

February 18. 2012 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has once again proven that the only thing Americans need fear, is their own government, with the latest "terror attack" foiled being one entirely of their own design.

USA Today reports that a suspect had been arrested by the FBI who was "en route to the U.S. Capitol allegedly to detonate a suicide bomb." While initial reports portrayed the incident as a narrowly averted terrorist attack, CBS would report that a "high ranking source told CBS News the man was "never a real threat."" The explosives the would-be bomber carried were provided to him by the FBI during what they described as a "lengthy and extensive operation." The only contact the suspect had with "Al Qaeda" was with FBI officials posing as associates of the elusive, omnipresent, bearded terror conglomerate. The FBI, much like their MI5 counterparts in England, have a propensity for recruiting likely candidates from mosques they covertly run.

This is but the latest in a string of national terror plots carried out from start to finish by the FBI, who has made a business of approaching likely candidates and grooming them to carry out terror attacks. In September 2011, another FBI terror operation targeting the Capitol was "foiled," involving a patsy who believed he was to take part in an assault that would involve multiple gunmen and even a drone bomber provided to him by the FBI...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, patsy

Breaking: FBI Arrests Patsy in Capitol Terror Plot

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 17, 2012

A man wearing what he thought was an explosive vest has been arrested at a steakhouse on Constitution Avenue near the Capitol.

NBC and Fox report the vest contained inert chemicals and was provided by the FBI. The suspect was the target of an undercover investigation for about two months, according to USA Today.

Law enforcement said the “person arrested was canvassing the U.S. Capitol with violent intentions, the Associated Press reports. He was not believed to have any known connections to al-Qaeda,” according to USA Today.

Officialdom said the arrest “was the culmination of a lengthy and extensive operation during which the individual was closely and carefully monitored,” WUSA TV reports.

In August, it was reported the FBI currently employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents, ten times the number they had in 1975, and the vast majority of terror plot arrests in the United States are the result of FBI sting operations.

“By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize,” RT reported.

The Capitol sting arrives a few days after terrorist attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand. Israel, the United States, and the establishment media have uniformly declared the attacks to be the work of Iran and its “proxy” Hezbollah despite strenuous denials by Iran.

The FBI has yet to link the latest plot to Iran.

Labels: FBI, patsy

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists

(Reuters) - Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, Soveign Citizens

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

Advisory aimed at Internet Cafe owners characterizes mundane behavior as “suspicious activity”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, February 7, 2012

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

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

“Each flyer is designed for a particular kind of business,” writes Linda Lewis, a former policy analyst and planner for the U.S. government. “For example, this list was prepared for owners of internet cafes. Unquestionably, someone planning a terrorist attack has engaged in one or more of the “suspicious” activities on that list. But so, too, have most of the estimated 289 million computer users in this country.”

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

Labels: cash, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation

FBI seeking social media monitoring tool

Breitbart

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a tool to mine social media for intelligence tips.

The US domestic law enforcement agency is asking information technology contractors about the feasibility of building a tool that would "enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing 'open source' actionable intelligence."

The January 19 open request was published on a website offering federal business opportunities and was first reported by New Scientist magazine.

The FBI said it is seeking an "open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application solution" for its Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC).

"Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations," the FBI request said...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, monitoring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fwMCAOfuoE

Labels: false flag, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation

J. Edgar Hoover Was Much Worse Than New ‘Tell-All’ Movie Depicts

American Free Press

By Pat Shannan

As panning critics drove moviegoers away from Hollywood’s glossed-over depiction of J. Edgar Hoover in the movie J. Edgar faster than the Democrats could force the nosedive of Herman Cain in the polls, much comes to mind about the distorted, historical portrait of the 48-year reign of America’s top G-man.

