How a Radical Leftist Became the FBI’s BFF; To many on the left, Brandon Darby was a hero. To federal agents consumed with busting anarchist terror cells, he was the perfect snitch (2011)

FOR A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER 2008, as the Republican Party kicked off its national convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Twin Cities were a microcosm of a deeply divided nation. The atmosphere around town was tense, with local and federal police facing off against activists who had descended upon the city. Convinced that anarchists were plotting violent acts, they sought to bust the protesters’ hangouts, sometimes bursting into apartments and houses brandishing assault rifles. Inside the cavernous Xcel Energy convention center, meanwhile, an out-of-nowhere vice presidential nominee named Sarah Palin assured tens of thousands of ecstatic Republicans that her running mate, John McCain, was “a leader who’s not looking for a fight, but sure isn’t afraid of one either.”

The same thing might have been said of David McKay and Bradley Crowder, a pair of greenhorn activists from George W. Bush’s Texas hometown who had driven up for the protests. Wide-eyed guys in their early 20s, they’d come of age hanging out in sleepy downtown Midland, commiserating about the Iraq War and the administration’s assault on civil liberties.

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St. Paul was their first large-scale protest, and when they arrived they were taken aback: Rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, tumbling tear-gas canisters—to McKay and Crowder, it seemed like an all-out war on democracy. They wanted to fight back, even going so far as to mix up a batch of Molotov cocktails. Just before dawn on the day of Palin’s big coming out, a SWAT team working with federal agents raided their crash pad, seized the Molotovs, and arrested McKay, alleging that he intended to torch a parking lot full of police cars.

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Since only a few people knew about the firebombs, fellow activists speculated that someone close to McKay and Crowder must have tipped off the feds. Back in Texas, flyers soon began appearing at coffeehouses urging leftists to beware of Brandon Darby, an “FBI informant rat loose in Austin.”

The allegation came as a shocker; Darby was a known and trusted member of the left-wing protest crowd. “If Brandon was conning me, and many others, it would be the biggest lie of my life since I found out the truth about Santa Claus,” wrote Scott Crow, one of many activists who rushed to defend him at first. Two months later, Darby came clean. “The simple truth,” he wrote on Indymedia.org, “is that I have chosen to work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Darby’s entanglement with the feds is part of a quiet resurgence of FBI interest in left-wingers. From the Red Scare days of the 1950s into the ’70s, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program, a.k.a. COINTELPRO, monitored and sabotaged communist and civil rights organizations. Nowadays, in what critics have dubbed the Green Scare, the bureau is targeting the global-justice movement and radical environmentalists. In 2005, John Lewis, then the FBI official in charge of domestic terrorism, ranked groups like the Earth Liberation Front ahead of jihadists as America’s top domestic terror threat.

FBI stings involving informants have been key to convicting 14 ELF members since 2006 for a string of high-profile arsons, and to sentencing a man to 20 years in prison for conspiring to destroy several targets, including cell phone towers. During the St. Paul protests, at least two additional informants infiltrated and helped indict a group of activists known as the RNC Eight for conspiring to riot and damage property.

Brandon Darby.: Couresy Loteria Films
Brandon Darby. Courtesy Loteria Films
But it’s Darby’s snitching that has provided the most intriguing tale. It’s the focus of a radio magazine piece, two documentary films, and a book in the making. By far the most damning portrayal is Better This World, an award-winning doc that garnered rave reviews on the festival circuit and is slated to air on PBS on September 6. The product of two years of work by San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega, it dredges up a wealth of FBI documents and court transcripts related to Darby’s interactions with his fellow activists to suggest that Darby acted as an agitator as much as an informant. (Watch the trailer and read our interview with the filmmakers here.)

The film makes a compelling case that Darby, with the FBI’s blessing, used his charisma and street credibility to goad Crowder and McKay into pursuing the sort of actions that would later land them in prison. Darby flatly denies it, and he recently sued the New York Times over a story with similar implications. (The Times corrected the disputed detail.) “I feel very morally justified to do the things that I’ve done,” he told me. “I don’t know if I could have handled it much differently.”

Darby “gets in people’s minds and can pull you in,” one activist warned me. “He’s a master. And you are going to feel all kinds of sympathy for him.”
BRANDON MICHAEL DARBY is a muscular, golden-skinned 34-year-old with Hollywood looks and puppy-dog eyes. Once notorious for sleeping around the activist scene, he now often sleeps with a gun by his bed in response to death threats. His former associates call him unhinged, a megalomaniac, a manipulator. “He gets in people’s minds and can pull you in,” Lisa Fithian, a veteran labor, environmental, and anti-war organizer, warned me before I set out to interview him. “He’s a master. And you are going to feel all kinds of sympathy for him.”

The son of a refinery welder, Darby grew up in Pasadena, a dingy Texas oil town. His parents divorced when he was 12, and soon after he ran away to Houston, where he lived in and out of group homes. By 2002, Darby had found his way to Austin’s slacker scene, where one day he helped his friend, medical-marijuana activist Tracey Hayes, scale Zilker Park’s 165-foot moonlight tower (of Dazed and Confused fame) and unfurl a giant banner painted with pot leaves that read “Medicine.” They later “hooked up,” Hayes says, and eventually moved in together. She introduced him to her activist friends, and he started reading Howard Zinn and histories of the Black Panthers.

Some local activists wouldn’t work with Darby (he liked to taunt the cops during protests, getting them all riled up). But that changed after Hurricane Katrina, when he learned that Robert King Wilkerson, one of the Angola Three—former Black Panthers who endured decades of solitary confinement at Louisiana’s Angola Prison—was trapped in New Orleans. Darby and Crow drove 10 hours from Austin towing a jon boat. When they couldn’t get it into the city, Darby somehow harangued some Coast Guard personnel into rescuing Wilkerson. The story became part of the foundation myth for an in-your-face New Orleans relief organization called the Common Ground Collective.

It would eventually grow into a national group with a million-dollar budget. But at first Common Ground was just a bunch of pissed-off anarchists working out of the house of Malik Rahim, another former Panther. Rahim asked Darby to set up an outpost in the devastated Ninth Ward, where not even the Red Cross was allowed at first. Darby brought in a group of volunteers who fed people and cleared debris from houses while being harassed by police, right along with the locals who had refused to evacuate. “If I’d had an appropriate weapon, I would have attacked my government for what they were doing to people,” he declared in a clip featured in Better This World. He said he’d since bought an AK-47 and was willing to use it: “There are residents here who have said that you will not take my home from me over my dead body, and we have made a commitment to be in solidarity with those residents.”

But Common Ground’s approach soon began to grate on Darby. He bristled at its consensus-based decision making, its interminable debates over things like whether serving meat to locals was serving oppression. He idolized rugged, iconoclastic populists like Che Guevara—so, in early 2006, he jumped at a chance to go to Venezuela to solicit money for Katrina victims.

Darby was deeply impressed with what he saw, until a state oil exec asked him to go to Colombia and meet with FARC, the communist guerrilla group. “They said they wanted to help me start a guerrilla movement in the swamps of Louisiana,” he told “This American Life” reporter Michael May. “And I was like, ‘I don’t think so.'” It turned out armed revolution wasn’t really his thing.David Mckay: Couresy Loteria Films
David McKay. Courtesy Loteria Films

Darby’s former friends dispute the Venezuela story as they dispute much that he says. They accuse him of grandstanding, being combative, and even spying on his rivals. In his short-lived tenure as Common Ground’s interim director, Darby drove out 30 volunteer coordinators and replaced them with a small band of loyalists. “He could only see what’s in it for him,” Crow told me. For example, Darby preempted a planned police-harassment hot line by making flyers asking victims to call his personal phone number.

The flyers led to a meeting between Darby and Major John Bryson, the New Orleans cop in charge of the Ninth Ward. In time, Bryson became a supporter of Common Ground, and Darby believed that they shared a common dream of rebuilding the city. But he was less and less sure about his peers. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve replicated every system that I fought against,'” he recalls. “It was fucking bizarre.”

By mid-2007, Darby had left the group and become preoccupied with the conflict in Lebanon. Before long, Darby says, he was approached in Austin by a Lebanese-born schoolteacher, Riad Hamad, for help with a vague plan to launder money into the Palestinian territories. Hamad also spoke about smuggling bombs into Israel, he claims.

Darby says he discouraged Hamad at first, and then tipped off Bryson, who put him in touch with the FBI. “I talked,” he told me. “And it was the fucking weirdest thing.” He knew his friends would hate him for what he’d done. (The FBI raided Hamad’s home, and discovered nothing incriminating; he was found dead in Austin’s Lady Bird Lake two months later—an apparent suicide.)

MCKAY AND CROWDER FIRST encountered Darby in March 2008 at Austin’s Monkey Wrench Books during a recruitment drive for the St. Paul protests. Later, in a scene re-created in Better This World, they met at a café to talk strategy. “I stated that I wasn’t interested in being a part of a group if we were going to sit and talk too much,” Darby emailed his FBI handlers. “I stated that I was gonna shut that fucker down.”

“My biggest impression from that meeting was that Brandon really dominated it,” fellow activist James Clark told the filmmakers. Darby’s FBI email continued: “I stated that they all looked like they ate too much tofu and that they should eat beef so that they could put on muscle mass. I stated that they weren’t going to be able to fight anybody until they did so.” At one point Darby took everyone out to a parking lot and threw Clark to the ground. Clark interpreted it as Darby sending the message: “Look at me, I’m badass. You can be just like me.” (Darby insists that this never happened.)

“The reality is, when we woke up the next day, neither one of us wanted to use” the Molotovs, Crowder told me.
When the Austin activists arrived in St. Paul, police, acting on a Darby tip, broke open the group’s trailer and confiscated the sawed-off traffic barrels they’d planned to use as shields against riot police. They soon learned of similar raids all over town. “It started to feel like Darby hadn’t amped these things up, and it really was as crazy and intense as he had told us it was going to be,” Crowder says. Feeling that Darby’s tough talk should be “in some ways, a guide of behavior,” they went to Walmart to buy Molotov supplies.

“The reality is, when we woke up the next day, neither one of us wanted to use them,” Crowder told me. They stored the firebombs in a basement and left for the convention center, where Crowder was swept up in a mass arrest. Darby and McKay later talked about possibly lobbing the Molotovs on a police parking lot early the next morning, though by 2:30 a.m. McKay was having serious doubts. “I’m just not feeling the vibe on the street,” he texted Darby.

“You butt head,” Darby shot back. “Text me when you can.” He texted his friend repeatedly over the next hour, until well after McKay had turned in. At 5 a.m., police broke into McKay’s room and found him in bed. He was scheduled to fly home to Austin two hours later.

Bradley Crowder: Courtesy Loteria Films
Bradley Crowder. Courtesy Loteria Films
The feds ultimately convicted the pair for making the Molotov cocktails, but they didn’t have enough evidence of intent to use them. Crowder, who pleaded guilty rather than risk trial, and a heavier sentence, got two years. McKay, who was offered seven years if he pleaded guilty, opted for a trial, arguing on the stand that Darby told him to make the Molotovs, a claim he recanted after learning that Crowder had given a conflicting account. McKay is now serving out the last of his four years in federal prison.

AT SOUTH AUSTIN’S STRANGE BREW coffeehouse, Darby shows up to meet me on a chromed-out Yamaha with flames on the side. We sit out back, where he can chain-smoke his American Spirits. Darby is through being a leftist radical. Indeed, he’s now an enthusiastic small-government conservative. He loves Sarah Palin. He opposes welfare and national health care. “The majority of things could be handled by people and by communities,” he explains. Climate change is “a bandwagon” and the EPA should be “strongly limited.” Abortion shouldn’t be a federal issue.

He sounds a bit like his new friend, Andrew Breitbart, who made his name producing sting videos targeting NPR, ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and others. About a year after McKay and Crowder went to jail, Breitbart called Darby wanting to know why he wasn’t defending himself against the left’s misrepresentations. “They don’t print what I say,” Darby said. Breitbart offered him a regular forum on his website, BigGovernment.com. Darby now socializes with Breitbart at his Los Angeles home and is among his staunchest defenders. (Breitbart’s takedown of ACORN, he says, was “completely fucking fair.”)

“No matter what I say, most people on the left are going to believe what reinforces their own narrative,” Darby says. “And I’ve quit giving a shit.”
Entrapment? Darby scoffs at the suggestion. He pulls up his shirt, showing me his chest hair and tattoos, as though his macho physique had somehow seduced Crowder and McKay into mixing their firebombs. “No matter what I say, most people on the left are going to believe what reinforces their own narrative,” he says. “And I’ve quit giving a shit.”

The fact is, Darby says, McKay and Crowder considered him a has-been. His tofu comment, he adds, was a jocular response after one of them had ribbed him for being fat. “I constantly felt the need to show that I was still worthy of being in their presence,” he tells me. “They are complete fucking liars.” As for those late-night texts to McKay, Darby insists he was just trying to dissuade him from using the Molotovs.

He still meets with FBI agents, he says, to eat barbecue and discuss his ideas for new investigations. But then, it’s hard to know how much of what Darby says is true. For one, the FBI file of his former friend Scott Crow, which Crow obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request last year, suggests that Darby was talking with the FBI more than a year before he claims Bryson first put him in touch. Meanwhile, Crow and another activist, Karly Dixon, separately told me that Darby asked them, in the fall of 2006, to help him burn down an Austin bookstore affiliated with right-wing radio host Alex Jones. (Hayes, Darby’s ex, says he told her of the idea too.) “The guy was trying to put me in prison,” Crow says.

Such allegations, Darby claims, are simply part of a conspiracy to besmirch him and the FBI: “They get together, and they just figure out ways to attack.” Believe whomever you want to believe, he says. “Either way, they walk away with scars—and so do I.”

—By Josh Harkinson | September/October 2011 Issue

Find this story in September/October 2011

Copyright ©2014 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress.

381: Turncoat (2009)

A well-known activist—an anarchic, revolutionary activist—is accused of spying on other activists for the FBI. The strangest thing about the rumor is, it’s true. How Brandon Darby transformed from cop-hater to federal witness. Plus, a story by Etgar Keret, about a boy who betrays his people with a pair of shoes.

Brandon Darby was a radical activist and one of the founders of the incredibly effective relief organization Common Ground. Michael May reports on how Darby changed from a revolutionary who wanted the overthrow of the U.S. government into an informant working with the FBI against his former radical allies.

MAY 22, 2009

Find this story at 22 May 2009

© 1995 – 2014 Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass

The Informant Revolutionary to rat: The uneasy journey of Brandon Darby (2009)

Last year on Aug. 28, eight Austin activists traveled north in a rented white van to join thousands of protesters in St. Paul, Minn., for the Republican National Convention. In the trailer behind them were shields homemade from traffic barrels – cut in half, painted black, and fitted with Plexiglas windows. The shields mimic police riot gear and are often used in “black blocs,” a method of street protesting with origins in Germany that became prominent stateside at the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests, during which a black bloc caused property damage to various businesses. The black bloc is sort of like the punk rock version of protest, and its alluring combination of direct action and danger similarly attracts mostly young, white men.
On Aug. 31, a couple of days after the group’s arrival in Minnesota, St. Paul police searched the trailer without a warrant and seized the shields. The next day, two of the van’s passengers, David McKay, 22, and Bradley Crowder, 23, were arrested for disorderly conduct. McKay was released later that day, but Crowder remained in jail. According to a subsequent police affidavit, McKay met the next day with fellow activist Brandon Michael Darby, 32, who had also traveled to St. Paul with the Austin group. Angry that his friend was still being held, McKay told Darby that he and Crowder had made some Molotov cocktails (i.e., bottled gasoline bombs) and that he was planning on throwing them at cop cars parked in a parking lot.
According to the partial transcript in the affidavit, Darby asked McKay, “What if there’s a cop sleeping in the car?” “He’ll wake up,” replied McKay. “What if he doesn’t?” Darby asked. McKay was silent. Darby pressed on, asking McKay if he would “leave the scene with a cop burning or dying.” McKay answered, “Yes.” And then, again, according to a partial transcript of the recorded conversation, McKay told Darby that it was “worth it if a cop gets burned or maimed.” These words, along with eight Molotov cocktails found in the basement of the house in which McKay was crashing, have him facing up to 30 years in federal prison for charges related to possession and assembly of “unregistered firearms,” as the weapons are defined by federal law.
McKay did not know that his words to Darby, spoken in a moment of foolish hotheadedness that his friends say he is known for, were being transmitted to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation via electronic surveillance gear that Darby had hidden out of sight. Nor did he know that Darby had supplied the FBI with the information that led to the seizure of the homemade riot gear. More­over, Darby had already told the feds that, in retaliation for the cops’ apparently illegal bust, the group had gone to Wal-Mart with a shopping list that might have supplied a touring Roller Derby team – elbow pads, gas cans, bike helmets, motor oil, tampons – but included also the potential fixings for some Molotov cocktails. The youths’ recklessness, as well as their implicit trust in Darby, had led them into a police trap.
Who Is Brandon Darby?
At first glance, Brandon Michael Darby seems a typical Austin lefty activist. He entered Austin’s radical progressive scene nearly a decade ago; through a former activist girlfriend, he became involved in a variety of small groups engaged in progressive projects: getting dirty drug needles off the streets, innocent prisoners out of jail, and recent immigrants into stable homes. He’s a boyishly handsome guy, in good shape from martial arts training, and he currently lives on several acres of farmland beyond the city limits, where he keeps chickens and a pig. He says he’s planning on getting a goat and has a “massive compost operation” going. He talks excitedly about making his home more sustainable and about the impending installation of a solar water heater. He collects rainwater for the garden and is restoring an old house.
Darby’s now employed as a legal and investigative assistant for an attorney, work that he feels good about because, he says, his employer doesn’t buy in to the whole “how much justice can you afford” system and does a lot of pro bono work. He recently became a father, to 9-month-old Olivia, and though he and Olivia’s mother don’t live together, he says that they are “co-parenting.” All in all, a contemporary portrait in progressive rationality and sustainable ambitions.
Prior to his latest incarnation, Darby had also acquired a considerable national reputation as a valiant and committed community activist, especially in New Orleans. There, initially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he had helped rescue stranded residents and rebuild housing and had been centrally involved in the work of the Common Ground Relief – a community effort focused on restoring neighborhoods, defending residents’ rights, and trying to rebuild the community from the ground up. Darby was featured in national interviews about post-hurricane New Orleans and more particularly had a reputation for defying authority and especially cops – not necessarily the profile of a potential police informant.
But ask around Austin activist circles, and a more contradictory portrait emerges. Several local activists describe Darby as a troubled, paranoid man with a volatile history with women, a penchant for violent rhetoric, and a strong authoritarian streak. At best, Darby might be just an ordinary and confused young person, fired with generalized idealism and stumbling through this world on his own tangled, misguided mission to save it. But at worst, he might have been – might have become over the last several years – a manipulator with a hero complex, bent on inflating his own self-importance in the comfortable guise of moral superiority.
Finding Common Ground
For much of 2006, Darby was heavily involved with Common Ground Relief, the post-Katrina recovery effort that has gained national attention for its endeavors. Darby himself came to national attention when he and one of Common Ground Relief’s founding members, Scott Crow, the prominent anarchist community organizer behind a host of Austin organizations including Radical Encuentro Camp, Ecology Action, and Treasure City Thrift, traveled to New Orleans right after the levees broke in search of their friend Robert “King” Wilkerson, who had stayed in his home to weather out the storm.
Crow’s detailed account of the apocalyptic journey, “It Takes a Spark to Start a Prairie Fire: Desperation, Racism and the Beginnings of Common Ground Relief,” can be read in full at Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org). (Crow’s book, Black Flags and Windmills: Anarchy, Hope and Common Ground, which also recounts the episode, comes out this year.) Their first effort failed, but the two friends decided to try again when they got a call from Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther, community organizer, and childhood friend of King’s, who reported that his neighborhood, Algiers, was being patrolled by white militias harassing unarmed black residents. The men set out once again, this time determined to bring supplies and aid to Rahim and to bring King back to Austin.
It was on this second trip that Rahim and Crow planted the seeds for Common Ground Relief using, Crow writes, “a strategy mixed from the Black Panther survival programs, the current work in Chiapas, Mexico of the Zapatistas and good old community organizing.” It was also when Darby made national headlines by taking a dip into the dreaded “toxic sludge,” a gnarly mix of industrial waste, waterlogged carcasses, and other nastiness, to find King. Crow writes: “Brandon called me one last time before he dropped into the dark water, and Malik and I told him we would come looking for him if he didn’t return. He started swimming with his phone held in the air, and he made good progress alternating between wading and swimming, trying to keep the water out of his mouth.” Federal Emergency Management Agency agents spotted Darby and ordered him out of the water, but he would not do so until they dispatched a boat to find and retrieve King; a hero’s welcome awaited Darby when he and King returned to Rahim’s home. After celebrating the reunion, everyone went to work, doing what they could to put the world right again.
At the time of Common Ground’s inception, the mood in New Orleans was tense. The U.S. government had completely failed the community, all the proof that most people needed that the system wasn’t working. Revolution was in the air, and Common Ground was at the forefront of envisioning a potential new world. In that heady atmosphere, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez offered the group monetary relief in the form of Citgo gas cards, and Common Ground sent a delegation, including Darby, to Caracas. On pirate radio, Crow described Common Ground as “a paramilitary organization” – a statement for which he was criticized within the group. But given the atmosphere of chaos and devastation and uncertainty, people behaved in ways they normally would not.
As for Darby, those who were involved in Common Ground describe him as a simultaneously dynamic and divisive character, with an authoritarian streak that the mostly anarcho-hippie crowd didn’t care for. One volunteer coordinator who worked with Common Ground from January to July 2006 recounted a disturbing episode: A couple of volunteers called back to headquarters concerned they were about to get jumped, and Darby leaped into his truck to save the day – reportedly by firing his gun into the air in the middle of the street. “It just seemed like an unnecessarily violent escalation,” she recalled. “Everything I heard about Brandon Darby during my time at Common Ground was that he was crazy, and what I witnessed was that he was very prominent and very divisive. He’d come into town and everybody would be whispering, like: ‘Oh, shit. Brandon Darby’s back.’ ”
Darby explains the perception of him as authoritarian this way: “For some, Common Ground might have been about creating a little anarchist utopia. For me, it was about helping people have their rights heard and have their homes [restored], and it was about getting things done.” Darby also denies that he has ever discharged a firearm anywhere in the state of Louisiana.
“I know that Brandon has been trained in firearm safety, and I just don’t see him doing that,” says Andy Gallagher, a New Orleans resident who’s known Darby since he was 18 and who has lived with him in the past. “In all honesty, there have been situations that I have witnessed where Brandon has had a gun on hand and used it [in] a way that actually de-escalated the situation and protected the lives [of those] who were with him.” Though Gallagher wasn’t involved with Common Ground, he was in town at the time doing his own aid work – locating displaced foster children – and would often visit Darby.
Another prominent organizer of the Com­mon Ground effort was Lisa Fithian, who says she has never gotten along with Darby. “He was a leader of the organization, though, and because of that, he was able to set some patterns in motion that I believe led to systemic issues of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and violence,” she says. “He kicked the door down of a women’s center at 2am to throw a guy out; he kicked in the door of a trailer where there were volunteers with guns on them. He did a lot of Wild West shit – Mister Macho Action Hero.”
Darby responds that this portrait is both inaccurate and unfair. “We were in an aggressive situation that was frightening; we felt like it was the end of the world,” he explains. “So if there is a man living in a women’s center illegally, against the wishes of the women in the center, and all of the women exit that center, leaving that one guy who barricades himself in and is pissing and pooping on the floor, I think it’s totally fine to kick down the door. But really, if I was so bad, why was I the spokesperson for Common Ground Relief for so long?” Darby asks. “Why, after 2006, did they have me come back and ask me to direct the organization and be the spokesperson again?”
In retrospect, Darby’s friend Crow adds his own doubts. “He inserted himself as ‘co-founder’; he wanted that status, even as people were getting written out of the Common Ground history, people who did a lot of work organizing. He also made sure that the media followed him extensively and didn’t interview other people when he was director and also when he was just another person around,” insists Crow. “If you look at the way Brandon tells it, he did the whole Lower 9th Ward with one hand tied behind his back, when really there were a lot of people who did the work, and the organizing too, who you’ll never hear about because of Brandon’s monopoly on the media. So, did he do that just because he’s crazy, or did he do that to get more credibility for himself so that he could gather more information?”
Bad Intentions
Malik Rahim now fervently believes that Darby was an informant for at least part of the time he worked for Common Ground, a conclusion he describes as heartbreaking. “Look, Brandon and Scott brought weapons to my house to help me defend my home,” he says. “So my first feeling for both of them was love.” But that love, Rahim laments, soon turned to blind defense of someone with whom many in the organization, including his own family members, had problems. “It came to the degree that my son just knew that there was something too wrong with Brandon, and he searched Brandon’s possessions, because he said, ‘This guy is an agent, or he is an informant,'” Rahim recalls. “And, let me tell you, it caused a rift between my son and I, so much so that eventually, he left. Because I believed Brandon. I defended him.”
Rahim believes that something happened to Darby while he was in Venezuela and that it was then that he became an informant, because that is when Rahim now sees that Darby began to impede the group’s progress. “I think that Brandon had a nervous breakdown in Venezuela and that when he came back he was messed up in the head,” Rahim explains. “At the very beginning, he was helpful, but after Venezuela, he became harmful. … He did everything he could to destroy St. Mary’s, which was where we were housing the majority of our volunteers, by letting a bunch of crackheads move in there. And he also drove a wedge between me and Lisa Fithian and eventually caused her to leave, too. He was doing everything you’re supposed to do as a government agent in that situation. Divide and conquer.”
What Rahim considers sabotage and what Fithian calls patriarchal power plays Darby just sees as trying to do something good in a bad situation. Though he disagrees that his adamant refusal to turn people away from St. Mary’s was harmful, he agrees that something bad really did happen to him in Venezuela and that he came back a changed man. “I probably should have left New Orleans at that point and come back to Austin and gone to therapy. But I didn’t. I stayed,” he says. “I didn’t want to be there, but I thought I should have been there. Maybe that was my biggest mistake.” While in Venezuela, Darby says, he was informed by “someone in the Venezuelan government” that what he was doing – essentially seeking funds from the Chávez administration to undermine the Bush administration – was illegal. Darby freaked out and says that at times he was frightened for his life. He thought he might be arrested when he returned to the States, and he was angry that he had been put in that position by Common Ground, particularly Crow and Fithian. But he swears, again and again, that he was never working for the federal government while in New Orleans. Not ever.
These activists believe Brandon Darby reported on their activities to the FBI. Those interviewed for this story include Scott Crow (back, center). Next to Crow is Ann Harkness. Simon Evans is back row, far right, and Lisa Fithian stands in front of Evans.
These activists believe Brandon Darby reported on their activities to the FBI. Those interviewed for this story include Scott Crow (back, center). Next to Crow is Ann Harkness. Simon Evans is back row, far right, and Lisa Fithian stands in front of Evans.
PHOTO BY JANA BIRCHUM
Though he refuses to give a start date, Darby says he’s been working with the FBI for less than two years. FBI documents have him making phone calls to the bureau beginning in November 2007. Though he still describes himself as a lefty and says he’s “the furthest thing from a Republican,” it was protecting the rights of Republicans, he says, that finally persuaded him to work with the feds. “One morning, I woke up and realized that I disagree with the group I was associating with as much as I disagree with the Republican Party,” he recalls. “I began to feel that a small select group of people had bad intentions, and I felt the need to do something about it.”
The relationship began with a call to a cop that Darby knows in another city, because, he says, there was a situation that needed to be reported. He told that person what his concerns were, and that cop gave him the name of a federal agent. Darby says he met with some federal agents, told them what he had to say, and left. The agent later contacted him again, they had what Darby says was a “good conversation,” and over the course of a few months, Darby agreed to go undercover. Though he won’t say what it was exactly that made him make that initial call, he will say this about the eventual decision to go undercover: “My deal was with a small group of people whom I personally wouldn’t call terrorists but whose views and ideologies, in addition to their actions, are a little bit frightening and not in the best interest of the world. … So, with that said, I did what I can to make sure that that’s not an issue. Because I felt like I owed that to life, and I felt like I owed it to this little collective we call a nation who are trying to get through the world together.”
This sudden bout of patriotism sounds odd coming from a guy who witnessed complete governmental breakdown in New Orleans and went to Venezuela with revolution on his mind, but Darby says that it was those very experiences that added to his shift. “I think I began to see things very differently as a result of my experiences around Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath and my experiences as a person of leadership in a large organization. I saw the absolute importance and the absolute negative effect that happens to individuals or groups whenever there’s no stability in a system,” he explains. “I began to feel that we as a radical, radical left, because of the way we pseudo-governed, I started to feel like we were a little silly, critiquing the U.S. government, when we had so many faults of our own.”
Soul on Fire
Some people who worked with him are frankly suspicious that Darby’s acknowledged collaboration with the FBI hints of something much larger and more sinister. Some Austin activists have formed the Austin Informant Working Group; currently focused on the McKay and Crowder cases, they are also considering the wider implications. The term “Green Scare” (by analogy to earlier anti-communist “Red Scares”) refers to the federal government’s growing interest in prosecuting environmental activist groups, particularly the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. Austin Informant Working Group member Simon Evans points to a report by former University of Texas law student Elizabeth Wag­goner, who said that FBI agent Charles Rasner announced to her class that Food Not Bombs and Austin Indymedia were on the bureau’s terror watch list. “It doesn’t seem unreasonable to question,” says Evans, “whether or not something larger is at play here.”
“They’re going after me and Scott and other organizers, but they nabbed the low-hanging fruit,” said Fithian, who was also involved in the RNC protests in Minnesota. Fithian was not surprised at the news that Darby was an informant. “I always said at Common Ground: If he was not a cop or an agent of the state, he was doing their job for them, creating division and disrupting our work.”
Crow initially came to Darby’s defense, posting a strenuous denial, when a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press first fingered him as an informant, based on FBI documents. “It was more about defending the truth than it was about defending Brandon as a person,” says Crow. “When I asked him, he told me it wasn’t him, and I believed him. I’ve had to apologize to people like Lisa, because I gave him credibility with my initial statements. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t being maligned. Now, I didn’t defend his misogyny or his antagonism; I defended him based on what he told me. It’s still heartbreaking, you know.” Darby eventually wrote an open letter coming out as an informant, but Crow first learned the truth by reading FBI documents furnished to him by McKay’s defense team. Crow was hurt by the news, as this wasn’t the first time he had found himself defending Darby.
“A lot of women had been hurt by this man, and a lot of men had defended him over the years, and it’s not OK,” says Fithian. “That’s a whole part of the healing process that we are going to have to deal with as a community.” This sentiment was echoed by other sources who spoke of a particular romantic relationship in Darby’s past that they describe as emotionally abusive and Darby as paranoid, jealous, and possessive. “I was a total asshole in my early 20s,” Darby admits freely. “My entire adult life has been a process of trying to be less of an asshole. What on earth my penis has to do with this case, I have no idea.”
Regarding Darby’s obsessive and paranoid nature, Crow says that sometimes Darby would call him 30 times a day. “I’m not a psychologist, but I would definitely say that guy’s paranoid. I mean, he sleeps with guns under his pillow. This is not something I have been told; this is something I have seen. The guy has a cache of weapons.” This depiction from Crow, who legally owns an AK-47, pisses Darby off. “I have legal firearms that I have a right to own,” he says, “and I live out in the country, and I think it’s OK. And I did have a gun in New Orleans, and as a citizen I have a right to do that.”
Sometimes, when Darby speaks of his old friend Crow, there’s a catch in his voice – as when he says that they were close, once, but that Crow hasn’t accepted his recent invitation to his home nor met his daughter. “I will always have a bond with him because of what we went through together, and no evil or anything that he would perceive as bad would come from my hand toward that person,” he says, sounding sincere. Yet the documents reflect that during 2007, Darby secretly informed on Crow’s whereabouts and actions. His defense is that he reported what he saw. “Wouldn’t it be more frightening,” he asks, “if the person in my position picked and chose what truth they told rather than say the facts?”
“Even though I was a shield for him in a lot of ways,” Crow now argues, “he really was marginalized in our community. A lot of people wouldn’t work with him on stuff, and even I didn’t have anything to do with him for a year before Common Ground, because he would start getting paranoid and do divisive things, like tell everyone that Lisa was out to get him, for example. For one period in New Orleans, he started to get King to think that Lisa and I were colluding against him – and I took Brandon’s calls more than anybody would. I counseled that guy many times and actually considered it more of a mentorship than a friendship. That guy asked me a lot of questions. And now of course, it all makes sense.”
So when he had his personal epiphany, why didn’t Darby reach out to other activists and tell them about his change in world-view – rather than begin spying on them? “If I felt like the best thing I could have done to right my wrongs was to come out and say how I felt, I would have done so. I just didn’t feel like it was. I felt like I would be completely marginalized and nobody would want to hear my opinions.” Darby uses the controversial civil rights leader and Black Panther turned Republican born-again Christian Eldridge Cleaver as an example. “He wrote a book called Soul on Ice, and it sold a million copies and is touted at all the anarchist bookstores. Most people in radical communities have heard of it. Then, if you say to an auditorium, ‘Have you ever heard of a book called Soul on Fire?’ No. That’s when Eldridge Cleaver became a born-again Christian and changed his views and recanted much of what he had earlier believed. They don’t promote it. Just like the school board: They promote a version of history that isn’t historically accurate.” Like a petulant teenager whose parents just don’t get him, Darby adds: “Nobody lets you voice your opinions. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear it.”
Pissed Off and Pissed On
Fithian says she was wary of Darby’s presence in Minnesota last September. “Nothing about Brandon going to the RNC made any sense to me, and I spoke out about it, and I warned people. When he came to meetings, I actually asked, ‘What the fuck is he doing here?'” She says she pulled him aside and asked him to leave communication meetings where strategic details of actions are worked out. “He said he was there to do medical, but instead he was at all the meetings, all the comms. When he stood up at a spokes meeting [i.e., organized like ‘spokes’ on a wheel], I told him he needed to leave.”
Gabby Hicks, a 21-year-old activist who traveled in the van with Darby, McKay, Crowder, and others, said that the Darby in the open letter – who sounds like a thoughtful guy opposed to violence – is very different from the argumentative and nonsensical Darby she met. Once, on the drive up, Darby became agitated because he needed to go to the bathroom. “He at one point threatened a driver of the van, because the person didn’t pull over fast enough, and Brandon was literally yelling, ‘I’m a 31-year-old revolutionary, and you can’t tell me when I can or can’t pee!'” Hicks laughed. “Once we pulled over, they were still fighting, and someone asked if they needed mediation. Brandon was like, ‘I can put it behind us if we can all act like adults.’ He turned the whole thing around and acted like we were the ones who had freaked out. That was his tactic. It was just weird.”
At the heart of the Darby story remain those two young men from Midland, Texas, Bradley Crowder and David McKay, who are currently facing years in federal prison based in no small part on information that Darby gave to the FBI. Though there are no legal restrictions preventing Darby from commenting on the case, he says he declines to do so out of “respect for the bureau.” Darby is a decade older than either defendant and, as far as direct action is concerned, much more experienced. So why didn’t he simply try to talk these guys out of doing something stupid or criminal instead of turning them over to the feds?
“Why didn’t I try to discourage them? You don’t know that I did or didn’t,” Darby insists. “For all you know, I could have gotten in trouble for violating the rules and trying to discourage somebody from doing something. I’m just saying you don’t know what the facts are yet.”
Indeed we don’t, says Evans of the Austin Informant Working Group. “There is still the issue of entrapment: I want to be clear that we may never know Brandon Darby’s full role or motivations in this incident, as these details are omitted from the FBI documents and informant reports provided to the defense. But something I keep coming back to is: What would I have done in the same position? I consider myself a moral and ethical person; I believe in nonviolence; I’m an ‘anarchist.’ What I would have done is talk to anyone thinking of illegal action, weigh in with my experience, point out the potential consequence, and dissuade that person. If that didn’t work, I would have prevented them from purchasing the materials or going on the action. I feel that a strong community can educate and police itself.”
Darby rejects the depiction of McKay and Crowder as kids easily influenced by an older activist. “If these two ‘kids’ had been stopped in the midst of a plot to bomb an abortion clinic, all these same people would be like: ‘Why wasn’t the government watching these people? Why weren’t they involved?'” he says, exasperated. “The guys who dragged James Byrd to death were the same age as these two, and they weren’t kids; they were monsters.” (Actually, two of the perpetrators in Byrd’s 1998 murder in Texas were 24; the third was 32.) In any case, Darby is sticking to his story. “In regards to this case, there’s no evidence that shows that I assumed a leadership role, and I didn’t,” he says. “I didn’t encourage anybody to do anything, and if you think that I should have done everything I could have to talk these guys out it, you’re not going to be let down [as the trial proceeds] a month from now.”
Good Career Move
Whatever his current motivations, Darby acknowledges his past mistakes. “When I was younger, I identified as a revolutionary, and I believed that many people around the world had a right to take up arms against oppression,” he says. “But I mistakenly felt that our system was one where that would be appropriate.” Then why does he feel that he deserved the benefit of maturity and hindsight, when McKay and Crowder deserve multiple years in the pen? How does he justify robbing them of their chance to go through their own maturing process and personal evolution of political ideology? “Because I didn’t actually do any of it,” he says. “Because I always had enough sense to know that I didn’t have the wisdom to make decisions that endanger people’s lives.”
Darby does say that McKay and Crowder were not the focal point of the investigation. In the course of an ideological shift that took him from armed revolutionary to FBI mole, Darby says he began to see major problems with certain actions that were being planned for the Republican National Convention – particularly by the black bloc and a group of organizers calling themselves the Welcoming Committee. “Anytime that a group of people get together and say that they are going to use ‘any means necessary’ and have images of firebombs and all kinds of other things on their website and they organize around the country, not to protest but to specifically prevent another group of American citizens to exercise their right to assemble, the U.S. government is going to get involved,” he says. “And they should get involved, and I support it wholeheartedly.”
Crowder and McKay, he suggests, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, adding, “Then, if at the very end of an investigation like that, as a complete shock to everybody, a group of people decide to do something that’s insane, they’re going to get in trouble for it.”
None of this fully explains why Darby chose to go undercover as an FBI informant and surreptitiously spy on his friends when he could have instead simply left the movement and tried to get involved in public policy in some other productive way. “I’ve watched countless activists begin to work in the Legislature and begin to do things that participate in the system; we have a system that is wide open for our involvement,” he said. “You can get involved and have a say so; if you disagree with the way our city is run, you can get involved. If you have an ideological bent that’s on social justice, you can become a law enforcement officer, you can get involved with the FBI, or a lawyer.”
Darby says he was indeed compensated at times for his work with the feds, although he’s vague on the details except to say he turned down witness protection and a lump sum offered to people who testify in federal cases. He does say he is able to be independent because he has some money from his family. Darby sees his current role with the FBI as something akin to a “volunteer firefighter” and believes it to be a natural extension of his desire to do what’s right, no matter how uncomfortable. Yet with his decision to go undercover instead of any other of the myriad choices he had to change the direction of his life, Darby has effectively reinforced the notions that many in the activist community already had: that the Man is always out to get you, and you just can’t trust anyone.
Activist, adventurer, hero, revolutionary, informant. For his next transformation, Darby sees a future for himself in law enforcement. His first gig was surely a foot in the door.

BY DIANA WELCH, FRI., JAN. 23, 2009

Find this story at 23 January 2009

COPYRIGHT © 1981-2014 Austin Chronicle Corp.

The mentality of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI undergirds today’s surveillance state (2014)

People forget that the FBI is the NSA’s primary partner in domestic spying, which allows them to work in secret

FBI director nominee James Comey oversees a growing part of the US surveillance state. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters
The new documentary 1971, about the formerly anonymous FBI burglars who exposed the crimes of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, debuted to a rapt audience at the Tribeca film festival last night. As the filmmakers noted in an interview with the AP, the parallels between Nixon-era FBI whistleblowers and Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations are almost eerie in their similarity.

But while the NSA connection seems obvious, the movie will actually shed light on the domestic intelligence agency with far more power over ordinary Americans: the modern FBI.

Everyone seems to forget that the FBI is the NSA’s primary partner in the latter’s domestic spying operations and that, in fact, the NSA’s job would be impossible without them. Whenever you see a company deny giving any data to the NSA remember: It’s because it’s not the NSA asking (or demanding) the information of them, it’s the FBI. They use the same Patriot Act authorities that the NSA does, and yet we have almost no idea what they do with it.

In fact, the FBI has gone to extreme lengths to just keep their surveillance methods a secret from the public, just like the NSA. And the more we learn, the scarier it gets.

On Monday, the EFF revealed through its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that the FBI’s “next generation” facial recognition program will have as many as 52m photographs in it next year – including millions that were taken for “non-criminal purposes.” It’s massive biometric database already “may hold records on as much as one third of the U.S. population,” EFF found.

Lavabit, the email provider once allegedly used by Edward Snowden, also lost an appeal this week, leaving its founder Ladar Levinson in contempt of court for failing to hand over Lavabit’s encryption keys to the FBI that would have exposed all 400,000 users of Lavabit. The court failed to rule on the larger issue – leaving the door open for the FBI to try it again.

And we know they want to. Foreign Policy’s Shane Harris reported last year, the FBI “carries out its own signals intelligence operations and is trying to collect huge amounts of email and Internet data from U.S. companies – an operation that the NSA once conducted, was reprimanded for, and says it abandoned.” The FBI’s activities include trying to convince “telecom carriers and Internet service providers to install [port readers] on their networks so that the government can collect large volumes of data about emails and Internet traffic.”

We also know they routinely get cell phone location information without a warrant. (If you want to see how your cell phone location information reveals almost every detail of your life, watch this amazing ACLU video.) We also know they’re using Stingray devices, which are fake cell phone towers that vacuum up all cell phone activity in a particular area.

We know that the FBI is still issuing thousands of oversight-free National Security Letters a year, despite multiple government reports detailing systematic abuse, and a federal court ruling that they are unconstitutional last year. (The ruling was put on hold pending appeal.)

The FBI has pushed Congress and the White House – and reportedly quietly lobbied the tech companies – to support a dangerous overhaul to wiretapping laws that would require Internet companies like Google and Facebook to create a backdoor into their services, giving the FBI direct access if they get the requisite legal authorities. And, at the same time, the FBI also wants to be able to expand their ability to hack suspects’ computers.

(At least some judges have been pushing back, noting that the trove of information that the FBI can get from hacking suspects is often far beyond what the agency’s investigation requires.)

Worse, Wired discovered FBI training materials in 2012 that told agents they had the “ability to bend or suspend the law and impinge on freedoms of others,” in national security cases. The materials were quickly withdrawn when they became public.

All of this leads to why a comprehensive report released by ACLU late in 2013 called the FBI a “secret domestic intelligence agency” that “regularly overstepped the law, infringing on Americans’ constitutional rights while overzealously pursuing its domestic security mission.”

After watching 1971, or reading Betty Medsger’s corresponding book The Burglary, it should be a scandal to everyone that the FBI building is still named after J. Edgar Hoover. Unfortunately, his ghost also still seems to permeate in much of what they do.

Trevor Timm
theguardian.com, Saturday 19 April 2014 15.00 BST

Find this story at 19 April 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

“The Convert” Update (2012)

This week’s episode, “The Convert,” was about FBI informant Craig Monteilh, who went undercover in southern California’s Muslim community to try to find people who were recruiting and training terrorists. Craig’s operation, which took place in 2006 and 2007, was called Operation Flex.

On Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that was filed against the FBI as a result of Operation Flex. Several people Craig spied on — including Yasser AbdelRahim, who was featured in our episode — sued the Bureau, claiming it had violated their first amendment rights during Operation Flex by targeting them because of their religious beliefs, and that they’d been subjected to searches and monitoring without a warrant.

In response, the government asserted the state secrets privilege, arguing that the suit shouldn’t be allowed to move forward because it would force the FBI to reveal classified information and would put national security at risk.

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney sided with the government. After reviewing confidential statements from top FBI officials, Carney wrote in his decision that allowing the suit to proceed could “significantly compromise national security.”

It was a difficult decision, according to Carney. He compared himself to an ancient Greek hero:

In struggling with this conflict, the Court is reminded of the classic dilemma of Odysseus, who faced the challenge of navigating his ship through a dangerous passage, flanked by a voracious six-headed monster, on the one side, and a deadly whirlpool, on the other. Odysseus opted to pass by the monster and risk a few of his individual sailors, rather than hazard the loss of his entire ship to the sucking whirlpool. Similarly, the proper application of the state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security.

We reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, and the Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR, who are representing the people Craig spied on. Peter Bibring, an attorney at the ACLU, sent us this statement:

As troubling as we find the implications that it might be okay to feed the Muslim community to a monster, it’s a mistake to think that closing courts to claims of religious discrimination in the name of national security affects only the few who bring those cases. The government that refuses to let courts determine whether it has violated our most basic Constitutional values because the whole matter is supposedly secret steers our nation into much more dangerous waters. It’s wrongheaded, in the name of defending freedom, to give up its hallmarks, including the basic balance of powers our founders so carefully set.

The judge’s dismissal means that the case against the FBI cannot move forward. But the plaintiffs are also suing individual FBI agents who were involved in Operation Flex, and Carney did allow certain charges against them to stand. Bibring said the ACLU and CAIR plan to appeal the judge’s decision.

AUG 16, 2012

Find this story at 16 August 2012

Find the radio show at 10 August 2012

© 1995 – 2014
Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass

The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: ‘There is no real hunt. It’s fixed’

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau’s more ethically murky practices

Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.

“They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did,” Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.

It is an astonishing admission that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.

Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of “confidential informants” in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist “attacks” at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.

In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant’s criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot.

Such actions have led Muslim civil rights groups to wonder if their communities are being unfairly targeted in a spying game that is rigged against them. Monteilh says that is exactly what happens. “The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed,” he said.

But Monteilh has regrets now about his involvement in a scheme called Operation Flex. Sitting in the kitchen of his modest home in Irvine, near Los Angeles, Monteilh said the FBI should publicly apologise for his fruitless quest to root out Islamic radicals in Orange County, though he does not hold out much hope that will happen. “They don’t have the humility to admit a mistake,” he said.

Monteilh’s story sounds like something out of a pulp thriller. Under the supervision of two FBI agents the muscle-bound fitness instructor created a fictitious French-Syrian alter ego, called Farouk Aziz. In this disguise in 2006 Monteilh started hanging around mosques in Orange County – the long stretch of suburbia south of LA – and pretended to convert to Islam.

He was tasked with befriending Muslims and blanket recording their conversations. All this information was then fed back to the FBI who told Monteilh to act like a radical himself to lure out Islamist sympathizers.

Yet, far from succeeding, Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County’s Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. In an ironic twist, they also reported Monteilh to the FBI: unaware he was in fact working undercover for the agency.

Monteilh does not look like a spy. He is massively well built, but soft-spoken and friendly. He is 49 but looks younger. He lives in a small rented home in Irvine that blends into the suburban sprawl of southern California. Yet Monteilh knows the spying game intimately well.

By his own account Monteilh got into undercover work after meeting a group of off-duty cops working out in a gym. Monteilh told them he had spent time in prison in Chino, serving time for passing fraudulent checks.

It is a criminal past he explains by saying he was traumatised by a nasty divorce. “It was a bad time in my life,” he said. He and the cops got to talking about the criminals Monteilh had met while in Chino. The information was so useful that Monteilh says he began to work on undercover drug and organised crime cases.

Eventually he asked to work on counter-terrorism and was passed on to two FBI handlers, called Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen. These two agents had a mission and an alias ready-made for him.

Posing as Farouk Aziz he would infiltrate local mosques and Islamic groups around Orange County. “Paul Allen said: ‘Craig, you are going to be our computer worm. Our guy that gives us the real pulse of the Muslim community in America’,” Monteilh said.

The operation began simply enough. Monteilh started hanging out at mosques, posing as Aziz, and explaining he wanted to learn more about religion. In July, 2006, at the Islamic Center of Irvine, he converted to Islam.

Monteilh also began attending other mosques, including the Orange County Islamic Foundation. Monteilh began circulating endlessly from mosque to mosque, spending long days in prayer or reading books or just hanging out in order to get as many people as possible to talk to him.

“Slowly I began to wear the robes, the hat, the scarf and they saw me slowly transform and growing a beard. At that point, about three or four months later, [my FBI handlers] said: ‘OK, now start to ask questions’.”

Those questions were aimed at rooting out radicals. Monteilh would talk of his curiosity over the concepts of jihad and what Muslims should do about injustices in the world, especially where it pertained to American foreign policy.

He talked of access to weapons, a possible desire to be a martyr and inquired after like-minded souls. It was all aimed at trapping people in condemning statements. “The skill is that I am going to get you to say something. I am cornering you to say “jihad”,” he said.

Of course, the chats were recorded.

In scenes out of a James Bond movie, Monteilh said he sometimes wore a secret video recorder sewn into his shirt. At other times he activated an audio recorder on his key rings.

Monteilh left his keys in offices and rooms in the mosques that he attended in the hope of recording conversations that took place when he was not there. He did it so often that he earned a reputation with other worshippers for being careless with his keys. The recordings were passed back to his FBI handlers at least once a week.

He also met with them every two months at a hotel room in nearby Anaheim for a more intense debriefing. Monteilh says he was grilled on specific individuals and asked to view charts showing networks of relationships among Orange County’s Muslim population.

He said the FBI had two basic aims. Firstly, they aimed to uncover potential militants. Secondly, they could also use any information Monteilh discovered – like an affair or someone being gay – to turn targeted people into becoming FBI informants themselves.

None of it seemed to unnerve his FBI bosses, not even when he carried out a suggestion to begin seducing Muslim women and recording them.

At one hotel meeting, agent Kevin Armstrong explained the FBI attitude towards the immense breadth of Operation Flex – and any concerns over civil rights – by saying simply: “Kevin is God.”

Monteilh’s own attitude evolved into something very similar. “I was untouchable. I am a felon, I am on probation and the police cannot arrest me. How empowering is that? It is very empowering. You began to have a certain arrogance about it. It is almost taunting. They told me: ‘You are an untouchable’,” he said.

But it was not always easy. “I started at 4am. I ended at 9.30pm. Really, it was a lot of work … Farouk took over. Craig did not exist,” he said. But it was also well paid: at the peak of Operation Flex, Monteilh was earning more than $11,000 a month.

But he was wrong about being untouchable.

Far from uncovering radical terror networks, Monteilh ended up traumatising the community he was sent into. Instead of embracing calls for jihad or his questions about suicide bombers or his claims to have access to weapons, Monteilh was instead reported to the FBI as a potentially dangerous extremist.

A restraining order was also taken out against him in June 2007, asking him to stay away from the Islamic Center of Irvine. Operation Flex was a bust and Monteilh had to kill off his life as Farouk Aziz.

But the story did not end there. In circumstances that remain murky Monteilh then sued the FBI over his treatment, claiming that they abandoned him once the operation was over.

He also ended up in jail after Irvine police prosecuted him for defrauding two women, including a former girlfriend, as part of an illegal trade in human growth hormone at fitness clubs. (Monteilh claims those actions were carried out as part of another secret string operation for which he was forced to carry the can.)

What is not in doubt is that Monteilh’s identity later became public. In 2009 the FBI brought a case against Ahmad Niazi, an Afghan immigrant in Orange County.

The evidence included secret recordings and even calling Osama bin Laden “an angel”. That was Monteilh’s work and he outed himself to the press to the shock of the very Muslims he had been spying on who now realised that Farouk Aziz – the radical they had reported to the FBI two years earlier – had in fact been an undercover FBI operative.

Now Monteilh says he set Niazi up and the FBI was trying to blackmail the Afghani into being an informant. “I built the whole relationship with Niazi. Through my coercion we talked about jihad a lot,” he said. The FBI’s charges against Niazi were indeed later dropped.

Now Monteilh has joined an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the FBI. Amazingly, after first befriending Muslim leaders in Orange County as Farouk Aziz, then betraying them as Craig Monteilh, he has now joined forces with them again to campaign for their civil liberties.

That has now put Monteilh’s testimony about his year undercover is at the heart of a fresh legal effort to prove that the FBI operation in Orange County unfairly targeted a vulnerable Muslim community, trampling on civil rights in the name of national security.

The FBI did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

It is not the first time Monteilh has shifted his stance. In the ACLU case Monteilh is now posing as the sorrowful informant who saw the error of his ways.

But in previous court papers filed against the Irvine Police and the FBI, Monteilh’s lawyers portrayed him as the loyal intelligence asset who did sterling work tackling the forces of Islamic radicalism and was let down by his superiors.

In those papers Monteilh complained that FBI agents did not act speedily enough on a tip he gave them about a possible sighting of bomb-making materials. Now Monteilh says that tip was not credible.

Either way it does add up to a story that shifts with the telling. But that fact alone goes to the heart of the FBI’s use of such confidential informants in investigating Muslim communities.

FBI operatives with profiles similar to Monteilh’s – of a lengthy criminal record, desire for cash and a flexibility with the truth – have led to high profile cases of alleged entrapment that have shocked civil rights groups across America.

In most cases the informants have won their prosecutions and simply disappeared. Monteilh is the only one speaking out. But whatever the reality of his year undercover, Monteilh is almost certainly right about one impact of Operation Flex and the exposure of his undercover activities: “Because of this the Muslim community will never trust the FBI again.”

Paul Harris contributor jan 2013
Paul Harris in Irvine, California
theguardian.com, Tuesday 20 March 2012 16.50 GMT

Find this story at 20 March 2012

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

FBI informant scares Muslim suspects so much with his talk of violent jihad that they report HIM to authorities (2010)

An FBI informer sent to infiltrate a California mosque was made the subject of a restraining order after scaring Muslim worshippers with demands for holy war.
Craig Monteilh was known to members of the Irvine Islamic Center as Farouk al-Aziz, an apparently devout and at times over-zealous Muslim.
But when he began speaking of jihad and plans to blow up buildings, senior figures at the mosque reported him the FBI – the very people who sent him.
Informant: FBI operative Craig Monteilh was sent to spy on Muslims but was thrown out and reported to his handlers for extremist beahviour
Informant: FBI operative Craig Monteilh was sent to spy on Muslims but was thrown out and reported to his handlers for extremist beahviour
Now the FBI is facing criticism for its use of such stooges which have backfired in a number of cases.
The law enforcement agency’s problems have been confounded after Monteilh, a petty criminal with forgery convictions, went public with claims he received $177,000 tax free in 15 months for his work.

Shakeel Syed, of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California which represents more than 75 mosques told the Washington Post: ‘The community feels betrayed.
‘They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques.
‘And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.’
The emergence of details of the FBI’s attempted infiltration comes after an Oregan man was arrested for planning to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
An explosive device he was discovered in possession of had been supplied to him by an undercover FBI agent and was made by FBI technicians in a case of apparent entrapment.
Sacred: The informant was send to the mosque to secretly record conversations (file picture)
Sacred: The informant was send to the mosque to secretly record conversations (file picture)
The FBI defended its tactics, claiming such operations had prevented further terrorist atrocities in the wake of 9/11.
Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said that in certain circumstances, if there is evidence of a crime, FBI agents may ‘conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque.’
He added: ‘I know there’s a lot of suspicion that that’s the focus, that we’re looking at the mosques, monitoring who is coming and going. That’s just not the case.’
Monteilh claims he was already working for the FBI when he was approached about infiltrating mosques and was told ‘Islam is a threat to our national security’.
He agreed and became Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots.
He was trained by the FBI and claims he was told to infiltrate mosques in Orange County and two other counties.
Worshippers said that in Monteilh’s 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day but he was secretly recording conversations.
However, when he began to tell Muslims he had access to weapons they became convinced he was a terrorist and ironically reported the informant to the FBI.

UPDATED: 22:42 GMT, 6 December 2010

Find this story at 6 December 2010

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque (2010)

IRVINE, CALIF. – Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.

“This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle,” he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. “It’s November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we’re hot.”

The undercover FBI informant – a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh – then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.

But the FBI’s approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.

In the Irvine case, Monteilh’s mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.

Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his “handlers” trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.

Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh’s tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI – he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months – but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.

Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.

Citing Monteilh’s actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.

“The community feels betrayed,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.

“They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques,” Syed said. “And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.”

FBI and Justice Department officials say that the Monteilh case is not representative of their relations with the Muslim community and that they continue to work closely with Muslims in investigating violence and other hate crimes against them. Officials also credit U.S. Muslims with reporting critical information in a variety of counterterrorism cases.

The bureau “relies on the support, cooperation and trust of the communities it serves and protects,” FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said, adding that agents conduct investigations “under well-defined investigative guidelines and the law, and in close coordination with the Department of Justice.”

Officials said they have gone to great lengths to maintain good relationships with Muslims, including meetings hosted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Last week, FBI officials met to discuss law enforcement and other issues with predominantly Muslim Somali community members in San Diego and Minneapolis.

Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, declined to comment on Monteilh, citing Monteilh’s lawsuit. He said that in certain circumstances, if there is evidence of a crime, FBI agents may “conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque.”

But he said the agency does not target people based on religion or ethnicity.

“I know there’s a lot of suspicion that that’s the focus, that we’re looking at the mosques, monitoring who is coming and going. That’s just not the case,” he said.

The ‘chameleon’
Monteilh’s career as an informant began in 2003. Like many other informants, he was familiar with the inside of a prison cell. He had just finished a sentence for forging bank notes when local police officers he met at a gym asked him to infiltrate drug gangs and white supremacist groups for a federal-state task force.

“It was very exciting,” Monteilh said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I had the ability to be a chameleon.”

Monteilh, who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs 260 pounds, had worked as a prison chaplain before he was incarcerated. Married with three children, the Los Angeles native said that after he became an informant, an FBI agent on the task force sought him out. Law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about informants, said Monteilh was promoted from drug and bank robbery cases because his information was reliable and had led to convictions.

In early 2006, Monteilh said, he met with his FBI handler at a Starbucks.

“She asked if I wanted to infiltrate mosques,” he said. At a follow-up session at a doughnut shop, he said, his new handler told him that “Islam is a threat to our national security.”

Law enforcement sources said that the FBI trained Monteilh and that he aided an existing investigation. Monteilh, however, said he was ordered to randomly surveil and spy on Muslims to ferret out potential terrorists. Agents, he said, provided his cover: Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots. His code name was “Oracle.”

Monteilh said he was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation’s largest. He was told to target the Islamic Center of Irvine, he said, because it was near his home.

FBI tactics were already a sensitive issue at the Irvine mosque, a stucco, two-story building that draws as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers. With tensions rising between law enforcement and Muslims over allegations of FBI surveillance, J. Stephen Tidwell, then head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, spoke at the mosque in June 2006.

“If we’re going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you,” he said, according to a video of his speech. “. . . The FBI will tell you we’re coming for the very reason that we don’t want you to think you’re being monitored. We would come only to learn.”

Two months later, in August 2006, Monteilh arrived at the same mosque. He had called earlier and met with the imam. That Friday, he took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before hundreds of worshipers.

Worshipers said that in Monteilh’s 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day and waiting in the parking lot before the 5 a.m. prayer. Monteilh said he was told by the FBI to take notes on who opened the mosque each day.

Worshipers said his Western clothes gave way to an Islamic robe, a white skullcap and sandals, an outfit Monteilh said was chosen by his handlers. As he grew closer to Muslims, he said, the FBI told him to date Muslim women if it gained him intelligence.

Worshipers noticed that Monteilh often left his keys around the mosque, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who speaks often at the mosque.

“It seemed strange to people,” Ayloush said.

Inside the car remote on the bundle of keys was a microphone that recorded Muslims at the mosque, in their homes and at a local gym. Monteilh, who told people he was a fitness trainer, used the gym to seek out Muslim men.

“We started hearing that he was saying weird things,” said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who knew Monteilh from the mosque and gym. “He would walk up to one of my friends and say, ‘It’s good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad.”

Worshipers said Monteilh gravitated to Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan-born Arabic-language instructor who was a regular at Friday prayers.

In May 2007, Monteilh said he recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with Niazi and another man. Monteilh said he suggested an operation to blow up buildings and Niazi agreed. An FBI agent later cited that and other taped conversations between the two in court as evidence that Niazi was a threat.

A few days later, Ayloush got an anguished phone call from Niazi and the other man in the car.

“They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,” Ayloush recalled. “They were convinced this man was a terrorist.”

Ayloush reported the FBI’s own informant to the FBI. He said agents interviewed Niazi, who gave them the same account, but the agency took no action against Monteilh.

Still, Monteilh’s mission was collapsing. Members of the mosque told its leaders that they were afraid of Monteilh and that he was “trying to entrap them into a mission,” according to Asim Khan, the former mosque president. The mosque went to Orange County Superior Court in June 2007 and obtained a restraining order against Monteilh, court records show.

Soon afterward, Monteilh said FBI agents “told me they wanted to cut me loose.” After he vowed to go public, he said, he met with three agents at the Anaheim Hilton, where an FBI supervisor threatened him with arrest.

“She said, ‘If you reveal your informant status to the media, it will destroy the Muslim community’s relationship with the FBI forever.” Monteilh said.

The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh’s allegation.

At a subsequent meeting, Monteilh said, he signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $25,000 in cash. An FBI letter to Monteilh’s attorney, on file in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, says Monteilh signed the non-disclosure agreement in October 2007.

But Monteilh was arrested in December 2007 on a grand-theft charge and ended up back in jail for 16 months. In January, he sued the FBI, alleging that the bureau and Irvine police conspired to have him arrested, then allowed his informant status to become known in prison, where he was stabbed.

The FBI and police have denied the allegations, and the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. But the judge allowed Monteilh to file an amended complaint, with similar allegations, in September. The case is pending.

A case unravels
In the meantime, the case against Niazi unfolded. He was indicted in February 2009 by a federal grand jury on charges of lying about his ties to terrorists on immigration documents. In court, prosecutors said that jihadist materials were found on Niazi’s computer and that he had wired money to an alleged al-Qaeda financier. Prosecutors said he is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s security coordinator. Much of the evidence was FBI testimony about Niazi’s recorded conversations with an FBI informant, who sources say was Monteilh.

“Frankly, there is no amount of bail or equity in a home that can protect the citizens of this community” from Niazi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deirdre Eliot said in arguing for his detention.

Within days of Niazi’s indictment, Monteilh revealed his informant status in a series of interviews with Los Angeles area media.

“I think the FBI treated me with the utmost treachery,” he said in the interview with The Post.

In subsequent months, Monteilh sought out Niazi’s attorneys and told them he was ordered to entrap their client.

A year and a half later, on Sept. 30, prosecutors summarily moved to dismiss the case against Niazi, and a judge agreed. The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles cited the lack of an overseas witness and “evidentiary issues.” Sources familiar with the decision said Monteilh’s role – and his potential testimony for the defense – was also a factor.

Niazi declined to comment. His attorney Chase Scolnick said he is “very pleased with the outcome. It is a just result.”

In recent weeks, Monteilh said, he has been approaching Muslims at a local gym and apologizing for “disrespecting their community and religion.” Monteilh, who is now unemployed, says he regrets his role in the Niazi case and was glad when the charges were dropped.

On a recent Friday, more than 200 men sat on the carpet for prayers inside the Irvine mosque, most of them in khakis or jeans. During the sermon, the imam offered some advice.

“If an FBI agent comes in and says, ‘You’re under arrest,’â??” he told the crowd, they should pray to Allah – and then call a lawyer.

As worshipers milled around outside, they said they support the FBI’s role in fighting terrorism but feel betrayed by the infiltration of their sacred place.

“The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,” said Kurdi, the Loyola student. “They can’t have it both ways.”

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:47 AM

Find this story at 5 December 2010

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

Muslim Americans Who Claim FBI Used No-Fly List to Coerce Them Into Becoming Informants File Lawsuit

Naveed Shinwari is one of four American Muslims who filed suit against the government this week for placing them on the U.S. “no-fly list” in order to coerce them into becoming FBI informants. The plaintiffs say the government refuses to explain why they were named on the no-fly list. They also believe that their names continue to be listed because they would not agree to become FBI informants and spy on their local communities. “It’s very frustrating, you feel helpless,” Shinwari says. “No one will tell you how you can get off of it, how you got on it. It has a profound impact on people’s lives.” We are also joined by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is seeking to remove the men from the no-fly list and establish a new legal mechanism to challenge placement on it.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with the story of four American Muslims who say they were placed on the U.S. no-fly list by the FBI after they refused to become government informants. They say they were barred from flying, not because they were accused of any crime, but because they refused government requests to spy on their own communities. On Tuesday night, the men filed a lawsuit seeking their removal from the no-fly list, as well as a new legal mechanism to challenge placement on it.

The New York Times reports the list, officially called the Terrorist Screening Database, has grown to at least 700,000 people. The government refuses to reveal who is on the list, how one can get off it, and what criteria are used to place someone on it in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by Naveed Shinwari, one of the four American Muslims filing a lawsuit accusing the FBI of unjustly placing them on the no-fly list and trying to coerce them to spy on their community. Also with us is Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR is representing the four men, along with the City University of New York’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility program, or CLEAR.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Naveed, let’s begin with you. Tell us your story. What happened?

NAVEED SHINWARI: Thank you, first of all, for having us. I’ve been a big fan of the show since college days.

Well, in October 2011, I went on a Hajj pilgrimage, religious pilgrimage, with my mother. And after that, we went to Afghanistan, and that’s where I got married, too. On the way coming back, late February of 2012, I got—I was trying to obtain a boarding pass in Dubai. My flight was from Kabul to Dubai and then to Houston. And I was denied boarding pass in Dubai. I was told that I had to go outside and meet with the immigration, U.S. immigrations, or the embassy, consulate. I had to obtain a temporary visa. And my mother and I, we went out, out of the airport.

And then I was interrogated by two FBI agents for roughly about four hours, and I was told to—I was pressured to give them everything that I knew in order to go back home. And then they will—the more that I give them, the better chances of me coming back home that I had. I was told to take a lie detector test, and they wanted to take photos with their phone of mine, and which, both of them, I refused, because I was very truthful to them from the beginning.

Finally, after five days, we were able to—we had to buy new tickets, and we were able to come to the U.S. Then I was interrogated at the airport in Washington by a couple of FBI agents. And then I had several visits in my house. In March of 2012, I found out that I was on the no-fly list, when I had a flight to Orlando for a job. And in the airport, I was escorted by police officers telling me that I could not fly anymore. That’s the first time I found out.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you say they interrogated you the first time around, what kinds of questions were they asking you?

NAVEED SHINWARI: They told me to “tell us everything. And where did you been—where have you been? And have you attended any training camps in Afghanistan, or even to Pakistan?” And to all of those questions, my answer was negative. If you met individuals that pose a threat to national security, and my answer was negative, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your feelings about being on the no-fly list? How has it affected your life? Where is your wife now, by the way?

NAVEED SHINWARI: She’s in Afghanistan, and it’s been 26 months, counting, that I have not seen her.

AMY GOODMAN: For more than two years.

NAVEED SHINWARI: That’s correct. I spent a month with her, and then I had to leave. And then, ever since, I haven’t been able to go back.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana Kadidal, what is the legality of this?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Well, I think it’s completely illegal. You know, most people find out that they’re on the list the same way Naveed did. They try to fly, and then they’re denied boarding, and sometimes a gate agent will tell them, “Well, you’re on this list.”

Now, there’s a process to challenge it, nominally, through the Department of Homeland Security, but when you file a complaint, you never get told whether or not you’re on the list or whether you’ve been removed from the list. The government never tells us what the criteria for being on the list is. We think it has something to do with whether you’re a threat to civil aviation, whatever that means, but they’ve never sort of published a definition, and they never tell you what evidence, you know, they’ve used to put you on there, right?

And a lot of times, I don’t think the government knows what evidence they’ve used to put you on there, because a field-level FBI agent, for all practical purposes, can nominate someone like Naveed. Those guys who interviewed him in Dubai could do it on their own discretion, just as if a New York City beat cop could put you on the no-fly list. And it’s basically a rubber stamp, the level of review that it gets once it goes into the Terrorist Screening Center that runs the list.

So, you know, you get this situation that’s ripe for abuse. And Naveed, like our other clients, you know, I think the FBI put him on the list basically because they knew there was no process where he could challenge it, where he could get off, other than coming to court, like we have now, and therefore they could use it very effectively to twist their arms to work and spy on completely innocent members of their Muslim community.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right, and this issue of some of your clients being—or your clients being asked to spy on their communities, could you elaborate on that?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, so you see Naveed, you know, answered all those questions negatively and was still—and still ended up on the list, right? They are asking people not to spy on friends and family and acquaintances who the government suspects of involvement in crime or terrorism; they’re asking them to troll the Muslim community for information. You know, it’s the same mentality as underlies the NSA surveillance programs, right? Gather every bit of information on civil society, and then we’ll figure out why we wanted it later.

AMY GOODMAN: Aviation security specialist Glenn Winn told San Diego news station 6 that people are not put on the no-fly list arbitrarily.

GLENN WINN: There’s something has arisen in his background, and it has restricted his movement on a U.S. carrier of the United States, i.e. a threat.
AMY GOODMAN: Shayana Kadidal, your response?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: I mean, I think, you know, the most obvious response to that is to look at the Rahinah Ibrahim case that was just litigated out on the West Coast and where the government for eight years fought, you know, invoking every secrecy doctrine you can imagine, to resist telling a former Stanford Ph.D. student whether or not she was on the list. Turned out they had accidentally put her on the list because an FBI agent had kind of incompetently checked the “yes” box instead of not checking it as he intended to. They took her off the list in 2005, and yet they fought for eight years in court to avoid having to tell her that and to really avoid telling the public that they made a spectacular mistake.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in December, we spoke about the hidden cost of being placed on the no-fly list with the lawyer for Stanford University student Rahinah Ibrahim. Ibrahim sued the U.S. government after her name was placed on the no-fly list and she was barred from flying back from Malaysia to the United States in 2005 to complete her studies at Stanford. This is her attorney, Anya Bernstein.

ANYA BERNSTEIN: People are harmed by being on these watch lists. They’re harmed by being not allowed to fly. They’re also harmed by being subject to a lot more scrutiny from law enforcement officers every time they run into them. So if you’re on a watch list like this and you are stopped for speeding, the officer runs your license through a computer system, and he’s informed that you’re on the watch list. And then, naturally, he’s going to be paying a lot more attention to you; you’re much more likely to be arrested and to receive a certain kind of treatment. So, those are—those are more due process rights that may be infringed, and those are kind of the obvious costs of the terrorist watch lists.
The hidden costs are the systemic costs that people don’t really talk about as much, such as the effects on policy. So, one of the striking things about these watch lists is that, as far as we know, there is absolutely no mechanism for the agencies who run them to assess how well they’re doing. There’s nothing built into the system for people to review and say, “10 years ago we thought this was a bad guy. How did that turn out? How did our prediction pan out? And if it didn’t pan out, maybe we’re doing something wrong. What should we change?” So, one of the hidden costs is the bloating of the watch list with lots and lots of people who are most likely or even definitely not harmful and don’t pose a threat, and yet give us the impression that the main danger we face today is terrorism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Anya Bernstein, attorney for the only person who has been able to successfully challenge being on the no-fly list. The impact on you and other people that you personally have been acquainted with who might have also been placed on the no-fly list?

NAVEED SHINWARI: It’s very frustrating, and you feel helpless. No one will tell you how you can get off of it, how you got on it. And it has a profound impact on people’s lives, and it has had a big impact on my life and on my family. And so, this is one of the reasons that I wanted to come out, was to—that there might be a lot of people that are afraid to speak up. And I wanted to—you know, I wanted to come out and show to everyone that, you know what, you don’t have to be afraid in this country, and you can come out and speak your mind, and we have to come together in order to resolve these kind of programs and these sort of issues.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, can you describe the other men who are suing?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, you know, so Naveed hasn’t seen his wife in 26 months, right? We have another plaintiff who hasn’t seen his wife and his three small daughters for five years because he’s on the no-fly list. You know, all of our clients have family overseas. Two are Pakistani-American. Naveed’s Afghan-American. One’s Yemeni-American. And, you know, another client has a 93-year-old grandmother in Pakistan who’s begging to see him, because she’s gravely ill, she can’t travel here. You know, this woman raised him, and he can’t fly back there because he’s on this list. It’s devastating, you know, and there’s a stigmatic element to it, too. You know, there are people in the community who have turned away from some of our clients, because they wonder, you know, why did the government put them on this list. Surely there must be some reason, right?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about this in the context of the other instances of surveillance of the Muslim community in the United States? Obviously, in New York City we had the notorious example, now stopped by the de Blasio administration, of conducting random surveillances of the Muslim community.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Mm-hmm, right. Well, I think, you know, we have—you know, after 12 years since 9/11, 13 years, we have a huge, very well-financed infrastructure for counterterrorism, and it—you know, it generates a need, pressure to produce, quote-unquote, “results,” right? So FBI agents feel pressure to hit numerical quotas to produce a certain number of, quote-unquote, “informers.” Doesn’t matter whether the, you know, quote-unquote, “informers” have any tie to crime or terrorism or whether the people they know do, either, right? It’s, again, part of this program of just surveilling the community for surveillance’s sake.

AMY GOODMAN: A pro-Palestinian activist named Kevin Iraniha said he was mysteriously questioned by the FBI after a trip he took to the Middle East. He later found himself on a no-fly list while trying to fly to San Diego from Costa Rica. The law student reportedly returned to California by flying to Mexico and then walking across the border. He addressed supporters after returning home.

KEVIN IRANIHA: I’m happy to be home, finally, in my own hometown, you know, where I was born and raised. You see my bloodshot eyes. I’m still—I’m still going through it. It’s very tiring, and it was very depressing. This is very disappointing for anybody—to happen to anybody, you know, especially if they were born and raised here, or anybody on—outside also, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin is a U.S. citizen, and so he holds this news conference. Naveed, you’re here talking publicly. What about the repercussions for you? Are you concerned about any, about how people will view you?

NAVEED SHINWARI: Yes. Even within my household, there were—they were not in favor of me coming out. And they thought that this might make your situation difficult in bringing your wife here in the future. So that’s even within my house. Outside, many friends and family were against this, as well, too. But in every civil rights case, or whenever civil rights are violated or abused, people have to speak out. And if I don’t do it, who else will do it? So there are 16,000 to 21,000 people on this list, and the majority of them are innocent people, and they don’t know what they have done wrong. And I think we—it’s about time we need some openness to this program.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Naveed, we want to thank you for coming to Democracy Now! and telling your story. Naveed Shinwari is one of four American Muslims who filed a lawsuit accusing the FBI of unjustly placing them on the no-fly list and trying to coerce them to spy on their community. He has not seen his new wife in more than two years. Shayana Kadidal is senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, a federal court has ruled that a memo must be released that explains the rationale for killing the Awlakis, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman, as well as other American citizen, Samir Khan. Stay with us.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2014

Find this story at 24 April 2014

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No-fly list used by FBI to coerce Muslims into informing, lawsuit claims

Case highlights plight of people wrongfully added to database who face lengthy, secretive process to clear their names

Innocent people are being put on no-fly list as coercion or punishment by the FBI, a lawsuit alleges.

Naveed Shinwari hasn’t seen his wife in 26 months. He suspects it’s because he refused to become an informant for the FBI.

In February 2012 Shinwari, who has lived in the US since he was 14, flew to Afghanistan to get married. He says that before he could get home to Omaha, Nebraska, he was twice detained and questioned by FBI agents who wanted to know if he knew anything about national security threats. A third FBI visit followed when he got home.

The following month, after Shinwari bought another plane ticket for a temporary job in Connecticut, he couldn’t get a boarding pass. Police told him he had been placed on the US no-fly list, although he had never in his life been accused of breaking any law. Another FBI visit soon followed, with agents wanting to know about the “local Omaha community, did I know anyone who’s a threat”, he says.

“I’m just very frustrated, [and I said] what can I do to clear my name?” recalls Shinwari, 30. “And that’s where it was mentioned to me: you help us, we help you. We know you don’t have a job; we’ll give you money.”

Shinwari is one of four American Muslims in a new lawsuit who accuse the FBI of placing them on the no-fly list, either to intimidate them into becoming informants or to retaliate against them for declining.

Filed on Tuesday night in the US district court for the southern district of New York, the case accuses the US attorney general, Eric Holder, the FBI director, James Comey, the homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, and two dozen FBI agents of creating an atmosphere in which Muslims who are not accused of wrongdoing are forbidden from flying, apparently as leverage to get them snitching on their communities.

Their lawsuit seeks not only the plaintiffs’ removal from the no-fly list but also the establishment of a more robust legal mechanism to contest placement upon it.

“This policy and set of practices by the FBI is part of a much broader set of policies that reflect overpolicing in Muslim-American communities,” said Diala Shamas, one of the lawyers for the four plaintiffs.

In recent years Muslim community leaders in the US have stated that they feel law enforcement at times considers them a target, particularly thanks to mosque infiltrations and other surveillance practices. Material demonizing Muslims and Islam has been present in FBI counter-terrorism training, which the bureau has conceded was inappropriate. The New York police department recently shut down a unit tasked with spying on Muslim businesses, mosques and community centers in New York and New Jersey.

Like his co-plaintiffs Shinwari does not know for sure that the FBI deliberately placed him on the no-fly list as either a punitive measure or a pressure tactic.

Their four stories differ in important respects.

Jameel Algibhah of the Bronx alleges that the FBI explicitly asked him to infiltrate a Queens mosque and pose as an extremist in online forums. But they have in common an allegation of an implied quid pro quo. “We’re the only ones who can take you off the list,” an unnamed FBI agent who wanted Algibhah to inform to is alleged to have told him.

Their case follows at least one other, brought by the ACLU in Oregon, that alleges the FBI attempted to leverage no-fly selectees into informants. That case also challenges as insufficient the process afforded to people seeking to remove themselves from the list.

Shinwari, who now lives in Connecticut and works for a temp agency, has not attempted to return to Afghanistan to see his wife. While he was able to board a flight last month, he wonders if he received a reprieve from the no-fly list that the FBI offered to him in 2012 as enticement. Repeated attempts to formally remove himself from the list resulted in vague and inconclusive notifications from the government – which he, his co-plaintiffs and his lawyers contend feeds into the problem.

The no-fly list is among the most opaque post-9/11 measures. It is maintained by the FBI and implemented at airports by the Department of Homeland Security. Few know they’ve been placed on it, and those who do face a complicated redress process to have themselves removed. The new lawsuit alleges that the opacity contributes to watchlist abuse.

According to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list, there were approximately 16,000 people, fewer than 500 of them Americans, on the no-fly list as of September 2011.

A larger pool of data that feeds the no-fly list and other government watchlists, known as the Terrorist Screening Database, contemporaneously contained records of 420,000 people. Famously it included Nelson Mandela until 2008. The government’s policy is to not to confirm or deny someone’s placement upon a watchlist.

Several earlier lawsuits have attempted to get people off the no-fly list. In February Rahinah Ibrahim became the first since 9/11 to win such a case, after demonstrating that the FBI adder her name by mistake. She had been unable to fly since 2004.

The criteria for inclusion on the list are unclear. In a March 2011 federal court filing Christopher Piehota, the current director of the Terrorist Screening Center, affirmed that FBI agents could nominate candidates to it.

Inclusion on the broader Terrorist Screening Database depends upon “whether there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is a known or suspected terrorist”, Piehota, then the deputy director of the Terrorist Screening Center, told the eastern district court of Virginia.

“Mere guesses or ‘hunches,’ or the reporting of suspicious activity alone is not enough to constitute a reasonable suspicion and are not sufficient bases to watchlist an individual.” Audits and other quality control measures were periodic, Piehota told the court.

An ACLU study last month challenged that criterion. “It is not at all clear what separates a reasonable-suspicion-based-on-a-reasonable-suspicion from a simple hunch,” it said, calling inclusion on a government watchlist a potentially “life-altering” experience.

A redress system for thwarted travelers was operated by the Department of Homeland Security and referred complaints to the FBI, Piehota further affirmed. A subsequent records check determined “whether the complainant’s current status in the TSDB [Terrorist Screening Database] is suitable based on the most current, accurate and thorough information available”.

The process was entirely internal, with DHS informing the would-be traveler what the system had determined “without disclosing the traveler’s status in the TSDB”, Piehota said.

A study by the justice department’s inspector general, partially declassified on 25 March, painted a mixed picture of the FBI’s watchlisting processes. “Subjects of closed terrorism investigations were removed from the watchlist when the case was closed,” it found, but it noted the FBI was “not timely in submitting watchlist nomination and removal packages for individuals not under investigation by the FBI”. In such cases it took the FBI a median of 78 days to remove people from the lists.

“Because non-investigative subjects may be retained on the watchlist for an extended period of time, this subset of watchlist practices will continue to grow throughout the years,” the inspector general’s report said.

The FBI declined to comment on the allegations in the new lawsuit, which was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at the City University of New York.

Shinwari said his placement on the no-fly list and his dealings with the FBI had a chilling effect. “I don’t want to open up to people any more, or express myself politically or otherwise. It’s definitely had an effect on me participating in my local mosque,” he said.

“I just want to see some changes to this process, and openness and transparency would be good. That’s what Obama originally ran for.”

Spencer Ackerman in New York
theguardian.com, Wednesday 23 April 2014 03.00 BST

Find this story at 23 April 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

THE FBI IS TRYING TO RECRUIT MUSLIMS AS SNITCHES BY PUTTING THEM ON NO-FLY LISTS

Dr Rahinah Ibrahim is not a national security threat.

The federal government even said so.

It took a lawsuit that has stretched for eight years for the feds to yield that admission. It is one answer in a case that opened up many more questions.

Namely: How did an innocent Malaysian architectural scholar remain on a terrorism no fly-list – effectively branded a terrorist – for years after a FBI paperwork screw up put her there? The answer to that question – to paraphrase a particularly hawkish former Secretary of Defense – may be unknowable.

Last week, there was a depressing development in the case. A judge’s decision was made public and it revealed that the White House has created at least one “secret exception” to the legal standard that federal authorities use to place people on such lists. This should trouble anyone who cares about niggling things like legal due process or the US Constitution. No one is clear what the exception is – because it’s secret, duh – meaning government is basically placing people on terror watchlists that can ruin their lives without explaining why or how they landed on those lists in the first place.

This flies in the face of what the government has told Congress and the American public. Previously, federal officials said that in order to land on one of these terror watchlists, someone has to meet a “reasonable suspicion standard”. That means there have to be clear facts supporting the government’s assertion that the individual in question is, you know, doing some terrorist shit. Which seems like a good idea.

But not any more, apparently.

Dr Rahinah Ibrahim (Photo via University Putra Malaysia)

Ibrahim, a Muslim who is currently the Dean of Architecture at University Putra Malaysia, was placed on the federal no-fly list in late 2004. She was removed from that specific list the following year, but her name remained on federal terrorism watchlist databases. Her daughter, a US citizen, was also watchlisted. Ibrahim was arrested at San Francisco International Airport while she was enrolled as a PhD student at Stanford University. She was not charged with any crime, but her student visa was revoked; later attempts at obtaining a new visa were denied. She sued the US government in 2006, basically saying that what the federal authorities did was illegal. Eight long years of litigation followed.

She found herself in a guilty-until-proven innocent legal quagmire. Perhaps most importantly, she was never given an explanation as to what landed her on this list. For that answer, she is still waiting. The government would ultimately concede that she had never posed a national security threat. In January, the court found the US government violated her due process rights.

During the case, there was one clue as to what may have convinced the US that Ibrahim was a potential terrorist. She belongs to a women’s economic organisation called Jamaah Islah Malaysia – there have been rumours that the FBI confused this with the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Which would obviously be a really, really dumb thing for an investigative agency to do.

Ibrahim’s attorney, Elizabeth Pipkin, says she can’t say for sure how the authorities first became interested in her client. “That was speculation on our part,” she said. “The sad thing is, even after eight years of litigation, we weren’t able to get to the bottom of what was the underlying information that lead an FBI agent to her door and brought this whole thing about.”

But as great as a “Feds Suck at Googling” headline would be, it could be even more simple and ridiculous. According to one judge, an FBI agent made a basic paperwork error by filling out the form the opposite way from the instructions – ticking the lists she thought Ibrahim should not be on rather than the ones that she should. That screw up might be to blame for turning eight years of her life into a hellish pit of litigation.

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The real criteria of the no-fly list – if there is one – remains cloaked in secrecy. In America’s post-9/11 fever dream, it’s looking increasingly like the government has targeted Muslims who have no connection to terrorism on such lists, in the hope of developing informants, according to multiple ongoing federal lawsuits. (More on that in a minute.) And once you’re on these lists and terrorist databases, it’s a bitch to clear your name, as Ibrahim found out.

Pipkin says the only historical precedent for a like-minded programme occurred during the McCarthy era back in the 1950s, when the government denied passports for people who were suspected communists. It would appear the G-men of the 21st century are ripping a page right out of J Edgar Hoover’s playbook. When the Red Scare was all the rage, a case challenging such a policy went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which found that if someone is deprived of their right to travel, the government has to say why – something the authorities have failed to do in Ibrahim’s case.

As head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover ran roughshod over civil liberties during the 1950s, during which time one US policy tried to prevent passports from being issued to suspected communists.
(Photo via)

In other words, it’s secret law: the government is deciding it doesn’t like you for some reason and punishing you, but declining to say what exactly you did to trigger the punishment. People like Ibrahim are stuck in a legal no-man’s land, where they can’t fly but they have not been charged with a crime.

“The assertion of executive privilege in this case was extreme and the secrecy that was asserted by the federal government with respect to its action here are really hard to stomach when you believe that this should be a democratic country,” said Pipkin.

Ibrahim is not the only Muslim to be caught in an extrajudicial limbo.

Gulet Mohamed, a US citizen of Somali descent, is also currently challenging his placement on a no-fly list. Mohamed has not been charged with any crime, but his placement on the list left him stranded in Kuwait for a month from December 2010 to January 2011. His designation prevented him from flying home. During his confinement, US authorities grilled him about his travels in Somalia and Yemen, but Mohamed denied having contact with militants. Mohamed, then still a teenager, says he was beaten and that federal agents made him an offer of becoming an informant, which he turned down. Ultimately, he was allowed back into the US in January 2011. This January, a federal judge ruled that he had a right to challenge his placement on the list.

His attorney, Gadeir Abbas, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the watchlist policy violates due process rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

“We know that whatever it was that interested them in Gulet, it was not enough for them to press charges against him, and if you can’t test your allegations through the criminal process, then what, exactly, are you doing?” he asked.

Abbas said that Federal authorities have significantly expanded the use of such watchlists since that guy decided to ring in Christmas 2009 by stuffing explosives into his skivvies and boarding a plane that was bound for Detroit. The feds, he said, are now using the watchlists as a, “punitive tool that it can use as leverage [against] individuals that they want to interrogate, to become informants”.

Put another way: Federal authorities are using the watchlists to target Muslims in the hopes they will spy on their own communities on behalf of the US government.

Hina Shamsi, the director for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) National Security Project, meanwhile, has said the US terrorist database is broken. Thousands of people, she said, have been added to a no-fly list without any explanation as to why and with no opportunity to correct “the error or innuendo” that landed them there in the first place.

Abe Mashal

Abe Mashal was one such instance. The married father of four grew up the son of an Italian-American mother and a Palestinian father in Illinois. He is a former Marine. He also happens to be Muslim. He believes the confluence of those last two factors may have caused him a considerable headache.

Mashal trains dogs for a living. Sometimes this requires him to fly around the country. One day in April 2010, he arrived at Chicago’s Midway International Airport to fly to Washington state for a dog training job. He wasn’t allowed to board, he learned, because he had been placed on a no-fly list.

He is now part of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit challenging the legality of the no-fly list. In a familiar story, he’s never been clear exactly about what landed him on the list. He says he can fly now; he was apparently taken off the list but was never told when, how or why. But for three-and-a-half years it hurt his business. About a third of his clientele required him to fly, he said.

Mashal has not been charged with a crime. He thinks federal authorities targeted him because he was a former Marine who identified himself on his military records as Muslim.

Authorities, he thought, saw him as someone whom they could groom to be a solid informant. He said during his attempts to get off the watchlist, federal authorities offered him a deal: become an informant, spy on your fellow Muslims and you’ll be off the list. He declined and lawyered up. There are several other ex-military Muslims who are part of the ACLU’s suit, he said.

“I think they feel that you’re a patriotic person and you’re used to taking orders. They want someone with that type of discipline as well,” he told me. “You start putting the pieces together and say, ‘They’re aiming for military people who claim to be Muslims.’”

He added, “The FBI is very good and trained at intimidating people and getting them to do what they want. It’s been a frustrating experience. It’s made me question whether we have these rights that they say we do.” When the government can put you on a terror-list without giving you a reason, that seems a fair question to raise.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security both declined to comment for this story, deferring to other agencies. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment before deadline.

By: Danny McDonald
Apr 23 2014

Find this story at 23 April 2014

© 2014 Vice Media Inc

Every Drone Mission the FBI Admits to Flying

The FBI insists that it uses drone technology in the U.S. to conduct surveillance in “very limited circumstances.” What those particular circumstances are remain a mystery, because the Bureau refuses to identify instances where agents deployed unmanned aerial vehicles, even as far back as 2006.

The obscurity of the FBI drone missions, like that of other domestic law enforcement agencies, has frustrated advocates for transparency and privacy. In a letter to Senator Rand Paul in July 2013, the agency indicated that it had used drones a total of ten times since late 2006—eight criminal cases and two national security cases—and had authorized drone deployments in three additional cases, but did not actually fly them.

The only specific case where the FBI is willing to confirm using a drone was in February 2013, as surveillance support for a child kidnapping case in Alabama. After this and a previous flight in 2012, the agency found its drone missions “strikingly sucessful.”

But new documents obtained by MuckRock as part of the Drone Census flesh out the timeline of FBI drone deployments in detail that was previously unavailable. While heavily redacted—censors deemed even basic facts that were already public about the Alabama case to be too sensitive for release, apparently—these flight orders, after action reviews and mission reports contain new details of FBI drone flights.

New details, summarized in the timeline above, include FBI drone flights as part of investigations into dog fighting operations and drug trafficking rings in 2011, as well as to track a top ten most wanted fugitive in 2012. The documents confirm nine flown missions (ones with after action reports or actual flight orders), as well as five drone mission approvals and one mission proposal, without any confirmation that the FBI actually deployed the drone as proposed.

Previously, the FBI had acknowledged that its first operational deployment of drones took place in October 2006:

These new documents include confirmations of another eight drone operations between February 2011 and February 2013, plus an additional five drone mission approvals and one proposal without confirmation that the FBI actually deployed the drone as proposed.

There was also an instance in April 2011 where FBI aviation managers rejected a drone flight request based on safety concerns:

The FBI redacted location and case details from these operational documents save for the dates, even for operations now three year. This has been the normsince a judge ordered the release of thousands of pages of documents on FBI drone deployments last year. FBI records officers have tried redacting information from documents already published in full online, and withheldvirtually all UAV purchasing and invoice data.

But a handful of details escaped the censors in these latest documents.

In August 2011, the FBI’s Field Flight Operations Unit approved drone surveillance to investigate a “large-scale dog fighting operation” at a redacted location, based on “a review of the case Agent’s surveillance objectives and the nature of the terrain and airspace.”

While there are no after-action documents to confirm the mission took place, FBI aviation managers suggested that agents ask the Federal Aviation Administration for “as large a COA [Certificate of Authorization] as possible” for this mission, suggesting that the drone was meant to survey a wide region.

A few months later, in November 2011, the FBI held a meeting at Quantico to consider flying drones as part of Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigations of Mexican organizations:

 

Again, the FBI has not confirmed whether the proposed mission took place, or where.

In a mission hailed by agency officials as “a signal achievement in the history of the FBI,” the FBI drone team was deployed on short notice on May 9, 2012 as part of a kidnapping investigation. The mission was slated to “serve both as a tactical resource and a technology demonstration.”

The after-action report hails the operation as a “strikingly successful” milestone, in that it “marked the first use of a UAS [unmanned aerial system] to pursue a top ten fugitive.”

 

That same day, on May 9, 2012, the FBI added Adam Mayes to its Ten Most Wanted list. Mayes was wanted for the kidnap and murder of a Tennessee woman and one of her daughters, as well as for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

The FBI and state investigators found Mayes and the two remaining young girls the next day—the day after its drone team was scrambled to a kidnap-murder-unlawful-flight investigation—in heavy woods a few miles from Mayes’s home in Mississippi.

Media reports indicate that the long search was brought to an end after a Mississippi Highway Patrol officer “spotted a small blonde child peeking over a ridge.” No outlets reported the involvement of a drone in the manhunt. When law enforcement closed in, Mayes reportedly shot himself in the head, and the two girls were recovered without serious injuries.

While report details point to the involvement of drones in this manhunt, the FBI has refused to confirm whether its “signal achievement” centered around Mayes.

“Other than the hostage crisis site in Alabama, involving a kidnapper who abducted a boy and held him hostage in a bunker,” wrote FBI Special Agent Ann Todd in response to our request for confirmation, “we have not publicly identified specific cases where we have used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).”

It’s not only the general public that the FBI keeps in the dark regarding drone deployments. Even the FAA and agency partners do not receive details.

An FBI dossier on drone use from April 2007 indicates that the FAA has urged the FBI to maintain “the same standards as manned fixed-wing aircraft.” But it says the FBI may forgo notifying the FAA in “exigent circumstances”:

 

In a July 30, 2012 email to the FAA and a redacted agency at the close of a drone operation at a redacted location for a redacted purpose, an FBI aviation administrator begged pardon for keeping its partners in the dark:

 

“While details of the mission intent must remained guarded for now,” the aviation manager wrote, “I hope to release full details in the future.” As with most of the FBI’s drone deployments, those details have yet to see the light.

SHAWN MUSGRAVE
April 16, 2014 // 04:30 PM EST

Find this story at 16 April 2014

© 2014 Vice Media Inc

Inside the FBI’s secret relationship with the military’s special operations

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest.

In a review of the nighttime strike for a relative of one of the dead Rangers, military officials sketched out the sequence of events using small dots to chart the soldiers’ movements. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber?

After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI.

The FBI’s transformation from a crime-fighting agency to a counterterrorism organization in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been well documented. Less widely known has been the bureau’s role in secret operations against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other locations around the world.

With the war in Afghanistan ending, FBI officials have become more willing to discuss a little-known alliance between the bureau and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that allowed agents to participate in hundreds of raids in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The relationship benefited both sides. JSOC used the FBI’s expertise in exploiting digital media and other materials to locate insurgents and detect plots, including any against the United States. The bureau’s agents, in turn, could preserve evidence and maintain a chain of custody should any suspect be transferred to the United States for trial.

The FBI’s presence on the far edge of military operations was not universally embraced, according to current and former officials familiar with the bureau’s role. As agents found themselves in firefights, some in the bureau expressed uneasiness about a domestic law enforcement agency stationing its personnel on battlefields.

The wounded agent in Iraq was Jay Tabb, a longtime member of the bureau’s Hostage and Rescue Team (HRT) who was embedded with the Rangers when they descended on Ramadi in Black Hawks and Chinooks. Tabb, who now leads the HRT, also had been wounded just months earlier in another high-risk operation.

James Davis, the FBI’s legal attache in Baghdad in 2007 and 2008, said people “questioned whether this was our mission. The concern was somebody was going to get killed.”

Davis said FBI agents were regularly involved in shootings — sometimes fighting side by side with the military to hold off insurgent assaults.

“It wasn’t weekly but it wouldn’t be uncommon to see one a month,” he said. “It’s amazing that never happened, that we never lost anybody.”

Others considered it a natural evolution for the FBI — and one consistent with its mission.

“There were definitely some voices that felt we shouldn’t be doing this — period,” said former FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, one of a host of current and former officials who are reflecting on the shift as U.S. forces wind down their combat mission in Afghanistan. “That wasn’t the director’s or my feeling on it. We thought prevention begins outside of the U.S.”

‘Not commandos’

In 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, exposing the woeful inadequacy of the German police when faced with committed hostage-takers. The attack jolted other countries into examining their counterterrorism capabilities. The FBI realized its response would have been little better than that of the Germans.

It took more than a decade for the United States to stand up an elite anti-terrorism unit. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was created in 1983, just before the Los Angeles Olympics.