While no one dared discuss it while he was alive, Hoover was a bad example of a lawman. A closet homosexual (although claims he was a transvestite are probably untrue), he authorized illegal wiretapping and surveillance bugs on innocent people, as well as suspects, and maintained continuing dossiers on everybody who was anybody—all of which made him the 20th century’s poster boy for rampant abuse of power. His underhanded tactics of officially documenting what he knew to be lies about prominent people—followed by threats of publication if they didn’t back away from the current issue at hand—became well known throughout the political circles of Washington...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover

Phony FBI Terror Plots Garner Increased International Scrutiny

American Free Press

December 03, 2011

By The Staff at AFP -

On Nov. 18 Jose Pimentel, an American citizen from the Dominican Republic, was arrested in New York and charged with constructing a pipe bomb. A federal informant who had been monitoring him sat by, giving him directions, having already instructed Pimentel to attack an American target in revenge for the assassination of American Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Reuters and other news agencies immediately met reports of the plot with skepticism, especially after they said Pimentel bought his bomb-making materials while accompanied by the informant, who eventually caused his arrest.

This incident was the latest in a series of bogus terror arrests that has drawn the attention of international media sources, particularly Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which ran a Nov. 16 exposé on increasing governmental efforts to fabricate terror incidents in order to generate fear that can be used to control the American people.

The Guardian report followed a study by the University of California at Berkeley showing that only three of the hundreds of terror plots investigated by the United States may have had an existence independent of the FBI. Federal informants have been scouring the country trying to create terrorist incidents in order to help the careers of U.S. attorneys and justify excessive American expenditure on anti-terrorist campaigns.

The FBI has 10,000 field agents on its payroll, and each of those agents is required to have at least four informants working for him full time, manufacturing crimes, in exchange for a paltry $400 a week, plus up to a $2,000 bonus if their lies lead to a conviction. On average, each FBI agent maintains approximately 10 such informants, meaning that 100,000 Americans on the FBI’s payroll do nothing with their day but manufacture criminal conspiracies. The U.S. Marshals, DEA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and BATFE maintain similar programs, meaning that as many as half a million Americans are earning a full-time living attempting to lure other Americans into criminal acts, only to be prosecuted by the government.

“Legally, you have to use the word ‘entrapment’ very carefully. It is a very strict legal term,” said Karen Greenberg, a professor at Fordham University.

Under U.S. law, all an FBI agent has to do in order to “sting” someone for a terror plot is show that he was “predisposed” to commit acts of terrorism. To qualify as predisposed, all one must do is express a strong opinion either opposing the U.S. government or supporting an ideology the government believes is opposed to it. Thus, if a person were to express a strong belief in Islam, that would be sufficient for U.S. domestic intelligence forces to suggest that that person commit a terrorist act, then provide him with items necessary to carry out the act.

Generally, the FBI tries to lure victims into conspiracies, in which several people with similar ideas are brought together and persuaded to commit a crime in unison—a maneuver that means that no actual ability to carry out the attack need be present. But, sometimes, the FBI is unable to bring a group of people together, in which case it manufactures the crime by providing explosives—or explosive material and instructions—to its victim, and then arrests him.

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, phony, provocateur, terror plot

Gunwalker scandal broadens--the FBI connection

Examiner

Confidential informants who are participating in the Congressional probe of the Project Gunwalker (Operation Fast and Furious) scandal have now zeroed in on the FBI connection. Such a connection has been hinted at in the past, but information relayed today shows that FBI involvement was much deeper than anyone imagined.

The investigation into Gunwalker has revealed a scandal involving multiple departments of the Obama Administration--Justice, FBI, ATF, ICE, DEA, DHS, and State. These connections have been verified through previously hidden emails and documents, and sworn testimony of whistleblowers.

But the FBI connection is one that could be potentially the biggest one yet, indicating that the bureau not only was involved in Gunwalker but has been up to its neck in a scandal all its own--a program called 'PATCON,' or 'Patriot Conspiracy.'

A paid confidential informant enlisted under PATCON indicated a long history of the covert program spanning several decades which include such debacles as the Ruby Ridge murders, the Waco murders of a religious cult, the Oklahoma City bombing, and Project Gunwalker...[Full Article

The article Newsweek gutted--more proof of FBI corruption

Examiner

When citizen investigative journalist Mike Vanderboegh reported earlier this week that an article that appeared in Newsweek Magazine this week was supposed to contain explosive information damaging to the current Administration and that of Bill Clinton, he had a good idea of what was cut by editor Tina Brown due to his numerous contacts in the government. Today, however, Vanderboegh has an unedited copy of the original version of the article, complete with credible evidence of corruption that exposes Eric Holder, Janet Reno, the FBI, and two Administrations as threats not only to the truth but to the very lives of American citizens.