At Fort Bragg, N.C., home to the Army’s Special Operations Command, Delta Force operators trained the agents, teaching them how to breach buildings and engage in close-quarter fighting, said Danny Coulson, who commanded the first HRT.

The team’s mission was largely domestic, although it did participate in select operations to arrest fugitives overseas, known in FBI slang as a “habeas grab.” In 1987, for instance, along with the CIA, agents lured a man suspected in an airline hijacking to a yacht off the coast of Lebanon and arrested him.

In 1989, a large HRT flew to St. Croix, Virgin Islands, to reestablish order after Hurricane Hugo. That same year, at the military’s request, it briefly deployed to Panama before the U.S. invasion.

The bureau continued to deepen its ties with the military, training with the Navy SEALs at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, based in Dam Neck, Va., and agents completed the diving phase of SEAL training in Coronado, Calif.

Sometimes lines blurred between the HRT and the military. During the 1993 botched assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., three Delta Force operators were on hand to advise. Waco, along with a fiasco the prior year at a white separatist compound at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, put the FBI on the defensive.

“The members of HRT are not commandos,” then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told lawmakers in 1995. “They are special agents of the FBI. Their goal has always been to save lives.”

After Sept. 11, the bureau took on a more aggressive posture.

In early 2003, two senior FBI counterterrorism officials traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the Joint Special Operations Command’s deputy commander at Bagram air base. The commander wanted agents with experience hunting fugitives and HRT training so they could easily integrate with JSOC forces.

“What JSOC realized was their networks were similar to the way the FBI went after organized crime,” said James Yacone, an assistant FBI director who joined the HRT in 1997 and later commanded it.

The pace of activity in Afghanistan was slow at first. An FBI official said there was less than a handful of HRT deployments to Afghanistan in those early months; the units primarily worked with the SEALs as they hunted top al-Qaeda targets.

“There was a lot of sitting around,” the official said.

The tempo quickened with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. At first, the HRT’s mission was mainly to protect other FBI agents when they left the Green Zone, former FBI officials said.

Then-Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal gradually pushed the agency to help the military collect evidence and conduct interviews during raids.

“As our effort expanded and . . . became faster and more complex, we felt the FBI’s expertise in both sensitive site exploitation and interrogations would be helpful — and they were,” a former U.S. military official said.

In 2005, all of the HRT members in Iraq began to work under JSOC. At one point, up to 12 agents were operating in the country, nearly a tenth of the unit’s shooters.

The FBI’s role raised thorny questions about the bureau’s rules of engagement and whether its deadly-force policy should be modified for agents in war zones.

“There was hand-wringing,” Yacone said. “These were absolutely appropriate legal questions to be asked and answered.”

Ultimately, the FBI decided that no change was necessary. Team members “were not there to be door kickers. They didn’t need to be in the stack,” Yacone said.

But the FBI’s alliance with JSOC continued to deepen. HRT members didn’t have to get approval to go on raids, and FBI agents saw combat night after night in the hunt for targets.

In 2008, with the FBI involved in frequent firefights, the bureau began taking a harder look at these engagements, seeking input from the military to make sure, in police terms, that each time an agent fired it was a “good shoot,” former FBI officials said.

‘Mission had changed’

Members of the FBI’s HRT unit left Iraq as the United States pulled out its forces. The bureau also began to reconsider its involvement in Afghanistan after nearly a dozen firefights involving agents embedded with the military and the wounding of an agent in Logar province in June 2010.

JSOC had shifted priorities, Joyce said, targeting Taliban and other local insurgents who were not necessarily plotting against the United States. Moreover, the number of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan had plummeted to fewer than 100, and many of its operatives were across the border, in Pakistan, where the military could not operate.

The FBI drew down in 2010 despite pleas from JSOC to stay.

“Our focus was al-Qaeda and threats to the homeland,” Joyce said. “The mission had changed.”

FBI-JSOC operations continue in other parts of the world. When Navy SEALs raided a yacht in the Gulf of Aden that Somali pirates had hijacked in 2011, an HRT agent followed behind them. After a brief shootout, the SEALs managed to take control of the yacht.

Two years later, in October 2013, an FBI agent with the HRT was with the SEALs when they stormed a beachfront compound in Somalia in pursuit of a suspect in the Nairobi mall attack that had killed dozens.

That same weekend, U.S. commandos sneaked into Tripoli, Libya, and apprehended a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist named Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai as he returned home in his car after morning prayers. He was whisked to a Navy ship in the Mediterranean and eventually to New York City for prosecution in federal court.

Word quickly leaked that Delta Force had conducted the operation. But the six Delta operators had help. Two FBI agents were part of the team that morning on the streets of Tripoli.

By Adam Goldman and Julie Tate, Published: April 10 E-mail the writers

Find this story at 10 April 2014

© 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Al Sharpton’s Secret Work As FBI Informant; Untold story of how activist once aided Mafia probes

APRIL 7–When friends and family members gathered recently at the White House for a private celebration of Michelle Obama’s 50th birthday, one of the invited partygoers was a former paid FBI Mafia informant.

That same man attended February’s state dinner in honor of French President Francois Hollande. He was seated with his girlfriend at a table adjacent to President Barack Obama, who is likely unaware that, according to federal agents, his guest once interacted with members of four of New York City’s five organized crime families. He even secretly taped some of those wiseguys using a briefcase that FBI technicians outfitted with a recording device.

The high-profile Obama supporter was also on the dais atop the U.S. Capitol steps last year when the president was sworn in for a second term. He was seated in front of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two rows behind Beyonce and Jay Z, and about 20 feet from Eric Holder, the country’s top law enforcement officer. As head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Holder leads an agency that once reported that Obama’s inauguration guest also had La Cosa Nostra contacts beyond Gotham, and engaged in “conversations with LCN members from other parts of the United States.”

The former mob snitch has become a regular in the White House, where he has met with the 44th president in the East Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Oval Office. He has also attended Obama Christmas parties, speeches, policy announcements, and even watched a Super Bowl with the First Family (an evening the man has called “one of the highlights of my life”). During these gatherings, he has mingled with cabinet members, top Obama aides, military leaders, business executives, and members of Congress. His former confederates were a decidedly dicier lot: ex-convicts, extortionists, heroin traffickers, and mob henchmen. The man’s surreptitious recordings, FBI records show, aided his government handlers in the successful targeting of powerful Mafia figures with nicknames like Benny Eggs, Chin, Fritzy, Corky, and Baldy Dom.

Later this week, Obama will travel to New York and appear in a Manhattan hotel ballroom at the side of the man whom FBI agents primarily referred to as “CI-7”–short for confidential informant #7–in secret court filings. In those documents, investigators vouched for him as a reliable, productive, and accurate source of information about underworld figures.

The ex-informant has been one of Obama’s most unwavering backers, a cheerleader who has nightly bludgeoned the president’s Republican opponents in televised broadsides. For his part, Obama has sought the man’s counsel, embraced him publicly, and saluted his “commitment to fight injustice and inequality.” The president has even commented favorably on his friend’s svelte figure, the physical manifestation of a rehabilitation effort that coincided with Obama’s ascension to the White House. This radical makeover has brought the man wealth, a daily TV show, bespoke suits, a luxury Upper West Side apartment, and a spot on best seller lists.

Most importantly, he has the ear of the President of the United States, an equally remarkable and perplexing achievement for the former FBI asset known as “CI-7,” the Rev. Al Sharpton.

A lengthy investigation by The Smoking Gun has uncovered remarkable details about Sharpton’s past work as an informant for a joint organized crime task force comprised of FBI agents and NYPD detectives, as well as his dealings with an assortment of wiseguys.

Beginning in the mid-1980s and spanning several years, Sharpton’s cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI’s principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country’s largest and most feared Mafia outfit. In addition to aiding the FBI/NYPD task force, which was known as the “Genovese squad,” Sharpton’s cooperation extended to several other investigative agencies.

TSG’s account of Sharpton’s secret life as “CI-7” is based on hundreds of pages of confidential FBI affidavits, documents released by the bureau in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, court records, and extensive interviews with six members of the Genovese squad, as well as other law enforcement officials to whom the activist provided assistance.

Like almost every other FBI informant, Sharpton was solely an information source. The parameters of his cooperation did not include Sharpton ever surfacing publicly or testifying on a witness stand.

Genovese squad investigators–representing both the FBI and NYPD–recalled how Sharpton, now 59, deftly extracted information from wiseguys. In fact, one Gambino crime family figure became so comfortable with the protest leader that he spoke openly–during ten wired face-to-face meetings–about a wide range of mob business, from shylocking and extortions to death threats and the sanity of Vincent “Chin” Gigante, the Genovese boss who long feigned mental illness in a bid to deflect law enforcement scrutiny. As the mafioso expounded on these topics, Sharpton’s briefcase–a specially customized Hartmann model–recorded his every word.

Task force members, who were interviewed separately, spoke on the condition of anonymity when describing Sharpton’s work as an informant and the Genovese squad’s activities. Some of these investigators provided internal FBI documents to a reporter.

Records obtained by TSG show that information gathered by Sharpton was used by federal investigators to help secure court authorization to bug two Genovese family social clubs, including Gigante’s Greenwich Village headquarters, three autos used by crime family leaders, and more than a dozen phone lines. These listening devices and wiretaps were approved during the course of a major racketeering investigation targeting the Genovese family’s hierarchy.

A total of eight separate U.S. District Court judges–presiding in four federal jurisdictions–signed interception orders that were based on sworn FBI affidavits including information gathered by Sharpton. The phones bugged as a result of these court orders included two lines in Gigante’s Manhattan townhouse, the home phone of Genovese captain Dominick “Baldy Dom” Canterino, and the office lines of music industry power Morris Levy, a longtime Genovese family associate. The resulting surreptitious recordings were eventually used to help convict an assortment of Mafia members and associates.

Investigators also used Sharpton’s information in an application for a wiretap on the telephone in the Queens residence of Federico “Fritzy” Giovanelli, a Genovese soldier. Giovanelli was sentenced to 20 years in prison for racketeering following a trial during which those recordings were played for jurors. In a recent interview, the 82-year-old Giovanelli–now three years removed from his latest stint in federal custody–said that he was unaware that Sharpton contributed in any fashion to his phone’s bugging. He then jokingly chided a reporter for inquiring about the civil rights leader’s past. “Poor Sharpton, he cleaned up his life and you want to ruin him,” Giovanelli laughed.

While Sharpton’s acrimonious history with law enforcement–especially the NYPD–rankled some Genovese squad investigators, they nonetheless grudgingly acknowledged in interviews that the activist produced for those he would go on to frequently pillory.

Genovese squad members, however, did not share with Sharpton specific details about how they were using the information he was gathering for them. This is standard practice since FBI affidavits in support of wiretap applications are filed under seal by Department of Justice prosecutors. Still, Sharpton was briefed in advance of his undercover sorties, so he was well aware of the squad’s investigative interest in Gigante and his Mafia cronies.

Sharpton vehemently denies having worked as an FBI informant. He has alleged that claims of government cooperation were attempts by dark forces to stunt his aggressive brand of civil rights advocacy or, perhaps, get him killed. In his most recent book, “The Rejected Stone,” which hit best seller lists following its October 2013 publication, Sharpton claimed to have once been “set up by the government,” whose agents later leaked “false information” that “could have gotten me killed.” He added, “So I have been seriously tested in what I believe over the years.”

In an interview Saturday, Sharpton again denied working as a confidential informant, claiming that his prior cooperation with FBI agents was limited to efforts to prompt investigations of drug dealing in minority communities, as well as the swindling of black artists in the recording industry. He also repeatedly denied being “flipped” by federal agents in the course of an undercover operation. When asked specifically about his recording of the Gambino crime family member, Sharpton was noncommittal: “I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no.”

If Sharpton’s account is to be believed, he was simply a concerned citizen who voluntarily (and briefly) joined arm-in-arm with federal agents, perhaps risking peril in the process. The other explanation for Sharpton’s cooperation–one that has uniformly been offered by knowledgeable law enforcement agents–presents the reverend in a less noble light. Worried that he could face criminal charges, Sharpton opted for the path of self-preservation and did what the FBI asked. Which is usually how someone is compelled to repeatedly record a gangster discussing murder, extortion, and loan sharking.

Sharpton spoke for an hour in an office at the House of Justice, his Harlem headquarters, where he had just finished addressing a crowd of about 200 people that included his two adult daughters and his second wife (from whom he has been separated for ten years). A few minutes into the interview, Sharpton asked, “Are you taping this?” A TSG reporter answered that he was not recording their interview, but had a digital recorder and wished to do so. Sharpton declined that request.

In the absence of any real examination/exhumation of Sharpton’s past involvement with the FBI and the Mafia, his denials have served the civil rights leader well. Scores of articles and broadcast reports about the Obama-era “rehabilitation” of Sharpton have mentioned his inflammatory past–Tawana Brawley, Crown Heights, Freddy’s Fashion Mart, and various anti-Semitic and homophobic statements. But his organized crime connections and related informant work have received no such scrutiny.

In a “60 Minutes” profile aired three months before the August 2011 launch of Sharpton’s MSNBC show, correspondent Lesley Stahl reported on the “tame” Sharpton’s metamorphosis from “loud mouth activist” to “trusted White House advisor who’s become the president’s go-to black leader.” As for prior underworld entanglements, those were quickly dispatched: “There were allegations of mob ties, never proved,” Stahl flatly declared.

As host of MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation,” Sharpton now reluctantly identifies himself as a member of the media, if not actually a journalist. He spends his time at 30 Rockefeller Plaza surrounded by reporters, editors, and researchers committed to accuracy and the exposure of those who violate the public trust. In fact, Sharpton himself delights in a daily feature that seeks to expose liars, hypocrites, and others engaged in deceit (his targets tend to be Republican opponents of the Obama administration). As he wraps this segment, Sharpton points his finger at the camera and addresses his quarry: “Nice try, but we gotcha!”

In addition to his MSNBC post, Sharpton heads the National Action Network, which describes itself as a “Christian activist organization.” Obama, who refers to Sharpton as “Rev” or “Reverend Al,” is scheduled to deliver a keynote address Friday at the group’s annual convention in New York City. Mayor Bill DeBlasio will preside Wednesday over the convention’s ribbon cutting ceremony, while Holder and three Obama cabinet secretaries will deliver speeches.

Sharpton has been a leading supporter of Holder, who spoke at the National Action Network’s 2012 convention and saluted the reverend for “your partnership, your friendship, and also for your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.” Last Friday, Sharpton appeared on a panel at a Department of Justice forum led by Tony West, the agency’s third-ranking official. West thanked Sharpton for his “leadership, day in and day out, on issues of reconciliation and community restoration.”

According to its most recent IRS return, which Sharpton signed in mid-November 2013, the National Action Network pays him $241,402 annually for serving as president and CEO. In return for that hefty salary, Sharpton–who hosts a three-hour daily radio show in addition to his nightly cable TV program–reportedly works a 40-hour week for the not-for-profit (which lists unpaid tax liabilities totaling $813,576).

For longtime observers, the “new” Sharpton’s public prominence and West Wing access is bewildering considering that his history, mob ties included, could charitably be described as checkered. In fact, Obama has banished others guilty of lesser transgressions (see: Wright, Jeremiah).

Sharpton now calls himself a “refined agitator,” an activist no longer prone to incendiary language or careless provocations. Indeed, a Google check confirms that it has been years since he labeled a detractor a “faggot,” used the term “homos,” or derisively referred to Jewish diamond merchants.

* * *

As an “informant in development,” as one federal investigator referred to Sharpton, the protest leader was seen as an intriguing prospective source, since he had significant contacts in politics, boxing, and the music industry.

Before he was “flipped” in the course of an FBI sting operation in 1983, Sharpton had established relationships with promoter Don King, various elected officials, and several powerful New York hoodlums involved in concert promotion, record distribution, and talent management. At the time, the music business was “overrun by hustlers, con artists, black and white,” Sharpton recalled in his 1996 autobiography. A federal agent who was not part of the Genovese squad–but who also used Sharpton as an informant–recalled that “everyone was trying to mine” his music industry ties.

In fact, by any measure, Sharpton himself was a Mafia “associate,” the law enforcement designation given to mob affiliates who, while not initiated, work with and for crime family members. While occupying the lowest rung on the LCN org chart–which is topped by a boss-underboss-consigliere triumvirate–associates far outnumber “made” men, and play central roles in a crime family’s operation, from money-making pursuits to more violent endeavors.

For more than four years, the fact that Sharpton was working as an informant was known only to members of the Genovese squad and a small number of other law enforcement agents. As with any Mafia informant, protecting Sharpton’s identity was crucial to maintaining the viability of ongoing investigations. Not to mention keeping him alive.

For example, an episode recounted by TSG sources highlighted the sensitive nature of Sharpton’s cooperation with the FBI/NYPD task force.

In advance of seeking court authorization to bug a pair of Genovese family social clubs and a Cadillac used by Gigante and Canterino, a draft version of a wiretap affidavit was circulated for review within the Genovese squad, which operated from the FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters. The 53-page document, which detailed the “probable cause” to believe that listening devices would yield incriminating conversations, concerned some investigators due to the degree to which the activities of Sharpton were described in the document.

While the affidavit prepared by FBI Agent Gerald King and a federal prosecutor only referred to Sharpton as “CI-7,” the document included the name of a Gambino mobster whom Sharpton taped, as well as the dates and details of five of their recorded meetings. Such specificity was problematic since the possibility existed that the affidavit’s finalized version could someday be turned over to defense lawyers in the discovery phase of a criminal trial.

Investigators fretted that Sharpton could easily be unmasked by the Gambino member, who, if ever questioned about his meetings with “CI-7,” would surely realize that Sharpton was the wired informant referred to in the FBI affidavit. That discovery, of course, could have placed Sharpton’s life in grave danger. The Gambino wiseguy, too, likely would have faced trouble, since he was recorded speaking about a wide range of Mafia matters, including Gigante’s illegal operations. The Genovese power–rightly paranoid about bugged phones and listening devices–famously forbid fellow gangsters from even speaking his name. In fact, if a wiseguy had to refer to Gigante during an in-person meeting, a quick stroke of the chin was the acceptable means of identification.

In response to concerns about the King affidavit, the draft, which a source provided to TSG, was rewritten to carefully shroud Sharpton’s work with government agents. The affidavit’s final version–which was submitted to two federal judges–no longer included the disclosure that “CI-7” had “consensually recorded his conversations” with a gangster. The wiseguy’s name was also deleted from the document, as was any reference to the Gambino family or the informant’s sex.

Instead, the revamped affidavit simply noted that “CI-7 reported” to the FBI various details of Genovese family rackets. The actual source of that valuable intelligence about Gigante & Co. had been carefully obscured. As were the details of how that information was obtained via Sharpton’s battery-powered valise.

But despite efforts like this to protect Sharpton, some details of his informant work leaked out in January 1988, when New York Newsday reported that the civil rights activist had cooperated with federal investigations targeting organized crime figures and Don King. Though he reportedly made incriminating admissions to the newspaper, Sharpton quickly issued vehement denials that he had snitched on anyone.

While acknowledging contact with law enforcement officials, Sharpton–then involved in the early stages of the Tawana Brawley hoax–said he sought the help of investigators to combat the crack cocaine epidemic ravaging New York’s poorest communities. Sharpton also claimed to have contacted agents (and pledged his assistance) after a Mafia associate allegedly threatened him over a music industry dispute.

Sharpton asserted that a phone installed in his Brooklyn apartment by federal investigators in mid-1987 was there to serve as a “hotline” for the public to report drug dealing. He flatly denied recording phone conversations at the direction of law enforcement agents. In one radio interview, Sharpton even declared, “We have an ethical thing against wiretapping.”

In fact, Sharpton had been cooperating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn as part of an investigation targeting Don King. According to a source involved with that probe, federal agents “ran him for a couple of months,” during which time Sharpton “did some recordings” via his new home telephone. But the nascent Department of Justice operation was abruptly shuttered in the wake of the New York Newsday story.

The Brooklyn investigators were introduced to Sharpton in late-1987 by Joseph Spinelli, one of the reverend’s former FBI handlers (and one of the agents who initially secured his cooperation with the bureau). While Spinelli had left the FBI for another government post, he still helped facilitate Sharpton’s interaction with other investigators. “Joe was shopping him around,” one source recalled.

For example, in July 1987, Spinelli called a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and offered Sharpton’s assistance with a matter the lawyer was handling. The case involved Salvatore Pisello, a mobbed-up music industry figure who had just been indicted for tax evasion (and whom Sharpton had previously accused of threatening his life).

Referring to Sharpton, ex-prosecutor Marvin Rudnick said in an interview, “I didn’t know who he was” when Spinelli called. In subsequent conversations with Rudnick, Sharpton provided information about Pisello and a related music industry matter that was being scrutinized by Justice Department investigators.

While Sharpton would not prove particularly helpful to Rudnick, the attorney clearly recalled his brief, unorthodox dealings with the New York activist. “I remember having to go to a pay phone to take the call because he didn’t want it to be traced,” Rudnick laughed.

* * *

So why did Sharpton agree to become an FBI informant? And why was he willing to risk the dangers inherent in such cooperation?

“He thought he didn’t have a choice,” one Genovese squad agent recalled.

In the course of an investigation being run by Spinelli and his partner John Pritchard, Sharpton was secretly recorded in meetings with an FBI undercover agent posing as a wealthy drug dealer seeking to promote boxing matches.

As previously reported, Colombo crime family captain Michael Franzese, who knew Sharpton, enlisted the activist’s help in connecting with Don King. Franzese and Sharpton were later surreptitiously filmed during one meeting with the undercover, while Sharpton and Daniel Pagano, a Genovese soldier, were recorded at another sit-down. Pagano’s father Joseph was a Genovese power deeply involved in the entertainment industry (and who also managed the crime family’s rackets in counties north of New York City).

During one meeting with Sharpton, the undercover agent offered to get him “pure coke” at $35,000 a kilo. As the phony drug kingpin spoke, Sharpton nodded his head and said, “I hear you.” When the undercover promised Sharpton a 10 percent finder’s fee if he could arrange the purchase of several kilos, the reverend referred to an unnamed buyer and said, “If he’s gonna do it, he’ll do it much more than that.” The FBI agent steered the conversation toward the possible procurement of cocaine, sources said, since investigators believed that Sharpton acquaintance Daniel Pagano–who was not present–was looking to consummate drug deals. Joseph Pagano, an East Harlem native who rose through a Genovese crew notorious for narcotics trafficking, spent nearly seven years in federal prison for heroin distribution.

While Sharpton did not explicitly offer to arrange a drug deal, some investigators thought his interaction with the undercover agent could be construed as a violation of federal conspiracy laws. Though an actual prosecution, an ex-FBI agent acknowledged, would have been “a reach,” agents decided to approach Sharpton and attempt to “flip” the activist, who was then shy of his 30th birthday. In light of Sharpton’s relationship with Don King, FBI agents wanted his help in connection with the bureau’s three-year-old boxing investigation, code named “Crown Royal” and headed by Spinelli and Pritchard.

The FBI agents confronted Sharpton with the undercover videos and warned that he could face criminal charges as a result of the secret recordings. Sharpton, of course, could have walked out and ran to King, Franzese, or Pagano and reported the FBI approach (and the fact that drug dealer “Victor Quintana” was actually a federal agent).

In subsequent denials that he had been “flipped,” Sharpton has contended that he stiffened in the face of the FBI agents, meeting their bluff with bluster and bravado. He claimed to have turned away Spinelli & Co., daring them to “Indict me” and “Prosecute.” Sharpton has complained that the seasoned investigators were “trying to sting me, entrap me…a young minister.”

In fact, Sharpton fell for the FBI ruse and agreed to cooperate, a far-reaching decision he made without input from a lawyer, according to sources. “I think there was some fear [of prosecution] on his part,” recalled a former federal agent. In a TSG interview, Sharpton claimed that he rebuffed the FBI agents, who, he added, threatened to serve him with a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury investigating King. After being confronted by the bureau, Sharpton said he consulted with an attorney (whom he declined to identify).

Following bureau guidelines, agents formally opened a “137” informant file on Sharpton, a move that was approved by FBI supervisors, according to several sources. Agents anticipated using Sharpton in the “Crown Royal” case focusing on King, but during initial debriefings of their new recruit, it became clear that his contacts in the music business were equally appealing.

Sharpton had met James Brown in the mid-70s, and became extremely close to the R&B superstar. He worked for and traveled with the mercurial performer, married one of Brown’s backup singers, and wore the same processed hairdo as the entertainer. Like Brown, Sharpton would sometimes even wear a cowboy hat atop his tribute conk.

It was first through executives at Spring Records, a small Manhattan-based label affiliated with Brown, that Sharpton–who worked from the firm’s office–was introduced to various wiseguys, including Franzese. His circle of mob contacts would grow to include, among others, the Paganos, Carmine DeNoia, an imposing Pagano associate known as “Wassel,” and Joseph “Joe Bana” Buonanno, a Gambino crime family figure involved in record distribution and production.

At one point before he was “flipped,” Sharpton participated in a mob scheme to create a business front that would seek a share of lucrative Con Edison set-asides intended for minority-owned businesses. That deal, which involved garbage collection contracts, cratered when the power company determined that Sharpton’s silent partner was Genovese captain Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello. Details of the Con Ed plot emerged at a federal criminal trial of Ianniello and his business partner Benjamin Cohen. It was Cohen, who worked across the hall from Spring Records, who recruited Sharpton for the mob garbage gambit.

After his attempted detour into waste management, Sharpton returned his focus to the music industry, which, as he observed in his first book, “is an extremely dirty endeavor, because it is a cash business.” Sharpton continued, “Music is a street business, and that’s where organized crime is, on the street.” Still, he noted, “I wanted to learn more.”

One of Sharpton’s teachers was an ex-con named Robert Curington, a music producer with a questionable history.

Curington, a standout running back at North Carolina Central University, played for several pro teams until injuries forced his retirement in 1969. He transitioned into music management and teamed with legendary WBLS DJ Frankie Crocker to promote concerts featuring R&B acts like Barry White, The Dramatics, and The O’Jays. At the time, Curington had a desk inside the Broadway office of Calla Records, a small soul label headed by Nate McCalla, a Morris Levy bodyguard/sidekick. McCalla, who was murdered in 1980, was, according to an NYPD report, also connected with Colombo crime family underboss John “Sonny” Franzese, father of Michael.

In addition to his music pursuits, Curington also distributed heroin, according to Drug Enforcement Administration records.

Curington was twice indicted on federal narcotics trafficking charges. After being acquitted in a 1975 case, he was arrested again in 1977 after agents found a kilo of heroin inside a briefcase in a cream-colored Thunderbird carrying Curington and pal Frank Townsend, DEA agents reported.

According to prosecution filings in the second case, federal agents had twice observed Curington “transacting sales of heroin with a DEA informant” months prior to his arrest with Townsend. In a court opinion, a federal judge declared that the men “were known by the DEA agents to be major narcotics traffickers.” Curington was more charitable in his description of Townsend, whom he identified in one court filing as a fellow concert promoter who was “also in the adhesives business.”

After a mistrial, Curington pleaded guilty to a single count related to the receipt of 480 bars of mannite, which traffickers use to cut heroin. In August 1978, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison on the felony charge, and ordered to serve three years of “special parole” upon his release from custody. The mannite, according to court and DEA records, had been delivered by an undercover agent to the Upper West Side apartment of Curington’s girlfriend.

Curington, who was married with two young daughters, was also dating Sylvia Rhone after meeting the 25-year-old at Buddah Records, where she worked as an assistant. As a DEA informant sought to arrange the mannite delivery, he called Rhone in an effort to locate Curington. The informant told Rhone that Curington “asked me to get something for him and I contacted these people and I got it for him…and I’m sitting on it and holding it,” according to a DEA transcript of the recorded conversation. “Well, I think you should keep trying you know,” Rhone replied.

Rhone, who was not charged in the narcotics case, would later become the music industry’s most influential female executive. Now 62, Rhone has previously headed the Elektra Entertainment Group and Universal Motown Records. Last month, she was appointed president of Epic Records, whose artist roster includes Michael Jackson, Prince, Outkast, and Ozzy Osbourne.

While Curington was helping Rhone pay the rent on her West 90th Street apartment, his wife and children were living in New Jersey. As he explained in a letter to his sentencing judge, Curington’s “heart was in New York and the hearth was in New Jersey.”

Curington’s kin had decamped to the Garden State after two gunmen forced their way into the family’s Upper East Side apartment and demanded money. One of the intruders accompanied Curington to a Chemical Bank branch, where he retrieved $11,000 from a safe deposit box. The other gunman held Curington’s pregnant wife hostage in the apartment until his partner received the cash. When Curington returned to his home, he found his wife tied to a chair, but otherwise unharmed. The gunmen, dressed as maintenance workers, also stole nearly $4000 in jewelry.

A New York Times story about the home invasion described Curington as a “musical booking agent,” but made no mention that the crime appeared to be a by-product of his other business interests.

In recent interviews, Curington, 72, described the mobbed-up Levy as his “rabbi.” Remarking on the wide influence of the Genovese crime family associate, who was worth $59 million at the time of his death, Curington said, “We all served the same God.” Curington, who was valued as a record promoter due to his friendship with Crocker, also spoke of working closely with Buonanno, a former Levy partner, and meeting with Joseph Pagano to get the Genovese soldier’s approval for certain music business endeavors.

As for Sharpton, Curington said that he worked closely with the activist when Sharpton was “young and stupid and broke” and seeking to pressure large music labels and concert promoters into spending more money in the black community. Sharpton threatened to organize pickets and boycotts unless a target handed over money–usually in the form of a contribution to the National Youth Movement, the predecessor organization to Sharpton’s National Action Network. Sometimes, a block of concert tickets could also quash a protest.

The youth group’s finances were in shambles, and Sharpton never bothered to file tax returns or New York State disclosure forms for the not-for-profit. Curington, who Sharpton named the organization’s “Vice President of Industrial Affairs,” helped the preacher organize demonstrations during which Sharpton splashed red paint on buildings that he identified as crack houses. Amidst all the newspaper and TV coverage of Sharpton’s stunts, nobody noticed that the reverend’s sidekick was a convicted felon familiar with the wholesale end of the narcotics business.

While working with Sharpton, Curington was also partners with Buonanno, who owned a thriving record distribution business headquartered in an upper Manhattan warehouse, as well as several retail record stores. Curington and Buonanno, a volatile chain smoker, operated the Bullseye and Friends & Co. record labels, which specialized in Latin, Disco, and R&B releases. They shared producing credits on singer Esther Williams’s 1981 album “Inside of Me,” with Buonanno identified in the liner notes by his alias, “Joe Bana.”

Of the two partners, Curington had the “ears” and musical ability. Buonanno, as Curington testified in a 2008 civil deposition, was not “musically inclined.” Curington added that Buonanno “spoke heavy Italian. He was a wise guy.”

Buonanno grew up in East Harlem with Joseph Pagano, “Wassel” DeNoia, and an assortment of future hoodlums. He dropped out of high school after two years and joined the Marine Corps in 1943, only to soon go AWOL. Buonanno was subsequently arrested, court martialed, and sentenced to three years in prison, according to court records. He served about a year in custody and rejoined the Corps for 18 months of post-war service (which was split between China, Japan, Guam, and the Caroline Islands). He came back to New York and worked as a salvage operator and trucker before landing a job as general manager of an East Harlem-based garbage company owned by his uncles.

Buonanno returned to federal custody in 1961 for his role in the sale of nearly half-a-kilo of heroin to an undercover Treasury Department agent (who paid about $6000 for the drug during a meet at a Queens motel). At trial, Buonanno, then 35, made it seem he was a naïf when it came to narcotics. During cross-examination by a federal prosecutor, Buonanno was asked, “Do you know what junk is?” He replied, “Before this courtroom, I always thought it took place in the junk shop.” In reply to a inquiry about his knowledge of heroin, Buonanno testified, “I read about it in the papers.”

A federal jury later convicted both Buonanno and Francis Kenny on a pair of felony drug charges. Buonanno, though, handled the guilty verdict better than his 28-year-old codefendant. Immediately following the duo’s conviction, Kenny, while being escorted by a pair of marshals to a courthouse jail cell, broke free and dove over a stairway bannister, plunging about three floors to his death.

Sentenced to five years in custody, Buonanno did some of that time in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania lockup where “Chin” Gigante was concurrently incarcerated for heroin distribution, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records.

Buonanno did not, however, serve his full sentence, thanks to a successful petition for executive clemency that argued he played a limited role in the heroin transaction. In a memo written two weeks after his brother was assassinated, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy noted that he was willing to give Buonanno “some benefit of doubt,” and recommended that the felon’s sentence be immediately commuted. In March 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson granted Buonanno’s clemency bid, springing him from prison a year early.

***

After Sharpton agreed to cooperate with the FBI, agents debriefed him in an effort to identify avenues of investigation for which he could be helpful. Initially, the bureau adopted a “shotgun approach” when it came to their new confidential source, recalled one Genovese squad member. Sharpton, the investigator added, was an “informant in development” whom agents sent out to gather information from a wide variety of contacts. While Sharpton circulated in several target-rich environments, his greatest value would prove to involve mobsters.

Sharpton told his FBI handlers about his prior involvement with several Mafia figures, including Genovese soldier Joseph Pagano, whose entertainment industry investments spanned decades. According to FBI files, Pagano–who federal agents suspected of involvement in several underworld hits–once used the Copacabana nightclub as his de facto office, and had interests in talent management and booking firms.

Bureau sources reported that Pagano controlled singer Sammy Davis Jr., engaged in kickback schemes with several Columbia Records executives, had been offered an ownership interest in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, and even “lost a big roll [of money] to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.” These pursuits were slightly more glamorous than Pagano’s shylock book in Pomona or his numbers operation in Mamaroneck.

In addition to probing Pagano’s racketeering activity, agents even sought to substantiate an informant report about the mobster’s private life. The bureau’s J. Edgar Hoover-era source indicated that when Pagano was jailed in upstate New York’s Sing Sing prison, he turned gay after engaging in “homosexual activities.”

Pagano was also extremely close to Rodney Dangerfield, who performed at the wiseguy-choked 1973 nuptials of the hoodlum’s son Daniel, as well as the 1977 wedding of Pagano’s daughter, according to FBI records.

Before his comedy career took off, Dangerfield–then known as Jack Roy–sold aluminum siding door-to-door, a tin man who pleaded guilty in 1955 to six criminal charges after investigators determined that he was fraudulently securing Federal Housing Administration loans in the names of customers. Dangerfield received a one-year suspended prison sentence and probation for those crimes (the disclosure of which the comedian successfully kept under wraps).

So, like Pagano, Dangerfield was a convicted felon who knew what it was like to be investigated by the FBI. In fact, the young agent who arrested Dangerfield went on to spend more than a decade heading the organized crime division in the FBI’s New York City headquarters.

Sharpton told investigators that he thought Pagano felt “indebted” to him because he once helped broker a business meeting for Pagano with Muhammad Ali and representatives of the boxer, who was then retired. Sharpton had also met with Pagano at a National Association of Recording Merchandisers convention in Florida and at the wiseguy’s residence. Additionally, Sharpton met with Pagano’s son Daniel in Florida, at a Manhattan office, and the Stage Deli.

Sharpton also relayed to agents one of the elder Pagano’s favorite Dangerfield stories. The comedian, Pagano told Sharpton, spun a tale about how he was once pressured by a mobster who was trying to move in on a nightclub the performer owned. Dangerfield claimed the hoodlum demanded to know who the entertainer was “with,” shorthand for someone’s Mafia affiliation. “What do you mean? I’m here with my brother,” the clueless Dangerfield replied. The flustered mobster then reworded his inquiry, saying, “No, I mean who’s your rabbi?” To which the star answered, “Rabbi Horowitz!” The pair’s back-and-forth abruptly ended, Dangerfield claimed, with him getting smacked in the mouth. The story, apocryphal as it may have been, was a hit among underworld audiences.

After Sharpton’s initial debriefings were completed, his role with the FBI transitioned, as one investigator recalled, from “informational to operational.” This shift roughly coincided with the formation of the first Joint Organized Crime Task Force, which paired FBI agents with New York City detectives (each agency initially contributed about six investigators and a couple of cars to the task force).

The group, which would come to be called the “Genovese squad,” was headed by Henry Flinter, a veteran NYPD investigator, and FBI Agent John Pritchard, who was Sharpton’s handler. In this role, Pritchard would occasionally pay Sharpton small amounts of money, according to a Genovese squad member.

As the task force ramped up, its members reviewed both FBI and NYPD files, as well as informant, physical surveillance, and electronic surveillance reports. As a result, the squad’s first target became clear: Vincent “Chin” Gigante. The feared mob boss had eluded prosecution for 20 years, a period during which he rose to power within the crime family named after Vito Genovese (for whom Gigante once worked as a chauffeur/bodyguard).

The Genovese squad’s investigative plan was simple: Gather up fresh intelligence on the illegal activities of Gigante and his crew, then use that material to secure court-authorized listening devices that could yield valuable evidence against Mafia members and associates. Recalling the task force’s early investigative steps, one NYPD representative said, “We were building towards a wire.”

And that is where Al Sharpton entered the picture.

Investigators were particularly interested in the relationship Morris Levy had with the Genovese family’s leadership. The music industry power, who founded the legendary Birdland jazz club, owned Roulette Records and the Strawberries chain of retail music stores, and had muscled his way into control of the publishing rights of a massive song catalog.

Levy was also notorious for hijacking songwriting credits in order to guarantee himself ongoing royalty payments. Most famously, he claimed to have co-written “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” with 13-year-old Frankie Lymon. The mogul, who made a career of gypping R&B artists, also held a stake in Sugar Hill Records, the pioneering New Jersey rap label whose artists included Kurtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Despite being married and divorced five times, Levy was still worth in excess of $50 million, and had become the most valuable of underworld commodities–a reliable “earner.”

Levy was closely aligned with Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, a Genovese captain who ran the family’s Greenwich Village crew, which included Gigante and two of his brothers. Eboli, who vacationed in Italy with Levy and had a stake in several of his companies, was rubbed out in 1972, two years after becoming the family’s acting boss. Control of Levy eventually passed to Gigante and his older brother Mario.

Another Gigante sibling was also extremely close to Levy. Father Louis Gigante frequently socialized with the businessman, who gave the Roman Catholic priest a small property adjacent to his 1500-acre “Sunnyview Farm” in upstate Ghent, New York (which Levy used to entertain top record company executives, as well as the likes of McCalla, DeNoia, Curington, and Buonanno). Along with the free acre of land, Levy gave the priest a $32,000 mortgage at half the prevailing interest rate, according to real estate records. Gigante then built a ranch-style home on his property, which slopes down to a large pond.

[Though Sharpton never met “Chin” Gigante or his two brothers who were also Genovese members, the reverend did once cross paths with Father Gigante at the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Sharpton was there in support of a Demoratic congressman on trial, while Gigante was at the opposite end of the sixth floor attending his brother’s racketeering trial. During a break in both cases, Gigante–who himself was once know for staging street protests–approached Sharpton and introduced himself. The men shook hands and spoke briefly, out of earshot of a reporter.]

While Sharpton was circulating among mob-tied music industry figures, the Genovese squad was scrambling to develop background dossiers on their informant’s new acquaintances.

Investigators specifically focused on Buonanno, who had once been partners in M.R.J. Record Distributors with Levy and Eboli. In interviews, several Genovese squad members said that Daniel Pagano introduced Sharpton to Buonanno, effectively vouching for the activist. Curington, on the other hand, told TSG that he made the introduction.

In search of background on Buonanno, Genovese squad members reviewed FBI files that yielded little more than the New Jersey resident’s affiliation with the Gambino family, and the fact that agents had interviewed him years earlier about his sale of counterfeit Bob Dylan records. Buonanno–who told agents his name was “Joe Bana”–was not charged in connection with that piracy probe.

As detailed in a series of FBI memos, the Genovese squad first asked a supervisor in the bureau’s Newark office for information on Buonanno’s telephone number. Then squad members began surveilling Buonanno’s tidy split-level home in leafy New Milford, where a BMW and Mercedes-Benz were parked in the driveway. At one point, agents were able to photograph the balding wiseguy, who was partial to zipper jackets. Each of the FBI memos noted that information about Buonanno was being developed in the course of a racketeering investigation of Gigante and his Genovese crew.

In a second 1984 memo seeking help from Newark agents, a Genovese squad member wrote that Buonanno had recently been seen with Joe Pagano and another member of the Genovese family. Buonanno, the agent wrote, was affiliated with the recording industry in New York City, and was allegedly reported to be a made man “afforded a great deal of respect.”

About two months after the Genovese squad began researching Buonanno, investigators decided it was time that their “shotgun approach” with Sharpton directed some spray at the Gambino crime family figure.

Carrying the wired briefcase, Sharpton met with Buonanno on a Wednesday afternoon and recorded their conversation. While it was a short and uneventful encounter, the pair’s next meeting would prove valuable for the Genovese squad.

Three weeks after their first meeting, Buonanno opened up to Sharpton about Levy’s affiliation with “Chin” Gigante, as well as his own rocky partnership with Levy and Eboli. That business relationship soured, Buonanno recalled, after Levy accused Buonanno’s brother of stealing from their record distribution company. Buonanno told Sharpton that Levy asked Eboli to murder his brother, a request that was brought before the mob’s ruling “Commission” since two different Mafia families were involved in the dispute. Buonanno recounted that Levy’s hit demand was ultimately denied, according to an FBI summary of the second taped Sharpton-Buonanno meeting.

Over the following months, Sharpton met with Buonanno eight more times, surreptitiously recording the Gambino member on each occasion. During these encounters, an expansive Buonanno spoke about Gigante’s stranglehold on Levy, the hoodlum’s share of Levy’s retail chain, and how the businessman put up money for members of Gigante’s crew to purchase real estate.

Buonanno also told Sharpton that Joseph Pagano had, over the prior two years, sought to have Levy killed due to his intercession in an extortion scheme. While that beef was eventually settled without bloodshed, said Buonanno, Levy was ordered to pay Pagano $100,000 following a Genovese family sit-down. Confiding that Levy had frequently tried to end his relationship with the Genovese gang, Buonanno told Sharpton that the wealthy businessman “has only one way out.” Buonanno then “gestured like someone pointing a gun and pulling the trigger,” according to an FBI affidavit.

During one recorded meeting, Buonanno said that he had “learned a lot” from mob boss Carlo Gambino, whom he credited with shaping his career. He also spoke with Sharpton about a broad range of other Mafia topics, from loan sharks and numbers runners to a proposed African diamond deal and Gigante’s purported illiteracy.

Buonanno told Sharpton that he was “in the joint with ‘Chin,’” adding that the Genovese boss “hates everyone not Italian.” He also claimed that Gigante “was present” at the Eboli rubout to “make sure it was done right,” since his Greenwich Village crew “hated Tommy Ryan.” Gigante, Buonanno declared, “is a throwback to 1930’s mobsters,” according to an FBI summary.

Recalling Sharpton’s taping of Buonanno, an NYPD representative on the Genovese squad marveled, “Joe Bana just gave him a whole insight into how ‘Chin’ and Morris operated.” The source told of serving on a surveillance team during one Sharpton-Buonanno meeting at a Manhattan restaurant. The investigator accompanied squad leaders Pritchard and Flinter to a spot several blocks from the Upper East Side eatery, where they met up with Sharpton and handed him the wired briefcase. After eyeballing the restaurant while Sharpton was inside, the task force members reconnected with their informant after the meeting and retrieved the briefcase.

Sharpton, whose handlers prepped him in advance of each Buonanno meeting, was also debriefed following those encounters. Each of his tapes was reviewed by multiple investigators, and one agent was responsible for preparing a detailed written recap of what was discussed on the recordings.

Known as a “Summary of Pertinent Intercept,” those individual documents were released to TSG in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the FBI. Before turning over the records, however, bureau officials redacted Sharpton’s name from the material (click here to view a representative report). Since Buonanno is deceased, his name appears in the reports because he is no longer entitled to Privacy Act protections. The “Non-telephone” intercept summaries were not contained in Buonanno’s personal FBI dossier, but rather in separate files related to the racketeering investigation of Gigante and his Genovese cohorts.

When asked about Sharpton’s ability to draw out Buonanno on sensitive mob matters, a Genovese squad investigator said the informant excelled at “playing dumb.” But that analysis fails to recognize that Sharpton is quick on his feet and has been a gifted extemporaneous speaker since his days as a young Pentecostal “wonder preacher.” It is not hard to imagine that Sharpton could have easily kept his apprehensions in check and got Buonanno talking.

[Though he has become more disciplined and less voluble, Sharpton has always been personable and easy to talk to, as most journalists could attest. Though he blamed this reporter for instigating a criminal investigation that resulted in his indictment for tax evasion, Sharpton never failed to accept subsequent phone calls or lunch invitations. In fact, he even made an appearance at this reporter’s 1995 bachelor party, invited by friends of the groom, who was not told Sharpton would be a surprise guest.]

During the months that Sharpton was secretly recording Buonanno, he was simultaneously agitating for a role in a lucrative concert tour featuring Michael Jackson and his brothers. Though Don King was involved in the promotion of the “Victory Tour” of stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, Sharpton argued that the Jacksons were not giving enough back to the community that supported them since their days on the “black chitlin’ circuit.”

In the face of boycott threats, Sharpton was named to head the Jackson tour’s “Pride Patrol,” a hastily assembled community outreach program. In his autobiography, Sharpton wrote that he was given a $500,000 budget to cover the distribution of free tickets during the 55-concert tour. He also claimed to have used some of the funds to “make donations” and hire poor kids to work security in the 22 cities the Jacksons visited. At one tour stop, a sweatsuit-clad Sharpton and some “Pride Patrol” enlistees presented Jackson with a framed certificate proclaiming that, “The Victory Tour Did Not Sell Out.”

“I was later accused of extorting money from the Jacksons,” wrote Sharpton, who also was accused of scalping “Victory Tour” tickets. He denied those charges.

Genovese squad members were aware of their informant’s “Victory Tour” involvement, since Sharpton was reporting back on his dealings with King. At one point, FBI agents learned that Sharpton could possibly accompany Michael Jackson to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Ronald Reagan. The prospect of allowing an active FBI informant to enter the White House–without telling anyone of Sharpton’s secret status as a cooperator–caused unease with FBI brass.

White House records of Jackson’s meeting with Reagan, which came two months before the “Victory Tour” launch, show that Sharpton was not among the singer’s traveling party that May morning. An FBI source could not recall if investigators asked Sharpton not to attend the South Lawn ceremony, or whether he ultimately did not rate Jackson’s guest list.

The “Victory Tour” sinecure came at an opportune time for the unemployed Sharpton since he was not flush–occasional payments from his FBI handler amounted to little more than “walking-around” money, as one investigator recalled. In fact, Curington said, Sharpton actually had to borrow money from Buonanno so that he could travel to join the Jackson tour (where promoters only disbursed money after concerts).

Curington, who began working with Buonanno in 1975, said that he thought his partner wanted Sharpton’s help in getting involved with the “Victory Tour.” Curington said Buonanno also believed Sharpton could somehow help him get a particular artist signed to a music label. When TSG first spoke with Curington last year, he said it was “no secret” that Buonanno was a “wiseguy.” He then added, unprompted, “I can’t say what he did with the Gambinos.” A reporter had not previously specified Buonanno’s crime family affiliation.

Buonanno, said Curington, had a low opinion of Sharpton, and called the 300-pound preacher a “nose picker” behind his back. The gangster, who died of throat cancer in 1998, might have resorted to harsher actions had he ever learned about Sharpton’s secret life as “CI-7.”

Armed with Sharpton’s tapes and other fresh intelligence, the Genovese squad teamed with federal prosecutors to prepare a series of wiretap applications targeting “Chin” Gigante and his closest aides, including Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, Louis “Bobby” Manna, Dominick “Baldy Dom” Canterino, other made men, and crime family associates like Morris Levy.

Federal judges in New York City, New Jersey, and upstate New York subsequently granted permission for the wiretapping of numerous telephones and the placement of listening devices inside Genovese social clubs and a series of vehicles used by Canterino to chauffeur Gigante. Each of those U.S. District Court applications included information gathered via Sharpton’s briefcase.

But not every bugging attempt went smoothly.

The squad’s first attempt to wire Canterino’s auto ended disastrously. The Cadillac was parked in front of the hoodlum’s home when an FBI agent broke into the auto early one morning and drove off with the car (which was to be quickly returned to its spot after the listening device was planted). “Piece of cake,” the agent radioed to nearby surveillance agents as he drove away in Canterino’s ride. “You’re burned,” replied a panicked NYPD detective who spotted Canterino at the window of his Brooklyn house watching his vehicle get stolen.

“In retrospect, it was like a Keystone comedy,” laughed a former FBI agent who was on Canterino’s Gravesend block that day. “But it wasn’t so funny when it occurred.”

The Cadillac would later be destroyed in an arson fire, prompting the Genovese squad to seek judicial permission to bug Canterino’s new Dodge. The “probable cause” for the second application included material from Sharpton’s recordings. When it became clear that Canterino had switched to a third vehicle, another Cadillac, agents got permission to place a listening device in that car. Again, the court application relied, in part, on Sharpton’s taped conversations with Buonanno.

Canterino, an ex-longshoreman who had a forearm tattoo of an anchor with the word “Mom” inscribed within it, later told Genovese squad investigators he could not fathom how the bureau succeeded in bugging his car (albeit on the third try). Sitting in a Brooklyn diner with FBI agents Michael Ross and Ronald Parker Pearson, Canterino said he “prided himself as being an excellent burglar, and it was his own anti-theft device which he had installed in the automobile,” according to an FBI interview report.

The Genovese squad also received court authorization to wiretap phones in Levy’s Manhattan office and his farm. Two lines in the Upper East Side residence of Gigante’s mistress were also bugged. That home, a townhouse between Park and Madison avenues, was purchased by Levy in 1981 for $520,000. Two years later, he sold the four-story property to Olympia Esposito, with whom Gigante had three children, for just $16,000. The Levy and Esposito wiretaps provided federal investigators with a detailed overview of how the businessman funneled millions in stock, cash, and other assets to Gigante’s paramour.

The section of the FBI wiretap affidavits containing the fruits of Sharpton’s cooperation was titled “The Extortion From and Control of Morris Levy.” The initial November 1984 affidavit, which had to be rewritten to further mask Sharpton’s identity, noted that the confidential informant had been providing information to the bureau for more than a year. The source learned of the information provided to investigators “through conversations with members of four of the LCN families in New York City, as well as in conversations with LCN members from other parts of the United States,” according to the affidavit.

As detailed in the various affidavits, the informant told FBI agents about Gigante’s control over Levy, how the mob associate was a “source of ready cash” for the Genovese gang, and that the only way Levy could escape the Mafia’s clutch was via his own death. The material placed in the affidavit was lifted directly from the bureau’s summaries of Sharpton’s meetings with Buonanno. While most of the FBI affidavits made it seem that “CI-7” was the primary source of information about Levy, Gigante, and Pagano, a latter court filing provided a more precise picture of how the informant operated. That affidavit reported that the snitch was “advised by a member of an LCN family” about the Genovese family rackets.

The electronic surveillance carried out by the Genovese squad eventually proved devastating to Levy, Canterino, and an assortment of wiseguys who would be convicted, in part, based on those surreptitious recordings (for which Sharpton helped establish the “probable cause”).

A month before Levy’s arrest on federal extortion charges, a pair of FBI agents went to his Roulette Records office to serve a grand jury subpoena for business records. While there, the investigators told Levy he had been the subject of electronic surveillance in the course of the Genovese squad probe. According to an FBI report memorializing the encounter, the agents told Levy that his life “may be in jeopardy due to the implication of Olympia Esposito and Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante in the criminal investigation stemming from the activities of Levy.”

Levy, though, made it clear that “flipping” was not in his future. Remarking that he knew what the “rules” were, Levy told agents William Confrey and Stephen Steinhauser that he had dealt with wiseguys for 40 years and “held no fear for his safety based on these relationships.” When the agents replied that he had a choice if he felt threatened, Levy said that, “the witness security program was a joke and could not adequately protect witnesses.”

At the subsequent trial of Levy and Canterino, defense lawyers argued that the judge should direct prosecutors to identify several of the confidential FBI sources cited in wiretap affidavits. That request was denied after a Justice Department prosecutor responded that such a disclosure could result in the murder of the informants.

Defense motions specifically referred to information provided to the bureau by informants dubbed “CI-7” and “CI-8” in FBI documents. What the lawyers for Levy and his codefendants did not realize, however, was that “CI-7” and “CI-8” were the same person–Sharpton. Due to a numbering switch, the reverend was referred to as “CI-8” in the narrative of some of the FBI affidavits. Defense counsel was not apprised by prosecutors that a single FBI informant had been identified with two separate “C-I” numbers.

Levy was subsequently convicted of two felony counts and sentenced to a decade in prison, while Canterino got a dozen years. In pre-sentencing letters to the judge, Quincy Jones, Willie Nelson, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, and assorted record label executives saluted Levy’s charity and loyalty.

While free on appeal, Levy died of cancer in May 1990 at his upstate New York home. Canterino, who had survived quadruple bypass surgery, died several years later while in Bureau of Prisons custody, a less bucolic departure point than Levy’s beloved Sunnyview Farm.

With Sharpton’s help, the Genovese squad also secured a wiretap on the home phones of Federico “Fritzy” Giovanelli, a family soldier often seen at Gigante’s Sullivan Street social club, and two of the Queens wiseguy’s associates. Tapes from those bugs were subsequently used to help convict Giovanelli, Steven Maltese, and Carmine Gualtiere of a racketeering conspiracy that included the murder of Anthony Venditti, an NYPD detective assigned to the Genovese squad. Each of the men was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, though the portion of the verdict dealing with the Venditti killing was subsequently vacated on appeal.

The 34-year-old Venditti, a married father of four young daughters, was shot to death in January 1986 while he and a partner were surveilling Giovanelli. The Genovese soldier was tried three separate times on state murder charges. The first two trials ended in hung juries, while the third case, brought after the federal appeals ruling, resulted in Giovanelli’s acquittal.

Genovese squad agents were actually monitoring Giovanelli’s phone on the evening of Venditti’s murder. They listened as his wife Carol dialed Maltese at 10:57 and yelled, “It’s all over TV. My kids are going crazy. He shot a cop!” She added, “Freddy shot a cop!” In the call’s background, sobbing can be heard. Later that evening, Giovanelli called home while in police custody and tried to calm his spouse. “Babe,” he said, “you know that’s not my style.”

During a conversation last month, Giovanelli said that the FBI bug resulted in “5000 hours of me speaking with my friends about cooking” and other innocuous topics (which, to some degree, is true). Unaware of Sharpton’s work as an FBI informant, Giovanelli said that he thought the main reason his phone calls were intercepted was “because somebody got a broken jaw,” a reference to a record distributor who had run afoul of Levy & Co. and, as a result, got beaten by Gaetano “Corky” Vastola, a member of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family. The victim, who was being extorted by a coterie of hoodlums, cooperated with the FBI and entered the Witness Security Program.

The gravelly-voiced Giovanelli, who has survived a couple of aneurysms and heart valve replacement surgery, suggested that a reporter look at “the good side” of Sharpton instead of plumbing the reverend’s past. “I feel sorry for him,” Giovanelli laughed. “Here’s a guy who lost a hundred pounds and along comes a Bastone wielding a bastone to ruin things.” In Italian, a “bastone” is a wooden cane.

While Joseph and Daniel Pagano were not primary targets of the Genovese squad, the father-son combo was the focus of a parallel probe being conducted by investigators with the New York State Attorney General’s Office. And like their federal counterparts, the AG’s Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF) would also benefit from Sharpton’s work as an informant.

Like the Genovese squad, state OCTF agents believed that listening devices would produce incriminating evidence against the Paganos and members of their Genovese crew. According to investigators with both task forces, a close relationship existed between the groups–so much so that several Genovese squad members ended up working for the state task force, which was headquartered in Westchester County, a Pagano stronghold.

When the state OCTF sought court approval in January 1986 to place a listening device in Joseph Pagano’s Rockland County home, they cited a confidential FBI source who told his handlers that the mafioso conducted business in the basement of the Monsey house. In interviews, Genovese squad and state OCTF investigators identified Sharpton as the informant who provided a first-hand description of Pagano’s residence.

As expected, that listening device–and several other OCTF bugs–generated a wealth of evidence against the Pagano crew. Joseph was overheard reminiscing about the days when he moved kilos of heroin with Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, a fellow son of East Harlem who preceded “Chin” Gigante as Genovese family boss. Pagano was also recorded giving a succinct analysis of his son Daniel’s executive limitations: “He’s an opener, not a closer,” Pagano said.

The OCTF investigation, which spanned more than two years, ended in June 1989 with the indictment of five Genovese crime family figures on enterprise corruption charges. But only the younger Pagano ended up in the dock. His father, who had been seriously ill during the course of the OCTF probe, died two months before a grand jury accused his son and other underlings of engaging in mob staples like loan sharking, extortion, and gambling.

Each defendant subsequently pleaded guilty to various criminal charges, so there was no public presentation of evidence against the men. Which meant that OCTF prosecutors did not have to further expound on the indictment’s allegation that Daniel Pagano “solicited the use of a bank account of the National Youth Movement” to launder money.

Sharpton, who controlled that bank account, was not charged in connection with the Pagano investigation.

* * *

According to Sharpton’s most recent book, following the “Victory Tour,” King “decided that I should become a major concert promoter, working alongside him to become to the music industry what he was to the boxing world.” Sharpton–who formed a Georgia-based company, Hit Bound, Inc., to handle music promotions–wrote that he was also being urged by Michael Jackson and James Brown to enter the concert business.

But, Sharpton declared, he opted for the more “uncertain path” of civil rights activism, eschewing the prospect of “big stacks of dollars that could be very helpful in raising a family.”

Sharpton’s unique brand of activism included working with Curington to line up the endorsements of several prominent black ministers for Senator Al D’Amato, the conservative Republican incumbent then being challenged in the 1986 general election by liberal Democrat Mark Green. The ministers backing D’Amato included Bishop Frederick Douglas Washington, whom Sharpton has described as one of his spiritual mentors. The endorsements came several months after the The New Republic reported that D’Amato had privately referred to the residents of public housing projects as “animals.”

In return for the endorsements, D’Amato–who was easily reelected–steered a $500,000 federal grant to Curington and Sharpton for the establishment of an anti-drug program in Brooklyn. According to a grant application, Curington, whose prior narcotics experience landed him on a DEA list of “Class 1” traffickers, was slated to serve as the program’s executive director. Sharpton and Curington, the application noted, also planned to secure an additional $750,000 in “corporate support” from eight record labels.

The duo’s plan foundered, however, when officials at a Brooklyn church changed their mind about allowing a drug treatment facility to operate from a church building. As a result, the $500,000 grant was later canceled.

At D’Amato’s request, Sharpton also arranged for Coretta Scott King to make a surprise appearance at the August 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, according to a law enforcement official. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, who Sharpton has called “my mentor,” sat in Vice President George Bush’s box, where she was greeted with a kiss by Barbara Bush.

Sharpton apparently forgot about the six-figure D’Amato handout when he was penning his latest book. Claiming that his public positions were free of unseemly calculations, he claimed, “I never asked for public funding for anything, so there would be no confusion about my motives.”

By the time Sharpton’s “uncertain path” led him to join the Tawana Brawley team in mid-December 1987–when he demanded the arrest of the “racial beasts who are terrorizing the state”–his four-year-long cooperation with law enforcement agencies had almost run its course.

It had been five months since ex-FBI Agent Joe Spinelli steered him to the Los Angeles federal prosecutor who had to position himself at a pay phone when Sharpton was ready to drop a dime. And Sharpton’s work on behalf of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office–also at Spinelli’s urging–was snuffed out in its infancy in January 1988.

But while the Brawley affair left Sharpton radioactive for law enforcement, the same could not be said for his underworld contacts.

Beginning in late-1987 and carrying through the following year, Sharpton and Curington worked together on behalf of Sugar Hill Records to broker a multimillion dollar deal with MCA Records in Los Angeles. In an interview, Curington valued the contract at $6.5 million, adding that he and Sharpton stood to split a hefty six-figure fee for arranging the deal with MCA chairman Irving Azoff.

Sugar Hill was founded by Joe Robinson, a music industry veteran who, strapped for cash, took money from Morris Levy in return for a piece of the fledgling rap/R&B label. Like Levy and many of his peers in the rough-and-tumble record business, Robinson was unburdened by business ethics. “He was as greasy as a pork chop,” said Curington.

The Sugar Hill-MCA deal eventually collapsed amid claims that Robinson had engaged in various financial malefactions. Which, of course, did not relieve the Sugar Hill boss of his financial obligation to Curington and Sharpton. At least that was how the duo saw it.

Enveloped in debt and hurting for cash, Robinson nonetheless began getting a stream of unannounced visitors at Sugar Hill’s Englewood, New Jersey studio demanding that he pay Sharpton and Curington. On one occasion, “Joe Bana” Buonanno showed up with Genovese associate Mike Milano and confronted Robinson, who called a local cop to complain that he was being muscled by the men. Edward Stempinski, then an Englewood Police Department detective, recalled catching Buonanno and Milano at Sugar Hill, remarking that the duo “didn’t look like they should be going into a rapper’s studio.”

During a trip to Englewood, Curington was busted after punching one of Robinson’s sons. Stempinski, now retired, said that in a post-arrest interview, Curington identified himself as vice president of Sharpton’s National Youth Movement. Sharpton, who was then living in Englewood with his wife and two young daughters, also took part in the debt collection effort, visiting Sugar Hill to hector Robinson about payment, said Stempinski.

Referring to Joe Robinson, Curington admitted, in a TSG interview, to threatening the Sugar Hill boss over the money owed to him and Sharpton, adding that he warned Robinson that he would burn down Sugar Hill’s headquarters if they were not paid. Curington also admitted that he once went to Sugar Hill intending to “fuck up” Robinson, though he did not arrive solo. Curington said he was accompanied to the studio by Buonanno, “Wassel” DeNoia, and Daniel Pagano.

In an interview in his Manhattan apartment, DeNoia said that he could not recall traveling to the Sugar Hill studios to lean on Robinson. Now 88, time and illness have stripped the hulking former bookmaker of his menace, though not his affection for Sharpton and Joseph Pagano, a close friend since their youth in East Harlem. DeNoia called Sharpton a “really dear friend of mine,” saying that they met when Sharpton handled music promotions. He recalled that Sharpton became “very close” to his boyhood friend, adding that the activist “loved Joe Pagano.”

Stempinski, who shared details of the hoodlum caravan going westbound over the George Washington Bridge with several organized crime investigators, was surprised to discover that Sharpton had apparently learned of law enforcement’s monitoring of the Sugar Hill matter.

The detective arrived at work one day to find a remarkable two-page letter had been mailed to him by Sharpton, who was then eight months into his defense of Tawana Brawley.

Stempinski–who had never met or spoken with the activist–concluded that Sharpton sent the out-of-the-blue missive to him at the direction of Curington, whom Stempinski had been cultivating as a source. Curington, Stempinski recalled, “dropped dimes” on Sharpton, including a heads-up that the reverend was helping D’Amato orchestrate Coretta Scott King’s appearance at the 1988 Republican National Convention.

The August 23, 1988 correspondence stated that Sharpton and Curington had been retained as “consultants” by Robinson, who thought he was “being unduly and unfairly treated for racial reasons” by MCA. The pair was hired, Sharpton wrote, due to their MCA contacts and “standing in the black music community.” Sharpton then recounted Curington’s immersion in the Sugar Hill-MCA deal, a diligence which came at the expense of other “private business” and “community efforts” with which the duo was involved.

After noting that Robinson had leveled accusations of abuse against Curington, Sharpton dismissed those claims as false, stating that the Sugar Hill owner “fabricated” the allegations with the “intent of not meeting his obligations to me or Mr. Currington.” Sharpton declared that he would not tolerate “our movement, friends, co-workers, and associates to be prostituted and mis-used in this manner.”

Sharpton’s letter to the Englewood detective concluded with the promise that, “I can assure you I am prepared to move legally and publically (marches, press conferences) to get my money, Mr. Currington’s money, and the movement’s money. I hope these activities will be solved soon.”

Sharpton’s aggressive, preemptive strike made his position clear: He and Curington were victims of Robinson’s perfidy. And if anyone doubted that, they should prepare to endure the raucous Brawley-type protests for which Sharpton was becoming notorious.

As for menacing guys showing up at Sugar Hill’s studio, well, Sharpton’s letter did not address the sticky subject of all those Italian-American debt collectors, a group that included Buonanno, the mafioso who, years earlier, had been secretly taped by “CI-7.”

Sharpton told TSG that he could not recall writing to the New Jersey detective. Asked why an assortment of wiseguys would have been pressuring Robinson to pay a debt owed to him and Curington, Sharpton replied, “What makes you think I knew about that?”

***

Two years before signing with MSNBC in 2011, Al Sharpton traveled to Los Angeles to try and sell a daytime TV show that would have starred him in a “Judge Judy”-type role. His partner in the “Judge Sharpton” endeavor was James Rosemond, a music industry executive who paid airfare, hotel, and other expenses related to the proposal (which did not ultimately secure a Hollywood green light).

Like many of Sharpton’s prior business acquaintances, Rosemond, too, had a nickname: “Jimmy Henchman.”

At the time of the “Judge Sharpton” pitch, Rosemond, who managed hip-hop artists, already possessed a lengthy rap sheet and had served nearly seven years in prison for various weapons and narcotics convictions. He also happened to head a large bi-coastal cocaine trafficking ring. The notorious drug kingpin is now serving life in prison for that criminal operation, proceeds from which Rosemond used to cover “Judge Sharpton” costs.

In recent months, as Sharpton has been promoting his latest book, interviewers have not bothered to ask about Rosemond or any other gangsters to whom the civil rights leader has been linked.

Instead, Oprah Winfrey, Wendy Williams, Matt Lauer, and others have focused on Sharpton’s trim figure, his growing political influence, and Brawley, the albatross that hangs around his neck like Flavor Flav’s clock. Viewers of these Q&A sessions learned that daily cardio workouts and a healthy diet (no meat, two pieces of whole wheat toast for breakfast, and no food after 6 PM) can help a guy shed 54.8 percent of his body weight.

When he was last profiled on “60 Minutes,” Sharpton–“stately in his tailored suits”–was filmed inside the private Manhattan cigar club he frequents, as well as at a Sunday church pulpit. “I like folk that been knocked down and shamed and disgraced and somehow God picked them up and cleaned them off and brought ‘em back,” he told the cheering congregation.

Near the conclusion of the 12-minute piece, correspondent Lesley Stahl introduced investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, who began covering Sharpton’s exploits more than 30 years earlier, when the activist was involved in Brooklyn political campaigns. Sharpton, Barrett said, was “in the civil rights business. I don’t think he’s a civil rights leader.”

Barrett then wondered, considering Sharpton’s tawdry history, “Would anybody else be able to transcend that and be this larger than life figure?”

“He has,” Stahl chirped.

“Only because we let him,” replied Barrett.

By William Bastone with Andrew Goldberg and Joseph Jesselli

Find this story at 7 April 2014

© 2014 TSG Industries Inc.

Sharpton secretly worked as FBI mob informant: report

A report by the Smoking Gun reveals the Rev. Al Sharpton’s secret work as an FBI informant, collecting information on some of New York City’s top mobsters.

Muslim Rights Group: Miraliev Questioned, Denied Attorney by FBI

The Council on American-Islamic Relations alleges Constitutional rights violations against the friend of Ibragim Todashev.

Ashurmamad Miraliev, a friend of Ibragim Todashev, was denied repeated requests to an attorney during a six-hour interrogation with the FBI after his arrest last week, according to the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Todashev was a friend of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and was shot to death by the FBI during questioning related to a 2011 triple murder in Waltham last May.

CAIR also made a statement in a press release today that the FBI is systematically harassing and threatening Todashev’s friends by way of “frivolous investigations, intimidation and unlawful threats,” and they are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

“He made repeated requests for an attorney throughout, because we had trained him to do that, because we didn’t want anyone else shot and killed,” said Tampa CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly, referring to Todashev’s death in May. Todashev was shot by the FBI while being questioned in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings as well as a 2011 triple murder in Waltham.

Shibly says he also called the U.S. Attorney and the FBI on September 18, the day of Miraliev’s arrest, to request that lawyers be present for the questioning. He said lawyers from CAIR were only allowed to meet with Miraliev on Tuesday, despite being Miraliev’s representation.

Last week Boston magazine reported Miraliev, who is living in Todashev’s old Orlando apartment, was arrested by undercover officers on a warrant for allegedly threatening a victim of a crime, and questioned by the FBI before being held on a $50,000 bond.

Miraliev’s arrest is related to an incident in at the Ali Baba Hookah Cafe and Lounge in Kissimmee, Fla., according to Julissa Rizzo, assistant for the general council at the Osceola County clerk’s office.

In addition to the bond, Miraliev is being held on a federal detainer until he can be questioned by another federal agency, which by law the state is not allowed to name.

Shibly says Miraliev told him that the vast majority of his six-hour questioning was related to Todashev, not the offense he was arrested for; the charge of witness tampering, Shibly said, was only brought up during the final portion of the interview.

“They killed Todashev, and it’s an act of desperation,” Shibly said. “They are just trying to dig up as much dirt as possible to make their action of shooting an unarmed individual appear less heinous.”

A spokesperson from the FBI was not immediately available to comment on this story.

By Susan Zalkind | Boston Daily | September 25, 2013 5:33 pm

Find this story at 25 September 2013

Copyright © 2014 Metrocorp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Boston Bombing Suspects Were on FBI Radar for Years

The Wall Street Journal now reports that the FBI had interviewed at least one of the two Boston bombing suspects as early as 2011. In their article, “Renewed Fears About Homegrown Terror Threat,” WSJ reports that:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed suspected marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government, but didn’t find evidence of suspicious activity and closed the case, an FBI official said Friday.

The fact that the FBI spoke with Mr. Tsarnaev, who was killed Friday morning in a firefight with authorities, is likely to become a focal point of the post mortem into how the attack was able to be carried out at the Boston Marathon. It also speaks to the challenge faced by authorities as terrorism morphs to some extent from the complex international plots of a decade ago to small-scale attacks carried out by individuals located within U.S.

RT would report that the mother of the suspect claimed the FBI had been monitoring her sons ever since, and led them along “every step of the way.” In an article titled, “‘They were set up, FBI followed them for years’- Tsarnaevs’ mother to RT,” it stated of the suspects’ mother:

But her biggest suspicion surrounding the case was the constant FBI surveillance she said her family was subjected to over the years. She is surprised that having been so stringent with the entire family, the FBI had no idea the sons were supposedly planning a terrorist act.

Interestingly enough, the WSJ also stated that:
The profile of the Boston bombing in many ways resembles a number of the recent foiled plots, a federal law-enforcement official said. They have been small with little or no intelligence chatter, and have involved suspects who have been in the U.S. for several years and appeared to have assimilated.
What the WSJ categorically fails to mention is that these “foiled plots” were from start to finish engineered by the FBI itself, with suspects, just as Tsarnaevs’ mother had claimed of her sons, under “constant FBI surveillance,” and in fact led along every step of the way in the lead up to high-profile arrests. What is also subsequently left out by the WSJ is that during these undercover operations, real vehicles, weapons, and explosives are involved, and usually switched out for inert items right before the final attack and arrests are made.
One thing the WSJ is absolutely correct about is that the FBI’s involvement prior to the attack will become “a focal point of the post mortem into how the attack was able to be carried out at the Boston Marathon.”
While the WSJ offers nothing useful in examining that focal point, a look at the FBI’s “foiled plots” will reveal shocking implications about just how deeply the FBI may have been involved with these suspects before the bombing, shootout, and manhunt.

FBI’s History of Handing “Terror Suspects” Weapons and Live Explosives
In late September 2011, AFP reported that a man was charged with “planning to fly explosive-packed, remote controlled airplanes into the Pentagon and the Capitol in Washington.” In its report, “US man charged with Pentagon bomb plot,” AFP stated (emphasis added):

During the alleged plot, undercover FBI agents posed as accomplices who supplied Ferdaus with one remote-controlled plane, C4 explosives, and small arms that he allegedly envisioned using in a simultaneous ground assault in Washington.

However, ”the public was never in danger from the explosive devices, which were controlled by undercover FBI employees,” the FBI said.

Ferdaus was arrested in Framingham, near Boston, immediately after putting the newly delivered weapons into a storage container, the FBI said.

Authorities described Ferdaus as a physics graduate from Northeastern University who followed al-Qaeda and was committed to ”violent jihad” since early last year.

In addition to explosives and “small arms,” the FBI also provided the suspect with grenades. According to FBI.gov in a release titled, “Massachusetts Man Charged with Plotting Attack on Pentagon and U.S. Capitol and Attempting to Provide Material Support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” it stated (emphasis added):

Between May and September 2011, Ferdaus researched, ordered and acquired the necessary components for his attack plans, including one remote controlled aircraft (F-86 Sabre). This morning prior to his arrest, Ferdaus received from the UCs [undercover FBI employees] 25 pounds of (what he believed to be) C-4 explosives, six fully-automatic AK-47 assault rifles (machine guns) and grenades. In June 2011, Ferdaus rented a storage facility in Framingham, Mass., under a false name, to use to build his attack planes and maintain all his equipment.
If bombs, guns, and grenades sound strikingly familiar to the arsenal allegedly wielded by the most recent “terror suspects” the FBI admits it was in contact with since at least as early as 2011, that is because it is – the standard terror-playset the FBI provides its patsies.

In November 2010, a similar “plot” was engineered, then “disrupted,” also by the FBI – this time in Portland, Oregon. The so-called “Christmas Tree Bomber” attempted to remote detonate a van he believed was filled with explosives, provided by the FBI, before being arrested during a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Pioneer Courthhouse Square. The FBI’s official statement regarding the incident revealed that FBI agents had handled, even detonated live explosives with the entrapped suspect in Lincoln County in the lead up to the final failed bombing.

The FBI’s official statement titled, “Oregon Resident Arrested in Plot to Bomb Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in Portland,” released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on November 26, 2010 stated (emphasis added):
According to the affidavit, on November 4, 2010, Mohamud and the undercover FBI operatives traveled to a remote location in Lincoln County, Ore., where they detonated a bomb concealed in a backpack as a trial run for the upcoming attack. Afterwards, on the drive back to Corvallis, undercover FBI operatives questioned Mohamud as to whether he was capable of looking at the bodies of those who would be killed in the upcoming attack in Portland. According to the affidavit, Mohamud responded, “I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured.”

Upon returning to Corvallis that same day, the affidavit alleges that Mohamud recorded a video of himself with the undercover FBI operatives in which he read a written statement that offered a rationale for his bomb attack. On Nov. 18, 2010, undercover FBI operatives picked up Mohamud to travel to Portland in order to finalize the details of the attack.

Earlier this evening, Mohamud was arrested after he attempted to remotely detonate what he believed to be explosives in a van that was parked near the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the affidavit alleges.

Yet another operation was carried out by the FBI in February 2012, where yet another otherwise incapable patsy was provided with live explosives in the lead up to what was ultimately a failed suicide bombing at the US Capitol. USA Today reported in their article, “FBI foils alleged suicide bomb attack on U.S. Capitol,” that (emphasis added):

According to a counterterrorism official, El Khalifi “expressed interest in killing at least 30 people and considered targeting a building in Alexandria and a restaurant, synagogue and a place where military personnel gather in Washington before he settled on the Capitol after canvassing that area a couple of times,” the Associated Press writes. During the year-long investigation, El Khalifi detonated explosives at a quarry in the capital region with undercover operatives. He is not believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, officials said.

The frightening trend of the FBI cultivating otherwise incapable “terror” suspects, providing them with and detonating real explosives, small arms and grenades before giving them inert or controlled devices to carry out attacks on public targets where mass casualties are averted only at the last possible moment, sets the stage for at the very least, incredible potential for catastrophic blunders, and at worst, false flag attacks.

But does this mean the FBI is capable of turning such operations “live,” resulting in real terror attacks and loss of life? Has the FBI ever presided over “sting operations” that were actually carried out? The answer is yes.The FBI in fact was presiding over the terrorists who carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The role of the FBI leading up to the deadly attack would most likely have gone unreported had an FBI informant not taped his conversations with FBI agents after growing suspicious during the uncover operation. The New York Times in their article, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” reported:

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

Controlled Every Step of the Way

RT has quoted the mother of the recent Boston bombing suspects as claiming of the FBI:
They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act!
“They were controlling him, they were controlling his every step,” indeed. Posing as “extremist leaders” and leading witless patsies along, just as the FBI has done in every case regarding its previous “foiled plots,” and even successful plots, like the 1993 WTC attack, should shift America’s attention not to Chechnya or the “threat” of domestic terrorism, but the immense incompetence and/or criminality of the FBI.

As even mainstream sources concede the FBI had some sort of relationship with the Boston bombing suspects before the attack, there will be two arguments made. One, that the FBI simply doesn’t have enough authority or resources to prevent “domestic terror” attacks, and needs more still.

The other argument is that the FBI and other federal agencies have been behind every domestic terror attack or “foiled plot” for years, and constitutes the single greatest danger to the American people, both literally in terms of life and limb, and in terms of subverting and stripping away their liberty and dignity amidst a growing police state.

In turn, this would require local law enforcement to cease all cooperation with the FBI, particularly with its Joint Terror Task Force (JTTF), raid local offices and make arrests where appropriate, and fold any agents who are willing and capable, into local and state agencies. In essence, the FBI should be dismantled from top to bottom, and an alternative put in its place.

What is clear is that the Boston bombing suspects were contacted by the FBI at least as early as 2011. Between then and the attack, there is a gap where the FBI may or may not have been involved. While the FBI may have in fact been cultivating these suspects prior to the Boston bombing, they are now the very ones “investigating” the case, opening the door to the destruction of evidence, and ultimately a coverup.

By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, April 20, 2013

Find this story at 20 April 2013

Copyright © 2005-2014 GlobalResearch.ca

Boston Bomb Suspect Eyed in Connection to 2011 Triple Murder

Prosecutors examining connection between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and cold murder case

In the wake of the revelations about the violent nature of accused marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, investigators in the Boston suburbs tell ABC News they are probing whether he may have been involved in an unsolved grisly triple homicide of a former roommate and two others. The murders took place around the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

“We are looking at a possible connection with the suspect in the marathon atrocity and this active and open homicide in Waltham,” Stephanie Guyotte, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex County District Attorney, confirmed to ABC News.

Tsarnaev, the alleged bombing mastermind who died in a fierce gun battle with police early Friday morning, had been training with one of the 2011 murder victims in an attempt to transition from boxing into a possible career in the brutal sport of mixed-martial arts.

The victims were found in a Waltham, Massachusetts apartment. They had their throat slashed, their heads nearly decapitated. Their mutilated bodies were left covered with marijuana.

It was a gruesome scene – but also perplexing to law enforcement. While drugs appeared to factor into the motive, the murderer left both the marijuana and thousands of dollars in cash behind in the Waltham apartment. While the investigation has been active for more than a year, authorities acknowledged they have had few leads.

Two law enforcement sources told ABC News that may now change, with the bomb attack prompting a fresh look into Tsarnaev’s alleged penchant for violence.

Even before the bombing, police records show, there was an indication of a rage growing inside of Tsarnaev. Court documents obtained by ABC News show in July 2009 he was arrested for domestic violence after his then-girlfriend made a frantic 911 to report she was “being beat up by her boyfriend.” The police report, which was redacted to hide the girlfriend’s name, says that Tsarnaev admitted to responding officers that he slapped her. The case was later dismissed.

Tsarnaev had also been close to one of the murder victims, 25-year-old Brendan Mess, investigators told ABC. The two had been training together in a local gym –each helping the other with a missing element from their fighting arsenal. Tsarnaev, a golden-gloves heavy weight boxer, lacked martial arts training. And Mess, an experienced jiu jitsu competitor, lacked boxing experience.

The two sparred together at an Allston, MA gym called Wai Kru. The gym’s head trainer, John Allan, provided a statement to the Boston Globe via Facebook message saying that Tamerlan “came into the gym to spar from time to time.”

Tsarnaev and Mess lived just a few blocks apart in Cambridge, in the same predominantly Russian neighborhood. Authorities believe there were times Mess crashed at Tsarnaev’s apartment.

It was unclear if Tsarnaev knew the other men slain, Raphael Teken, 37, and Erik Weissman, 31.

A Waltham investigator who called the murders “the worst bloodbath I have ever seen in a long law enforcement career” said Tsarnaev has now proven he had the propensity for the type of violence that unfolded two years ago.

“There was no forced entry, it was clear that the victims had let the killer in. And their throats were slashed right out of an al Qaeda training video. The drugs and money on the bodies was very strange,” the investigator said.

One of Mess’ relatives yesterday told investigators they thought it was odd that Tsarnaev did not attend the funerals for his slain friend. The Mess relative also described animosity between the two friends “over Brendan’s lifestyle,” two law enforcement sources said. Because it is an open homicide investigation the sources were not authorized to speak on the record.

“Given how religious the older brother was, and we have heard information from the college about how the younger brother was ‘a pot head’ is there a chance that Tsarnaev was angry that Brendan was selling his brother marijuana? We don’t know,” said one of those sources. “But we are certainly interested in finding out.”

Tsarnaev and Mess had been socializing together in the months before the murder, according to a Massachusetts correction officer who met up with a group of fighters that included Tsarnaev and Mess at a June 2011 Mixed Martial Arts event run by Burlington Brawl, a Vermont-based fighting outfit. Tsarnaev impressed the group with his golden gloves status, but largely kept to himself during the evening.

“We were all drinking beers, but not that guy. He was drinking water,” the correction officer said.

Freelance writer Michele McPhee is a Boston-based reporter and frequent contributor to ABC News.

By MICHELE MCPHEE
BOSTON April 22, 2013—

Find this story at 22 April 2013

Copyright © 2014 ABC News Internet Ventures

Exclusive: Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchists (2014)

More details have come to light showing how the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington. Democracy Now! first broke this story in 2009 when it was revealed that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent from Towery using his military account to the FBI, as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane. He wrote, “I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro.” Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant attempted to entrap at least one peace activist, Glenn Crespo, by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot. We speak to Crespo and his attorney Larry Hildes, who represents all the activists in the case.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: More details have come to light showing the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington and beyond. Democracy Now! first broke the story in 2009 that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. At the time, Port Militarization Resistance was staging nonviolent actions to stop military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn helped expose John Towery’s true identity as a military spy. In 2009, Dunn spoke on Democracy Now!

BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: After it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Brendan Maslauskas Dunn speaking in 2009 on Democracy Now! He’s now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against John Towery, the military and other law enforcement agencies.

Since 2009, there have been numerous developments in the case. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent by Towery using his military account. It was sent to the FBI as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, in Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane, Washington. He wrote, quote, “I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro.” Towery also cites “zines and pamphlets,” and a “comprehensive web list” as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing becase, quote, “it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures,” he wrote. The subject of the email was “Anarchist Information.”

Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant may have attempted to entrap at least one of the peace activists by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot.

We’re joined now by two guests. Glenn Crespo is a community organizer in the Bay Area who used to live in Washington state, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the military and other agencies. He’s joining us from Berkeley. And with us in Seattle, Washington, longtime attorney Larry Hildes, who represents the activists in the case.

The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office declined to join us on the program, saying, quote, “Because this case is still in litigation we are unable to provide comment.”

Let’s go first to Washington state, to Larry Hildes. Can you talk about the latest developments in this case, and what has just come out?

LARRY HILDES: Sure. Good morning, Amy. It’s interesting. What came out did not come out from this case. It came out from a Public Records Act request from a different client of ours who was arrested in an anti-police-brutality march and falsely charged with assaulting an officer, that the civil case is coming to trial in a couple weeks. He put in a Public Records Act request because he was active with PMR and was concerned that he had been targeted, and he was then subject to a number of citations and arrests.

And, yeah, the Army’s investigative reports claimed that, well, there may have been some rules broken, but Towery was doing this off the job in his off-hours, unpaid, for the sheriff—for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and the fusion center. Here he is at his desk, 10:00 in the morning, using his military ID, his military email address, and identifying himself by his military titles, writing the law enforcement agencies all over the country about forming this mini-group to target and research anarchists and leftists, and it’s coming out of what’s called the DT Conference that the State Patrol was hosting here in Washington, Domestic Terrorism Conference. They created a book for this conference based on information largely from Towery that included Brendan Dunn and one of our other plaintiffs, Jeff Berryhill, and two other activists with PMR, listed them as domestic terrorists and a violent threat because of their—basically, because they were targeted by Towery and because of their activism and their arrests for civil disobedience. So, he’s taking something he created, labeling these people as terrorists, going to a conference with this information, and saying, “We should disseminate this and work on this more broadly.”

It also puts the lie to Towery’s claim and his supervisor Tom Rudd’s claim that Towery was simply working to protect troop movements from—between Fort Lewis and the public ports of Stryker vehicles going to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re not shipping out of L.A. They’re not shipping out of Portland or Eugene. And they’re not—none of these are agencies that are directly involved in protecting military shipments from Fort Lewis. So it’s clear there’s a much larger agenda here.

And we’ve seen that in some other ways. There are extensive notes that we’ve received of Towery’s spying on a conference of the Evergreen State College in Olympia about tactics for the protests at the DNC in Denver in ’08, Republican—Democratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in ’08, and who was going to do what, the red, yellow and green zones, and specifically what was going to happen on the Monday of the convention. And it was the RNC Welcome Committee, which then got raided and became the RNC 8—claimed that they were planning acts of terrorism, which were in reality acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. So this goes way beyond Fort Lewis and PMR, and there’s a full—there seems to be a much larger agenda, as we’ve seen in other places, of nonviolent activism equals terrorism equals anarchism equals justification for whatever spying or law enforcement action we want to take.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to—

LARRY HILDES: And obviously this is not—sorry, go ahead, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from your lawsuit. You write, quote, “In addition to the Army, Coast Guard, and Olympia Police Department, the following agencies are known to have spied on, infiltrated, or otherwise monitored the activities of PMR and/or related or associated activists: Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, Tacoma Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, Ft. Lewis Police Department, 504th Military Police Division, Aberdeen Police Department, The Evergreen State College Police Department, the Lacey Police Department, the [Tumwater] Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff’s Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, other Divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, Naval Investigative Services, Air Force Intelligence (which has created a special PMR SDS taskforce at McGwire Air Force Base in New Jersey), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Taskforce, as well as the previously discussed civilian employees of the City of Olympia. This list is likely incomplete,” you write. That is a very extensive list, Larry Hildes.

LARRY HILDES: It is. And it turns out it is incomplete. And those were all agencies that we had documents obtained from Public Records Act requests showing that they were directly involved. So now we’re finding out there’s more agencies. The Evergreen State College was giving regular reports to the State Patrol, to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and to Towery and Rudd about activities of SDS on campus at Evergreen. And there’s an extensive discussion about the conference about the DNC and RNC protests and that the chief of police is the source for the information. But, yeah, now we’ve got L.A. This gets bizarre. And we received 9,440 pages of sealed documents from the Army as a Christmas present on December 21st that—that I can’t even talk about, because they insisted that everything was privileged. It was supposed to be privileged as to private information and security information, but it’s everything, all kinds of emails. So, yeah, I mean, it starts out sounding very encompassing, and we’re finding out we were conservative about what agencies were involved.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Glenn Crespo into this conversation, a Bay Area community organizer. You were the peace activist who John Towery, you say, attempted to persuade you to purchase guns, to learn to shoot. How did you meet him, and what happened when he tried to get you to do this?

GLENN CRESPO: Well, this kind of relationship spanned over a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-year period of time. I first met him at a weapons symposium demonstration in Tacoma, Washington, in downtown Tacoma. I didn’t introduce myself to him at that point, but I saw him there. He came out—he actually came out of the symposium, and this was a conference where Lockheed Martin and all these other weapons manufacturers and distributors were showing their wares. He came out of that, and it appeared to me as if other activists in Olympia had already become friends with them. He was very friendly with them, they were very friendly with him. That was the first time I saw him. That was in mid-2007. Not long after that, he organized a Tacoma PMR meeting, and I wasn’t really involved—

AMY GOODMAN: Port Militarization Resistance.

GLENN CRESPO: Yeah, exactly. And I wasn’t very involved in that, but I did get the mass email. So I figured, because I lived in Tacoma, I might as well go check it out. He was the first person there. I was the second person there. He introduced himself. I introduced myself. And he asked me about a poster that he had made regarding an upcoming demonstration, and he said he was going to bring it to the group and see if we could get consensus on whether or not it was OK if he put it up. And I told him that—I looked at the poster and said, you know, “This is pretty general.” There’s no particular reason I really think that he has to get consensus on whether or not he can put a poster up that’s kind of basically just time and place and description of the event. And that was the first time I met him.

He later on used that conversation as a way to boost our rapport between each other, when he said that he thought that that conversation was really profound to him, that he believed that it was interesting that I kind of wanted to—or suggested that he bypass some sort of consensus process regarding this poster, so that he can just do—you know, that he could do what he wants. You know, he could put the poster up if he wants to. That was very interesting. I realized that in retrospect, that that was a way that he tried to broaden or expand upon our friendship in the beginning.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, where did the guns come in?

GLENN CRESPO: Probably within the six to seven months after meeting him, so late—late 2007. He had started coming to events at the house I was living at in Tacoma. We were doing—we did a lending library. And we were doing a lot of organizing regarding the Tacoma Immigration and Customs detention center, so the ICE detention center. He would go to those meetings. He would come over for potlucks. So both public and private events, he kind of worked his way in as a friend.

He produced handgun to me in our kitchen, just between he and I. He carried it in his side pocket. He said he always carried a handgun on him. And he emptied it. He put the magazine out. He cleared the chamber, and he handed it to me. And he said he always carries one on him. And that, that was the first time he really talked about guns with me. And I was caught off guard, because at the time I was in my early twenties. I had never held a—I don’t even think I had seen a handgun, really, like that before. And that was kind of the beginning of him starting to talk more about guns. And he said—he had said that if we ever wanted to go shooting, being me and my friends, or myself in particular, that he would take us shooting, or, you know, he knows where all the gun shows are at, so we could go to gun shows if—you know, if we’re interested. And then, later on, these things did happen, when he prompted myself and others to go to the Puyallup Gun Show and purchase—purchase a rifle. And then, that went into going to shooting ranges that he was already a member of. He would drive us to all of these things, take us to these shooting ranges.

And this seemed fairly innocuous to me, in the beginning. I mean, Washington is a pretty gun-owner-friendly state. It didn’t—it didn’t really surprise me, because he wasn’t saying anything crazy or really implying anything crazy at that point. But about a year into that, there was a significant shift in his personality. Whereas in the beginning he was very optimistic and very—seemed very hopeful and kind of seemed lonely—I mean, he was, you know, in his early forties, early to mid-forties. He primarily surrounding himself with people who were in their early twenties. And he just came off as if he was kind of a sweet, harmless guy and was kind of lonely and wanted to hang out with people that he felt like he had something in common with, as far as his ideas went. But like I said, into a year into that relationship, he started to become a little bit more sinister and dark in his demeanor, in his—the things he would talk about.

And this continued to go into him giving myself and another friend a set of documents that were military strategy documents, and he said that he—he suggested that “we,” whatever that meant, use those documents in “our actions.” And these were documents on how to properly execute military operations. And then, following that, he showed people at my house, including myself, how to clear a building with a firearm. And these things were prompted by him. He would basically say, “Hey, do you—you know, check this out. Look, I could explain this stuff.” And he would just go into it, on how to, for example, in this case, clear a building with a firearm. So he had a mock—you know, he would hold a rifle up, or a make-believe rifle, and clear—stalk around the lower levels of our house and up the stairwell, all the way up the second stairwell into the attic, and the whole time talking about how he would—you know, how he was clearing corners and checking angles and all this stuff that nobody particularly had any interest in.

And around the same time, he had, you know, conversations with me about how he believed that anarchists were very similar to fascists, in a—almost in a positive light, where he was saying that they both don’t care about the law and don’t use the law to get what they need or what they want, and that he believed that the only way anarchism or anarchy would ever work, in his words, would be if five billion people died. So this is kind of in his—in the midst of his weird, sinister behavior that started to happen, that I thought that he was depressed. I thought that he was basically going through some sort of like maybe existential crisis, or maybe he was fed up with things. I wasn’t really sure. He always talked about him having issues at the house—at his home. He had implied that his wife was concerned that he was cheating on her, and that’s why we could never go to his house, because his wife didn’t like us, his other friends, or whatever.

He submitted an article in the same—like the last—you know, that last half of the time that I knew him as a friend. He submitted an article to a magazine that I was editor of in early 2009, that was written from the perspective of 9/11 hijackers. And I remember this very specifically, because he gave me a copy, a physical copy, when we were on our way to go get coffee. And I remember reading it, and probably about a quarter of the way through realizing I didn’t even feel comfortable touching it, like touching the physical document with my hands. It was the weirdest thing in the world, because it was kind of—it was basically implying—or seeming sympathetic with the 9/11 hijackers. And he wanted me to publish this in his—in the next issue of the magazine I was editor of. So I just—I actually—because he was being so forceful, I just didn’t do the magazine again. That first issue was the last issue. And once he submitted that paper, I didn’t publish it ever again.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask your lawyer, Larry Hildes, is this entrapment, I mean, when you’re talking about this whole progression that Glenn Crespo went through with the man he thought was named John Jacob, who in fact is John Towery, working at Fort Lewis? He’s military personnel.

LARRY HILDES: I think, absolutely, it was an attempted entrapment. He went step by step. He misjudged our folks. He thought our—he correctly saw that our folks were angry and upset about what was going on, but misjudged them. It feels like we could have ended up with a Cleveland Five or an 803 situation very easily, if he had had his way. Fortunately, our folks’ reaction was: “This is really weird and creepy. Get away from me.” And it speaks to how little he understood the nature of the antiwar movement and how little he understood people’s actual commitment to nonviolent action, to not seeing the troops themselves as the enemies—

AMY GOODMAN: Larry—

LARRY HILDES: —but seeing the war—yeah, I’m—yeah, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Hildes, we don’t have much time, but I just want to ask about Posse Comitatus and the laws that separate the military—I mean, they’re not supposed to be marching through the streets of the United States.

LARRY HILDES: Yeah, right.

AMY GOODMAN: What about this issue of investigating? And how far and extensive is this infiltration campaign, where you put in people, they change their names, and they try to entrap or they change the nature of what these actions are?

LARRY HILDES: I think they crossed the line. They claim they’re allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping people—attempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement.

And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff’s office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well aware—in fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC, DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks’ activism and their lives. I mean, we had—at one point, Brendan Dunn had four cases at the same time in four counties, because they kept stopping him. Seven times he got arrested or cited; Jeff Berryhill several times; Glenn Crespo. People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives. This is way into Posse Comitatus. This is way beyond any legitimate military role.

And it’s exactly why Posse Comitatus exists. The job of the military, as they see it, is to seek out the enemy and destroy them, neutralize them. When the enemy is nonviolent dissenters and the First Amendment becomes the enemy, as Chris Pyle, our expert, who was the investigator for the Church Committee, put it—the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment are an inconvenience to the Army; they ignore them; they’re not sworn to uphold them in the same way—it becomes a very dangerous situation. And yes, they are way over into illegal conduct. They’re into entrapment operations. They’re into trying to silence dissent against them, and apparently much larger. This case just keeps getting bigger as we go. And we’re set for trial, I should say, on June 2nd—

AMY GOODMAN: And we will continue to cover this.