The original article written by reporter R.M. Schneiderman and approved by his immediate editor John Solomon is extensive. An abbreviated step-by-step overview of that article is provided below...[Full Article]

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SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed...[Full Article]

Labels: bombing, Eric Holder, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, gun walking, OKC, Oklahoma City, PATCON

Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned

Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots

UK Guardian

David Williams did not have an easy life. He moved to Newburgh, a gritty, impoverished town on the banks of the Hudson an hour or so north of New York, at just 10 years old. For a young, black American boy with a father in jail, trouble was everywhere.

Williams also made bad choices. He ended up going to jail for dealing drugs. When he came out in 2007 he tried to go straight, but money was tight and his brother, Lord, needed cash for a liver transplant. Life is hard in Newburgh if you are poor, have a drug rap and need cash quickly.

His aunt, Alicia McWilliams, was honest about the tough streets her nephew was dealing with. "Newburgh is a hard place," she said. So it was perhaps no surprise that in May, 2009, David Williams was arrested again and hit with a 25-year jail sentence. But it was not for drugs offences. Or any other common crime. Instead Williams and three other struggling local men beset by drug, criminal and mental health issues were convicted of an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up Jewish synagogues and shoot down military jets with missiles.

Even more shocking was that the organisation, money, weapons and motivation for this plot did not come from real Islamic terrorists. It came from the FBI, and an informant paid to pose as a terrorist mastermind paying big bucks for help in carrying out an attack. For McWilliams, her own government had actually cajoled and paid her beloved nephew into being a terrorist, created a fake plot and then jailed him for it. "I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone," she told the Guardian...[Full Article]

Labels: entrapment, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Feds Claim Geriatric Domestic Terrorists Planned Attacks “Like Timothy McVeigh”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 2, 2011

Federal officials claim two men from Georgia who are supposedly members of a militia planned a domestic terror attack with the deadly poison ricin.

Court documents state that 73-year-old Frederick Thomas told others in the “fringe group” that he intended to fashion his attack on the online novel “Absolved,” which involves small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials. Fox News expert Mike Vanderboegh wrote the novel.

“In Vanderboegh’s novel, which was self-published online, underground militia fighters declare war on the federal government over gun control laws and same-sex marriage, leading to a second American revolution,” writes Matt Gertz for the Soros-funded Media Matters operation.

Gertz compares Vanderboegh’s novel to the to National Alliance founder William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries and links it to government agent Timothy McVeigh.

Like previous terror domestic terror cases, the FBI plays a central role in the alleged case against the indicted men, who are in their late 60s and early 70s.

Two of the elderly men are accused of buying what they believed was a silencer and an unregistered explosive from an undercover informant in May and June. Prosecutors say the men discussed using the weapons in attacks against federal buildings.

A government informant inside the group said 73-year-old Frederick Thomas discussed creating a “bucket list” of government employees, politicians, corporate leaders and members of the media to be “taken out.”

“I’ve been to war, and I’ve taken life before, and I can do it again,” he allegedly said. “There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly, highly illegal: murder… When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people have got to die.”

A “confidential informant” also targeted IRS and ATF buildings with Thomas, according to the indictment. “We’d have to blow the whole building, like Timothy McVeigh,” he said during the trip to Atlanta, the indictment claims.

Last month Mother Jones published an article detailing how the FBI arranges nearly all domestic terror plots with its network of informants, “a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO, the program the bureau ran from the ’50s to the ’70s,” writes Trevor Aaronson.

COINTELPRO was infamous for its legion of agents provocateurs.