LARRY HILDES: —at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Larry Hildes, lead attorney representing the antiwar activists spied on by the military, civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, speaking to us from Seattle, Washington. And Glenn, thank you so much for being with us. Glenn Crespo is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, a community organizer in the Bay Area of California.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, spies in the movement. We’re going to go back some time to the civil rights movement. Stay with us.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Find this story at 25 February 2014

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Christopher Pyle, Whistleblower Who Sparked Church Hearings of 1970s, on Military Spying of Olympia Peace Activists (2009)

The news of peace activists in Olympia, Washington exposing Army spying, infiltration and intelligence gathering on their groups may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of US intelligence activities like those of the 1970s. We speak with law professor and former Army whistleblower Christopher Pyle, whose 1970 disclosure of the military’s widespread surveillance of civilian groups triggered scores of congressional probes, including the Church Committee hearings, where he served as an investigator. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a follow-up on our exclusive broadcast yesterday. We spent the hour looking at a story out of Olympia, Washington, where antiwar activists exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. Declassified documents obtained by the activists revealed that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis.
The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing US military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of US intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the ’70s.
Well, Christopher Pyle was a captain in Army intelligence in 1970, when he first disclosed the military’s widespread surveillance of civilian groups. The disclosure triggered fifty congressional inquiries within a month. Pyle went on to work for Senator Sam Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights and Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence, that led to the founding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Christopher Pyle joins us now from Chicopee, Massachusetts. He teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College, and he’s the author of four books. His most recent is called Getting Away with Torture.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted you to first start off by talking about the significance of these revelations yesterday, with the young activists on Democracy Now! having simply applied under Freedom of Information Act [ed: public records request] for any information on anarchists or on their organizations in Olympia, Washington, and finding this one email inside that referred to this man named John Towery. They started doing some digging, and they realized it was their friend. Well, they knew him as “John Jacob.” He came out of Fort Lewis base. Christopher Pyle, the significance of this?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: I think the significance is less that the Army is monitoring civilian political activity than that there is a network, a nationwide network, of fusion centers, these state police intelligence units, these municipal police intelligence units, that bring together the services of the military, of police, and even private corporations to share information about alleged terrorist groups in cities throughout the country. I was fascinated by the story of the Air Force officer from New Jersey making an inquiry to the police in the state of Washington about this group. This is an enormous network. It’s funded by the Homeland Security Department. Police departments get a great deal of money to set up these intelligence units. And they monitor, largely, lawful political activity, in violation of the First Amendment and, when the military is involved, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play just two clips from yesterday. This is one of the activists in Olympia who exposed that his friend John Jacob was actually John Towery, a military informant and a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. I asked Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, the Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, what his first reaction was when he found out.
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He was — he said he was an anarchist. I met him over two years ago through community organizing and antiwar organizing I was involved with in Tacoma and Olympia with other anarchists and other activists.

And he was really interested in Students for a Democratic Society. He wanted to start a chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society, which is connected to SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance, with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was — you know, knew a lot of people involved with that organization.

But he was a friend of mine. We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle. I mean, he was a friend. A lot of people really, really did like him. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me this week when all of this was determined.

AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Maslauskas Dunn went on to describe exactly what his so-called friend, John Towery, said when he confronted him with the evidence.
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.

So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.

He also — one other thing he spoke of — I don’t know if this is true. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what to believe from John, but he said that the police in Tacoma and Olympia had been planning for a while on raiding the anarchist Pitch Pipe Infoshop and also the house I lived in with several other activists in Olympia. And they had approached John several times, saying, you know, “Do they have bombs and explosives and drugs and guns and things like that?” which is just disgusting to even think that they would suggest that. They’re just trying to silence us politically. They’re going after us for our politics and for our work, you know, around Port Militarization Resistance and around antiwar organizing. And, of course, John told them, no, we didn’t have any of those stuff. He told them the truth.

But he also mentioned that there were other informants that are amongst us.

AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, the Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, the one who put in the Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request] and found out his friend, who he thought was named “John Jacob,” was John Towery out of Fort Lewis base in Washington state.
Christopher Pyle, you’re now a professor. You were in military intelligence, a captain. When you started to uncover the military, what, almost forty years ago, investigating civilian groups, give us the history.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, I was teaching law at the US Army Intelligence School, and I was asked to teach a class on CONUS intelligence and spot reports. CONUS is the acronym for continental United States. So I delivered a lecture about the need for the use of the military to put down riots, which did not require identifying any persons. You simply go in, clear the streets, declare a curfew, quiet things down, restore order.
And an officer came up to me after class and said, “Captain Pyle, you don’t know much about this, do you?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, I can arrange a briefing.” And he did.
He took to me across the post to the headquarters of the US Army Intelligence Command’s CONUS Intelligence Section. There I discovered thirteen teletype machines reporting on every demonstration around the country of twenty people or more. The reports were coming from 1,500 Army plainclothes agents working out of 300 offices. They had it all covered.
They showed me a mug book of persons who could be rounded up in case of a civil disturbance. The military really believed that if you had a civil disturbance or a protest, it was very important to know the names of the people who might be protesting, because, you never know, they might be connected with a cadre of agitators and communists behind them.
Well, the same pattern is now developing under the Northern — the US Army’s Northern Command, which coordinates domestic intelligence work for the US Army and tries to prepare for what they call “military assistance to civil authorities.” It was out of this that the TALON reports came, but I also helped to disclose, reports on lawful, constitutionally protected antiwar activities. And so, history is repeating itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Who were some of the people in the mug shots, Christopher Pyle?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, the first one —-
AMY GOODMAN: Who did they say could be rounded up?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: The first volume, under letter A, was Ralph David Abernathy, who was head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King. And there were many more of that type.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re saying -—
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Perfectly law-abiding citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re saying some protest happened somewhere, or a riot, and they can go to where Ralph David Abernathy is, in a wholly different place, and round him up.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Yes, today, particularly, with the power of computers and internet communications and monitoring the public airwaves, this network of seventy-two fusion centers, plus all of the subordinate groups that provide information and seek information, can follow you and me and just about anybody all around the country. They don’t have to put transponders in our cars. They could use E-ZPass on the highway. But in your case from the state of Washington, they apparently used a transponder in an antiwar protester’s automobile. This is the kind of surveillance society this country does not need.
AMY GOODMAN: Who else was listed at the time?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Say that again?
AMY GOODMAN: Who else was listed at the time, both individuals and organizations that you saw targeted?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, one of the printouts that the military gave me of their surveillance for a particular week in 1968 included the infiltration of a Unitarian Church. In more recent years, surveillance of Quaker groups, the infiltration of Quaker groups in Florida, who were planning to protest military recruitment in their local high school. These are the people who, according to the TALON reports, are considered to be potential threats to military security.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what you mean by TALON.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: TALON is a collection of intelligence reports of threats to military bases that were collected by an unknown group for many years after 9/11 called the Counterintelligence Field Activity. It had a thousand employees. It was located in the Pentagon. And it was monitoring civil disturbances around the country, following a pattern very much like the 1960s and ’70s.
The idea was that if you could follow enough protesters in the — protests in the country, or enough disturbances, you could tell when the country was going to overheat and the military would have to be called in. In the 1960s, they thought that if they could tell how many protests there were on college campuses, they could then predict riots in the black ghettos of the major cities of the United States. It was ludicrous intelligence work, but that’s what they had in mind.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you left there that day, saying you were going to write an article. You were going to expose this. You learned about huge databases, places like in — where? In Baltimore, Maryland.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, a big center was in Baltimore, Maryland, and — but there were six other computer databanks back then. Computers were still in their infancy. They were still being fed with computer punch cards. Nothing like we have today. They were bush league compared to what now exists in these fusion centers, that you’ve reported on, from the state of Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened as a result of this information? You’re a military intelligence captain. You’re appalled by what you see: the targeting of civilians. You write an article. What ensued?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, what was really interesting is I began to hear from my former students, who had been doing this work on active duty. And I eventually recruited 125 counterintelligence agents to tell what they knew about the domestic intelligence operations of the US Army. I shared this information with the press and with congressional committees. Senator Ervin, in the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, held hearings, which I organized and disclosed the existence of this system. The military was embarrassed by the system and eventually disbanded it and burned all the records. I checked on that by interviewing the guys who did the burning of the records.
AMY GOODMAN: There’s a discussion right now among the people who are involved — Congress member Barbara Lee; in New Jersey, Rush Holt, congressman; chair of the Judiciary Committee, Conyers — weighing a committee be set up to once again investigate, as the Church Committee did, intelligence in this country and its far-reaching effects. For example, the example we brought out yesterday of the military infiltrating peace groups, and this was just one individual that we looked at. Talk about what came from the Ervin and the Church Committee hearings.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, the Church Committee did the most extensive investigation of all the agencies. Ervin’s committee just did Army intelligence. But nobody had ever done anything to investigate intelligence agencies before Senator Ervin took it upon himself to do so. Once Ervin proved that there was extensive misconduct and abuse of authority, then others got interested. And the House created a committee under Otis Pike, and the Senate created a special committee under Frank Church. They had to create special committees, because there were no standing committees to oversee the intelligence agencies.
And as the result of the work of those two committees, we now have standing congressional committees whose job is supposed to be to oversee the work of the intelligence committees. So the proposal for yet another select committee to do the work of existing committees seems to me a political nonstarter, but maybe Barbara Lee knows something more about the politics of Capitol Hill than I do.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to be done right now?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: I think that we need to prosecute the torturers. I think that’s the biggest single message that we could give to the intelligence community, that it is not above the law. That’s even more important than the domestic intelligence, and the domestic intelligence, to me, is extremely important. That’s the untold story that you’ve begun to tell, but there have been many other abuses of authority. And when you get into torture, kidnapping, secret illegal detention and assassination, it seems to me you’ve gone over the hill to the most serious abuses any intelligence community can possibly commit, and that’s the place to start. Don’t lose our focus on that.
And then, after that, we need to investigate ways of curbing domestic intelligence activity. And there’s an area of this which has not yet become publicly known, and that is the role of corporations working with the intelligence agencies, corporations which do data processing and data mining, which are totally exempt from any state or federal privacy laws. There’s no control on them at all. And when they’re part of this network, they can use Google and techniques like Google, sophisticated techniques, to gather a great deal of information on the personal lives of the young men you had on your program yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Pyle, this is just the beginning, and we’re going to have you back. Your new book, Getting Away with Torture

. Christopher Pyle was a military intelligence captain when he exposed the surveillance of civilian groups in this country, now a professor at Mount Holyoke College. Thank you for being with us.

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2009

Find this story at 29 July 2009

Democracy Now! Broadcast Exclusive: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned (2009)

Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. “This could be one of the key revelations of this era,” said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

ANJALI KAMAT: We begin with a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. Peace activists in Washington state have revealed an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military. The activists are members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before his true identity was revealed, the informant was known as “John Jacob,” an active member of antiwar groups in the towns of Olympia and Tacoma. But using documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], the activists learned that “John Jacob” is in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at the nearby Fort Lewis military base.
The activists claim Towery has admitted to them he shared information with an intelligence network that stretches from local and state police to several federal agencies, to the US military. They also say he confirmed the existence of other government spies but wouldn’t reveal their identity.
The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. The statement says, quote, “John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media.” Fort Lewis also says it’s launched an internal inquiry. We invited John Towery on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our interview request.
In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we’re now joined in Seattle by the two activists who exposed John Towery as a military informant. Brendan Maslauskas Dunn counted John Towery, or “John Jacob,” as a close friend. But he discovered Towery’s identity after obtaining government documents under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request]. Brendan is an Olympia-based activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. We’re also joined in Seattle by Drew Hendricks. He is an Olympia activist with Port Militarization Resistance who worked closely with John Towery, aka “John Jacob.” This is their first broadcast interview since coming forward with their story.
Brendan, let’s begin with you. Just lay out how you found out about this military spy.
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, thanks for having us, Amy.
I actually did a public records request through the city of Olympia several months ago on behalf of the union I’m in, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the records request I did, I had asked for any documents or emails, etc., that the city had, especially in discussions or any kind of communications between the Olympia police and the military in the city generally, anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World. I got back hundreds of documents from the city.
One of the documents was an email that was sent between personnel in the military, and the email address that was attached to this email was of John J. Towery. We didn’t know who that was, but several people did a lot of research to find out who that was, and they identified that person as being John Jacob.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your first reaction? Who was John Jacob to you?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He was — he said he was an anarchist. I met him over two years ago through community organizing and antiwar organizing I was involved with in Tacoma and Olympia with other anarchists and other activists.
And he was really interested in Students for a Democratic Society. He wanted to start a chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society, which is connected to SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance, with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was — you know, knew a lot of people involved with that organization.
But he was a friend of mine. We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle. I mean, he was a friend. A lot of people really, really did like him. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me this week when all of this was determined.
ANJALI KAMAT: And, Brendan, what did John Towery, who you used to know as “John Jacob,” say to you when you confronted him?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, after it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
He also — one other thing he spoke of — I don’t know if this is true. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what to believe from John, but he said that the police in Tacoma and Olympia had been planning for a while on raiding the anarchist Pitch Pipe Infoshop and also the house I lived in with several other activists in Olympia. And they had approached John several times, saying, you know, “Do they have bombs and explosives and drugs and guns and things like that?” which is just disgusting to even think that they would suggest that. They’re just trying to silence us politically. They’re going after us for our politics and for our work, you know, around Port Militarization Resistance and around antiwar organizing. And, of course, John told them, no, we didn’t have any of those stuff. He told them the truth.
But he also mentioned that there were other informants that are amongst us.
AMY GOODMAN: Brendan, we’re going to break. Then we’re going to come back to this discussion. I really want to talk to Drew Hendricks about John’s involvement in IT, in the technical aspects, the coordination of the LISTSERVs.
Today, a Democracy Now! exclusive, an exposé on a military spy in peace groups in Olympia, Washington. Brendan Dunn is our guest, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually a military spy. And Drew Hendricks will be joining us in a minute, talking about his involvement. John Towery, their friend, “John Jacob.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a national broadcast exclusive. A military spy in the ranks of antiwar activists in Olympia, Washington.
We have a number of guests. We’ve just been speaking with Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered, through an FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually working with Fort Lewis base in Washington state, was a military spy in his organizations.
Drew Hendricks is with us, as well, in Seattle, also an Olympia activist with the same groups, Port Militarization Resistance. He worked with John Towery, his real name — “John Jacob” is how they knew him — before the exposé that has now coming out.
Drew, tell us how you met John and how he was involved in the organizations.
DREW HENDRICKS: I first met John in September of 2007, and he approached me as somebody who claimed to have base access, which turned out to be true. He did admit that he was a civilian employee for the Army. And what he was offering me were observations and inside knowledge of operations on Fort Lewis.
I let him know that I wasn’t willing to have any classified information from him and that I wasn’t engaged in espionage. I was looking for open source information and looking for insight into movements of military materials over the public roads, so that people other than myself could organize protests or organize blockades, as they might see fit, and it wasn’t appropriate for me to be involved in their plans. It was only appropriate for him let me know things that I could confirm from open ground, from public spaces. He abided by those rules, for the most part.
And he did not reveal his role to me that he was actually part of a force protection cell, that he was actually reporting to DES fusion and part of the intelligence operation of Fort Lewis. He wasn’t admitting to me that his reports were going to Washington Joint Analytical Center, which is a function of the Washington State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Intimidation — I’m sorry, Investigation.
But he did provide what he purported to be observations of operations on Fort Lewis, and he was involved with the group for a few months before I mistakenly and stupidly, in retrospect, trusted him with co-administration of our LISTSERV, our shared means of talking to each other over electronic media.
AMY GOODMAN: And the LISTSERV involvement, how much control he had over who was involved in your groups, Drew?
DREW HENDRICKS: Well, he could tell from that access who all was subscribed to the LISTSERV. He couldn’t control who was coming into or out of meetings, but he could find out who people were, if they were subscribed to the LISTSERV. And he did challenge some people who were attempting to get to the LISTSERV for their credentials, for people who could vouch for them being people who were not law enforcement or people who were not military intelligence who were coming into that activity. He wasn’t in control of what messages people could send, but as an administrator on RiseUp, he could have unsubscribed people, and there were some people that were disruptive that he did unsubscribe, in a way that the other LISTSERV administrators, for the most part, agreed with.
He wasn’t found to be abusing his authorities as a LISTSERV administrator directly, although he probably reported that list upwards in his chain of command or his chain of employment. And that served a significant chilling role for him as a military employee. He’s a civilian employee, but he is a former military-enlisted person. And so, he understood, or should have understood, that what he was doing was legally inappropriate. I’m not a lawyer, but in my opinion and from the history I’ve read, what he was doing was rather extraordinary, from the histories that I’ve read.
ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring three others into this discussion. Joining us from Washington, DC is Mike German. He’s the National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He previously served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.
Also joining us here in New York is Eileen Clancy. She’s a founding member of I-Witness Video, a video collective that has documented government surveillance of activist groups for years. Her group was targeted by police raids last summer during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And on the line with us from Bellingham, Washington is Larry Hildes, an attorney and National Lawyers Guild member who has represented Washington state-based activists with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in criminal and civil cases.
Larry, I want to go to you. Can you talk about your involvement with this and on what bases you have represented these activists?
LARRY HILDES: Absolutely. Good morning, by the way.
Yeah, I’ve been — I got involved — there was a sit-in at the gate of the Port of Olympia back in May of 2006 to protest use of the port for military shipments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s been a wonderful experience. I have represented these folks through several rounds of criminal cases throughout Pierce and Thurston Counties, Tacoma and Olympia. And now we are suing, based in part on spying, in conjunction with the Seattle office of the ACLU.
And it got strange fairly early. We were in trial in March of 2007, arguing that these folks were not guilty of criminal violations for sitting at the gate, when they weren’t allowed into the port itself. The prosecutors kind of hinted that there was — that they had inside information that they shouldn’t have had. And the fourth day of the trial, as it’s clear that we have the jury, prosecutor’s office came out with a confidential jury analysis sheet that my office had done, that was circulated only on the internal attorney-client LISTSERV that was exclusively for the defense team, and announced that this was all over the internet and got a mistrial.
And we’re trying to figure out in the courtroom what’s going on here. Never seen anything like this. We know it’s not on the internet. And the person who set up the LISTSERV — so we’ve got LISTSERV stuff going on even before Mr. Towery’s involvement — person on the LISTSERV discovers that there’s two people who we never heard of, who they had not subscribed, he had not allowed onto the list. Those two turned out to be Tacoma police officers. And we’ve now found that the Tacoma police knew that this document was going to be revealed, knew it would probably be a mistrial, and was speculating — and knew exactly when it would be and was speculating what the effects would be. So, the spying started early.
It was very clear that they treated these folks — the worst thing they’ve ever done is acts of civil disobedience, peacefully, nonviolently trying to stop military blockades by standing in front of tanks and Strykers — that they were treating this like a very, very serious situation. So we knew that early. And it’s become clear that there was a lot of spying going on throughout this process. We kind of knew that this was coming.
Right now I’m defending a group of demonstrators who were arrested in Olympia in November of ’07, allegedly trying to block a troop convoy or a Stryker convoy from coming out of the port to go back to Fort Lewis to be repaired and sent back to Iraq again. And the police reports talk about —- the incident commander talks about the fact that they had Army intelligence sources reporting to them detailed discussions that were going on in private meetings that Port Militarization Resistance was having, where they were discussing tactics and strategies. And based on that information, they decided that our clients from that action, who were sitting in an empty road outside of a closed gate, with no military vehicles in sight, were intending to blockade traffic and were arrested for attempted disorderly conduct, a charge we’ve never seen in our lives.
So we started trying to find out what’s going. We got the judge to agree to sign subpoenas, which were immediately refused by the head of the civil division of the US attorney’s office in Seattle, Brian Kipnis, saying they had no standing and they weren’t going to respond, and ordered the Army not to give us this information. So -—
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about this US attorney. And also, isn’t he the attorney who prosecuted Ehren Watada —-
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly -—
AMY GOODMAN: — the first officer to say no to going to war in Iraq, refusing to lead young men and women there for a war he felt was immoral?
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly right, Amy. He handled the Ninth Circuit appeals and stood up in the courtroom and said, “OK, he’s had his appeal. Now we need to go forward. He needs to be prosecuted. We want a second court-martial,” and continued to argue that. And the day that the decision came — Ninth Circuit decision came down saying, “No, this was double jeopardy; you can’t do this,” he said, “Well, we’re going to prosecute him on the remaining claims anyway,” which, of course, has not happened.
He was also involved in a number of the Guantanamo cases and has been arguing that evidence of torture shouldn’t come out, because it would reveal confidential information about how Guantanamo was set up. So, his role has been, throughout this, to obstruct.
I sent him a letter saying, “OK, now we have this information. I ask for your help in investigating this, because this is a crime.” Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1887, it is a crime for the US military to become involved in civilian law enforcement. And they’ve chipped away at it, but it’s still a crime. I got a letter back now telling me I have to ask the Army. I got this yesterday, saying, “You have to go through channels with the Army.” I’ve gone through channels with the Army, and the Army has told me they’re not allowed to talk to me, because he told them not to. So we’re going back and forth with this guy.
He has been in the US attorney’s office throughout much of the Bush administration. And apparently his job is to obstruct and punish those involved in protesting the war and those protesting torture. Interesting character. I had never heard of him before this. Apparently has a close relative — there aren’t that many Kipnises, but there are some —- who runs a security firm that specializes in analysis of national security issues. So it’s a cozy little family network there. So -—
ANJALI KAMAT: I’d like to turn to Mike German and bring him into the conversation, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, DC. Mike German, what’s your response to all of this?
MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think his analysis is exactly right. This is a pretty clear violation of Posse Comitatus. Now, what the military would argue, and has argued, is that they have a right to engage in force protection, which obviously, in its normal understanding of that term, is a defensive sort of capability, i.e. they can put guards at the gates of military bases and protect from threats from without. But they seem to have been, since 2002, considering that as an offensive capability, where they’re actually sending operatives out to spy on community activists, which is, of course, prohibited and something that, you know, the First and the Fourth Amendment become engaged.
And, you know, this is something that we found out through a FOIA back in 2005 the military was engaged in through a group called the Counterintelligence Field Activity. And they had a database of activists called TALON that, again, collected this US person information that the military has no business collecting. And that was shut down. But unfortunately, you know, they just created a new mechanism. This appears to be the fusion centers and these fusion cells that they’re using that, they seem to think, give them a method of circumventing Posse Comitatus and the restrictions on military intelligence gathering in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean, Mike, by fusion centers.
MIKE GERMAN: About two years ago, me and a colleague at the ACLU started investigating a lot of federal money going to what were called intelligence fusion centers. And I was only two years out of federal law enforcement at that point, and I had never heard this term, so I became concerned. And what these centers are is multi-jurisdictional intelligence centers that involve state, local and federal law enforcement, as well as other government entities — you know, a lot of times there are emergency services type of entities, but actually can’t involve any government entity — but also involve oftentimes the military and private companies.
So we produced a report in November of 2007 warning of the potential dangers that these multi-jurisdictional centers had, because it was unclear whose rules applied. Were we using federal rules? Were we using state rules? Local rules? And what was military and private company — what rules govern their conduct? So we put out this report in November of 2007. At that point, there were forty-two fusion centers. By July of 2008, we had found so many instances of abuse, we put out an updated report. At that point, there were fifty-eight fusion centers. Today, the DHS recognizes at least seventy-two fusion centers. So these things are rapidly growing, without any sort of proper boundaries on what activities happen within them and without really any idea of what it is the military is doing in these fusion centers and what type of access they have to US person information.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn back for a moment to the two activists in Olympia. They’re speaking to us from Seattle today, first time they’re speaking out nationally, Brendan Dunn and Drew Hendricks. Just give us a sense, Brendan, of why you got involved in activism. People might be listening and watching right now and wondering, “I’ve never even heard of Port Militarization Resistance,” or perhaps the new Students for a Democratic Society, based on the old. What’s your background, Brendan?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, I guess I really started to get involved with activism and organizing — it was in high school, but it wasn’t until after high school, when my friend’s brother was shot and killed by the police in Utica, New York. His name was Walter Washington. And the community developed a response to that, and, you know, that’s what really started to get me thinking and actively organizing. That’s really when I got involved.
I moved to Olympia a little over three years ago. Since then, I’ve been involved with a lot, with Students for a Democratic Society. And, you know, the more police repression I’ve learned about or experienced and just repression, generally, that it’s moved me in a more radical direction. That’s when I started to pick up anarchist politics and organizing.
So I’ve been involved with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance — just makes sense to me, because the military — this is one of the most highly militarized areas of the country, if not the world, western Washington is. And it just makes sense to me that if we want to throw a gear in the war machine, the best way to do it is in our own backyard, our own towns. And in our case, it’s in the Port of Olympia, the Port of Tacoma, the Port of Grays Harbor in Aberdeen. And that’s where direct action makes sense and community struggle makes sense.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Drew Hendricks, your involvement in Port Militarization Resistance, known for trying to stop some of the — for example, the Stryker vehicles from being sent to Iraq?
DREW HENDRICKS: Yes. My primary activity with Port Militarization Resistance is as a coordinator for intelligence collection, so that people have the time that they need to make good decisions about what it is that they’re going to do. I’ve taken one direct action myself against said activity early on in the end of May 2006. I blocked a couple of gates shut overnight and was arrested during that action and found and put in jail for a few hours. But for the most part, my role has been to collect information and disseminate it to the people who need to know, so that they can make timely decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this conversation. We are doing a national exposé today on a person who worked in the military spying on peace groups in Washington state. His name — well, they thought his name was John Jacob. His name is John Towery. We asked that he come — we wanted him to come on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our request. We also asked the military to join us; we read the statement earlier, yes, admitting that John Towery worked with them. We’ll continue this conversation in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We bring you this exclusive on peace activists in Washington state revealing an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military — the activists, members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, this is Democracy Now!, and we urge you to go to our website at democracynow.org, where we’re video and audio podcasting, where you can see the documents that they got under Freedom of Information Act [ed: public records request].
Anjali?
ANJALI KAMAT: The government documents also show that intelligence officers from other government and military agencies inquired Olympia police about the Washington state peace activists. In an email to an Olympia police officer from February 2008, Thomas Glapion, Chief Investigations/Intel of New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force, writes, quote, “Good Morning, first let me thank you for the effort. To the contrary you were quite the help to me. You are now part of my Intel network. I’m still looking at possible protests by the PMR SDS MDS and other left wing anti war groups so any Intel you have would be appreciated…In return if you need anything from the Armed Forces I will try to help you as well,” end-quote.
Now, we contacted the McGuire Air Base, and they also denied our interview request. They released a short statement saying only, quote, “Our force protection specialists routinely research local and national groups in response to potential risks and threats to Air Force installations and to ensure the safety of our personnel,” end-quote.
Another declassified email from February 2008 comes from Andrew Pecher of the US Capitol Police Intelligence Investigations Section in Washington, DC. The email is also addressed to an Olympia police contact. It says, quote, “I am just droppjng [sic] in to see if you had a problems with the below action that we had talked about a few weeks ago. Any information that you have would be helpful. Thank you!!” end-quote. The “action” Pecher refers to is the “Northwest DNC/RNC Resistance Conference,” an event that was held at Evergreen State College to prepare for protests at last summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions.
I want to go to Brendan Maslauskas Dunn. Brendan, how did you find this information? When you first saw this information, can you talk about your reaction?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, when it all surfaced through the public records requests, I wasn’t surprised. I guess I had been expecting this, especially with the level of activity that activists have been involved with in Olympia, in the last few years, especially. But, I mean, it still was a shock. I didn’t know it was that extensive. I guess that’s why it was a shock to me.
I didn’t know that the Air Force from New Jersey was interested in activities that activists in Olympia were involved with. And I didn’t know that the Capitol police in Washington, DC was trying to extract information from people in Olympia, as well.
So I always suspected that there was surveillance going on. It was obvious it was going on locally from local agencies and local police agencies. I had no idea how widespread it is. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have no clue what’s below the water.
AMY GOODMAN: Eileen Clancy, I’d like to bring you into this conversation. You have long been documenting police and federal authorities’ activities in antiwar and peace protests at the conventions in 2004 and then 2008. You, yourselves, at I-Witness were targeted. You were detained by police. The places that you were setting up video to video police actions on the streets were raided by the police in St. Paul. Your reaction to what you’re listening to and watching today?
EILEEN CLANCY: Well, I have to say, I think this is one of the most important revelations of spying on the American people that we’ve seen since the beginning of the Bush era. It’s very clear that there’s no such thing as one spy, especially not in the Army. So — and it’s very clear that this problem is national in scope, in that sort of casual manner that these folks are interacting with each other.
It’s really like in January 1970. Christopher Pyle, who was a former US Army intelligence officer, revealed in Washington Monthly that there was an extraordinary program of spying by the Army on political protest groups. And he said that — well, what was written in the New York Times was that the Army detectives would attend some of these events, but the majority of material that they gathered was from police departments, local governments and the FBI. And at that time, they had a special teletype, pre-internet, that connected the Army nationwide and where the police could load up their information on this stuff. They also published a small book that was a blacklist, which is similar now to the terrorist watch list, where the police share information about activists with maybe no criminal basis whatsoever. And at the time, in January 1970, Pyle said that there was a hope to link the teletype systems to computerized databanks in Baltimore, Maryland, which, of course, is the general area of the National Security Agency, which does most of the spying for — it’s supposed to be foreign, but apparently they do domestic spying, as well.
So this now, what we have here — and after these revelations, there was a Church Committee. There was a great deal of investigating that went on. And while a lot of it was covered up, the military was pushed back for a while on this front. But because now we have the capability of gathering an extraordinary amount of information and holding onto it and sharing it, through the internet and through other means, we really have this 1970s problem amped up on steroids, twenty-first-century-style. And this had been going on for a while.
Something terrible has been going on in the Pacific Northwest in terms of police spying. There are other documents that had been revealed — the Tacoma police, Homeland Security, meetings, minutes. And you can see that one of the essential problems with this kind of model and the fusion center model is that in the same meeting, they’re talking about a Grannies Against the War group handing out fliers at the local mall, and they’re talking about new information about what al-Qaeda is going to do. It’s a model that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and it’s a model that’s based really on hysteria.
When you see those pictures that were just shown on the screen, pictures of people with no weapons standing in the middle of a road with giant Army vehicles in front of them, you know, it’s clear that the protest is of a symbolic nature. There’s no violence involved on the part of the activists. It’s a traditional sit-in type of protest. The idea that the Army, the Navy and the Marines would become hysterical at this threat, I mean, it is the Army, it’s the Navy, it’s the Marines. And when — that’s the reason the Army shouldn’t be involved in this, because the job of an army — and they’ll tell you this — is to kill people and break things. The motto of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team that’s housed at Fort Lewis, that this force protection cell was trying to protect, their motto is “strike and destroy.” They’re really built for one thing, and it’s certainly not policing. It’s certainly not dealing with community activist groups, Grannies Against the War, or local activists in Olympia.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about Rush Holt, the New Jersey congressman — we’re talking about McGuire Air Base, actually, in New Jersey — who has just in the last weeks been calling for a Church-like, Pike-like investigation of the intelligence community, starts by talking about the CIA. He’s raised this with the Washington Independent, with the Newark Star-Ledger, even raised it on Lou Dobbs a few days ago. And the significance of something at this level of the Church Committee hearings that investigated spying — Sy Hersh exposed it decades ago in a major article in the New York Times. Mike German, at this point, the significance of something like this? And do you think we would see this under President Obama?
MIKE GERMAN: I would hope so. You know, when we first came out with our report on fusion centers and warned about the military presence, you know, people told us that that wasn’t something we needed to be concerned about. And, you know, so this is a very important revelation, that there is actual evidence of abuse, that hopefully will open the eyes of the people who are responsible for overseeing these types of activities. And I believe something like a select investigative committee to investigate such activities is certainly called for. And, in fact, Representative Barbara Lee had introduced back in April a bill that would allow a select committee to investigate national security policy and practices. So, we’re hoping that this will bring support to that effort.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask Brendan Dunn about the evidence of other spies in your organization. In fact, didn’t John — “John Jacob,” now known as John Towery, who worked at Fort Lewis — didn’t he tell you about others that he actually wanted out of the organization sometimes and called the military to get them out?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, that’s his story, at least. He admitted that there were a few other informants that were sent.
He had a weird story, which, you know, we know isn’t true, based on the public records and the documents that we have in our hands, that he was, you know, forced into this position to spy on us, that he didn’t do it for pay, that he only reported to the Tacoma police and wasn’t connected to the military whatsoever. I mean, it’s a good cover story to, you know, let the military free and blame it on a bunch of Keystone cops in Tacoma, but there was actually another email I got through the records request that was sent between a couple Olympia police officers, and they had mentioned something about their Army guy that was working for them and something else about someone in the Coast Guard that was also perhaps, still perhaps, currently acting as an informant.
AMY GOODMAN: We also, in doing research on John Towery, have information, addresses that he had at both Fort Drum, Upstate New York, and also in Brussels, which we associate with NATO. Is there any understanding or knowledge you have of this, either Brendan or Drew? Did he talk about this in his past?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: This is actually the first I’ve heard of it. I’m actually surprised, because I used to live near Fort Drum. I used to go to school near Fort Drum before I moved out to Olympia. So this is news to me. I’ve never heard anything.
AMY GOODMAN: Right now, in figuring out how you go forward, I wanted to bring Larry Hildes back into this conversation. Information about one activist actually having a locator put in his car to figure out where he was going from one protest to another, can you tell us about Phil Chin, Larry?
LARRY HILDES: Yes, I can. And we’re actually suing about this in conjunction with the Seattle ACLU now. Mr. Chin was on his way to a demonstration at the Port of Aberdeen. It was going to be a peaceful march, not even any civil disobedience. His license plate was called in, and Washington state patrol sent an attempt-to-locate code — we didn’t know what an attempt-to-locate code was until this — saying, “There are three known anarchists in this car, in this green Ford Taurus. Apprehend them, and then let the Aberdeen police know.”
So he gets pulled over for supposedly going five miles an hour under the speed limit in heavy traffic and charged with DUI, despite the fact he hasn’t had anything to drink, hasn’t done any drugs, total — every single test comes up absolutely negative, except for the fact that he had trouble standing on one foot because he had an inner ear infection. The lab tests come up negative. And they still go forward with this, until we move to dismiss and ask what this attempt-to-locate code is. And we find out that it’s — we’ve got the tape, the dispatch tapes of them calling in this car with the three known anarchists — by the way, none of whom was Phil. But on the dashboard of the car that takes him away is a picture of Phil’s other car.
ANJALI KAMAT: Eileen Clancy, we just have a minute left. What does this, all of this information that’s come out, what does this do for activists? Does it create a climate of fear? What you, who have been spied on, who have had so much experience with this — what are your final words?
EILEEN CLANCY: I think people should try not to be afraid. They should consider what these fine activists have done here, which is done an extraordinary public service by putting this information out. This could be one of the key revelations of this era, if this is followed up on. It’s very important that people be aggressive about this. And thank goodness they did it.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us, Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video; Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union; Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild, based in Bellingham; and the two activists who have exposed this story through their Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia-based activist, and Drew Hendricks, as well. Thank you both very much for being with us.

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TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2009

Find this story at 28 July 2009

Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups (2009)

Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed U.S. Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the U.S. Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.

The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement, and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

Brendan Maslauskas Dunn asked the City of Olympia for documents or e-mails about communications between the Olympia police and the military relating to anarchists, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the Industrial Workers of the World (Dunn’s union). Dunn received hundreds of documents. One e-mail contained reference to a “John J. Towery II,” who activists discovered was the same person as their fellow activist “John Jacob.”

Dunn told me: “John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He said he was an anarchist. He was really interested in SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me.”

“Jacob” told the activists he was a civilian employed at Fort Lewis Army Base, and would share information about base activities, which could help PMR organize rallies and protests against public ports being used for troop and Stryker military vehicle deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2006, PMR activists have occasionally engaged in civil disobedience, blocking access to the port.

Larry Hildes, an attorney representing Washington activists, says the U.S. attorney prosecuting the cases against them, Brian Kipnis, specifically instructed the Army not to hand over any information about its intelligence-gathering activities, despite a court order to do so.

Which is why Dunn’s request to Olympia and the documents he obtained are so important. The military is supposed to be barred from deploying on U.S. soil, or from spying on citizens.

Christopher Pyle, now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, was a military intelligence officer. He recalled: “In the 1960s, Army intelligence had 1,500 plainclothes agents watching every demonstration of 20 people or more. They had a giant warehouse in Baltimore full of information on the law-abiding activities of American citizens, mainly protest politics.”

Pyle later investigated the spying for two congressional committees: “As a result of those investigations, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished, and all of its files were burned. Then the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to stop the warrantless surveillance of electronic communications.”

Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rush Holt, D-N.J., and others are pushing for a new, comprehensive investigation of all U.S. intelligence activities, of the scale of the Church Committee hearings, which exposed widespread spying on and disruption of legal domestic groups, attempts at assassination of foreign heads of state, and more.

Demands mount for information and accountability for Vice President Dick Cheney’s alleged secret assassination squad, President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the CIA’s alleged misleading of Congress. But the spying in Olympia occurred well into the Obama administration (and may continue today). President Barack Obama supports retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the wiretapping, and has maintained Bush-era reliance on the state secrets privilege. Lee and Holt should take the information uncovered by Brendan Dunn and the Olympia activists and get the investigations started now.

See/hear/read the full exclusive hour broadcast exposé on Democracy Now!:

Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman Amy GoodmanHost, executive producer of Democracy Now!, NYT bestselling author, syndicated columnist
Posted: July 28, 2009 08:20 PM

Find this story at 28 July 2008

Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

The Military Spies on Anarchists in Olympia (2009)

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now just broke a story that is a piece of a larger puzzle: and that puzzle is the spying on dissidents right here in the United States.

This time it was done by someone working for the U.S. military, which may be illegal.

It happened out in Olympia, Washington, where a guy who went by the name of John Jacob infiltrated a group of anarchists working with Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Militarization Resistance. This went on for a couple of years.

When the activists found him out just last week, they were shocked.

“John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine,” Brendan Maslauskas Dunn told Amy Goodman. “We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle.”

But John Jacob was not who he purported to be.

His real name is John Towery, and he’s no anarchist. He’s a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis.

This is just the latest case of domestic spying on political groups that may be happening all over.

A few months ago, it came out that an undercover FBI agent had infiltrated some peace groups in Iowa City.

The case in Olympia is even more troubling, as it involves the U.S. military, which is supposed to be banned by the Posse Comitatus Act from engaging in law enforcement.

But this isn’t the first time that the military has been caught with its hand in the spying jar.

Back in 2004 at the University of Texas Law School in Austin, two Army lawyers attended, under cover, a conference entitled “Islam and the Law: A Question of Sexism.”

On Mother’s Day, 2005, the National Guard in California was keeping tabs on the Raging Grannies and Code Pink.

And last year at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, the U.S. Northern Command provided support. (See democracynow.org, and “What Is NorthCom Up To?”; in the February 2009 issue of The Progressive.)

The Pentagon also was involved in spying on activists through its notorious Talon database.

Though the Pentagon shut down Talon, the national security state is still involved in gathering intelligence through so-called fusion centers.

The Olympia activists were surprised at the extent of the spying. It turns out that the head of investigations and intelligence at New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force contacted an Olympia police officer about the anarchists, saying he was looking into “leftwing anti-war groups” himself and would appreciate “any Intel.” And the U.S. Capitol Police Intelligence Investigations Section sought information from the Olympia police about an event at Evergreen State College that was planning protests at the Democratic and Republican conventions last year, according to Democracy Now.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Dunn told Amy Goodman. “I have no clue what’s below the water.”

For more information on hundreds of similar incidents, go to McCarthyism Watch at The Progressive’s website.

Published on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 by The Progressive
by Matthew Rothschild

Find this story at 28 July 2009

© 2009 The Progressive

FBI Infiltrates Iowa City Protest Group (2009)

Confirmed: The CIA Destroyed Its Noam Chomsky File and Thousands More on Other U.S. Citizens

I can now confirm that the reason why the CIA could not locate its file on Noam Chomsky, despite the fact that the CIA had in fact maintained records on him, is that the CIA destroyed them and, unfortunately in my view, the destruction was authorized by the Archivist of the United States.

As background, in an earlier post “More CIA Records on Noam Chomsky the CIA Could Not Find” I analyzed some additional CIA records (see, e.g., here from 1967, here, here, and here from 1970, and here from 1971) showing that the CIA was documenting the activities of Noam Chomsky as part of the CIA’s CHAOS/MHCHAOS program. Importantly, those documents were located in the “Segregated Collection” of CIA records that were provided to the House Select Committee on Assassinations established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of JFK and MLK, which are available in full-text search from the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

My post was a follow-up to John Hudson’s earlier piece in Foreign Policy called “Exclusive: After Multiple Denials, CIA Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky” that was based on a CIA document obtained via a FOIA request to the FBI by Kel McClanahan at National Security Counselors on behalf of Chomsky biographer Fredric Maxwell after the CIA had repeatedly denied possession any such records.

The new piece of the puzzle, just obtained via FOIA, is this CIA records control schedule, NC1-263-78-1, signed by then Archivist James B. Rhoads in March 1978 approving a “Request for immediate disposal” of thousands of CIA files on U.S. citizens “and the index related to these collections which were established under project CHAOS during the period 1967-1974.” The schedule notes that the “files were opened to maintain information bearing on possible foreign Communist exploitation of dissention in the United States, primarily concerning the Vietnam War. Subject of the folders were U.S. citizens and organizations involved in dissident activities in the United States.”

The schedule actually quantifies these files noting there were “8,328 folders on individual U.S. persons (citizens, resident aliens) and 2,196 volumes consisting of official and ‘soft’ subject files and so-called sensitive files (i.e., organizations/activities).” The CIA only requested immediate destruction of 7,840 of the files and was retaining the other 488, because it had deemed them to be of “continuing foreign intelligence or counter-intelligence interest.” The schedule also excludes records that were, at the time, subject to FOIA or Privacy Act requests.

The schedule explains why the CIA denied having any such records and why the CIA records on Chomsky have been found in collections outside the CIA. Moreover, on its face, this approved records schedule made the destruction of the records consistent with the procedure outlined in the statutes collectively referred to as the Federal Records Act (although it is not conclusive as courts can, and have, found that even records schedules fail to comply with the federal records laws (see, e.g., American Friends Serv. Comm. v. Webster, 720 F.2d 29, 65-67 (D.C. Cir. 1983)).

The bigger issue, as I suggested in my earlier post, is that the incomplete story of the CIA’s creation, maintenance, and then destruction of its Noam Chomsky file highlights yet again a crucial question that needs attention and discussion in the ongoing debate over NSA surveillance files (previously discussed here). Namely, the drive for “purging” surveillance data and “minimization” procedures purportedly designed to “protect privacy” needs to be balanced against the value of retaining government surveillance files (or some portion thereof) for long-term accountability purposes. We now know that the CIA destroyed its file on Noam Chomsky based on a records schedule that cites the Privacy Act as justification, but that destruction also had the effect of creating, for years, the false impression that the CIA had never had such a file in the first place. There has to be a middle path that both protects privacy and also preserves accountability.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Find this story at 26 February 2014

copyright docexblog.com

Exclusive: After Multiple Denials, CIA Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.
The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky’s entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley’s archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.
The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky’s CIA file comes in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.” The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky’s brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s — and the CIA’s well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word.
Now, a public records request by Chomsky biographer Fredric Maxwell reveals a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.
Dated June 8, 1970, the memo discusses Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asks the FBI for more information about an upcoming trip by anti-war activists to North Vietnam. The memo’s author, a CIA official, says the trip has the “ENDORSEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY” and requests “ANY INFORMATION” about the people associated with the trip.
After receiving the document, The Cable sent it to Athan Theoharis, a professor emeritus at Marquette University and an expert on FBI-CIA cooperation and information-gathering.
“The June 1970 CIA communication confirms that the CIA created a file on Chomsky,” said Theoharis. “That file, at a minimum, contained a copy of their communication to the FBI and the report on Chomsky that the FBI prepared in response to this request.”
The evidence also substantiates the fact that Chomsky’s file was tampered with, says Theoharis. “The CIA’s response to the FOIA requests that it has no file on Chomsky confirms that its Chomsky file was destroyed at an unknown time,” he said.
It’s worth noting that the destruction of records is a legally treacherous activity. Under the Federal Records Act of 1950, all federal agencies are required to obtain advance approval from the national Archives for any proposed record disposition plans. The Archives is tasked with preserving records with “historical value.”
“Clearly, the CIA’s file, or files, on Chomsky fall within these provisions,” said Theoharis.
It’s unclear if the agency complied with protocols in the deletion of Chomsky’s file. The CIA declined to comment for this story.
What does Chomsky think? When The Cable presented him with evidence of his CIA file, the famous linguist responded with his trademark cynicism.
“Some day it will be realized that systems of power typically try to extend their power in any way they can think of,” he said. When asked if he was more disturbed by intelligence overreach today (given the latest NSA leaks) or intelligence overreach in the 70s, he dismissed the question as an apples-to-oranges comparison.
“What was frightening in the ‘60s into early ‘70s was not so much spying as the domestic terror operations, COINTELPRO,” he said, referring to the FBI’s program to discredit and infiltrate domestic political organizations. “And also the lack of interest when they were exposed.”
Regardless,, the destruction of Chomsky’s CIA file raises an even more disturbing question: Who else’s file has evaporated from Langley’s archives? What other chapters of CIA history will go untold?
“It is important to learn when the CIA decided to destroy the Chomsky file and why they decided that it should be destroyed,'” said Theoharis. “Undeniably, Chomsky’s was not the sole CIA file destroyed. How many other files were destroyed?”

1170848-001 – 2013-04-11 – FBI – CIA response

BY JOHN HUDSON AUGUST 13, 2013 – 05:18 AM

Find this story at 13 August 2013

Copyright thecable.foreignpolicy.com

WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI

On an August workday in 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport. The passport photo showed a man with a unruly shock of platinum blonde hair and the name Julian Paul Assange.

Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.

The relationship provides a rare window into the U.S. law enforcement investigation into WikiLeaks, the transparency group newly thrust back into international prominence with its assistance to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Thordarson’s double-life illustrates the lengths to which the government was willing to go in its pursuit of Julian Assange, approaching WikiLeaks with the tactics honed during the FBI’s work against organized crime and computer hacking — or, more darkly, the bureau’s Hoover-era infiltration of civil rights groups.

“It’s a sign that the FBI views WikiLeaks as a suspected criminal organization rather than a news organization,” says Stephen Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “WikiLeaks was something new, so I think the FBI had to make a choice at some point as to how to evaluate it: Is this The New York Times, or is this something else? And they clearly decided it was something else.”

The FBI declined comment.

Thordarson was 17 years old and still in high school when he joined WikiLeaks in February 2010. He was one of a large contingent of Icelandic volunteers that flocked to Assange’s cause after WikiLeaks published internal bank documents pertaining to that country’s financial crisis.

When a staff revolt in September 2010 left the organization short-handed, Assange put Thordarson in charge of the WikiLeaks chat room, making Thordarson the first point of contact for new volunteers, journalists, potential sources, and outside groups clamoring to get in with WikiLeaks at the peak of its notoriety.

In that role, Thordarson was a middle man in the negotiations with the Bradley Manning Defense Fund that led to WikiLeaks donating $15,000 to the defense of its prime source. He greeted and handled a new volunteer who had begun downloading and organizing a vast trove of 1970s-era diplomatic cables from the National Archives and Record Administration, for what became WikiLeaks’ “Kissinger cables” collection last April. And he wrangled scores of volunteers and supporters who did everything from redesign WikiLeaks’ websites to shooting video homages to Assange.

He accumulated thousands of pages of chat logs from his time in WikiLeaks, which, he says, are now in the hands of the FBI.

Thordarson’s betrayal of WikiLeaks also was a personal betrayal of its founder, Julian Assange, who, former colleagues say, took Thordarson under his wing, and kept him around in the face of criticism and legal controversy.

“When Julian met him for the first or second time, I was there,” says Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Icelandic Parliament who worked with WikiLeaks on Collateral Murder, the Wikileaks release of footage of a US helicopter attack in Iraq. “And I warned Julian from day one, there’s something not right about this guy… I asked not to have him as part of the Collateral Murder team.”

In January 2011, Thordarson was implicated in a bizarre political scandal in which a mysterious “spy computer” laptop was found running unattended in an empty office in the parliament building. “If you did [it], don’t tell me,” Assange told Thordarson, according to unauthenticated chat logs provided by Thordarson.

“I will defend you against all accusations, ring [sic] and wrong, and stick by you, as I have done,” Assange told him in another chat the next month. “But I expect total loyalty in return.”

Instead, Thordarson used his proximity to Assange for his own purposes. The most consequential act came in June 2011, on his third visit to Ellingham Hall — the English mansion where Assange was then under house arrest while fighting extradition to Sweden.

For reasons that remain murky, Thordarson decided to approach members of the Lulzsec hacking gang and solicit them to hack Islandic government systems as a service to WikiLeaks. To establish his bona fides as a WikiLeaks representative, he shot and uploaded a 40-second cell phone video that opens on the IRC screen with the chat in progress, and then floats across the room to capture Asssange at work with an associate. (This exchange was first reported by Parmy Olson in her book on Anonymous).

 

Unfortunately for Thordarson, the FBI had busted Lulzsec’s leader, Hector Xavier Monsegur, AKA Sabu, a week earlier, and secured his cooperation as an informant. On June 20, the FBI warned the Icelandic government. “A huge team of FBI came to Iceland and asked the Icelandic authorities to help them,” says Jonsdottir. “They thought there was an imminent Lulzsec attack on Iceland.”

The FBI may not have known at this point who Thordarson was beyond his screen names. The bureau and law enforcement agencies in the UK and Australia went on to round up alleged Lulzsec members on unrelated charges.

Having dodged that bullet, it’s not clear what prompted Thordarson to approach the FBI two months later. When I asked him directly last week, he answered, “I guess I cooperated because I didn’t want to participate in having Anonymous and Lulzsec hack for Wikileaks, since then you’re definitely breaking quite a lot of laws.”

That answer doesn’t make a lot of sense, since it was Thordarson, not Assange, who asked Lulzsec to hack Iceland. There’s no evidence of any other WikiLeaks staffer being involved. He offered a second reason that he admits is more truthful: “The second reason was the adventure.”

Thordarson’s equivocation highlights a hurdle in reporting on him: He is prone to lying. Jonsdottir calls him “pathological.” He admits he has lied to me in the past. For this story, Thordarson backed his account by providing emails that appear to be between him and his FBI handlers, flight records for some of his travels, and an FBI receipt indicating that he gave them eight hard drives. The Icelandic Ministry of the Interior has previously confirmed that the FBI flew to Iceland to interview Thordarson. Thordarson also testified to much of this account in a session of the Icelandic Parliament, with Jonsdottir in attendance.

Finally, he has given me a substantial subset of the chat logs he says he passed to the FBI, amounting to about 2,000 pages, which, at the very least, proves that he kept logs and is willing to turn them over to a reporter disliked by Julian Assange.

Thordarson’s “adventure” began on August 23, 2011, when he sent an email to the general delivery box for the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík “Regarding an Ongoing Criminal investigation in the United States.”

“The nature of the intel that can be brought to light in that investigation will not be spoken over email conversation,” he wrote cryptically.

An embassy security officer called him the same day. “He said, ‘What investigation?’ I said the Wikileaks,” says Thordarson. “He denied there was such an investigation, so I just said we both know there is.”

Thordarson was invited to the embassy, where he presented a copy of Assange’s passport, the passport for Assange’s number two, Kristinn Hrafnsson, and a snippet of a private chat between Thordarson and Assange. The embassy official was noncommittal. He told Thordarson they might be in touch, but it would take at least a week.

It happened much faster.

 

Photo: Courtesy Sigurdur Thordarson

FBI agents and two federal prosecutors landed in a private Gulfstream on the next day, on August 24, and Thordarson was summoned back to the embassy.

He was met by the same embassy official who took his keys and his cell phone, then walked with him on a circuitous route through the streets of downtown Reykjavík, ending up at the Hotel Reykjavik Centrum, Thordarson says. There, Thordarson spent two hours in a hotel conference room talking to two FBI agents. Then they accompanied back to the embassy so he could put money in his parking meter, and back to the hotel for more debriefing.

The agents asked him about his Lulzsec interactions, but were primarily interested in what he could give them on WikiLeaks. One of them asked him if he could wear a recording device on his next visit to London and get Assange to say something incriminating, or talk about Bradley Manning.

“They asked what I use daily, have always on,” he says. “I said, my watch. So they said they could change that out for some recording watch.”

Thordarson says he declined. “I like Assange, even considered him a friend,” he says. “I just didn’t want to go that way.”

In all, Thordarson spent 20 hours with the agents over about five days. Then the Icelandic government ordered the FBI to pack up and go home.

It turns out the FBI had misled the local authorities about its purpose in the country. According to a timeline (.pdf) later released by the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police, the FBI contacted Icelandic law enforcement to report Thordarson’s embassy walk-in, and ask for permission to fly into the country to follow up. But the bureau had presented the request as an extension of its earlier investigation into Lulzsec, and failed to mention that its real target was WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks is well regarded in Iceland, and the incident errupted into a hot political topic when it surfaced there this year, with conservatives arguing that Iceland should have cooperated with the FBI, and liberals complaining about the agents being allowed into the country to begin with. “It became a massive controversy,” says Jonsdottir. “And then none of them knew what sort of person Siggi is.”

Politics aside, the FBI was not done with Thordarson.

The agents persuaded Thordarson to fly to Copenhagen with them, he says, for another day of interviews. In October, he made a second trip to Denmark for another debriefing. Between meetings, Thordarson kept in touch with his handlers through disposable email accounts.

In November 2011, Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks. The organization had discovered he had set up an online WikiLeaks tee shirt store and arranged for the proceeds to go into his own bank account. WikiLeaks has said the embezzlement amounted to about $50,000.

Thordarson told the FBI about it in a terse email on November 8. “No longer with WikiLeaks — so not sure how I can help you more.”

“We’d still like to talk with you in person,” one of his handlers replied. “I can think of a couple of easy ways for you to help.”

“Can you guys help me with cash?” Thordarson shot back.
Image: Courtesy Sigurdur Thordarson

For the next few months, Thordarson begged the FBI for money, while the FBI alternately ignored him and courted him for more assistance. In the end, Thordarson says, the FBI agreed to compensate him for the work he missed while meeting with agents (he says he worked at a bodyguard-training school), totaling about $5,000.

With the money settled, the FBI began preparing him for a trip to the U.S. “I wanted to talk to you about future things we can do,” his handler wrote in February. The FBI wanted him to reestablish contact with some of his former WikiLeaks associates. “We’ll talk about specific goals of the chats, but you can get a head start before our meet by just getting in touch and catching up with them. If you need to know who specifically, we can discuss on the phone.”

The three-day D.C. trip took place in February of last year. Thordarson says he flew on Iceland Air flight 631 to Logan International Airport on February 22, and transferred in Boston to JetBlue flight 686 to Dulles International Aiport, where he was greeted by a U.S. Customs official “and then escorted out the Dulles terminal into the arms of the FBI.”

He stayed at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, where the Justice Department’s investigation into WikiLeaks is centered, and met there with his two usual FBI contacts, and three or four other men in suits who did not identify themselves.

 

“At the last day we went to a steak house and ate, all of us,” he says. “Where they served Coca Cola in glass bottles from Mexico.”

On March 18, 2012, he had one more meeting with the FBI in Denmark. On this trip, he brought along eight of his personal hard drives, containing the information he’d compiled while at WikiLeaks, including his chat logs, photos and videos he shot at Ellingham Hall. The FBI gave him a signed receipt for the hardware.

Then they cut him off.

Today, Thordarson, now 20, has new problems. He’s facing criminal charges in Iceland for unrelated financial and tax crimes. In addition, WikiLeaks filed a police report for the tee-shirt shop embezzlement.

The legacy of his cooperation with the FBI is unclear. A court filing revealed last week shows that in the months following Thordarson ’s last debriefing, Justice Department officials in Arlington, Virginia, began obtaining court orders targeting two of Thordarson ’s former WikiLeaks colleagues in Iceland: Smari McCarthy and Herbert Snorrason.

Snorrason, who ran the WikiLeaks chat room in 2010, before Thordarson took it over, had the entire contents of his Gmail account handed over to the government, under a secret search warrant issued in October 2011.

The evidence used to obtain the warrant remains under seal. “I do wonder,” says Thordarson, “whether I’m somewhere in there.”

By Kevin Poulsen06.27.136:30 AM

 Find this story at 27 June 2013

WIRED.com © 2014 Condé Nast.

 

The WikiLeaks Mole; How a teenage misfit became the keeper of Julian Assange’s deepest secrets – only to betray him

On a recent frigid night near Reykjavik, Iceland, Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson slips into a bubbling geothermal pool at a suburban swim club. The cherubic, blond 21-year-old, who has been called everything in the press from “attention seeker” to “traitor” to “psychopath,” ends many of his days here, where, like most places around the city, he’s notorious. But even at a spa, he can find only the briefest moment of relaxation. Soon, the local prosecutor who is trying him for leaking financial records joins him in the tub, and Siggi quickly has to flee to another pool. “How does it feel to be the most dangerous man in Iceland?” a bather shouts across the steam.

Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview

In person, Siggi’s doughy shape and boyish smile make him seem less than menacing – unless you’re another one of the world’s most dangerous men, Julian Assange. Four years ago, just as WikiLeaks was winning international notoriety, the then-17-year-old hacking prodigy became Assange’s youngest and most trusted sidekick. “It was like Batman and Robin,” says Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of the Icelandic parliament. But as Assange became more embattled and besieged, the protégé turned on his mentor in the most shocking of ways: becoming the first FBI informant inside the group.

Siggi’s story of international espionage and teenage high-roller antics plays like James Bond meets Superbad, starring a confounding mash-up of awkward man-child and balls-out tech savant. And his tale reveals not only the paranoia and strife within WikiLeaks, but just how far the feds were willing to go to get Assange.

Siggi still lives with his parents in a nondescript high-rise, sitting at his computer in a bedroom lined with stuffed animals, including an orangutan-size Garfield he bought for $2,000. But his jet-black Mercedes ML350 is parked outside, which, along with his recent conviction for sexual misconduct against a 17-year-old boy (he says the relationship was consensual), speaks to his bizarre double life.

The Trials of Bradley Manning

The revelation of Siggi’s role as an FBI snitch has polarized WikiLeaks insiders. When I met with WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson (Assange declined to talk for this story), he grew red in the face, dismissing Siggi as “a pathological liar,” a party line echoed by the WikiLeaks faithful. “It all sounds rather absurd,” Hrafnsson says, “to go and to spend all this time analyzing the absolute bullshit that is flowing out of this young man, who is so troubled that he should be hospitalized.”

While other WikiLeaks insiders also question Siggi’s credibility, they insist that his story can’t be discounted, and there’s more to it than the organization is letting on. Tangerine Bolen, founder of the whistle-blowing advocacy organization RevolutionTruth, which used to work closely with WikiLeaks, is among those who say the group’s efforts to discredit Siggi are “patently false. They’re scared. The fact is Siggi played a key role in the organization and was very close to Julian.”

The truth, it seems, may be held in the leaks. Siggi has provided Rolling Stone with more than a terabyte of secret files he claims to have taken from WikiLeaks before he left in November 2011 and gave to the FBI: thousands of pages of chat logs, videos, tapped phone calls, government documents and more than a few bombshells from the organization’s most heated years. They’re either the real thing, or the most elaborate lie of the digital age.

Jacob Applebaum: The American WikiLeaks Hacker

Assange himself validated the importance of Siggi’s documents when he filed an affidavit late this past summer asserting that “the FBI illegally acquired stolen organisational and personal data belonging to WikiLeaks, me and other third parties in Denmark in March 2012” and that the FBI “was attempting to entrap me through Sigurdur Thordarson.”

Whatever their origins, the SiggiLeaks are a deep and revealing portal into one of the most guarded and influential organizations of the 21st century – and the extreme measures its embattled leader is willing to take. Of all Assange’s allies who’ve come and gone, few served him as faithfully as Siggi, or betrayed him so utterly. “One thing is sure,” Siggi tells me in his thick Icelandic accent, as the vapors from the thermal pool rise around him. “I have not lived a life like a teenager.”

L
ike Assange and so many gifted hackers, Siggi had an isolated childhood. The son of a hairdresser and a paint-company sales manager, he grew up with his little sister in a middleclass suburb of Reykjavik. Though puckish and bright, he was bored by school, alienated from his classmates and dreamed of a life beyond bourgeois Nordic comfort. “When I was, like, 12 years old, I wished for a couple of things,” he tells me as we drive one afternoon past some lava fields outside the capital. “I wished to be rich; I wished to be a famous guy; I wished to live an adventureful life.”

He found the excitement he craved in computers, and at age 12 he says he hacked into his first website, a local union’s home page, which he replaced with a picture of “a big fluffy monkey.” The experience empowered him. “When you do something like that, you feel invincible,” he says, “and if you can do that, what else can you do?”

He found out two years later, when, on a plane back from a family vacation, he fixed a laptop for a businessman sitting next to him. The executive was so impressed by his skills that he offered him a job at the Icelandic financial firm Milestone: scrubbing computers of sensitive documents. Siggi figures the company trusted him with such data because he was only 14 and must have thought, as he says, “I wouldn’t understand what I was supposed to delete.” Plus, the pay dwarfed that of his paper route.

WikiLeaks’ Greatest Hits

Curious about the files he was erasing, he’d copy them and study them at night. What he eventually discovered astonished him: Employees of Milestone seemed guilty of large-scale corruption in collusion with local politicians. At this time, in 2009, Iceland was reeling from the worldwide financial crisis, and Siggi believed the people deserved to know the role of Milestone and their dirty politicians – even if that meant leaking the files. “Someone has to do it,” he thought, “and why not me?”

In the fall, Siggi says he brought more than 600 gigabytes of Milestone data to the Icelandic newspaper Dagbladid Vísir, making front-page news and leading to investigations against the politicians and businessmen he exposed. Siggi believed in the importance of exposing the corruption he describes as “illegal as it gets.” With his identity still secret, he kept on leaking to other media outlets until, for reasons he never learned, his childhood friend outed him, a betrayal that changed him. “I literally just stopped believing in humanity,” he says. “Since then, I just basically stopped having feelings.”

But after being arrested and splashed across the news, he found a powerful connection in Kristinn Hrafnsson. A well-known TV reporter in Reykjavik at the time, Hrafnsson considered Siggi’s leaks to be “quite significant” and worthy of an introduction to another up-and-coming whistle-blower, Julian Assange, who was speaking at the University of Iceland. Though WikiLeaks had already exposed death squads in Kenya and financial malfeasance in the Swiss bank Julius Baer, the group was still largely unknown. But at the panel, Siggi found, to his surprise, that Assange was well aware of his work – he even chastised the reporter who revealed Siggi’s name in the Milestone leak. “He was basically just condemning the guy, sayingouting whistleblowers is wrong,” recalls Siggi, who reveled in the support.

The bond between the two was immediate. Assange too had been arrested for hacking when he was a young man in Australia. He also had a son, Daniel, who was roughly Siggi’s age, whom he had little contact. “I think Julian saw himself in Siggi,” says Jónsdóttir. “Julian felt an immediate sympathy toward the kid.”

After the panel, Siggi says he took Assange to Sea Bar, a small, rustic restaurant on the water. Over lobster soup and whale steak, they spoke about politics, hacking and their shared sense of purpose in exposing the secrets of the elite. Assange struck Siggi as someone with the courage to take on anyone. “He’s the kind of activist that does the thing that has to be done,” Siggi tells me. After talking for a few hours, Assange took out a small metal box. “Have you ever seen this before?” he said.

Assange cracked open the container and revealed three phones inside. “These are encrypted cellphones,” he said. “I’m going to give you one. Just keep it on at all times so I can communicate with you, day and night.”
W
ithin just a few weeks, Siggi was inside Assange’s small inner circle, a complex place where decisions centered on the mercurial leader. “There’s a video I want to show you,” Siggi recalls Assange telling him as they sat inside Jónsdóttir’s small house in Reykjavik one wintry night soon after they met in February 2010.

“Are you sure you want to show this to him?” said Jónsdóttir. She was concerned about Siggi’s involvement in the project and didn’t entirely trust him, but nevertheless felt protective of the boy. “He was just a lonely kid that had been bullied,” she recalls, “and I felt sort of motherly towards him in the beginning.” Before Assange cued up the clip, she warned Siggi, “This is a disgusting video.”

The grainy footage showed an Apache helicopter firing upon men in the streets of Baghdad. “This can cause a World War III,” Assange said. Though Siggi was new, he didn’t hesitate to express his concerns. “We have to be careful about what we publish,” he said. When Assange wanted to call the video “Collateral Murder,” Siggi told him he thought that was too dramatic. Assange seemed to value the bluntness of his new recruit. “I considered him a friend, and I believe he considered me a friend as well,” Siggi recalls. “If I was against something he said, I told him so, and that was something he liked.”

That spring, when the group was riding an international wave of attention after the video’s release, Siggi, whom Assange gave the handle PenguinX (he was later known as Q), became his dependable errand boy and confidant: talking regularly, looking for equipment, making encrypted calls to contacts on Assange’s behalf. After Bradley Manning was arrested for the “Collateral Murder” leak in May 2010, Assange wrote Siggi that it “might help if people think he’s gay. . . . [The] gay lobby in U.S. is very big, and the whole ‘gays in the military’ thing is very contentious.” When Assange eclipsed pop stars in Time’s person-of-the-year poll, he giddily messaged Siggi, “We beat Gaga!” But the pressure was getting to Assange. In a chat on July 7th, 2010, Siggi asked Assange how he was doing amid all the controversy. Assange replied, “Stressed.”

“Anything i can do to loose some stress?” Siggi typed.

“Find me a pretty girl with lots of warm olive oil;)” Assange replied. But women, too, soon became part of Assange’s worries. One night in August, Siggi’s cryptophone rang with a call from Assange. “Can I trust you?” he said.

“Definitely,” Siggi replied.

“Interpol is most likely going to issue an arrest warrant for me.”

Two women in Sweden alleged he had committed rape and sexual harassment, which Assange denied, saying sex with each was consensual. “The best solution to all this mess might just be going to Sweden and finishing the interrogation,” Siggi told him. But Assange pushed back, saying the U.S. would try to extradite him. “If you get arrested, I’ll just have a backup plan of stealing you from the police,” Siggi said in all seriousness.

But by fall, Assange had other problems: the defection of his closest supporters. His controlling nature had grown overbearing. Hacktivist Daniel DomscheitBerg, Jónsdóttir, journalist Herbert Snorrason and others in the small group of insiders battled with Assange over his reluctance to redact the Afghan war logs, which, they feared, would put lives at risk. Jónsdóttir spoke out to the media, calling for Assange to step aside and “let other people carry the torch.”

And Assange’s confounding closeness with Siggi, which bordered on a paternal relationship, was also an issue. “The perception was that Siggi basically got to a level where Julian trusted him in a matter of days,” says Snorrason. The core volunteers considered Siggi a dangerous liability, prone to youthful indiscretions and lies. But, as Domscheit-Berg recalls, the rumors were being stoked by Assange himself. “Julian told us we shouldn’t speak to Siggi because he couldn’t be trusted,” he says. “He told me Siggi was a notorious liar, but then again Julian told people I was a notorious liar probably because he’s a notorious liar. I think it’s psychological. We knew Julian was dealing with Siggi all the time – it all implied Julian was using him. These are all kinds of games children get into.”

Jónsdóttir was among those caught in Assange and Siggi’s web. “I told Julian, ‘There’s something weird, I can’t explain it, but I have this feeling,'” Jónsdóttir recalls. “‘You just be very careful with this guy.’ But he didn’t believe me.” Though she continuously tried to get Siggi removed from projects, Assange stood by the boy. “He might have trusted him with something that he didn’t want him to expose,” she says.

For Siggi, there was a simple reason he rose in Assange’s eyes: the old guard’s weakness. “To be blunt, they were just cowards,” he says. “I stayed with Julian through this entire shit. I didn’t leave, so that’s probably why he started to trust me more – I showed him loyalty.”

According to the chat logs, Assange commanded Siggi to insinuate himself with Jónsdóttir, in light of her calls for his resignation, and report back. “But be careful,” Assange warned Siggi. “She is good at smelling lies that are intellectual, though not so good at smelling emotional lies.” Days later, after Siggi returned with updates on Jónsdóttir, Assange wrote to him, “Good work on B.” Siggi suggested Assange confront her in person, to which Assange replied, “I will, but I need to let my anger cool, or it would be with a gun.”

Worried that logs of him discussing the rape allegations could be released by Snorrason, Assange told Siggi to hack into the journalist’s computer and remove them. “The log, get rid of it,” Assange wrote. “His pc must be taken over, and that deleted.”

“How can we delete it from his computer?” Siggi replied. “We would need physical access to his computer.” Assange said he could be fooled into downloading a trojan, a kind of computer virus. Though they never hacked Snorrason, the schism within WikiLeaks was tearing the group apart. That fall, Domscheit-Berg, Jónsdóttir, Snorrason and others left. But Siggi remained, and he wanted to make sure that Assange understood his dedication. “What about me?” Siggi wrote him late one night in a chat. “Any trust issues at all?”

“No. I know your difficulties and I accept them,” Assange replied. “Good intent and loyalty is more important to me.”

B
y October 2010, Assange had appointed Siggi to Snorrason’s old post of running the WikiLeaks chat room. It was an important position, vetting the faceless flood of potential allies and leakers, and passing along the cream to Assange. “Keep your eye open for people trying to befriend you or others in an attempt to infiltrate WikiLeaks,” Assange instructed him in a chat. “Lives depend on your diligence.”

Assange was on the lookout for FBI agents, informants and betrayers. And there was one unlikely group of people whom he feared might be rallying against him: the Bradley Manning Support Network. In July, Assange had pledged to pay for a substantial amount of Manning’s defense, which was expected to cost more than $100,000, and the group was increasingly angry that, months later, no money had come through. According to Siggi, Assange had simply moved on.

Throughout the fall, Siggi was getting word from BMSN co-founder David House that David Coombs, Manning’s attorney, was threatening to go public. “Coombs will go to the media very soon,” House warned Siggi in one chat. “I need someone in WL to do their job and actually start giving a shit about Manning’s defense.”

But WikiLeaks went on the offensive instead. “Julian wanted to know everything they were doing,” says Siggi. On October 7th, Siggi hacked into a Skype conference call of the BMSN and sent the recording to Assange. In the wee hours of November 11th, with word of another Skype call that evening, he asked Assange if he should do it again. “Do you want me to record the BMSN conference?” Siggi wrote.

“YES,” Assange replied.

“Oki dok:)”

The next night, Siggi reported back: Mission accomplished. “Yey the Recording was successful,” he typed in chat. “Want me to upload and send to you?”

“Yes. But going to bed now,” Assange wrote. “Good work on the record.”

“Ok:) Did you remember to brush your teeths:)”
With still no funds by December, the BMSN did go public, resulting in unflattering headlines, like The Washington Post’s “WikiLeaks hasn’t fulfilled financial-aid pledge for suspect in leaks.” (Eventually, the group gave $15,000.)

But by the end of 2010, Assange had sought refuge from the Swedish case by retreating to Ellingham Hall, a country mansion in England owned by dilettante investigative journalist Vaughan Smith. Assange deployed the now-18-year-old Siggi as one of his few trusted couriers for WikiLeaks’ most prized and explosive leaks of all – the quarter-million diplomatic cables from Manning – which they were delivering to news outlets around the world. “Do you have an EU passport?” Assange messaged Siggi one night.

“Yes Why:)?”

“Just thinking about various meetings.”

W
hen I met with WikiLeaks spokesman Hrafnsson, he insisted that apart from a trip to Ellingham Hall Siggi “was never traveling on behalf of WikiLeaks anywhere.” But several European journalists I spoke with confirmed their meetings with Siggi, and some insisted that both Assange and Hrafnsson were well aware. “Kristinn told me Siggi was the one to deal with,” says Leonie van Nierop, a reporter for a Netherlands daily paper, NRC Handelsblad, who met with Siggi in Amsterdam. “Siggi was constantly on the phone with Assange,” says Dan Sommer, the former head of security for the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik and a local pastor, who traveled as Siggi’s bodyguard. “It was clear that Assange knew what Siggi was doing.”

Assange had potential publishers vetted in person before giving them the files, and Siggi was among those tasked with the job, arriving in each city with an encrypted thumb drive containing excerpts from the cables. The twisted humor of the transactions – that the biggest leak in U.S. history was being delivered by a baby-faced 18-year-old – wasn’t lost on the reporters and editors with whom Siggi met. Dutch journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal found him to be “an insecure guy who wanted to be something in the world.”

After spending several days with Siggi, van Nierop took a liking to the boy. She had acted as a tour guide for a day, leading Siggi through the famed red-light district in Amsterdam, where she noticed that he didn’t seem very intrigued by the women offering themselves in windows. “He was more interested in the trains in the station than the hookers,” she recalls. She could tell, while listening to her colleague speak with Assange about Siggi after the trip, that the two were geeky pals. She says Assange teasingly said that since she “took Siggi to the red-light district, couldn’t you have bought a girl for him?” Van Nierop thought Siggi’s relationship with Assange also explained why the boy seemed isolated. “If Julian Assange is your best friend,” she says, “you must be a little lonely.”

With media outlets often paying his way, Siggi says he was “having the time of my life.” When he told his parents he was traveling on missions for WikiLeaks, they balked; but as his father told me, “He was 18. There was nothing we could do.” In January 2011, he arrived in Honduras to meet with editors from the newspaper El Heraldo and was greeted by a team of armed bodyguards. When Siggi asked why he needed such heavy security, one of the goons told him, “because you’re white, and you could get stabbed or kidnapped.”

But Sommer, his personal bodyguard on many of the trips, couldn’t get the boy to leave behind his childhood. At every city, Siggi insisted on taking time out to visit the local waterpark and eating McDonald’s. In Budapest, Siggi had Sommer take him to his first strip club. In New York, Siggi wanted to try out a pepper-spray pen his bodyguard bought at a local spy shop. Back at the hotel, a half hour before a meeting, he persuaded his bodyguard to shoot him with it to see how it felt – but vastly underestimated the burn. “It was horrible,” says Siggi, who had to douse himself with milk to relieve the pain. He showed up at his next meeting with bloodshot eyes and a rash. “We had to explain that I wasn’t stoned,” Siggi says.

While in Washington, D.C., he had one mishap that was too close for comfort. His bodyguard was driving a Jeep the wrong way down a street by the Pentagon, when he saw a police car pull out nearby. With the diplomatic cables in the back seat, Siggi freaked. “Fuck me!” he said. “Oh, my God, we could get pulled over. We’re gonna go to Guantánamo Bay!” But as luck would have it, the police car passed him – missing the chance for the bust of a lifetime.

D
uring the half dozen times Siggi arrived at Ellingham Hall to visit Assange, he says he knew what to bring with him: a suitcase full of Malt Extrakt, Assange’s favorite Icelandic soda. “I saw it in his face,” Siggi says, “somebody actually thought about him. He was happy that I remembered.”

Despite his circumstances, Assange was enjoying the comforts of mansion life and the companionship of his close-knit circle of supporters, including Siggi. They went swimming in the nearby lake, had long dinners in the regal dining hall. At Assange’s blowout 40th-birthday party, Siggi got drunk for the first time, on licorice schnapps, and drove his car into a ditch during a midnight junk-food run. “It was hilarious!” Siggi recalls.

But in private moments, Assange told Siggi that the political and personal battles were wearing on him. “He said that he was really tired,” Siggi says. “I’d just like to give up,” Assange told him.
As the increasingly besieged WikiLeaks leader’s profile grew, so did his paranoia. Assange asked his protégé to write up psychological profiles of WikiLeaks core members. Siggi, however, initiated more recon on his own. Late one night, he clandestinely cloned their hard drives, including the laptops of Hrafnsson and longtime associate Sarah Harrison, and he provided Assange with a report of their contents.

Though Assange hadn’t asked him to do this, Siggi claims he read the findings and Assange allowed him to continue snooping during visits to Ellingham Hall. At one point, Siggi says, Assange asked him to search through the computers of Vaughan Smith, the journalist who owned the home, because he thought Smith was secretly videotaping him. Siggi sneaked into Smith’s office, rifling through his things until he found computer-memory cards and drives, which he promptly began wiping clean. I ask Siggi if he felt that spying on the volunteers and their host was wrong. “Privacy is just a myth, you know,” he replies. “It doesn’t really exist.”

But Assange’s spy games grew worse. BMSN co-founder House told Wired that Assange asked him in January 2011 to swipe a copy of former insider Domscheit-Berg’s WikiLeaks exposé prior to publication. Around the same time, Siggi claims Assange asked him to set up hidden cameras to spy on guests inside Ellingham Hall. “Julian just had this idea that everybody was after him,” he says. “He wanted this to be done. It made him feel more secure.” Siggi bought coat-hook spy cams and affixed them on the back of doors throughout the house, including bedrooms. He says he also installed a spy cam in a room used for meetings with visitors like Eric Schmidt of Google and Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes.

When I call Smith to ask him if he had ever seen any of these items in his house, he said he recalled finding a coat hook in a box and wondering why it was there. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s weird,'” he says. “‘Why would someone bring a coat hanger into my house?'”

S
iggi’s infiltrations soon spiraled well beyond Ellingham Hall. While WikiLeaks has always maintained that they are, as Hrafnsson puts it, “passive recipients” of leaks, Siggi spent much of 2011 conspiring with the most renowned hackers on the Net. The operation fulfilled what was now a common pattern: Siggi going rogue but with what he said was his boss’s tacit approval. “I understood what Julian wanted,” Siggi says.

In the wake of the Manning cables, Assange wanted more newsmaking leaks, but the material coming in wasn’t meeting his insatiable appetite or ambitions. So Siggi reached out to Gnosis, a hacker group that made its name in December 2010 for compromising more than a million registered accounts on Gawker websites.

Gnosis tipped Siggi off to a notorious 16-year-old female from Anonymous named Kayla who had just helped hack HBGary, an IT security firm that worked for the U.S. government. Gnosis claimed to have an unpublished copy of HBGary’s database, including its clients’ names and e-mails. “Don’t release it,” Siggi messaged back. “Allow us.”

Anonymous, however, ended up leaking the files themselves, and Siggi told Gnosis that his boss was pissed. “You can’t really control Anonymous,” Gnosis replied. “You can kinda herd them in the right direction but other than that lol good luck.”

But that didn’t stop Siggi from trying. In January 2011, Siggi got word that DataCell, the hosting service behind WikiLeaks, had valuable contracts pulled by an Icelandic power company called Landsnet, and he wanted revenge. “I have a funny request for you,” Siggi wrote Kayla in one chat. “www.landsnet.is is something ‘Anonymous’ should take down if it’s possible.” Two minutes later, Kayla replied that she’d just unleashed a botnet against the website, a form of a cyberattack that swamps the site with requests. Siggi tried logging on to the Landsnet site. “Haha request timed out,” he wrote.

The attack didn’t stop there. When Siggi explained that the Icelandic government had made a deal to assume DataCell’s contracts, Kayla asked if he wanted her to take down one of its sites too. “Definitely,” Siggi replied. Minutes later, a ministry site was down. But as the sites fell, Siggi joked that Kayla might inadvertently knock Iceland’s power offline too. “If you see a button that says turn off electricity don’t press it please,” he wrote.

With his connections to the Anonymous cell more secure, Siggi suggested that the group could be of even greater help – getting them more secret documents that WikiLeaks could release. “I don’t care where the information comes from,” Assange had told him, which Siggi took as carte blanche to solicit stolen material. So Siggi had Gnosis introduce him to one of the most infamous hackers of all: Sabu, leader of the Anonymous offshoot LulzSec. In the spring of 2011, LulzSec had taken down the sites of high-profile targets including Fox, the CIA and PBS, whose Web page they replaced with the title “FREE BRADLEY MANNING. FUCK FRONTLINE!” But Sabu wanted proof that Siggi was who he said he was by speaking with Assange directly. Siggi claims to have complied and arranged the Skype call.

With Sabu convinced, Siggi put him on a job: to dig further into the Icelandic government’s computers to see if it had intel on the DataCell deal. Soon, Sabu delivered. Siggi says Assange told him to have LulzSec upload the files to a WikiLeaks FTP server, which they did. And Sabu soon had more secrets to offer. He told Siggi his crew had recently hacked Stratfor, a “global intelligence” agency and government contractor, and found more than 5 million confidential e-mails between Stratfor and companies such as Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, as well as government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

But as the e-mails poured in, Siggi began to grow anxious and questioned the scale of the operation. Even though he was the one who initiated the relationship with the hackers, he worried that they were going too far. “Crossing this line by accepting stolen information and publishing this is literally just breaking the law,” he says he told Assange. “You’re going away from being a journalist organization and threatening national security.” But, once again, Assange told him he didn’t care how the information was obtained.

Back at home in his bedroom, Siggi couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed imagining the FBI breaking down his door, storming into his house, past his giant Garfield doll, his sleeping parents and his little sister, and hauling him off to Gitmo for good. For months, he’d had insomnia, but now his mind and heart were racing like never before. When he did manage to fall asleep, he woke up screaming.

J
ust after 3 a.m. on August 23rd, 2011, the pressure Siggi felt finally broke him. Crawling from bed, he e-mailed the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik and asked for a meeting. It wasn’t just the LulzSec association that concerned him. Assange seemed to have changed from the man he met the year before. While he was unwilling to donate the amount he’d promised to Manning’s defense, he was ready to blow large sums rehabilitating his ailing image. “I don’t care,” Assange told him. “We have a million bucks, and we can spend it on buying publicity.” For Siggi, it was a turning point. “I realized that this wasn’t the same ideology as before,” he says. But truth is, Siggi was also trying to save his own ass. Going to the FBI, he hoped, would inoculate him against prosecution. And, he admits, he thought being a spy for the feds would be a thrill. There was just one price to pay: “I would be betraying WikiLeaks, Julian, my friends,” he says.

The next day, Siggi got called to the U.S. Embassy and was soon taken to a nearby hotel, where he was met by the FBI. They wanted to know WikiLeaks’ physical security, their technical security, locations of computer servers, how Assange lived, his daily routine, “literally, everything,” Siggi says. And he had plenty of data to share: several hard drives of WikiLeaks private files that he had amassed during his time with the organization – just in case he ever needed them.
Signing a nondisclosure agreement, he spoke daily with the FBI, passing along the chats he was handling, the leaks that were in negotiation. And, as he told the FBI, there were big ones to be had, courtesy of Sabu. As they were getting the Stratfor files from LulzSec, Siggi had heard that Assange was trying to get Sabu to join the WikiLeaks team. “Did J say anything about recruiting you permanently?” Siggi asked Sabu in one chat.

“Well he emailed me once but we didn’t get to talk,” Sabu replied. “Guess he’s been busy/careful or whatever but let him know we have intercepted 92GB of mails from .gov.sy so this can be one of the biggest leaks in history.” In November 2011, Sabu began passing excerpts of this data, later published by WikiLeaks as the “Syria Files,” to Siggi – 2 million internal e-mails, going back to 2006, from companies, politicians and ministries in Syria. According to Siggi, when he told Assange about the new information, “He said, ‘OK, cool,'” Siggi recalls. “‘They can upload it.'”

But Siggi’s spy work was jeopardized that same month when he got an angry call from WikiLeaks’ spokesman Hrafnsson, accusing him of embezzling $50,000 in proceeds from selling WikiLeaks merchandise online. Siggi insists that he had run the money through his account with Assange’s permission, and that any extra cash went to cover his own expenses. With both sides warring, it isn’t clear whom to believe. But even if Siggi was guilty, the accusations raised more questions about why the boy, whom the group says had no role in the organization, had access to such funds in the first place. Hrafnsson threatened to report him to the police. Siggi e-mailed the FBI telling them the news. “No longer with WikiLeaks – so not sure how I can help you more. Sorry I couldn’t do more :(”

To his surprise, the FBI still had more work for him. Shortly after WikiLeaks published the Stratfor files in February 2012, Siggi was flown to Washington, D.C., where he met with members of the CIA, the DOD and the FBI at a Marriott hotel. The questions became dizzying: They wanted to know about others besides Assange – Jónsdóttir, Hrafnsson and more.

It didn’t take long for the hammer to fall. On March 5th, LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond was arrested for hacking the Stratfor files leaked to WikiLeaks (he’d later be sentenced to 10 years in prison). The next day, Kayla, the LulzSec hacker Siggi had conspired with, was indicted on conspiracy charges – and revealed to be a man, 25-year-old Ryan Ackroyd, from England. But the biggest shock came when Siggi read in the news that Sabu was an FBI informant, and had been since June 2011. It suddenly all made perfect sense. For months, he had been informing the FBI of his conversations with Sabu, and they hadn’t seemed to care. And since Sabu had been an informant during the time of the Stratfor and Syria files, that meant something incredible: The FBI had been well aware of the Stratfor and Syria hacks all along, and done nothing to intervene. Their target had always been Assange. The biggest and most famous hack in recent years was a carefully built plot by the FBI to snare a man it considered as an enemy of the state.

“Ultimately, the FBI’s mission is to apprehend criminals and prevent the commission of serious crimes,” says Glenn Greenwald, the journalist whom Edward Snowden leaked NSA files to last year. “In this particular case, they purposely allowed the commission of serious crimes they could have easily stopped. To treat an American firm like Stratfor and the privacy of Syria as sacrificial lambs in a campaign to entrap Julian Assange into criminality is unbelievably radical – you can even say corrupt.”

During a meeting in Denmark in March, the FBI had Siggi sign over eight hard drives containing his WikiLeaks files. When Siggi asked them about Sabu, the agents just smiled and gave him $5,000 to cover his cost of living, then sent him on his way. He never heard from them again.

I
n January 2013, Siggi watched TV in horror as Hrafnsson told a reporter how he had learned the previous summer that the FBI had come to Iceland to secretly interview someone about WikiLeaks – he just didn’t know who it was. But after meeting with Ögmundur Jónasson, who had just left the position of Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, he pieced together that Siggi was the one who had gone to the FBI.

I met with Jónasson, who told me how, in June 2011, Iceland received a warning from U.S. authorities of “an imminent attack on Icelandic computer systems.” Two months later, Jónasson found out that a plane full of FBI agents had arrived in Iceland for another purpose: to investigate WikiLeaks. Because they didn’t have authorization for this, he turned them away – only to find out later that they had taken Siggi to Copenhagen. “I still have suspicion,” he says, “that this was part of an attempt to put a case against Julian Assange.”

Hrafnsson remains just as outraged, though he tells me he and Assange weren’t shocked. “We have stopped being surprised about anything,” he says. When I ask if Assange feels betrayed by Siggi, Hrafnsson arches his brow. “Inherently in your question is the assumption that there was a very close relationship, which I never saw.”

While Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Siggi faces the repercussions of coming clean. Among other things, for the first time in this story, he’s admitting to the Milestone leak. “It’s probably going to lead to my conviction,” he says. “But I just have to face that.” In the meantime, in addition to unrelated fraud charges, he’s appealing his sentence of eight months for sexual misconduct. Siggi claims the victim’s father pressed the charges after learning of Siggi’s relationship with his son; Siggi calls his homosexual tryst a “phase.”

As for WikiLeaks, should he ever get asked one day to testify against Assange, Siggi isn’t sure whether he will comply. He knows that he betrayed his former mentor and friend. But he says he did it all for the very same reasons he believed in WikiLeaks and Assange: “The truth needs to come out.”

This story is from the January 16th, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone.

by David Kushner
JANUARY 06, 2014

Find this story at 6 January 2014

©2014 Rolling Stone

WikiLeaks’ Teenage Benedict Arnold; How the FBI used a baby-faced WikiLeaks volunteer to spy on Julian Assange.

When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder’s attitude and quickly signed up to the cause. But little more than a year later, Thordarson was working as an informant spying on WikiLeaks for the U.S. government—embroiling himself as a teenager in one of the most complicated international events in recent history.

In a series of interviews with Slate, Thordarson has detailed the full story behind how, in an extraordinary sequence of events, he went from accompanying Assange to court hearings in London to secretly passing troves of data on WikiLeaks staff and affiliated activists to the FBI. The 20-year-old Icelandic citizen’s account is partly corroborated by authorities in Iceland, who have confirmed that he was at the center of a diplomatic row in 2011 when a handful of FBI agents flew in to the country to meet with him—but were subsequently asked to leave after a government minister suspected they were trying to “frame” Assange.

Thordarson, who first outed himself as an informant in a Wired story in June, provided me with access to a pseudonymous email account that he says was created for him by the FBI. He also produced documents and travel records for trips to Denmark and the United States that he says were organized and paid for by the bureau.

The FBI declined to comment on Thordarson’s role as an informant or the content of the emails its agents are alleged to have sent him. In a statement, it said that it was “not able to discuss investigative tools and techniques, nor comment on ongoing investigations.” But emails sent by alleged FBI agents to Thordarson, which left a digital trail leading back to computers located within the United States, appear to shine a light on the extent of the bureau’s efforts to aggressively investigate WikiLeaks following the whistle-blower website’s publication of classified U.S. military and State Department files in 2010.

Late last month, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was convicted on counts of espionage, theft, and computer fraud for passing the group the secrets. During the Manning trial, military prosecutors portrayed Assange as an “information anarchist,” and now it seems increasingly possible that the U.S. government may next go after the 42-year-old Australian for his role in obtaining and publishing the documents. For the past 14 months, Assange has been living in Ecuador’s London Embassy after being granted political asylum by the country over fears that, if he is sent to Sweden to face sexual offense allegations, he will be detained and subsequently extradited to the United States.

Meanwhile, for more than two years, prosecutors have been quietly conducting a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks that remains active today. The FBI’s files in the Manning case number more than 42,000 pages, according to statements made during the soldier’s pretrial hearings, and that stack of proverbial paper likely continues to grow. Thordarson’s story offers a unique insight into the politically-charged probe: Information he has provided appears to show that there was internal tension within the FBI over a controversial attempt to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the whistle-blower group. Thordarson gave the FBI a large amount of data on WikiLeaks, including private chat message logs, photographs, and contact details of volunteers, activists, and journalists affiliated with the organization. Thordarson alleges that the bureau even asked him to covertly record conversations with Assange in a bid to tie him to a criminal hacking conspiracy. The feds pulled back only after becoming concerned that the Australian was close to discovering the spy effort.

—

It was 2010 when the saga began in Reykjavik, Iceland. Thordarson, then just 17, says that before his first encounter with Assange, he knew little about the man beyond a few YouTube videos he’d watched about WikiLeaks. But he went to hear Assange speak at a conference hosted by an Icelandic university, and the teenager was impressed. After the event, a journalist Thordarson knew introduced him to Assange, and the pair struck up a relationship that led to Thordarson doing some volunteer work for the organization. Before long, he was on the edges of WikiLeaks’ small, tight-knit inner circle.

At that time, the group was sitting on the explosive files it had received from Manning that included a video showing a U.S. helicopter attack that resulted in the deaths of 12 civilians, among them two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Thordarson, a blond-haired stocky figure with a baby face, was present while WikiLeaks staff and volunteers in Reykjavik were preparing the video for publication. When it was published by WikiLeaks in April 2010, under the name Collateral Murder, it catapulted the organization into the international spotlight and provoked an angry response from government officials in Washington.

The then-teenager, known as “Siggi” to his friends, was around at the height of that backlash. He was given administrative privileges to moderate an Internet chat room run by WikiLeaks. And when Assange relocated from Iceland to England, Thordarson came to visit. He even accompanied the WikiLeaks founder to court appearances in London as he fought extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault.

Siggi and Assange in England in 2011. You can see that Assange is wearing his ankle monitor.

Photo courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Thordarson looked up to Assange, viewing him as a friend. The WikiLeaks chief, he says, treated him well—helping him find a lawyer in 2010, not long after the pair had met, when he says he was wrongly accused by Icelandic police of breaking into a business premises. But signs that Thordarson had a proclivity for brushes with the law did not appear to trigger alarm bells early on at WikiLeaks—though perhaps they should have, because he was certainly not any ordinary volunteer. Unlike many drawn to WikiLeaks, Thordarson does not seem to have been principally motivated by a passion for the cause of transparency or by the desire to expose government wrongdoing. Instead, he was on the hunt for excitement and got a thrill out of being close to people publishing secret government documents.

As a child, Thordarson led a fairly normal middle-class life in Reykjavik, enjoying social studies and chemistry at school. His father worked as a sales manager at a painting firm, and his mother ran a hair salon. But as he entered his teenage years, he says, he began to feel that he could not connect with others in his peer group. He went to college to study computer science and psychology—but claims he was suspended after hacking into a college computer system.

By mid-2011, Thordarson’s thirst for adventure, combined with his interest in hacking, would irreversibly complicate his relationship with WikiLeaks. In June of that year, the Anonymous-linked hacker group LulzSec brought down the website of the CIA. Thordarson says that he and other WikiLeaks staff were amused by the incident, and he decided to reach out to the hackers to establish contact. Thordarson claims that, using the aliases “Q” and “Penguin X,” he set up a line of communication between WikiLeaks and LulzSec. During the series of exchanges that followed, Thordarson says he “suggested” that his group wanted assistance to find evidence of anti-WikiLeaks sentiment within the Icelandic government’s Ministry of Finance, which had thwarted an attempt by DataCell, a company that processes WikiLeaks donations, to purchase a large new data center in Reykjavik. (In early 2011, DataCell’s founder questioned whether the Icelandic government had deliberately prevented the deal because it was “afraid of letting WikiLeaks here into the country.”)

“That was basically the first assignment WikiLeaks gave to LulzSec,” Thordarson alleges, “to breach the Icelandic government infrastructure.”

Thordarson admits that he initiated the contact with the hackers, though he claims it was approved by Assange. It is unclear, however, whether WikiLeaks staff were fully aware of his correspondence with LulzSec and the “assignment” that he says he handed to them. WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told me he believed that if Thordarson had any contact with LulzSec, it was as a rogue operative and that it was “highly unlikely” any other WikiLeaks staff, including Assange, knew what he was engaged in. Thordarson is a dishonest character, Hrafnsson said, who is trying to inflate the role he played as a volunteer.

Either way, in this case, the exchange Thordarson describes does appear to have taken place. It has since been independently corroborated in part by authorities in Iceland and was first reported—from the perspective of the hackers—in a 2012 book by Parmy Olsen, We Are Anonymous. I have also seen chat logs and emails from 2011 that appear to back up Thordarson’s assertion that he was communicating with the hackers, which has significant ramifications. By claiming that he effectively solicited LulzSec to break into government computers, Thordarson has implicated himself in a potential international criminal conspiracy, leaving WikiLeaks open to the allegation that it, too, was somehow involved.

But the full facts about the incident remain murky—not least because there is another dramatic twist to the tale.

What Thordarson did not know at the time was that Sabu, the loudmouth figurehead of LulzSec and one of the hackers he was communicating with, was in fact working as an FBI informant—and the online chat about hacking Icelandic government infrastructure was apparently being monitored by the feds. About four days later, the FBI contacted Icelandic authorities to warn them about an “imminent” hacking attack, according to Iceland’s state prosecutor, and this prompted Icelandic police to travel to the United States to discuss the matter. (Sabu, it later turned out, was a then-28-year-old hacker from New York named Hector Monsegur. The FBI reportedly tracked him to his Lower East Side apartment in early June 2011 and managed to “flip” him, because he was the guardian of two young children and desperate to stay out of jail.)

Thordarson says LulzSec never gave WikiLeaks any information about Icelandic government corruption, but hackers close to the group did hand over a confidential Icelandic state police document related to the security of the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. He also claims that hackers affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous turned over documents from a bank in Mexico, files from BP, and emails hacked from the Syrian government and the security think tank Stratfor, among others. Between February 2012 and July 2012, a large cache of Syrian government and Stratfor emails were published by WikiLeaks under the names the “Syria Files” and the “Global Intelligence Files.” (As a matter of policy, WikiLeaks does not comment on how its releases are sourced.)

Being at the center of the action had given Thordarson the adrenaline rush he was looking for. But the contact with LulzSec, which he had initiated, made him feel like he had gone too far. He was worried that in maintaining contact with the hackers, he was “breaking quite a lot of laws.” Meanwhile, news reports were saying that the U.S. government was already investigating WikiLeaks for its publication of classified documents, including the Collateral Murder video, diplomatic cables, and military war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq. And just as Thordarson was getting anxious about the high-stakes international affairs he had become entangled with, he also seems to have become bored with WikiLeaks—and he now admits he wanted to embark on a new adventure.

It was then that, at about 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 23, 2011, Thordarson sat down at his computer at home in Kópavogur and typed out a message to the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. He decided he wanted to become an informant—and, unlike Sabu, he was ready to do so without any threats hanging over his head.

From: [redacted]@live.com
To: reykjavikdatt@state.gov
Subject: Regarding an Ongoing Criminal investigation in the United States.
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:33:39 +0000

After a quick search on the internet i have yet not been able to find a reliable contact form to establish a meeting with a person regarding an on going criminal investigation.