As we noted in March of 2010, the FBI was at the center of the Hutaree militia in Michigan. “A spokesperson at the FBI’s Detroit office declined to comment on the undercover agent and any role such an agent may have had in the investigation. A spokesman at the Justice Department in Washington also declined to discuss specifics of the investigation,” the Wall Street Journal reported on March 31, 2010.

CNN and the establishment media, with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center, attempted to spin a ludicrous domestic terror narrative around the infiltrated group. CNN’s Anderson Cooper cited the Department of Homeland Security’s discredited “rightwing extremism” report when talking about the Michigan group.

The government case against the Hutaree eventually fell apart. Federal prosecutors, however, have pushed forward with the case despite the fact one defendant suffers from a mental disease or defect and is unable to appreciate the severity of charges that could send him to prison for life.

The other alleged members are scheduled to stand trial February 7.

Labels: domestic terrorist, FBI

The FBI Announces Gangs Have Infiltrated Every Branch Of The Military

Business Insider

A soldier in a combat zone throwing gang signs

Image: FBI

The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military (via Stars and Stripes).

The report says the military has seen members from 53 gangs and 100 regions in the U.S. enlist in every branch of the armed forces. Members of every major street gang, some prison gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have been reported on both U.S. and international military installations...[Full Article]

2011 National Gang Threat Assessment – Emerging Trends

view printable version (pdf)

Labels: Army, FBI, gangs, military, U.S. Army, US Army

Assassination Plot Was Pushed By DEA Informant

Arbabsiar thought he was involved in a drug deal

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, October 14, 2011

Details emerging from the dubious Iranian terror plot strongly suggest that the plan to assassinate a Saudi ambassador was concocted not by Mansour J. Arbabsiar, who thought he was overseeing a drug deal, but by the DEA informant working on behalf of the federal government.

“The legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation,” reports Asia Times’ Gareth Porter.

The document confirms that the assassination plan was “originated with and was strongly pushed by an undercover DEA [Department of Drug Enforcement] informant, at the direction of the FBI”.

Geopolitical experts have almost universally questioned why the highly professional Iranian Quds Force would hire a washed up used care salesman who had a drinking problem and a propensity for hookers to be the “mastermind” behind such a sophisticated operation, and why that operation would take place in the United States when it would be far easier to carry out the assassination in the middle east.

It now appears that Iranian-American patsy Mansour Arbabsiar thought he was merely involved in a drug deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan, and that the terrorist angle was introduced by “CS-1″ – the DEA informant working on behalf of the FBI.

“On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan,” writes Porter.

The legal document fails to list any single example directly attributable to Arbabsiar where he mentions killing the Saudi ambassador.

“Both that language and the absence of any statement attributed to Arbabsiar imply that the Iranian-American said nothing about assassinating the Saudi ambassador except in response to suggestions by the informant, who was already part of an FBI undercover operation,” adds Porter.

Indeed, the record shows that it is the informant who constantly refers to the assassination. When Arbabsiar wired $100,000 dollars to an account in New York in August, he still did so under the impression that the money would be used in connection with the drug deal, the legal document shows.

The DEA informant himself was under pressure to pull off the sting because he had already been charged with a narcotics offense and was posing as a drug cartel operative in return for the charges against him being dropped.

It appears as though the entire plot was, similar to a myriad of previous terror cases, a case of entrapment where the FBI deliberately chooses an individual down on his luck and promises him money and importance, radicalizing him in the process and convincing him to commit criminal activities. Even so, there is no specific example where Arabsiar directly advocates killing the Saudi ambassador.

As we reported yesterday, an FBI insider who spoke with retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer told Shaffer that no details of a terror plot existed within the Department of Justice files, indicating that the story was largely fabricated by the Obama administration as a pretext to give Israel the green light to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, which many geopolitical observers are warning is only weeks away.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: DEA, FBI, Iran, Paul Joseph Watson

FBI Insider: Obama Administration Likely Manufactured Dubious Terror Plot

No information about plot exists within FBI channels

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, October 13, 2011

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer says that an FBI insider told him the dubious terror plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador which has been blamed on Iran was likely manufactured by the Obama administration, because no information about the plot even exists within FBI channels.