The nature of the investigation is not something that i desire to speak over an email conversation.

The nature of the intel that can be brought to light in that investigation will not be spoken over email conversation.

I here by request a meeting at the U.S Embassy in Iceland, or any other place.

I am an Icelandic citizen.

I can be contacted via this email address

Or Via Phone

00xxx-xxxxxxx

I request also that this email will be considered confidential.

Later that day, Thordarson received a phone call. On the other end, he says, was the security chief at the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. The man asked what exactly the email was concerning, and Thordarson told him it was about the U.S. government’s ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks. He says the security chief denied the existence of any such investigation, but nevertheless asked Thordarson to come to the embassy to meet him. Thordarson agreed. And that afternoon, he turned up at the door of the Reykjavik embassy, explaining briefly that he wanted to share information about WikiLeaks. To prove he wasn’t bluffing, he showed staff a photocopy of Julian Assange’s passport that he had obtained.

He says he was told not to expect any further contact for at least a week, if at all. But less than 24 hours later, Thordarson’s phone rang again. He was asked if he could come back to the embassy for another meeting. This time, it was serious. Unlike the more casual first meeting, he was told to hand over any electronic devices and take off his watch. He was then escorted by the embassy security chief on a walk around Reykjavik, circling the city center a number of times to ensure they were not being followed. Then he was ushered into a conference room in the four-star Hotel Reykjavik Centrum, where, he says, two men were waiting for him. They spoke with American accents and displayed FBI credentials. Iceland’s state prosecutor has acknowledged that this meeting took place, confirming in a document published earlier this year that a handful of FBI agents and federal prosecutors were authorized to jet into the country after an Icelandic citizen contacted the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. The U.S. Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

For a brief moment, Thordarson became nervous. “The only thing that went through my mind was: ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ ” he recalls. But the feeling of doubt didn’t last long, and soon he was embracing the whole experience—almost as if he believed he was starring in his own personal spy thriller.

The FBI, he says, asked him a range of questions to “verify that I wasn’t full of bullshit.” At one point, he was asked what he knew about LulzSec, and he described the online conversations he had been having with Sabu. Thordarson did not know it at the time, but the FBI had presumably been monitoring those chats—as an informant, Sabu had been issued a government laptop, and his online activity was reportedly under surveillance 24/7. Indeed, the bureau had met with Icelandic authorities two months earlier to warn about a potential hacking attack on Icelandic infrastructure—just days after Thordarson says he gave LulzSec the “assignment” to hack Icelandic government computers.

Thordarson’s detailed knowledge of the Sabu chats—and his participation in them—apparently convinced the agents. For about the next four consecutive days, they met with him, Thordarson says, each time at a different hotel in Reykjavik. They asked about people connected to WikiLeaks and quizzed him about what Assange was doing at Ellingham Hall, the remote residence in England’s countryside where the WikiLeaks founder was living at the time while on bail and fighting extradition to Sweden. Thordarson says the agents also wanted information about WikiLeaks’ technical and physical security and the locations of WikiLeaks’ servers; they asked him, too, for names of individuals linked to WikiLeaks who might be open to becoming informants if approached by the FBI.

However, by Aug. 30, 2011, several days after the FBI entered Iceland, the Icelandic government had become unsettled about the presence of U.S. authorities. Then–Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson told me that Icelandic authorities initially believed the FBI agents had come to the country to continue their investigation into the impending LulzSec hacking attack on Icelandic government computers. But once it became clear that the FBI agents were in fact engaged in a broader swoop to gather intelligence on WikiLeaks, according to Jónasson, the agents were asked to immediately remove themselves from the country.

“I think it was a question of trying to frame Julian Assange,” Jónasson says, recalling the debacle. “And they wanted Icelandic authorities to help them with that.”

WikiLeaks ally DataCell had just months earlier accused the Icelandic government of working against the whistle-blower group, but by booting the FBI out of the country, the Interior Ministry had radically undermined that theory. Its decision, in fact, was a stark illustration of how WikiLeaks has continued to maintain a strong support base in Iceland since 2009, when it exposed controversial loan payments made by Kaupthing, the bank at the heart of the Icelandic financial crisis. As a result, the FBI could not meet with Thordarson in Iceland again. Instead, he says, the FBI held further meetings with him in Denmark (three times) and brought him to the United States (once) to continue discussions about WikiLeaks. Through this period, Thordarson says the bureau paid him about $5,000 in total to cover his expenses and to make up for loss of earnings.

Thordarson maintained contact with WikiLeaks, but he was secretly sending information back to the FBI. Once, he says, he told the agents that he was planning a visit to see Assange at Ellingham Hall. Eager to take advantage of the trip, they asked him to wear a recording device and make copies of data stored on laptops used by WikiLeaks staff. He alleges that the FBI wanted him to get Assange to “say something incriminating about LulzSec.” But he declined to wear a recording device and told his handlers that covertly copying data from computers wouldn’t be feasible because “people literally sleep with their laptops at Ellingham.”

Assange and Siggi in Paddington, London, in 2011.

Photo courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Thordarson felt that wearing a wire in an attempt to secretly implicate Assange in LulzSec’s illegal hacking activities was a step too far, but he was happy to engage in equally dubious intelligence-gathering activities. He maintained contact with LulzSec and passed transcripts of his conversations with the hacker Sabu back to the FBI, his emails show. What Thordarson did not know at the time was that the FBI already knew about the chats—because, of course, it had recruited Sabu as an informant, too.

In one notable online exchange in November 2011, Sabu told Thordarson that LulzSec had breached Syrian government computers. He showed off snippets of hacked emails to Thordarson, saying he wanted to pass a trove of data to WikiLeaks. Later in the same conversation, Thordarson quizzed Sabu about a plan to “recruit” him for WikiLeaks. Neither of the two men appear to have realized that they were both independently acting as informants for the FBI.

“We ended up [inside] a certain government’s central mail server and got some fucking massive leaks coming out,” Sabu says in the chat. “You gents sure you’re not wanting to do anymore leaks?”

“Did J say anything about recruiting you permanently?” Thordarson fires back a few minutes later, in reference to Assange.

“Well he emailed me once but we didn’t get to talk,” Sabu says. “Guess he’s been busy/careful or whatever. But let him know we have intercepted 92GB of mails from .gov.sy [the Syrian government] so this can be one of the biggest leaks in history.”

When Sabu was outed as an informant in an explosive Fox News story in March 2012, it made sense to Thordarson. He says he found it strange that the FBI never seemed interested in the information he told them he had about the hacker, who was a hugely prominent figure at the helm of a group that had claimed responsibility for attacking U.S. government websites and multinational corporations, including Sony and News International. What the FBI agents wanted from Thordarson, it seems clear, was information that they could not get from any other source—information about the inner workings of WikiLeaks.

Before his penultimate meeting with U.S. authorities, in early February 2012, Thordarson says he was instructed to build relationships with people close to WikiLeaks in order to gather information for the feds. He received an email from his alleged handler—who used the alias “Roger Bossard”—in an account set up for him under the fake name “Ibrahim Mohammad.” The message encouraged Thordarson to “chat with those people we discussed on the phone” in order to “get a head start before our meet.” A few weeks later, he was flown out to Washington, D.C., and says he was put up in a Marriott hotel in Arlington, Va., near the location of a grand jury that has been collecting evidence about WikiLeaks since at least early 2011 as part of a criminal investigation into the whistle-blower organization. At meetings in a conference room of the hotel, he was asked about a host of individuals who had at one time volunteered or worked for WikiLeaks in some capacity, including Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir; eminent computer security expert Jacob Appelbaum; and Guardian reporter James Ball, a former WikiLeaks staffer. “They wanted to know literally everything there was to know about these people,” Thordarson alleges.

He says he “mostly gave them information that was general knowledge.” But he admits that he turned over some email addresses, details about instant messenger accounts, and phone numbers. This information is useful to the authorities because they can use it to order surveillance of targeted suspects’ phone or email accounts. Since 2010, several individuals connected to WikiLeaks have had emails and other communications monitored as part of the FBI’s investigation.

By the end of the meeting in Washington, the U.S. government had already gleaned a large amount of information about WikiLeaks from Thordarson. Its biggest haul of intelligence, however, was yet to come.

On March 18, 2012, Thordarson says he met with the FBI for what would be the final time, in Aarhus, Denmark. Prior to the meeting, he exchanged emails with his alleged handler, agreeing that he would come equipped with hard drives packed with chat logs, photographs, and other data related to WikiLeaks. According to a Justice Department receipt Thordarson says he was provided by the FBI, he turned over eight hard drives in total containing of about 1 terabyte of data, which is the equivalent of about 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. (The Ministry of Justice in Denmark refused to comment on whether it authorized FBI agents to enter the country to meet with Thordarson, saying that it could not discuss “specific cases.”)

The Department of Justice receipt Thordarson says he was given for the delivery of eight hard drives to U.S. authorities.

Courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Once the agents obtained the hard drives and received the passwords to access them, Thordarson’s emails suggest, they stopped responding regularly to his messages and rebuffed his attempts to set up another meeting. (Apparently, Thordarson’s thirst for adventure hadn’t yet been quenched.) They continued to encourage him to send data on WikiLeaks to a P.O. box at a UPS Store in Arlington, a short drive from Justice Department and FBI headquarters, but they pulled back, apparently concerned that their cover could soon be blown.

The UPS Store in Arlington, Va., where Siggi was asked to send mail for the FBI.

Photo by Torie Bosch

“Understand J has your laptop,” an alleged agent wrote to Thordarson shortly after the final Denmark meeting, referencing Assange. “Is there anything on it about our relationship?”

There were also signs that internal conflict was developing within the FBI over the infiltration of WikiLeaks, a controversial tactic not least because WikiLeaks is a publisher and press freedom groups have condemned from the outset the government’s investigation into Assange and his colleagues. In early 2012, after a period of not responding to Thordarson’s emails, his alleged FBI handler wrote that there had been “bureaucratic issues beyond my control that prevented me from maintaining contact,” adding that “our relationship has been problematic for some others. This is not an ordinary case. But those were not my issues and I have been diligently trying to work out those issues so we can continue our relationship.”

Thordarson, too, was having problems. He had become embroiled in a serious dispute with WikiLeaks about money in late 2011, which created friction between him, Assange, and WikiLeaks, ultimately resulting in him being dismissed from his volunteer role and perhaps even fueling his desire to continue informing on the group. Thordarson was accused of embezzling about $50,000 from a merchandise store that he had helped set up to raise funds. He admits that he took some of the money but denies stealing it, saying he used the funds to cover expenses he was owed by WikiLeaks. The matter is currently being investigated by police in Iceland.

In February, Iceland’s state prosecutor published a detailed timeline about the FBI’s visit to the country in 2011. The information shed light on the circumstances surrounding how U.S. authorities were asked to leave because of their attempt to gather intelligence on WikiLeaks. The same month, Thordarson was called to appear at a closed-door meeting with Icelandic parliamentarians to discuss the extent of his dealings with the FBI, which led to him being named in the Icelandic press as the person who had prompted the FBI to fly to the country in August 2011.

It was at this point, Thordarson says, that he was forced to come clean to WikiLeaks. He says he told Assange about everything he had turned over to the FBI and forwarded to WikiLeaks all of his emails with the alleged FBI agents. Unsurprisingly, Assange “wasn’t happy,” he says. Hrafnsson, the WikiLeaks spokesman, told me he believed Thordarson was guilty of “pathological” behavior, adding that the FBI’s apparent recruitment of Thordarson had revealed the U.S. government’s “relentless persecution” of WikiLeaks.

Thordarson, however, does not seem fazed by the controversy he has created. He now spends much of his time working for companies that offer security and bodyguard training in Iceland and Denmark, though does not believe his relationship with the FBI has “formally ended.” He claims that his handlers at the bureau told him that he might yet be asked to testify in court about WikiLeaks. The Justice Department declined to comment about Thordarson but confirmed that its investigation into WikiLeaks is ongoing.

Eventually, the U.S. government may attempt to prosecute Assange, and there can be little doubt that he remains fixed firmly in the feds’ crosshairs. The WikiLeaks founder’s attorneys believe that a grand jury probe may already have produced an indictment against him that remains under seal—and so he remains sheltered in Ecuador’s London Embassy, fearing that if he sets foot outside the door he will subsequently be extradited to the United States and thrown in jail. But the prospect of this does not appear to be weighing heavily on Thordarson’s mind. Only once, when recounting the time he spent passing information on Assange to the FBI, does his voice tremble with a quiver of guilt.

“If you come into Julian’s inner circle,” Thordarson says, “he really takes care of his friends.”

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Ryan Gallagher  Aug. 9 2013 5:37 AM

Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports from the intersection of surveillance, national security, and privacy for Slate’s Future Tense blog. He is also a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation.

Find this story at 9 August 2013

© 2014 The Slate Group LLC.

 

Here’s What It Looks Like When Two Hacker FBI Informants Try To Inform On Each Other

WikiLeaks informant Sigurdur Thordarson, left, and LulzSec informant Hector Xavier Monsegur.

The FBI has so many moles in the hacktivist community, it seems, that at times they’ve even ended up unwittingly doing their best to get each other arrested.

For much of 2011, Icelandic then-teenager and self-described hacker Sigurdur Thordarson worked as both a WikiLeaks volunteer and an FBI informant. As Thordarson first told Wired, he claims to have given the FBI eight hard drives full of information potentially useful to the U.S. government’s ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks, which has come back into the spotlight due to the secret-spilling group’s role in helping NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seek asylum.

In an instant message conversation with Thordarson Thursday, I asked him what he might have given to the FBI that could be relevant to its investigation, and he responded immediately with a log of an instant message conversation between himself and the member of the LulzSec hacker group known as Sabu, which he says he gave to the FBI and which he claims shows “that information was passed on from LulzSec that later got published by WikiLeaks.” Thordarson told me he believes the log supports a “conspiracy” charge against Julian Assange or others in WikiLeaks.

The log is likely less useful to the FBI than Thordarson thinks: It’s no surprise that WikiLeaks has published hacked files, or even that it publishes files hacked specifically by LulzSec, such as the millions of emails stolen from the private intelligence firm Stratfor by activist Jeremy Hammond, who pleaded guilty to computer fraud and abuse last month.

More interesting, or at least more humorous, is the fact that the chat log represents a conversation between two FBI informants, both of whom seem to be trying to lure the other into providing evidence they can turn over to their law enforcement handlers–or even into a meeting that could lead to the other’s arrest. Sabu, also known as Hector Xavier Monsegur, had agreed to work as an FBI mole within LulzSec months before his conversation with Thordarson. Thordarson, for his part, tells me he thought he was helping to deliver a “notorious hacker” to the FBI, and didn’t know he was speaking to a fellow stool pigeon. Monsegur doesn’t show any signs of knowing either.

Thordarson, it should be noted, is not a reliable source, and WikiLeaks has claimed that “at no time did he have access to sourcing or publishing systems.” But while he may have tampered with the chat logs he provided me, they would be nearly impossible to wholly fabricate, and include English colloqualisms from Monsegur that would be tough for a native Icelander like Thordarson to invent.

At the beginning of this November 2011 conversation, in which Thordarson goes by the name “Dumbo12,” Monsegur offers WikiLeaks a a trove of hacked Syrian government emails, which sound like a portion of collection WikiLeaks would publish in 2012.
“
Sabu: how you doing my brother?

Dumbo12: all good on my and my friend

Dumbo12: on my end my friend *

Dumbo12: how’s life

Sabu: everythings good over here

Sabu: been busy

Sabu: we ended up a certain governments central mail server

Sabu: and got some fucking massive leaks coming out

Sabu: you gents sure you’re not wanting to do anymore leaks?

Dumbo12: Oh we will make more leaks

Dumbo12: we are gathering material now’a days and getting more funds to keep hosting our data servers

Dumbo12: anything else you can tell me about the comming out leaks?

Sabu: well between us. we ended up owning syrian government central mail server. my teams working on translating from arabic to english. but we are seeing crazy shit

Monsegur sends Thordarson some examples, and Thordarson responds with interest, and then asks Monsegur how WikiLeaks can help him. He responds asking for money:
“
Sabu: this is real shit

Dumb012: is this something WL could get there hands on and get real and good publicitiy?

Sabu : my brother. I’ll give you url of email attachments right now as a sample

Sabu : one minute

Dumbo12: another question i was asked to ask you, Are you being monitered? are you safe? do you need any assistance from us?

…

Sabu: nein but thanks for asking

…

Sabu: the only assistance I need is money so I can stop living in poverty and being the brokest hacker on earth

Sabu: hahaha

Then Thordarson mentions recruiting Monsegur to become a member of WikiLeaks, but insists on meeting him in person.
“
Dumbo12: Did J say anything about recruiting you permanately?

Sabu: well he emailed me once but we didnt get to talk

Sabu: guess hes been busy/careful or whatever

Sabu: but let him know we have intercepted 92GB of mails from .gov.sy so this can be one of the biggest leaks in history

Dumbo12: Just to point out one thing – If we are to recruit you – a meeting will have to take place we can’t be talking to a username forever

Sabu: I don’t care about that. but if you meet me you better make sure you guys are secure

Sabu: I refuse to go to jail for meeting anyone

Dumbo12: we will be secure im more worried about you

Sabu: especially me. they’re trying to get me really hard man

Sabu: I think they’re builing a real ugly case against me

Sabu: I believe in this cause and J inspired me to do what I’m doing

Sabu: but it feels like they’re trying to turn me to a martyr

Dumbo12: Believe me when i say, i personally and this organization will do everything we can to protect you from our end

Sabu: thanks brother.

Later Thordarson asks Monsegur to meet in Iceland, and Monsegur instead asks Thordarson to come to New York.
“
Dumbo12: Do you feel comfortable traveling to Iceland?

Dumbo12: or do you wan’t us to travel somwhere?

Sabu: unfortunately I’m a grown ass man with kids, so I don’t have the luxory of traveling the world

Sabu: but if you sneak yourself out to new york we’ll meet up at a bar on some random shit

Dumbo12: haha new york?

Sabu: haha yeah

Dumbo12: you don’t ask for little my friend

Sabu: take your time brother

Sabu: but its easy to hide in this city

Dumbo12: well worst case scenario i get stopped in NY customs – but i do not think that will happen

Sabu: I can be in NY tomorrow but i won’t go there unless your 100%

Sabu: I’m 100% but again my nigga I can’t risk going to jail now. I’ve been hiding for so long

Sabu: so be private about every fucking thing

Dumbo12: give me a date that suits you and i will try my outmost to be ther

Dumbo12: e

Dumbo12: if i get stopped in the US and they realize who i am then im going to jail so i ask you the same be not private but be very private about everything

Dumbo12: and you need to know that if i travel there i will be traveling with a close protection unit

Sabu: thats fine. im from the ghetto so I got people too 🙂

Four months later, Monsegur was revealed as an FBI informant. His meeting with Thordarson at a New York bar seems to have never taken place. Which is a shame: The two had more in common than they realized.

6/28/2013 @ 3:51PM |Andy Greenberg

Find this story at 28 June 2013

Copyright 2014 Forbes.com LLC™

 

WikiLeaks volunteer was paid FBI informant

A “cherubic” looking 18-year-old was part of an international investigation

Wired reports that an Icelandic 18-year-old named Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, who volunteered for WikiLeaks, was also informing for the FBI on the secretive group:

Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.

The relationship provides a rare window into the U.S. law enforcement investigation into WikiLeaks, the transparency group newly thrust back into international prominence with its assistance to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Thordarson’s double-life illustrates the lengths to which the government was willing to go in its pursuit of Julian Assange, approaching WikiLeaks with the tactics honed during the FBI’s work against organized crime and computer hacking — or, more darkly, the bureau’s Hoover-era infiltration of civil rights groups.

Thursday, Jun 27, 2013 04:50 PM +0200
Alex Halperin

Find this story at 27 June 2013

© 2014 Salon Media Group, Inc.

WikiLeaks q: Sigurdur Thordarson

Thordarson appears to be on Twitter: @singi201 and @singi201/wikileaks

A sends in response to a Cryptome query about allegations against WikiLeaks member “q” cited in We Are Anonymous, by Parmy Olson:

A friend has just alerted me to your liar-q-wl.pdf doc, and haven’t had the time to look through what else has been posted. If you want more information on Q, the psychopathic right-hand man of Julian Assange, I can give you more information, including his name and some of his other alleged criminal activity.
Cryptome: Thanks for the offer. Parmy Olson notes that lower-case “q” is not the same as upper-case “Q.”

_________

I seem to recall q also going as Q in the WL chatrooms.

q is Sigurdur Thordarson, who was 18 years old in 2010 and probably 17 when he joined WL. When Daniel Domscheit-Berg was still in WL, he knew Thordarson was trouble and made sure to keep him as far away from Julian Assange as possible. I believe Birgitta Jonsdottir may have done likewise; I do know that they knew each other, that she was extremely wary of him and did not like him. When Domscheit-Berg and Jonsdottir left, that barrier was removed and he quickly became Assange’s flunkie. In a better run organisation, an unintelligent, unskilled, and shady person like Thordarson would have never gotten anywhere near Assange, but because WL is run more like a textbook dictatorship, with its leader deriving his authority from a cult of personality based on an exaggerated and sometimes falsified life story, inefficiency and unintended irony abounded while meritocracy floundered. I have no doubt the current state of affairs within WL differs much from what I saw and experienced.

Why was he considered trouble? In part, before joining WL, it was said he had an extensive and dishonourable criminal record. While I was with WL, it became clear that something was rotten in Iceland Denmark when a fellow volunteer notified me that Thordarson had bragged to him that he intended to fly to the USA on WL’s dime to sleep with a uni student who was desperate to work for WL but was clearly little more than an Assange fangirl, then email her once he’d returned home to say there was no place for her in the organisation.

Thordarson disappeared in late 2010 from WL, with no one knowing where he’d gone. He resurfaced almost a week later, saying he’d been stopped by a police officer in his country while on the road, that his name had popped up on the police database, and as a result his laptop was taken. He never clarified why he’d been stopped and why he was on the database, but vaguely worded it in a way to make it out to be WL-related persecution, which is hard to believe.

A contact of mine who professed to be investigating WL financial malfeasance as of 2011 looked into this incident and said there was no record of it; another Icelander clarified Thordarson could only have been stopped for driving while under the influence. I have no way to validate or invalidate either q’s story or this investigator’s alleged research. I have considered the possibility this so-called investigator was actually Thordarson or someone else in WL playing mind games with volunteers who had left WL to keep tabs on them. It is the sort of thing Assange and company would do. I lost contact with the investigator after s/he claimed that his contact within WL who was giving him information had stopped singing. The investigator was said to have been working alongside a French journalist to break this story. I was hoping to help break the story to the NYT.

I am one of about a dozen who left in late 2010 because of WL’s abysmal lack of organisation and order, Julian Assange’s manipulative and exploitative personality, and Thordarson’s – for lack of a better term – psychopathy. Some of the volunteers in 2010 included some of the best and brightest computer programmers you can find, and Assange left Thordarson to dole out mostly meaningless tasks which we would never hear anything more of. The primary consequence of the WL chatroom was to cull people who genuinely wanted to volunteer for WL but who were of no use to WL under its modus operandi, and dupe them into thinking they were volunteers when they were really pissing into the wind. Many of us left for these ethical reasons, as well as common sense. The last I heard, almost everyone I worked with left WL and now dick-slap one another in public over one issue or another. No one knows most of us worked for WL, which is for the best, especially for those of us who want to vacation in the USA at some point in our lives.

Though I cannot backup with hard evidence the claims that Thordarson stole $60,000 of WL money, I can believe it because the investigator, despite his/her reliability being uncertain, told a similar story, and the chat transcripts that exist of Thordarson talking of using WL money to travel internationally just to get laid. I can confirm that near the end of my time there, he tried to get one volunteer to do something illegal with the WL shop and its corresponding bank account. The volunteer realized what he was asking could land the person in prison, and Thordarson moved onto another volunteer to get them to do the same.

Around the time we quit, it was made known that Thordarson was being prosecuted for bugging computers in the Icelandic parliament. That case actually exists and from what I was informed by a trusted source this week, it is still pending. Thordarson is said to have quit WL because the organisation stopped supporting him.

He has the expected traits of the hacktivist equivalent to Baghdad Bob: he’s obese, he can’t pick up, he’s a post-pubescent male yet listens to Justin Bieber, and he eats at KFC a lot. I’d call him a useful idiot, but he wasn’t even useful. The most meaningful thing Thordarson ever did at WL, as far as I’m aware, was he once filmed Julian Assange walking down a street.

I could tell you a lot more, including the US intelligence agency Assange once worked for and the malevolent little tricks he plays on hardworking WL volunteers.

A WikiLeaks Whistleblower

12 June 2012

Find this story 12 June 2014

FBI told to leave Iceland – Took a boy with them

Mr. Kristinn Hrafnsson, Wikileaks spokesperson, said last week that representatives from the FBI came to Iceland in August 2011. The Icelandic Minister of the Interior confirmed this the same day and said that when he became aware of the FBI in Iceland he cancelled all cooperation with the FBI and told the representatives to leave.

Mr. Hrafnsson said that the FBI came to Iceland to investigate Wikileaks. In an announcement from the Icelandic police it was stated that the FBI agents were here because of an imminent attack on the Ministry Offices in Iceland. The FBI agents interrogated one person regarding Wikileaks and the computer attacks. That person was interrogated at the US embassy in Iceland and then taken to Washington where he was interrogated for four more days. It was also mentioned in the announcement from the police that the person who was interrogated came willingly forward to the embassy.

The FBI agents interrogated the man, who is twenty years old, for five days after the Ministry of the Interior declined to cooperate with the FBI.

The interrogations took place in hotels around Reykjavik but never at the US embassy.

On August 30th the FBI agents told the Chief of police in Iceland that the Ministry of the Interior had said that they did not want the boy interrogated any further in Iceland and that their stay here was unwanted. The agents then left the country.

They however took the boy with them to Washington where he was interrogated for four more days. It is said that the boy went willingly. After the interrogations the boy was flown back to Iceland.

Mr. Ossur Skarphedinsson, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said to a local newspaper today that the FBI’s stay in Iceland was illegal. He said that the objective of the ministries had been to protect the boy, they thought that the boy did not realize the consequences of his actions. Mr. Skarphedinsson added:

“Therefore, we at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thought that these conversations should be prevented, to protect this Icelandic citizen, because the conversations took place at very unusual places and without authorization. We did not receive any request regarding authorization to interrogate this man.”

An announcement from Mr. Ogmundur Jonasson, the Minister of the Interior, is expected soon.

Tuesday, 05 February 2013 16:10 font size Print Email

Find this story at 5 February 2014

Copyright News of Iceland.

From COINTELPRO to Snowden, the FBI Burglars Speak Out After 43 Years of Silence (Part 2)

Watch Part 2 of our extended discussion with three of the antiwar activists who broke into an FBI office in 1971 in Media, Pennsylvania. The burglars, John Raines, Bonnie Raines and Keith Forsyth, are speaking out this week for the first time following the publication of Betty Medsger’s book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.

Click here to watch Part 1 of this interview.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we bring you part two of this fascinating discussion, the solving of a mystery during the Vietnam War era that wasn’t solved ’til this week. Nermeen?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So we continue our discussion looking at how activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and disclosed secrets about the FBI’s COINTELPRO program—that is, Counterintelligence Program.

AMY GOODMAN: Until this week, their identities were not known. Joining us are two of the people who broke into the FBI’s offices, John and Bonnie Raines. John and Bonnie hosted many of the planning meetings for the burglaries at their home, where they were raising three children. Bonnie worked as a daycare director. She helped case the FBI office by posing as a college student interested in becoming an FBI agent. John Raines was a veteran of the Freedom Rides movement, a professor at Temple University. He used a Xerox machine at the school to photocopy many of the stolen documents.

We’re also joined by Betty Medsger. She is author of the new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. She first reported on the stolen documents while working at The Washington Post. The activists mailed the documents to her. She was the first to reveal them; The Washington Post, the first paper to agree to publish the information in these documents. She uncovered the identities of most of the burglars in her new book. So, 40 years ago, she broke the story, and now she’s breaking the story of the identities.

And we’re joined by David Kairys, who has worked as an attorney for the activists for over four decades, a civil rights attorney and law professor at Temple University, as well.

In the first part of our discussion, we talked about how March 8th, 1971, went down, the night of the Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali fight, using that as a cover because it would be a lot of noise and the belief that the guards would be watching this in the Media offices. But there was criticism leveled—or you feared there would be, John and Bonnie Raines—of why you did this, because you could have gone to jail for many, many years. You had three kids under 10. Professor John Raines, what was your thinking process leading up to this?

JOHN RAINES: Sure, that’s a great question. We were the only ones, out of the eight, who were not only husband and wife, but father and mother of three children under 10. And we were not into the being a martyr. We were not into jeopardizing the future of our children. We were pretty sure—if we weren’t pretty sure, we wouldn’t have, in fact, gone into that office and taken out those files. So we were pretty sure we could get away with it.

But the second thing that’s important to know is that we routinely ask, as a society, mothers and fathers to take on as part of their work highly dangerous kinds of activities. We ask that of all policemen. We ask that of everybody that works for the fire department. We ask that of mothers and fathers who are stationed overseas, sent overseas to defend our freedoms in the Army and Navy. We routinely ask of people to take on jobs that risk their families. Now, we were faced back in 1971 with nobody in Washington was going to do what had to be done if we were going to reveal what J. Edgar Hoover was doing with his FBI. We were the last line of defense. So, as citizens, we stepped forward and did what we had to do because nobody in Washington would do what they should have done. Then, after we did what we did, people in Washington, with the help of Betty’s revealing stories in the Post, then they began, finally, to oversee J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and things changed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you spoke to family members. In the event that you were caught and imprisoned, you spoke to some of your family members and asked them to care for your children. What exactly did you tell them you were about to do?

BONNIE RAINES: Well, we didn’t tell them exactly what we had planned. We did have to let them know the high level of jeopardy and that we were doing this after much careful thought and involved with other people who we thought were responsible and careful. And we asked them, if the worst happened and we were convicted and sent to prison, if they would care for our children. So we had that conversation with John’s older brother Bob and with my mother and father.

AMY GOODMAN: When did you tell your children?

BONNIE RAINES: It was later, when they were old enough, as teenagers, to put it in perspective. We’ve always been a political family and involved our children in political activities of various kinds. But we needed to wait until it could fit into what I describe as kind of the family lore. And it was very easy and very natural to tell them about it. And they were a little bit shocked, but also quite proud, I have to say.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you tell them? Can you describe the scene? Did you actually sit them down together?

BONNIE RAINES: Can you remember that?

JOHN RAINES: I’m not sure. Do you remember it? We waited until they were, I think, teenagers, so that they could understand kind of the larger political context.

AMY GOODMAN: But this makes it even more amazing that this secret has been kept for so long.

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

JOHN RAINES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: You had four children—

BONNIE RAINES: By that time.

AMY GOODMAN: —that you told.

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re just two of the eight. There was also a ninth person. And if you could tell us about him, because he pulled out before the action took place, and you had further interactions with him.

JOHN RAINES: I did. He—I won’t name him, but he showed up on our front door, the door of our house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. And he said, “I need to talk with you, John.” I said, “Well, come on in.” And we went in, and he looked me in the eye, and he said, “I think I’m going to have to turn you in.”

AMY GOODMAN: When was this?

JOHN RAINES: Oh, it was the two or three weeks after, after the break-in. So, I, you know—and he knew all the names. I mean, if he had turned us in, we were going to jail.

AMY GOODMAN: He was in on all the planning meetings.

JOHN RAINES: He was.

AMY GOODMAN: He had pulled out just at the last second.

JOHN RAINES: That’s right. That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did he say when he pulled out, by the way?

JOHN RAINES: Well, he said, “I’ve been told by my girlfriend that there are files that you still have that are highly dangerous files in terms of threatening national security, that name various missile sites, anti-missile sites, around Philadelphia and so on.” And I said, “No, no, no, there’s nothing like that in these files.” Then I said to him, “Well, why did you think there was?” And he said, “Well, my girlfriend,” and so on. I said, “Have you ever thought that maybe your girlfriend works for the FBI?” And, you know, his face went like that. And then he—he left. And he kept the secret to himself.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s because then it’s not only him; it’s also his girlfriend who knew. We’re talking about 40 years of keeping this secret.

JOHN RAINES: Yeah.

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm.

JOHN RAINES: His girlfriend, I think, didn’t know who we were. I don’t think he said that. I think he simply—she gave him the information that was false information. It was fed, I think, by the FBI to him that there were these very dangerous files.

AMY GOODMAN: J. Edgar Hoover was desperate to get you.

JOHN RAINES: Oh—

AMY GOODMAN: He had over a hundred agents.

JOHN RAINES: Two hundred.

BONNIE RAINES: Two hundred agents.

AMY GOODMAN: Two hundred agents. It was your Xerox machine—

JOHN RAINES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —that they were—well, tell us about the Xerox machine at Temple University that you used to make Xerox—sounds a little like Dan Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, when he xeroxed the Pentagon Papers.

JOHN RAINES: Well, back then, nobody knew—or not many people knew—that every Xerox machine leaves its own fingerprint from the drum. Every drum on every Xerox machine has its own separate fingerprint. And therefore, anything that is xeroxed on that machine can be traced back exactly to that machine. Now, when we found that out, I very quickly, you know, phoned David—phoned—

BONNIE RAINES: Bill.

JOHN RAINES: Bill Davidon.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Bill Davidon, meanwhile, is being tapped, for other reasons, or—

JOHN RAINES: He’s being tapped.

AMY GOODMAN: —for very similar reasons.

JOHN RAINES: But he’s also using the Xerox machine at Haverford College. And I said, “Hey, hey, hey, Bill.” So he went and he scratched the surface of the drum at Haverford. And—

DAVID KAIRYS: You know, the main reason—

AMY GOODMAN: David Kairys.

DAVID KAIRYS: —they didn’t get caught—I mean, you’re right. There’s all these possibilities. Life is so contingent, and things could be so different than they turn out to be. But the main thing is the FBI used a typical American law enforcement approach. It was, instead of looking for who did it and investigating a range of people, the glommed onto one person, who they were sure, for whatever reasons, did it. And he was a leader of the Catholic Left, John Peter Grady. He had raided a lot of draft boards. They were sure he did it.

AMY GOODMAN: He was Camden, New Jersey.

DAVID KAIRYS: He also did Camden.

BETTY MEDSGER: He was a lot of things.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah, he did a lot of these.

AMY GOODMAN: From Camden.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah. And they thought that he did it, so they had 200 agents, but they’re all looking for the wrong thing. You see, they’re all misdirected and not—they thought there was a locksmith, so they investigated all the locksmiths in the Philadelphia area. They didn’t know all you needed was Keith.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to bring Keith Forsyth back in a minute.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But he just learned it in a course on—I can’t say online—

JOHN RAINES: Yeah.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —because you didn’t have the Internet at the time, right?

BONNIE RAINES: Correspondence.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, library.

AMY GOODMAN: Correspondence course.

DAVID KAIRYS: And he made his own tools rather than go to a store and buy them, which would be a record of that. So, see, they were extremely careful. And the FBI just let itself be completely misdirected.

BETTY MEDSGER: I’d also like to add that in addition—

AMY GOODMAN: Betty Medsger.

BETTY MEDSGER: In addition to focusing on John Peter Grady, they also focused on the ninth burglar. And they put him under 24-hour surveillance within 24 hours of the burglary and continued to monitor him for weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: The one who didn’t do it.

DAVID KAIRYS: Right.

BETTY MEDSGER: The one who didn’t do it.

DAVID KAIRYS: Who John just spoke of.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, yes. There were three main people that they targeted immediately: John Peter Grady—they thought he was the leader of the group—

AMY GOODMAN: And just very quickly, explain who he is. His children are well-known as activists today, especially—

DAVID KAIRYS: Yes.

BETTY MEDSGER: That’s right. That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: —upstate New York, taking on issues of drones.

BETTY MEDSGER: That’s right. Well, he was a—he was a leader, very prominent within the Catholic peace movement. He was the person in the Catholic peace movement who moved it from the Catonsville 9 method of going in in broad daylight and walking out and waiting for arrest.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Catonsville 9 in Catonsville, Maryland, led by Dan—Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan, who burned draft records, using napalm, that they had pulled out of the Catonsville draft office.

BETTY MEDSGER: Right. And John Grady was the leader of the part of the Catholic peace movement that then took things to another level, which was: Do these actions, but do them in order to actually do damage to the ability of the draft boards, so that they can’t operate and bring people into the service, and get away with it so you can go on and raid more draft boards. He was the key person in the Catholic peace movement who believed that that was needed, that things needed to be done that way. So, the FBI had not been successful in arresting many of the people. There were, you know, 350 draft board raids and hundreds of people involved in them. And they had not been very successful at finding these people. And he was somebody that they assumed was involved in many of them, and they immediately, for that reason, I think, assumed that he had led this group. So they focused on him, they focused on the ninth burglar, and they also focused on Bonnie. But they never knew Bonnie’s name.

DAVID KAIRYS: Never knew who she was.

BETTY MEDSGER: They knew her face, and they had that image, that art sketch that had been drawn based on the memories of the men in the office who saw her.

AMY GOODMAN: We touched on this in part one, but—of our discussion, but, Bonnie Raines, can you describe what you did before March 8th, the day that you all broke into the Media office? Talk about your experience.

BONNIE RAINES: Well, many of the planning meetings and the scheduling of what we called casing the building at night took place from our house. So I was involved in much of that, but not really one of the prominent members of the group, until we realized that we needed to have someone get inside the offices to look at the possibility that there would be security measures, burglar alarms over the doors, whether the file cabinets were locked. So I was elected to do that. And I was to pose as a Swarthmore College student and disguise myself, as much as I possibly could, and make an appointment to go in and interview the head of the office about opportunities for women in the FBI. And they were very cordial. They spent enough time with me to allow me to really look around to see everything, to gather all the information.

JOHN RAINES: They didn’t notice that you kept your gloves on.

BONNIE RAINES: I kept my gloves on the whole time I was taking those—

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And they never asked you your name, right?

BONNIE RAINES: No.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: You never gave a name.

BONNIE RAINES: No. No, they never did. I think, in the course of conversation, I was asked where I was from. And I said, I think, “Hartford, Connecticut,” or something. But the good news was that I was able to get that last important piece of information about the inside of the office, and then that allowed us to make a decision to actually plan to go ahead with it on March 8th.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they—it was from that that they got the description of you with these fake glasses and—

BONNIE RAINES: Yes, yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —a hat on.

BONNIE RAINES: I had long hair, and I tucked my hair all up inside—it was February, so I had a winter hat and looked a little shabby, like I might have been a student on a scholarship at Swarthmore. But I was very polite, and they were very cordial, and it went very, very well. And they never noticed that I never took my gloves off the whole time I was taking notes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And the night of the burglary, what did you actually do on the night, March 8th?

BONNIE RAINES: My role—we each had an assigned role, and my role was to be in a car on a side street at the building, so that if a police patrol came along on that street and would then turn around to be at the front of the building and might see our four fellow companions leaving the building, I was to pretend that my car had broken down and block the street so that they couldn’t come around to the front of the building. I didn’t have to do that, as it turned out.

AMY GOODMAN: And the other people involved, Betty Medsger, some have decided to come forward, and some haven’t. Bill Davidon, who wanted to come forward, has just recently died. He had Parkinson’s. Talk—since you spoke with him a lot—and, of course, all of you knew him, a professor at Haverford—I was actually wondering if you can tell us the story of his meeting with Henry Kissinger. This is astounding. Five days—I was talking to his daughter last night, and she said he sort of had a to-do list. You know, meet with Henry Kissinger at the White House, break into the Media offices and steal the FBI documents—that was his to-do list for the week.

JOHN RAINES: Yeah, that’s quite short.

AMY GOODMAN: But how did he end up meeting with the national security adviser, Henry Kissinger?

BETTY MEDSGER: Yeah, it’s an amazing thing to think about, that just two days before the burglary there’s the leader of the burglary in the Situation Room of the White House. Well, Bill never missed an opportunity to make the case against the war. And he really didn’t want to go to the White House that morning, particularly, but it’s—an interesting person had set it up. Brian McDonald was a young Quaker from Philadelphia who the previous—immediately after Nixon announced that we were invading Cambodia, at the end of April in 1970, Brian came to Washington and sat on the street—sidewalk in front of the White House and was fasting and—in protest of what Nixon had done. And he was there for quite some time. And during that time, I remember Shirley MacLaine came to know him, and some other people, and they quietly introduced Kissinger to Brian. And a strange combination, but they actually became real friends, a friendship that lasted until Brian died about a decade ago. But it was Brian who knew all parties involved, the three people who came to that meeting, including Bill and Kissinger. And so, he asked Kissinger to be willing to meet with them to talk about the war. And Kissinger said—because he liked Brian so much, agreed that he would.

So, the three people were Bill and two other people, Tom Davidson and Sister Beverly Bell. All three of them were unindicted co-conspirators in an indictment that had just come down that January that involved J. Edgar Hoover. It was an indictment that charged Phil Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister and a few other people. They were indicted, and then there was a series of people, including Bill Davidon, who were unindicted co-conspirators in a conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger and to bomb tunnels under federal buildings in Washington.

Now, the Hoover involvement comes the previous November, when Hoover, against the advice of his officials, who hardly ever spoke up to urge him to not do something, Hoover went before a committee of two people, and then—on the Hill, a congressional committee, and then immediately distributed his statement to as many press as they could get it to afterwards. And in that statement, he announced that these people were conducting this conspiracy. And it was his typical method of trying to convince members of Congress to give him more money, which always happened. But this was a very alarming thing, the idea that these people—priests and nuns and their colleagues—were—who were known for being nonviolent activists, were planning this violent thing. And the Justice Department and the FBI had investigated this, and the FBI people had decided that there was no plan, there was no real plan, and that the case should be abandoned. And Hoover knew that, but nevertheless made that public accusation. And that was enormous news at the time.

And then, the Justice Department—again, knowing that there was no such plan—in order to save Hoover’s face, went forward with a grand jury and designed it in such a way, eventually, in a superseding indictment, that people could be found guilty if they had participated in plans not only to kidnap Kissinger or to bomb tunnels under Washington, but to raid draft boards—if they had done any one of those things. Well, they all had raided draft boards. But the impact of it all, of course, on the public was: They wanted to kidnap Kissinger or set off bombs. By the way, the case, two years later, failed, and there was no conviction. But at this time, when Bill goes to the White House with two of the other unindicted co-conspirators, they are sitting there with the person that they’re supposedly planning to kidnap. So that seemed—made it even more strange.

And what they—they had a discussion for about an hour in the Situation Room, where many aspects of the Vietnam War had been planned, and something that they were quite aware of. And it was in the—ultimately, it was a frustrating meeting, where they felt that they were meeting with a—having a civil conversation with a friendly enemy, who at that time was responsible for more bombing. But—

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Kissinger felt he was being smeared, is that right?

BETTY MEDSGER: Felt he was what?

AMY GOODMAN: Being smeared in the academic community.

BETTY MEDSGER: Oh, you mean not by them, but elsewhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Right.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, yes, that’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: And part of why he wanted to meet with another professor, with Bill Davidon, to change the alienation he felt from the academic community that he valued.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, I think that’s true, although I—reading from Kissinger’s biography, I think he looked at this primarily as meeting with religious people, as he spoke of their high ideals and being in a spiritual world, whereas he was in the real world, and that they couldn’t really do anything, but he had to do something, whereas in fact they did not think of it as a religious confrontation or issue with him. They, too, were very much of the real world and wanted to see negotiations taking place and to stop the war, rather than the direction that he was taking it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And after the break-in on March 8th, 1971, Bill Davidon, whose idea it actually was, was in fact never questioned by the FBI, is that correct?

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, and that relates to the case that I was just talking about. The FBI was prepared to go after Bill Davidon very, very seriously. And the Justice—when the Justice Department found out about this, they put out an order that he should not be questioned—no questioning of Bill Davidon—which was quite amazing, given his situation and the fact that he was the leader of the group. And that went into effect. And for the entire length of the investigation, Bill was never questioned by the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did they put this out?

BETTY MEDSGER: Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to explain it. Because—they prohibited the FBI from questioning him because they were so intent on building a successful case in the Harrisburg indictment, and they didn’t want to bring any more confusion into the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Harrisburg indictment was?

BETTY MEDSGER: And that—yes, the Harrisburg indictment was the case of the conspiracy—

AMY GOODMAN: Of the—to kidnap Henry Kissinger.

BETTY MEDSGER: —the alleged conspiracy to kidnap.

DAVID KAIRYS: And it was a big national publicity. And Hoover was being criticized for indicting people for a conspiracy that was just ridiculous.

BETTY MEDSGER: And this would have brought more attention that they did not want brought to that.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we bring Keith Forsyth back in to join his other co-conspirators here at the table, I wanted to ask you, David Kairys, about the legality of all of this.

DAVID KAIRYS: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, of course, they had broken the law by breaking into the Media, Pennsylvania, FBI offices. Now, the statute of limitations is over. But can the authorities get around that, say, “New evidence has been presented: We now know their names”?

DAVID KAIRYS: That wouldn’t—that wouldn’t be a legitimate ground. There are things they could try, that, given the way they’ve been interpreted in law, would just not work. There’s really nothing they could do. Now, they do have discretion and a lot of power to put people through criminal trials even though they’re not going to win—the government. So, they could—and this is something you have to weigh in a situation like this—they could bring charges and just make you get lawyers and prepare a defense and disrupt your life, try to hold you on bail. There’s all those things they could do. But—and we would be arguing that it’s not being done in good faith, because there’s—the statute of limitations has run. So, I think, ultimately, it would work out that they are not convicted of anything, because of the statute of limitations, but you can’t—you can’t be sure that the government might not make you go through—

AMY GOODMAN: The FBI’s response today?

DAVID KAIRYS: Yesterday’s statement, I thought, was very positive. I actually had anticipated that they would say something like, “We’re looking into it. We’ll have to get back to you.” Instead of that, they seemed—they almost claimed credit for it. It’s like: Things happened that caused reforms, and we like these reforms. So, they’re—you know, they’re just reformers.

AMY GOODMAN: That could bode well for Edward Snowden.

DAVID KAIRYS: You’re—instead of FBI informers, you’re FBI reformers.

BETTY MEDSGER: They also said, I understand, to one reporter, “We didn’t have very good security.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is amazing. I mean, the actual quote of Michael Kortan, FBI spokesperson, “A number of events during that era, including the burglary, contributed to changes in how the FBI identified and addressed domestic security threats, leading to reform of the FBI’s intelligence policies and practices, including the creation of investigative guidelines by the Department of Justice.” I mean, this is very significant for Edward Snowden, because it’s saying—

DAVID KAIRYS: Oh, I think it is.

AMY GOODMAN: —if what you did led to reforms, then the good outweighed what they would consider the bad of the burglary.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What does this mean for Edward Snowden? The response has been enormous in terms of calls, not only in this country, but around the world, for reform.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: David, if you would like to weigh in on that—John, if you would like to weigh in on that, John Raines?

JOHN RAINES: Well, yeah, I think that what we were trying to do back in 1971, Snowden is trying to do right now. And that is to give the information that citizens need to decide, as citizens, what their government should do and should not do. And I think that we faced an FBI with a director called J. Edgar Hoover that was furious at us, and thank goodness we got away with it. Snowden faces governments, especially CIA and NSA, who want to make decisions about this massive kind of surveillance that they have. They vacuum up all our personal information, all of our emails, all of our correspondence. They say that they’re not listening to the emails. Well, they’ve got the technology to listen. Are we supposed to believe that they’re not listening to—you know, reading what we’re saying on our emails? That’s a—anyway, Snowden is facing the same kind of retribution of people of power, and he doesn’t deserve that. I see him as a public servant who, as a public servant, did serve the public, giving us the information we have a right to know, so that we can instruct the people in Washington what we, the people, think they should do and not do.

DAVID KAIRYS: The basic similarity in Snowden and the Media burglars, I think, for those of us who would have never had the courage to do such things, either one of them—and I include myself—they took this enormous risk, a really unbelievable personal risk, so that the rest of us could find out, in this case, what our FBI was doing or to expose wrongdoing. It’s the best American tradition. I mean, to go back to a group that’s got a different meaning these days, the original Tea Party was an illegal act. They didn’t stand there and say, “Arrest me for it.” They wanted to get away.