The plot, an assassination attempt against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, was pinned on an Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas and subsequently linked by the Obama administration to a wider conspiracy controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

According to the administration, used car salesman Mansour J. Arbabsiar tried to hire assassins from a Mexican drug gang to carry out the murder, but the head of the drug gang turned out to be a DEA agent posing as a Mexican Los Zetas gangster. The story has all the hallmarks of classic FBI entrapment tactics that have characterized almost every major terror bust in recent times.

Having personally interrogated Iranians, Shaffer doubted the fact that members of the elite Quds Force would risk carrying out an assassination in the United States when it would be far easier to conduct such a plot in the middle east.

“It does not smell correctly,” Shaffer told Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano, adding that it was doubtful a successful used car salesman who has been part of the community for 15 years would suddenly become embroiled in an international assassination plot.

Asked by Napolitano if Arbabsiar was the victim of another FBI sting, Shaffer responded, “I think that’s part of it.”

“The FBI’s had a record lately and I did talk to one of my inside guys and he is saying he thinks the same thing, you know why, because he can’t find any real information and he’s got a clearance – so that tells him that there’s something going on that’s extraordinary by the fact that he’s an inside investigator, knows what’s going on and yet, I’m gonna quote here, ‘There’s nothing on this within the DOJ beyond what they’ve talked about publicly’ – which means to him that there’s something very wrong with it,” said Shaffer.

Even the New York Times is now reporting that the dubious nature of the plot has caused “a wave of puzzlement and skepticism from some foreign leaders and outside experts.”

The military-industrial complex has long been searching for a pretext that could be used to justify military strikes against Iran.

In a 2009 report entitled “Which Path to Persia?”, the elitist Brookings Institution wrote, “It would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be.”

The dubious plot has been instantly seized upon by the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to push for Iran to be further isolated by the international community. Kerry’s comments were perhaps the most bellicose, telling reporters yesterday, “I don’t think anything should be taken off the table at this point in time.”

It has also served as a useful distraction for Attorney General Eric Holder, who is currently under investigation for his role in the infamous Fast and Furious program, which saw the federal government deliver thousands of military-grade weapons to leaders of Mexican drug gangs.

“That the current “alleged” plot pinned on Iran revolves around yet another undercover federal agency conducting a long-term sting operation defies belief,” writes Tony Cartalucci. “That we are expected to believe one of Iran’s most elite military forces left such a sensitive, potentially war-starting operation to a used-car salesman and a drug gang reported in the papers daily for its involvement with US government agencies (and who turns out to actually be undercover DEA agents) is so ridiculous it can only be “made up” as Secretary Clinton puts it. More accurately, it is the result of an impotent US intelligence community incapable of contriving anything more convincing in the face of an ever awakening American public, to bolster its morally destitute agenda. The cartoonish nature of the plot and the arms’ length even its proponents treat it with to maintain plausible deniability is indicative of a dangerously out of control ruling elite and an utterly incompetent, criminally insane government.”

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: FBI, Iran, Paul Joseph Watson

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

Nextgov

The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov.

The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar overhaul of the FBI's existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings...[Full Article]

Labels: face recognition, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation

FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

Russia Today

Published: 23 August, 2011, 01:02
Edited: 09 September, 2011, 11:34

The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents today, ten times what they had on the roster back in 1975.

If you think that’s a few spies too many — spies earning as much as $100,000 per assignment — one doesn’t have to go too deep into their track record to see their accomplishments. Those agents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of terrorist stings that have stopped major domestic catastrophes in the vein of 9/11 from happening on American soil.

Another thing those agents are responsible for, however, is plotting those very schemes...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List

New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.

Inclusion on the watch list can keep terrorism suspects off planes, block noncitizens from entering the country and subject people to delays and greater scrutiny at airports, border crossings and traffic stops.

The database now has about 420,000 names, including about 8,000 Americans, according to the statistics released in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. About 16,000 people, including about 500 Americans, are barred from flying...[Full Article]

Terror Watchlist PDF http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/253110/terror-watch-list-foia.pdf

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, terror watchlist

'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash

Wall Street Journal

For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.

A stingray's role in nabbing the alleged "Hacker"—Daniel David Rigmaiden—is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.

Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.

On Nov. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether or not police need a warrant before secretly installing a GPS device on a suspect's car and tracking him for an extended period. In both the Senate and House, new bills would require a warrant before tracking a cellphone's location...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, privacy, Stingray, surveillance, tracking

FBI is on your cell phone. Do you care?

World Net Daily

Here we are in 2011, with our federal, state and local governments having the technological ability to track and store in massive databases what we say on the phone, in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter and the myriad other digital means in which we communicate. The Obama administration has the power to punish an American for providing "material support" to our terrorist enemies.

Moreover, as I and others have reported, the Department of Justice's Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative, or NSI, enlists We the People to spy on possible seditious Americans among us and report them to the FBI and local and state police...[Full Story]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, surveillance

FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

Russia Today

August 23, 2011

The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents today, ten times what they had on the roster back in 1975.

If you think that’s a few spies too many — spies earning as much as $100,000 per assignment — one doesn’t have to go too deep into their track record to see their accomplishments. Those agents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of terrorist stings that have stopped major domestic catastrophes in the vein of 9/11 from happening on American soil.

Another thing those agents are responsible for, however, is plotting those very schemes.

The FBI has in recent years used trained informants not just to snitch on suspected terrorists, but to set them up from the get-go. A recent report put together by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkley analyses some striking statistics about the role of FBI informants in terrorism cases that the Bureau has targeted in the decade since the September 11 attacks.

The report reveals that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others. Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.

Additionally, one former high-level FBI officials speaking to Mother Jones says that, for every informant officially employed by the bureau, up to three unofficial agents are working undercover.

The FBI has used those informants to set-up and thus shut-down several of the more high profile would-be attacks in recent years. The report reveals that the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, the attempt to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and dozens more were all orchestrated by FBI agents. In fact, reads the report, only three of the more well-known terror plots of the last decade weren’t orchestrated by FBI-involved agents.

The report reveals that in many of the stings, important meetings between informants and the unknowing participants are left purposely unrecorded, as to avoid any entrapment charges that could cause the case to be dismissed. Perhaps the most high-profile of the FBI-proposed plots was the case of the Newburgh 4. Around an hour outside of New York City, an informant infiltrated a Muslim community and engaged four local men to carry out a series of attacks. Those men may have never actually carried out an attack, but once the informant offered them a plot and a pair of missiles, they agreed. Defense attorneys cried “entrapment,” but the men still were sentenced to 25 years apiece.

"The problem with the cases we're talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents," Martin Stolar tells Mother Jones. Stolar represented the suspect involved in a New York City bombing plot that was set-up by FBI agents. "They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror." For their part, the FBI says this method is a plan for "preemption," "prevention" and "disruption."

The report also reveals that, of the 500-plus prosecutions of terrorism-related cases they analyzed, nearly half of them involved the use of informants, many of whom worked for the FBI in exchange for money or to work off criminal charges. Of the 158 prosecutions carried out, 49 defendants participated in plots that agent provocateurs arranged on behalf of the FBI.

Experts note that the chance of winning a terrorism-related trial, entrapment or not, is near impossible. "The plots people are accused of being part of — attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building — are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury," David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, tells Mother Jones. Since 9/11, almost two-thirds of the cases linked to terrorism have ended with guilty pleas. “They don't say, 'I've been entrapped,' or, 'I was immature,’” a retired FBI official remarks.

All of this and those guilty pleas often stem for just being in the right place at the wrong time. Farhana Khera of the group Muslim Advocate notes that agents go into mosques on “fishing expeditions” just to see where they can get interest in the community. "The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause," says Khera. "That raises serious constitutional issues."

From the set-up to the big finish, the whole sting operation is ripe with constitutional issues such as that. A decade since 9/11, however, the FBI is reaching through whatever means it can pull together to keep terrorists — or whom they think could someday become one — from ever hurting America.

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, terrorism