BETTY MEDSGER: And the Underground Railroad.

DAVID KAIRYS: Underground Railroad, the violations of the Fugitive Slave Acts. The Revolution itself, the American Revolution itself, was illegal under existing law. And I still—after 40 years of knowing these folks well, it still amazes me that they took the personal risk that they did. And this is something that, to me, should be praised.

AMY GOODMAN: On that note, we’re going to reunite those who were involved in the burglary that night. Some might talk about the liberation of these documents; others, the stealing of these documents. David Kairys, thanks for joining us.

DAVID KAIRYS: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to be joined now by Keith Forsyth, in addition to John and Bonnie Raines, and Betty Medsger, the author of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. She is revealing this week, in this book, the names, the identities, of most of those involved with the burglary that night, March 8th, 1971. They called themselves—they, with five others—the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. And on March 8th, 1971, they broke into the offices of the FBI in Media, Pennsylvania, and got—how many documents, ultimately?

JOHN RAINES: About a thousand.

AMY GOODMAN: About a thousand documents. Did you go through them, John Raines, before you sent them off to Betty Medsger at The Washington Post and Tom Wicker—

JOHN RAINES: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, we were very careful about that.

AMY GOODMAN: —of The New York Times and Jack Nelson?

JOHN RAINES: We separated the files into what were clearly legitimate files, from our point of view—that is, they involved crime. And we didn’t want to release those files, because it had names of witnesses and things like that. That was about 40 percent of those files. Sixty percent of the files were clearly political in intent, and those were the ones we began to sort through. And we began to find—even on the morning, early morning, of the night, we began to find documents that were quite exciting.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

JOHN RAINES: Well, like the one that said, “Let’s increase the paranoia and have these folks be persuaded that there’s a FBI agent behind every mailbox.” I mean, that is—that’s not surveillance; that’s obviously intimidation. All right? Intimidation is a political act; it’s not an act of an investigative organization like the FBI.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Betty Medsger, when—one of the most damning programs that was revealed in these documents was COINTELPRO, but when you first received the documents, you had no idea what that program was. So how long after you got the documents did you find out what this program was and what it entailed?

BETTY MEDSGER: Yeah, the document that had COINTELPRO on it was just a routing slip. “COINTELPRO–New Left” was a label at the top. We had no idea what it was. None of us who received it had any idea what it was. The FBI was watching to see if that would ever be released. And because I wrote about something that was in that document, they knew, as of that day, that it had been released, and went into high gear. Hoover said, “We’ll stop this program.” And what he meant was, as he explained to agents, was, “We no longer use that name.” The program continued, but without that name. We had no idea what it was until, thanks to Carl Stern, by the end—at the end of 1973—

AMY GOODMAN: Of NBC.

BETTY MEDSGER: Carl Stern was the NBC reporter who covered the Department of Justice at that time. And he was in an office of the Senate committee, and they said, “Have you ever seen this?” And Carl had not seen it. And he was intrigued by the fact that at the bottom of the cover—of this routing slip were instructions for FBI agents to give the attached article on the need for control of students on campuses who were protesting the war—there was a note asking FBI agents to write anonymous letters and deliver this or mail it to unfriendly administrators, or to just hand it to friendly administrators. And Carl thought, “This is very strange.” And so, within a matter of days, he asked the FBI to tell him what COINTELPRO was and provide documentation of what it was. And they turned him down.

He went through attorney generals, various attorney generals at that time, because they were changing as a result of Watergate. And then, finally, he sued, under the Freedom of Information Act. Until then, Hoover had always instructed officials to ignore any applications under the Freedom of Information Act. But Carl pursued this through the courts and won, became the first person to succeed under the Freedom of Information Act in getting anything out of the FBI.

And what he received were the documents that immediately became news and explained that these dirty tricks operations had been going on since 1956. They were harassment. They were kind of activities that would seem to have nothing to do with law enforcement or intelligence gathering. Instead, they were secret harassment, sometimes quite violent and destroying people’s reputation.

AMY GOODMAN: Give us examples. And again, COINTELPRO means Counterintelligence Program.

BETTY MEDSGER: Counterintel. One example is what they did to actress Jean Seberg.

JOHN RAINES: Oh, yeah.

BETTY MEDSGER: Jean Seberg, at that time, was a very popular actress. And she had made a contribution to the Black Panthers in Los Angeles, something that—and because the Panthers were under great surveillance, the FBI knew that. And she was pregnant. And a way COINTELPRO operated, agents were invited to submit proposals for these dirty tricks operations, and then the proposal would go back to Washington. And Hoover would read them and decide whether or not they should be carried out. And the proposal was to plant a rumor that the baby she was carrying, that the father of the baby was a Black Panther in Los Angeles. And Hoover was so happy with this proposal, and he wrote a response saying that he thought it was terrific. But he thought that they should wait until she was more noticeably pregnant, wait a few months, so that it would have a greater impact. The plan was to plant the rumor with a gossip columnist. And the people in Los Angeles were so eager to carry it forward that they didn’t wait until she was more noticeably pregnant. And what a freelance reporter, Allan Jallon, later revealed in the Los Angeles Times was that the FBI actually planted that rumor with editors of the Los Angeles Times, who then gave it to a gossip columnist.

AMY GOODMAN: And they knew they were getting this from an FBI source.

BETTY MEDSGER: They knew they were getting it from an FBI source. And they planted—they gave it to a gossip columnist. She wasn’t named, but the description was so obvious that people, especially in Los Angeles, knew, and she knew, that they would—I mean, Jean Seberg knew that it was she who everyone realized was the object of this. And the result was quite tragic. She was so upset when this was published in the Los Angeles Times that she gave birth very soon to a premature baby, who died very soon after birth, a white baby girl. And then, years later, on the anniversary of the birth of that dead child, Jean Seberg committed suicide. And at that time, Director Webster put out a statement that said, “We are out of this business forever. No more COINTELPRO.” But it is a dramatic illustration of how extreme many of the COINTELPRO operations were. And they were all kinds of people, not everyone well known.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He’s Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2011, Chomsky spoke to Democracy Now! about COINTELPRO.

NOAM CHOMSKY: COINTELPRO, which you mentioned, is actually the worst systematic and extended violation of basic civil rights by the federal government. It maybe compares with Wilson’s Red Scare. But COINTELPRO went on from the late ’50s right through all of the ’60s; it finally ended, at least theoretically ended, when the courts terminated it in the early ’70s. And it was serious.

It started, as is everything, going after the Communist Party, then the Puerto Rican Independence Party. Then it extended—the women’s movement, the New Left, but particularly black nationalists. And it ended up—didn’t end up, but one of the events was a straight Gestapo-style assassination of two black organizers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, literally. I mean, the FBI set up the assassination. The Chicago police actually carried it out, broke into the apartment at 4:00 in the morning and murdered them. Fake information that came from the FBI about arms stores and so on. There was almost nothing about it. In fact, the information about this, remarkably, was released at about the same time as Watergate. I mean, as compared with this, Watergate was a tea party. There was nothing, you know?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, speaking to Democracy Now! Keith Forsyth, could you talk about the significance of what Professor Chomsky said? And also, Noam Chomsky was part of the group Resist, which was one of the groups to which those FBI documents had been sent by you.

KEITH FORSYTH: Correct. So, at some point in the process after the initial mailing, Bill eventually hand-delivered all of the political documents that we had selected for distribution to the Resist office in Boston.

AMY GOODMAN: This was Bill Davidon—

KEITH FORSYTH: Bill Davidon, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —the Haverford professor and well-known antiwar activist.

KEITH FORSYTH: Yes. And one of the examples that Mr. Chomsky cited was the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, which we all knew about, but we didn’t know the extent of the FBI involvement. That came out later. As it turned out, the FBI had an informant in the Chicago Black Panther organization who provided a map of the apartment where the Panther leadership was staying, including a big X on the location where Fred Hampton slept.

BETTY MEDSGER: Fred’s bed.

KEITH FORSYTH: Fred’s bed, yeah, Fred’s bed. This map was provided to Hanrahan, the—I believe he was a district attorney in Chicago, and a—had a special unit of police whose focus was to target the Panthers. And Fred Hampton was drugged one night and was sleeping very soundly when the police broke in early in the morning. And they—they killed Mark Clark, and they shot and killed Fred Hampton—excuse me—in his bed, while he was sleeping.

JOHN RAINES: He wasn’t dead.

KEITH FORSYTH: Oh, right. That’s right.

JOHN RAINES: He wasn’t dead.

AMY GOODMAN: John Raines.

JOHN RAINES: He was shot, he was wounded, but he wasn’t dead. And then his girlfriend, who was pregnant, was in the same room, in the bedroom. Two policemen came in—two Chicago policemen came in. And they said—and she heard them say, “Well, it looks like he’s going to make it.” And one of the guys took out his revolver, put the revolver on the back of Fred’s head and blew him away, and said, “Now he’s good and dead.”

AMY GOODMAN: This was December 4th, 1969, a year and a few months before you raided the FBI offices—

KEITH FORSYTH: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: —in Media.

KEITH FORSYTH: And later on—

JOHN RAINES: That’s the kind of thing that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was involved in—I mean, radically unconstitutional, illegal. They—assassination, as Keith said.

BONNIE RAINES: Horrifying, horrifying, horrifying.

JOHN RAINES: Yeah.

KEITH FORSYTH: Later on, there was an FBI document discussing, evaluating this raid. And I no longer recall the exact wording, but it was words to the effect of: “The result was very satisfactory. We got the result that we wanted.”

AMY GOODMAN: You, Keith, had a wrench. You had tools to break in, and that’s what you used to get into the offices. Forty years later, Edward Snowden, you know, uses his digital skills in order to get these documents. Do you identify with him?

KEITH FORSYTH: I do. His skills are far more difficult to master than mine.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you learn?

KEITH FORSYTH: I started with a correspondence course in locksmithing, which I took originally to assist in the draft board raid movement, to try to facilitate getting in and out of draft boards. And then—then, I also—I was actually working part-time as a locksmith on the side, in addition to driving a cab, so I got some practice there. And then we practiced—I practiced quite extensively at John and Bonnie’s house, made up a little sort of fake door with a whole—five or six locks in it, so you could, you know, work different ones, and just practiced fairly diligently to try to get the time down. So…

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Betty Medsger, can you talk about FBI Agent Welch?

BETTY MEDSGER: Yes. Neil Welch played a number of important roles at that time and was an agent quite different from most FBI agents. While the culture of the FBI was dominant—dominated by Hoover’s personality and many offices of the FBI were dominated also by COINTELPRO demands and actions similar to those kinds of operations, political spying and so forth, there were a few agents who didn’t like that culture. It was very hard to resist it. But Neil Welch was an agent, a special agent in charge at various places, and he was, I think, the only special agent in charge in the FBI who refused to carry out Hoover’s orders that COINTELPRO programs take place. He refused to let his agents participate in them, and at times was placed on probation because of this.

A couple things about him later on. First of all, he happened to be the agent in charge of the Philadelphia office five years after the burglary, when the statute of limitations expired on the burglary. And it is he who signed the document closing the case. He claims—and I’m sure this is true—that it was a matter of routine; it was time to do that, since the burglars had not been found and there was no hope that they would be. I think he was also happy to do so, because he, years later, when I interviewed him, told me that although he doesn’t think that people should burglarize FBI offices, that he nevertheless thought that these people had done a heroic thing that was very important.

And something else that he did that shows the change that took place in the years immediately afterwards, Clarence Kelley became the director of the FBI, the first full director after J. Edgar Hoover. It was a—he came in at a critical time, when people in the Justice Department and Congress were first starting to look at the FBI and raise questions. And he at first defended COINTELPRO, later apologized for it. But at one point, he finally—he ordered Welch to come to Washington to go into the domestic intelligence files and go through every single one of them and test whether or not they should be held open. Very few were held open. Most of them were closed by Welch. And that was not reported at the time. It was not known. But it really symbolizes the dramatic change that did take place.

AMY GOODMAN: John Raines, can you—what did you teach at Temple University? And—

JOHN RAINES: Well, I taught Christian social ethics.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his significance, who he was?

JOHN RAINES: Well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian. And he spent a year or two at Union Theological Seminary, which is where I would later get my theological training. The Second World War was on, just beginning, and he decided he had to go back to Germany. He would be safe in this country, but he had decided that he was not going to choose safety. He would go back to his country, where his people were. And Hitler was very much against, of course, this theologian, this marvelous man. And finally, they decided, a group within this kind of religious underground, that they should undertake the assassination of Hitler. And his name was associated with that effort, and he was killed after that assassination failed.

AMY GOODMAN: And his influence on your decision to do what you did May 8th, 1971, with your wife Bonnie and the others?

JOHN RAINES: Well, it was a—it was an example of, one, significant identity with his nation; two, taking on grave personal risks in order to save that nation from what was happening to Germany under Hitler. And he paid the ultimate price for that. Bonhoeffer paid the ultimate price for that. And that was a significant kind of inspiration for those of us, just like Martin Luther King was also, taking a risk for what you know to be right and following that risk, if you have to, all the way to the cross.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Betty Medsger, his influence on Bill Davidon?

BETTY MEDSGER: Well, I would just like to say something I learned about his—how both John and Bonhoeffer were influenced in their move toward resistance by African-American people. I didn’t realize, until I did the research for the book, that Bonhoeffer, after he returned to Germany and wrote about his move toward resistance, attributed his ability to decide to resist the government to what he learned here in Harlem from African Americans and about their struggle and their willingness to resist. And I found—when I discovered that, I mean, even his language in describing it was so similar to the way John described that working with African Americans, resisting with them in the South, was what gave John courage to resist.

JOHN RAINES: Oh, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: John, I was wondering if you could read the statement you read the morning after the burglary to a Reuters reporter. Now, this was what? March 9th, 1971.

BONNIE RAINES: About 5:30 in the morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe it. Bonnie, what was going on? You were in the farmhouse?

BONNIE RAINES: No, we were headed back to our home in our car, and it was early morning. We had decided that the statement that the group had written should be released the very same day, if possible. And so, we stopped in our car headed back into the city at a public phone, and John called a reporter from Reuters whom we’d—I think Bill Davidon had arranged that—called him, woke him up and read the statement to him over the phone.

JOHN RAINES: OK, the statement is, that I read: “On the night of March 8, 1971, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI removed files from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI. These files will now be studied to determine: one, the nature and extent of surveillance and intimidation carried on by this office of the FBI, particularly against groups and individuals working for a more just, humane and peaceful society; two, to determine how much of the FBI’s efforts are spent on relatively minor crimes by the poor and the powerless against whom they can get a more glamorous conviction rate, instead of investigating truly serious crimes by those with money and influence which cause great damage to the lives of many people—crimes such as war profiteering, monopolistic practices, institutional racism, organized crime, and the mass distribution of lethal drugs; finally, three, the extent of illegal practices by the FBI, such as eavesdropping, entrapment, and the use of provocateurs and informers.”

It goes on: “As this study proceeds, the results obtained along with the FBI documents pertaining to them will be sent to people in public life who have demonstrated the integrity, courage and commitment to democratic values which are necessary to effectively challenge the repressive policies of the FBI.

“As long as the United States government wages war against Indochina in defiance of the vast majority who want all troops and weapons withdrawn this year, and extends that war and suffering under the guise of reducing it, as long as great economic and political power remains concentrated in the hands of a small clique not subject to democratic scrutiny and control, then repression, intimidation, and entrapment are to be expected. We do not believe that this destruction of democracy and democratic society results simply from the evilness, egoism or senility of some leaders. Rather, this destruction is the result of certain undemocratic social, economic and political institutions.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to comments that Glenn Greenwald wrote on Tuesday about—Glenn Greenwald is the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden and his NSA revelations. He wrote a piece yesterday, Tuesday, responding to the revelations about the 1971 FBI break-in. Greenwald writes, quote, “Just as is true of Daniel Ellsberg today, these activists will be widely hailed as heroic, noble, courageous, etc. That’s because it’s incredibly easy to praise people who challenge governments of the distant past, and much harder to do so for those who challenge those who wield actual power today.”

So, Betty, I’d like to ask you: How were your reports received then? How did people writing in response to the documents, the articles that you wrote, respond to the fact that these activists had broken into the FBI, taken these documents, and that The Washington Post had made the decision to publish them?

BETTY MEDSGER: Well, the letters to the editor were mixed. I think the majority were positive. People were shocked. They were also glad that evidence had been presented to them, that they had no idea of what existed. There were other—I mean, this was a time of Cold War attitudes still being very—so there were many people who accused us of being communist and trying to serve a communist purpose by making these documents public. There also was a very strong response among a few people in Congress that the adulation of Hoover in Congress needed to stop and questions needed to be asked for the first time—very strong effort to press for an investigation. Also, newspaper editorial writers at papers that had only written positive things about Hoover also called for investigations. I mean, that turned out to be a relatively long process, but those investigations did take place in 1975, when there was a buildup of additional revelations, including coming to understand what COINTELPRO was, and then Sy Hersh’s article in December 1974 that revealed that the CIA, in violation of its charter, was also engaged in massive domestic surveillance. That sort of was the tipping point. There was this string of things, and then Congress did. But this all started with the Media file release and the reaction.

AMY GOODMAN: And you, really, in pushing for your piece to be published, you laid the groundwork—though Katharine Graham first didn’t want to and then ultimately did—for Watergate, because the same thing was taking place with Woodward and Bernstein, but now she had the experience of releasing—releasing your piece.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yeah, I mean, I like to think that there was a buildup of—as she became more experienced with this through time. And certainly it was—she was making very tough decisions. I mean, it’s easy for those of us who are simply finding the stories and thinking, “Boy, this is a story there’s no way they could refuse to publish,” to realize that there were pressures. And in the instance of the press—I mean, of The Washington Post, the fact that they owned television stations and the Nixon administration could threaten them with loss of those licenses was a very real thing.

AMY GOODMAN: John and Bonnie Raines, so your name is known; Keith Forsyth, your name is now known. What are your thoughts about people knowing who you are?

BONNIE RAINES: Well, I can judge most immediately by the things that came in on my phone, my emails and responses from so many people who either read the Philadelphia story or The New York Times, overwhelmingly saying, “Wow! You did an amazing thing and never talked about it, never shared it all these years. And thank you very much for what you were able to accomplish.”

AMY GOODMAN: These are your close friends.

BONNIE RAINES: These are all colleagues, work colleagues. And I’m hopeful, too, that these are people who will want to see the film, as well, 1971, because it’s a wonderful documentary and very well done. But I just—it was a flood of responses that were overwhelmingly positive.

AMY GOODMAN: And John?

JOHN RAINES: Well, the same.

BONNIE RAINES: Former students.

JOHN RAINES: Former students, yes, and all of them saying, “You did a good job, Raines. Thank you for standing your watch.”

AMY GOODMAN: And how will you deal with the glare of the media spotlight?

JOHN RAINES: Oh, lights are a funny thing. They come on, and they go off. And knowing that that’s the way lights are, it helps you get ready when the lights go on, knowing that someday they’ll go off again. And that’s fine by me.

AMY GOODMAN: And those who are not named, maybe you could address this, Betty. Someone who is named is Bob Williamson. Tell us what happened with him.

BETTY MEDSGER: Bob Williamson was a defendant in the Camden trial after the Media burglary and then moved to New Mexico. And Bob has gone through many changes. He was eager to move away from total engagement with the movement, as he knew it, in Philadelphia and to get on with a new life. And he eventually did that. He was quite happy to recall his memories of what happened and what was a very important experience in his life. He’s become a Republican and stands in very different position from the rest of the burglars today, but he still looks back on that as a very important thing and regards it as something that caused positive change. And he came to New York yesterday to see the documentary and be with his fellow burglars and brought his adult daughter to share in the sense of celebration that they all felt.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it was fascinating to see him, because now he became a Republican speech writer, among other things. And with his daughter in the audience, he said, “I wanted her to know who I was before I was her father.”

BETTY MEDSGER: Right. He’s told her about some of the things that he did. I was fairly surprised to learn yesterday at lunch that he hadn’t told her about breaking into an FBI office until they were on the plane leaving Albuquerque on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: And Bill Davidon died in November. He knew that his name would become known, but he was not shy about his antiwar activism, and he was out there all the way. Why didn’t he speak out before? Was it part of the vow you all took together?

JOHN RAINES: Yes.

BETTY MEDSGER: Yeah.

KEITH FORSYTH: Yes.

JOHN RAINES: Yeah, sure.

BONNIE RAINES: Yeah, it was. That was so, so important that we—we were going to trust each other to maintain a silence about it. And I think we knew that Bill would do everything possible to get the word out, but not as one of the burglars. He was—he was very anxious to continue to push for the changes that he thought were so important.

BETTY MEDSGER: I’d like to say something about Bill and the keeping of secrets. Bill’s personality was—he was a very humble, modest person, while at the same time being a very strong leader. And to some extent, that’s a reflection of the qualities of the other members of the group, and one of the things that I think made it possible for them to keep the secret all these years. I’ve covered a lot of people and a lot of different kind of movements, and there tend to be some pretty dramatic egos in movements of all kinds, where I think for most people, once that five-year period passed, it would have been very tempting to want to get credit. And I was amazed when I met them and to find out that they did not have that kind of ego need.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Keith Forsyth, before we conclude, how is it—how is it for you now that your name is out, after all these decades of secrecy?

KEITH FORSYTH: I’m the kind of person that’s not really comfortable talking about myself in public. And so, it’s been—it’s been a little difficult for me. But I was persuaded that, you know, by sharing our names, it helps give the story more weight, and it makes it more difficult for people who may not share our political views to dismiss it out of hand. You know, a book like this, with all unsubstantiated sources, unnamed sources, would be, I think, a different book, both as a historical record, which I think is important, and also in terms of the effect it can have to spark a political discussion. So, I’m not anxious to be even a little bit famous, but if it—if this will help spur the discussion that we need to have in this country, then I’m willing to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I mean, what is so astounding about this—and, Betty, you touched on this—is when the FBI set its sights on someone, as they did on John Grady, thinking he headed this plot, they’re blind to everything else—and maybe that woman they had a sketch of who ended up being Bonnie Raines. But as you show on page 150 of the book, The Burglary, there is a front-page headline, Delaware County Daily Times, a picture of Bill Davidon—this is five days after the break-in—with the headline, “Davidon Unveils Plot Against FBI.” Public remarks by William Davidon about the burglary reported in a front-page banner headline in a local newspaper four days, that is, after the burglary. “As guest speaker at a meeting of clergy in Swarthmore, he read the commission’s statement”—that’s your Commission to—Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI—”explaining why they broke into an FBI office.” In those five years, he was never investigated for this.

BETTY MEDSGER: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Betty.

BETTY MEDSGER: That amazing article sort of points to two things. First, the FBI was under orders at that point not to question him, his incredible immunity as a result of being investigated for Harrisburg.

AMY GOODMAN: Which protected you all in many ways.

JOHN RAINES: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

BETTY MEDSGER: Right, right.

BONNIE RAINES: Definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: Except for the one who dropped out. That’ll teach him. He becomes the suspect.

BETTY MEDSGER: But it also shows Bill, although I described him as this humble, unegotistical person, he also was so determined that this information become public. And the fact that the office had been burglarized wasn’t even getting attention. There were these tiny stories just saying, “Yes, not much was taken. Just a little burglary.” And he wanted it to be known that something had happened, and he was willing to go this far, but always standing back, never acknowledging that he was involved in it.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Betty Medsger has written the book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. And the activists themselves—professors, taxi cab drivers, a director of daycare—who were involved with this break-in, John Raines, Bonnie Raines, Keith Forsyth, they called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
GUESTS

John Raines, participated in the 1971 FBI break-in and helped photocopy many of the stolen documents. He and his wife Bonnie hosted many of the planning meetings for the burglary by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. He was a professor at Temple University.

Bonnie Raines, participated in the 1971 FBI break-in and helped survey the office prior to the burglary. She and her husband John hosted many of the planning meetings for the burglary by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. She was a mother of three at the time and worked as a daycare director.

Keith Forsyth, served as designated lock-picker in the 1971 FBI break-in by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. He was working as a cab driver at the time.

Betty Medsger, author of the new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. She is the former Washington Post reporter who received an anonymous package in 1971 that contained secret documents obtained by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. Her new book about the saga has just been published.

David Kairys, civil rights attorney and a law professor at Temple University. He has represented the activists for more than four decades.

Find this story at 8 January 2014

Democracy needs whistleblowers. That’s why I broke into the FBI in 1971

Like Snowden, we broke laws to reveal something that was more dangerous. We wanted to hold J Edgar Hoover accountable

I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch that there would be incriminating material there, as the FBI under J Edgar Hoover was so bureaucratic that we thought every single thing that went on under him would be recorded. But we could not be sure, and until we found it, we were on tenterhooks.

A shout went up among the group of eight of us. One of us had stumbled on a document from FBI headquarters signed by Hoover himself. It instructed the bureau’s agents to set up interviews of anti-war activists as “it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

That was the first piece of evidence to emerge. It was a vindication.

Looking back on what we did, there are obvious parallels with what Edward Snowden has done in releasing National Security Agency documents that show the NSA’s blanket surveillance of Americans. I think Snowden’s a legitimate whistleblower, and I guess we could be called whistleblowers as well.
A look back at what happened

I was 29 when my husband John and I decided to join six other people to carry out the break-in. I was a mother of three children, aged eight, six and two, and I was working on a degree in education at Temple University, where John was a professor of religion.

We had both been heavily involved in the civil rights movement. John had been a freedom rider, and in Philadelphia we participated in anti-war protests against Vientnam. Through that activity we knew that the FBI was actively trying to squelch dissent, illegally and secretly. We knew that they were sending informants into university classrooms, infiltrating meetings, and tapping phones. The problem was that though we knew all this, there was no way to prove it.

A physics professor at Haverford College named Bill Davidon called a few of us together at his home. Bill, who died last November, floated the idea of doing something to obtain evidence. He just came out with it: “What do you think about breaking into an FBI office to remove the files?” If it hadn’t been for Bill, who was so smart and strategic, I’m not sure we would have taken it seriously. But we did.

Bill articulated for all of us the frustration over the foment of those times, and the feeling that we all had of being compelled to do something as ordinary citizens because no one in Washington was holding Hoover accountable. We started looking into the feasibility of a break-in. Right away, we found out the main FBI office in Philadelphia was in a high-rise in the center of the city, and that it was impregnable. Then we learned there were other field offices in the suburbs, and that lead us to Media.

John and I lived in a big old house in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, and we set aside a room in the third floor to be our base of operations. We lined the walls with maps of Media. We had to tell our elder children not to talk to anyone about the maps on the walls. Even though they knew nothing of our plans, we worried the detail might give something away.

We cased the FBI office in Media for about three months. Two of us would go and watch activity in and around that building, record people going in and out and the patterns of police patrols.

I was chosen to carry out the last piece of casing, which involved getting into the office during business hours to check out its security systems. I called and made an appointment to interview the head of the office, under the ruse that I was a Swarthmore College student researching opportunities for women in the FBI.

I tried not to arouse suspicions, tucking up my long hippy hair in a hat, wearing glasses and gloves throughout the interview even though I was taking notes. Through that visit I learned there was no security, none at all, in the office – even the filing cabinets were left unlocked.

I think it was Bill Davidon’s idea to choose 8 March 1971 as the operation’s date. It was the night of Muhammad Ali’s fight against Joe Frazier, and we thought people would be listening on their radios and that the police would perhaps be a little less vigilant.

As the day approached, we both grew anxious. We had three children, there was a lot at jeopardy. We knew that if things went wrong and we were convicted, we could go to federal prison for a long time. We talked to my husband’s brother and to my parents, without telling them the details, and asked them to take care of our children if the worst happened.

John wasn’t sleeping well. I was a little more bold and determined, a little gung-ho I guess. My association with good people in the movement gave me strength, and the idea that citizens have to take responsibility for when our rights are being abused.

Four of us broke into the FBI office. Keith Forsyth had trouble picking the lock, which was daunting. My job that night was to distract any patrolling police cars by pretending my own vehicle had broken down. Luckily, no police drove by.

We spent a week going through the documents and then mailing them out anonymously to congresspeople and some progressive journalists. All the journalists, including the New York Times, returned the documents to the FBI under pressure from the Nixon White House. Everyone was afraid of Hoover, except the Washington Post. After the Post published the documents, everyone else jumped on board.

We were so happy that, finally, the right kind of information was getting out, and that it was accurate information that could stir things up. It had that effect, too – it really did stir things up. When the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church from Idaho, was set up to look into FBI and intelligence operations and policies, we felt our work was done.
Democracy needs whistleblowers

Democracy needs whistleblowers. Snowden was in a position to reveal things that nobody could dispute. He has performed a legitimate, necessary service. Unlike us, he revealed his own identity, and as a result, he’s sacrificed a lot.

On our part, you could accuse us of being criminals – and Hoover did just that: he was apoplectic and sent 200 agents to try and find us in Philadelphia. “Find me that woman!” he screamed at them.

But to us there didn’t seem to be an alternative at that point. No one was going to be hurt. We hoped for the outcomes that we wanted. We knew, of course, that we were breaking law, but I think that sometimes you have to break laws in order to reveal something dangerous, and to put a stop to it.

For five years we lived under the threat of arrest. There was a sketch of me that the FBI circulated from when I impersonated a Swarthmore student, though I didn’t know it at the time. And the FBI interviewed John, luckily while I was out of the house. After five years, the statute of limitations fell for the burglary, and we were relieved. We didn’t celebrate on the fifth anniversary, though after that we were more relaxed. We now know they closed the case in 1976 for lack of any physical evidence.

Eventually, we told the children, and the story became part of family lore. We wanted them to know about that chapter in our history, and besides, you can’t ask your children to act according to their conscience unless you show them what you have done in your life, too.

I still worry a great deal about the state of our democracy. Back in 1971, the country was so divided, there was so much foment, but there was also much determination to change things, and people felt empowered to do so.

Nowadays, the country is divided once again, but I don’t see much concern about the abuses that are happening today, like the surveillance of mosques in America, using agent provocateurs. I hear people say, “I don’t care,” the government can do what it needs to do as long as it protects me from terrorism …” To me, that’s giving the authorities blanket permission to cross the line again.

Dissent and accountability are the lifeblood of democracy, yet people now think they just have to roll over in the name of “anti-terrorism”. Members of government thinks it can lie to us about it, and that they can lie to Congress. That concerns me for the future of my children and grandchildren, and that too makes me feel I can talk about, at my age, doing something as drastic as breaking-in to an FBI office in the search for truth.

Bonnie Raines
theguardian.com, Tuesday 7 January 2014 18.22 GMT

Find this story at 7 January 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Remembering an earlier time when a theft unmasked government surveillance

(Henry Burroughs/ AP ) – In his office in the Executive Office Building, President Richard Nixon meets with Attorney General John N. Mitchell, left, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in Washington on May 26, 1971.

On March 24, 1971, I became the first reporter to inform readers that the FBI wanted the American people to think there was an “FBI agent behind every mailbox.” That rather alarming alert came from stolen FBI files I had found in my own mailbox at The Washington Post when I arrived at work the previous morning. ¶ It was the return address on the big tan envelope that prompted me to open it first: “Liberty Publications, Media, PA.” I had worked at the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia before coming to The Post in January 1970, so I knew of Media, a small town southwest of Philadelphia. ¶ The letter inside the envelope informed me that on the night of March 8, 1971, my anonymous correspondents — they called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI — had broken into the Media FBI office and stolen every file. They did so, I learned later, in the dark and as the sounds of the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing match filled the streets.

“Enclosed you will find,” the letter said, “copies of certain files from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI which were removed by our commission for public scrutiny. We are making these copies available to you and to several other persons in public life because we feel that you have shown concern and courage as regards issues which are, in part, documented in the enclosed materials.”

I wasn’t aware of having shown any courage, but I was, to put it mildly, eager to read those files — 14, as it turned out, of 1,000 files that they had taken.

For 43 years the people who sent those files to me then have remained unknown to the general public. This week, five of the Media FBI burglars — a group that pulled off an act that led to congressional investigations of all intelligence agencies, congressional oversight and significant reforms in the FBI — are coming forward for the first time.

In a book I have written and in “1971,” a documentary film by Johanna Hamilton, the burglars tell their story — the ultimate result of a chance encounter I had at a dinner party in 1989 with acquaintances in Philadelphia, who told me they were involved in the Media burglary.

There were eight of them. Seven have now explained why and how they broke into an FBI office, with five of them revealing their names: William C. Davidon, then a physics professor at Haverford College and the leader of the group, who died in November; John C. Raines, then and until recently a religion professor at Temple University; Bonnie Raines, a day-care center director then and since the director of organizations that advocate for children; Keith Forsyth, then a cabdriver and now an electrical engineer; Bob Williamson, then a social worker and now a life and business coach based in Albuquerque. The other surviving burglars who came forward live in Philadelphia.

‘Enhance the paranoia’

When I first looked at the contents of that envelope from Liberty Publications, I had no idea who might have done such a thing.

The first file I read grasped my attention. In it, FBI agents were encouraged to increase interviews with dissenters “for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

If the FBI had paranoia as a goal of its intelligence operations, it was significant news.

Every document told a story about FBI power that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI. One, signed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on Nov. 4, 1970, had two subject headings — “Black Student Groups on College Campuses” and “Racial Matters.” It was the first of numerous FBI files I would receive from the anonymous burglars over the next two months that revealed Hoover’s programs targeting African Americans. The files revealed that African American citizens were watched by FBI informers everywhere they went — the corner store, classrooms, churches, bookstores, libraries, bars, restaurants. Every FBI agent was required to hire at least one informer to report to him regularly on the activities of black people. In the District, every agent was required to hire six informers for that purpose. On one campus in the Philadelphia area, Swarthmore College, every black student was under surveillance.

In these documents, Hoover conveyed a sense of urgency about the need to monitor black students: “Initiate inquiries immediately. I cannot overemphasize the importance of expeditious, thorough, and discreet handling of these cases. . . . Increased campus disorders involving black students pose a definite threat to the Nation’s stability and security.”

When I finished reading the files I received that day in March, I knew I held in my hands either a cruel hoax or information the American public needed to know about its most powerful law enforcement agency and the FBI director it had long adored.

Within an hour, the FBI confirmed that the files were, indeed, copies of the ones stolen from the Media office.

By late afternoon, when I submitted my article, I was surprised to learn that it might not make it into the paper. Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who would later serve time in prison for his role in the Watergate affair, had called two editors, executive editor Ben Bradlee and national managing editor Ben Bagdikian, multiple times that afternoon urging them not to publish.

Two members of Congress — Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.) and Rep. Parren J. Mitchell (D-Md.) — and the Washington bureaus of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times had also received the files. All four of those recipients immediately handed them over to the FBI.

Late that afternoon, Mitchell called the publisher, Katharine Graham, and again demanded that The Post not publish an article. Finally, at 6:45 p.m., he released a statement urging “anyone with copies of the records to neither circulate them further nor publish them.” Disclosure of the files we possessed, he said, could endanger lives, disclose national defense information and give aid to foreign governments.

Tough words, especially for an attorney general who, I discovered years later from the 33,698-page record of the FBI’s official investigation of the Pennsylvania burglary, had neither read nor been briefed on the files before he issued those dramatic claims.

At first, Graham did not want to publish the article. The Post’s legal counsel, Tony Essaye, also opposed publication. After hours of heated discussion on the unprecedented question of whether to publicize secret government documents stolen by people outside the government, Graham approved publication at 10 p.m. The story was immediately released on The Post’s wire service and appeared the next day on the front pages of many papers, including The Post.

The editors had convinced Graham that the responsibility to reveal this information far outweighed concern about how it became available to us. It was important for people to have access to the information — even if it were the fruit of a burglary — that the FBI engaged in practices that had never been reported, probably were unconstitutional, and were counter to the public’s understanding of Hoover and the FBI.

The reaction to the story was swift and angry. Members of Congress who had never expressed anything but kind words for J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI now issued unprecedented calls for a congressional investigation of the bureau.

Covering up COINTELPRO

One of the most important Media files was a mere routing slip. On the top of it was the then-unknown term COINTELPRO. That program included clandestine efforts that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his closest associates interpreted at the time as a blackmail threat intended to persuade King to commit suicide. Hoover desperately wanted to keep the operation secret.

Because I wrote about the document attached to the routing slip, Hoover and his top aides knew on April 6, when that article was published, that the term COINTELPRO was known outside the department. Hoover immediately wrote to the heads of all field offices conducting these top-secret counterintelligence operations and ordered them to stop submitting status letters, apparently in an effort to increase security. At the same time, he told them they must “continue aggressive and imaginative participation in the program.”

Three weeks later, fear that the operations would one day become public convinced Hoover to take the more extreme step of eliminating the code name COINTELPRO. Officials were to say the program had been closed. Actually, it continued, but with no name.

The nature of the program was first revealed in 1973 by NBC journalist Carl Stern, who successfully sued the FBI for documents that defined the purpose of COINTELPRO, which was initiated by Hoover in 1956. Numerous such operations were revealed during the 1975 hearings of the Senate select panel known as the Church Committee, the first congressional investigation of all intelligence agencies.

A surprise at dinner

Many years after the Media burglars opened the door to Hoover’s secret FBI, I accidentally found two of them, John and Bonnie Raines. On a trip to Philadelphia in 1989, I had dinner at their home one evening. I had known them as acquaintances when I worked in Philadelphia in the late 1960s and had not seen them for many years. Their youngest child joined us briefly. John turned to her and said, “Mary, we want you to know Betty because many years ago, when your dad and mother had information about the FBI we wanted the American public to know, we gave it to Betty.”

That statement didn’t mean anything to Mary, but it almost knocked me off my chair. When she left the room, I asked the obvious question: “Are you saying you were the Media burglars?”

They happily admitted they were. John Raines had not planned to tell me, he says. He just happened to blurt it out. Among the many things I learned that night was that the eight burglars had all agreed to take the secret to their graves. A few weeks later, I asked them if they would find the others and together consider breaking that vow so that this important gap in history could be filled. Shortly after that, on a part-time basis while I continued to teach journalism, I started my research about them, the investigation into the burglary and the impact of what they had done.

As the Media burglars came forward this week, inevitably people have linked them to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who last year began releasing documents showing massive government surveillance.

There are similarities in their stated motivations: They all sought to give important information to the public about overreaching intelligence agencies.

Davidon, the leader of the Media group, thought that suppression of dissent was a crime against democracy. If documentary evidence was presented to Americans, he was confident they would take action to stop it. He was right. The burglars found the evidence and the public acted.

In the case of the Snowden files, it is not clear what action the public might demand that Congress take.

It is clear, though, that twice in the past half-century, Americans have had to rely on burglars — not official oversight by Congress, the Justice Department or the White House — for crucial information about their intelligence agencies’ operations.

Betty Medsger, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of “The Burglary: the Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.”

By Betty Medsger, Published: January 11 E-mail the writer

Find this story at 11 January 2014

© 1996-2014 The Washington Post

NBC reporter recounts breaking FBI spying story

On the Dec. 6, 1973 “Nightly News,” Carl Stern becomes the first reporter to expose COINTELPRO, a now-notorious FBI program that infiltrated and disrupted civil rights, anti-war and other political dissident groups.

The files stolen from an FBI office outside Philadelphia in 1971 were stunning, describing secret efforts to spy on student protestors and infiltrate civil rights groups.

But one document proved especially interesting to the NBC News correspondent who would later break the news of the FBI’s most notorious secret program of nationwide domestic surveillance. It discussed a proposal from bureau headquarters that agents send letters “anonymously” to college professors who had “shown a reluctance to take decisive action” against left-wing protestors. And it included a cryptic acronym he’d never seen before: “COINTELPRO.”

“The first question that popped in my mind was, ‘By what authority do FBI agents write anonymous letters?’” recalls Carl Stern, who covered the Justice Department for NBC News for nearly 30 years. He also wanted to know what “COINTELPRO” stood for. But when he pressed those questions with top DOJ officials, “nobody would talk to me about it.”

Stern recalled his efforts to learn more about the document—and the mysterious reference to “COINTELPRO” — on Tuesday after the confession by three former peace activists that they had committed the unsolved burglary of the Media, Pa. office in order to document what they were convinced was “massive illegal surveillance” by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The identities of the burglars are revealed in a new book, “The Burglary,” by former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, and were reported Tuesday on the “Today” show.

Read the NBC News report on the burglars who came forward.

In the bombshell book, “The Burglary,” journalist Betty Medzger exposes the robbers behind the momentous theft from an FBI office outside Philadelphia over 40 years ago. The perpetrators have come forward in an interview with NBC News.

The burglars cracked open the door to exposing illicit FBI snooping by stealing the files and sending them to select journalists, but it was Stern who opened it all the way. Using a then-novel tool called the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from the government, Stern uncovered the long-running surveillance program known as COINTELPRO, a now-infamous effort at political intimidation and disruption that may have been Hoover’s biggest secret.

As Stern recalled it, when his initial inquiries about COINTELPRO were rebuffed, he refused to take no for an answer and sought an explanation over lunch with L. Patrick Gray, who had become acting director of the FBI after Hoover died in 1972. He got back a terse letter in Sept. 1972. “This matter involved a highly sensitive operation,” it read. “It has now been discontinued” and any further disclosures “would definitely be harmful to the Bureau’s operations and to the national security.”

So Stern filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. And with the help of a sympathetic judge, the late Barrington Parker, he finally got the first documents describing what COINTELPRO was, and broke the story on NBC’s “Nightly News” on Dec. 6, 1973. “Secret FBI memos made public today show the late J. Edgar Hoover ordered a nationwide campaign to disrupt the activities of the New Left,” said John Chancellor that night introducing Stern’s report. “He ordered his agents not only to expose New Left groups, but to take action against them to neutralize them.”

Those documents opened the floodgates to hundreds more over the years as Congressional investigations followed. They showed that Hoover had started COINTELPRO in 1956, first targeting the Communist Party and then expanding the program over the years to include the Socialist Workers Party, black nationalists, New Left groups and the Ku Klux Klan. Agents were directed to harass and intimidate leaders, plant false stories and write anonymous letters aimed at discrediting them. In one case, the bureau planted a false story that film star Jean Seberg, known to have financially supported the Black Panther Party, had been impregnated by one of its leaders. In another, it sent a tape to Coretta Scott King, wife of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. containing secretly made audio recordings of her husband’s extramarital affairs.

“It was a very abusive program, it had no law enforcement purpose,” said Athan Theoharis, a leading scholar of the FBI’s history and a professor emeritus at Marquette University. “Clearly, what the bureau was doing was trying to contain organizations whose politics the FBI viewed as abhorrent.”

Stern agrees. “They made a decision about which individuals and organizations were doing things that they regarded as un-American and harmful,” he said, “and that’ s not the bureau’s job.”

Ironically, Hoover quietly terminated COINTELPRO shortly after the Media, Pa. break-in, afraid details of the program would come to light. Within a few years, prodded by the bad publicity and the findings of a Senate committee headed by the late Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, the Justice Department issued new guidelines prohibiting the bureau from engaging in any such activities and barring investigations based on First Amendment-protected political activity.

By then, a later FBI director, Clarence Kelley, would do something Hoover is not known to have ever contemplated. He formally apologized for COINTELPRO. “We are truly sorry we were responsible for instances which are now subject to such criticism,” Kelley said in a 1976 speech at Westminster College in Missouri. “Some of those activities were clearly wrong and quite indefensible.”

Theoharis said those changes might never have taken place if the Media burglars had not stolen the FBI’s secret files — and Stern had not followed up on what they did.

Wednesday Jan 8, 2014 2:00 AM
By Michael Isikoff, NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

Find this story at 8 January 2014

© NBCNews.com

How to Burglarise the FBI The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI did it back in 1971

For most of US history, spies didn’t have rules – even when they were targeting US citizens. The spymasters and their agents did whatever was necessary: blackbag break-ins, illegal phone taps, telegram and mail intercepts, plus the usual lying, stealing and killing. But in late 1970, a collection of ordinary citizens became so outraged by illegal government spying that they began to meticulously plan a daring mission: they would raid an FBI office.

On the 8th of March, 1971, a group of activists calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an office outside of Philadelphia, stole nearly all the FBI’s own documents and mailed them to Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger. This leak led to massive reforms of the rules of surveillance. Any limits on NSA and FBI actions inside the United States are thanks in part to these daring citizen burglars. They kept their story a secret for 43 years. Meet the men and women who burgled the FBI.

Their secret planning began with a spaghetti dinner. A pair of college professors, several university students, a social worker, a daycare worker and a taxi driver gathered around a homey dinner table, children underfoot at a three-story stone townhouse in Philadelphia. Some of the guests were on edge, while others laughed like old friends. Their leader, William “Bill” Davidon, a physics professor at nearby Haverford College, was the oldest at 43. He leaned back, quietly observing the crew that ranged in age down to 20. Several of the members had been arrested in earlier actions. But this operation was on a different scale of danger. Even sitting at the table slurping spaghetti and discussing plans was enough for conspiracy charges, perhaps up to ten years in federal prison. If the FBI catches you in the act, a friendly lawyer warned, you might be shot.

John and Bonnie Raines’s wedding photo, 1962

As they ate, Davidon outlined his plan. We are going to break into an FBI office, steal every document, mail the internal FBI files to the press and expose the FBI’s crimes to the nation. He was neither loud nor flashy. His was a leadership that came with the spark of conviction, the sensibilities of a lifelong educator.

But to attack the FBI meant directly confronting J Edgar Hoover, one of the most powerful men in America. For nearly five decades, Hoover had shaped the FBI to his liking, personally deciding who was a true American and who was an enemy of the state. “When Hoover was director, there were no guidelines. He was the guideline and he told agents what they can do and they can’t do,” said former FBI Special Agent Wes Swearingen, who was active from 1951 to 1977. “He did not ask any president or any attorney general what he could do. In fact, he kept it secret. That gave him a lot of power because everything was so secretive.”

Hoover used FBI agents to draw up a list of tens of thousands of “subversive” Americans to be rounded up and arrested in the event of a national emergency. He organised nationwide programmes to harass and disrupt political activists. “We used to set up Black Bag Jobs which were actually illegal searches because we did not have search warrants… and I did or knew about approximately 500 [of these] in the Chicago area alone,” Swearingen told me. “Hoover was very abusive because we were talking about innocent people being put in jail and people being assassinated, like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark [leaders of the Black Panther Party] in Chicago. That was a definite arrangement by the FBI for the Chicago Police to go in and kill all the members. And I was told personally by an agent that I used to work with, that that’s what happened.”

Despite his reign of abuse, no one in Washington dared challenge the man who knew too much. “Somebody had to do it. And those of us who referred to ourselves as the ‘Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI’ took that task as our task in the early months of 1971,” says John Raines, a professor of religion at Temple University and, along with his wife Bonnie, a former member of the Citizens’ Commission. “If we did not do it, it would not get done. And J Edgar Hoover would have continued to turn his FBI into a kind of proto-Gestapo.”

It had been Davidon’s idea that burglering the FBI would show how the venerated bureau was out of control, running illegal operations, ignoring the US Constitution and disrupting fundamental democratic rights. Secrecy was a must. They each knew that if even one of them talked, slipped up or got caught, the entire group was going down.

The FBI office was located on the second floor of the County Court Apartments in Media, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Betty Medsger)

An FBI office in the small town of Media, Pennsylvania caught Davidon’s attention. Media was just outside of Philly, and when he drove by the offices, Davidon was convinced that the three-story brick office building was vulnerable. These smaller FBI offices, known as “Resident Agencies”, often housed less than a half-dozen agents and had less sophisticated security measures. The Citizens’ Commission now had their target.

Throughout January and February of 1971, the Raines’s third floor attic morphed into a command centre. Sheetrock was hung on one wall and quickly filled with handwritten notes and operational details. Escape routes were planned. A large map of Media was hung on the wall and a diagram of the FBI office slowly took shape. Brainstorming sessions led to a chart with questions: How long does it take the courthouse guard to make rounds? Is it predictable? Are there regular police patrols?

Davidon wanted no detail left unstudied. He assigned each team member a specific set of tasks. John Raines was chosen to drive the getaway car – the family station wagon. He would wait in a parking lot miles from the operation, ready to receive the stolen goods. Once the documents were squirrelled away in a safe house, it would be John and Davidon who would write up the analysis. They were both in their early 40s, long-term strategic thinkers, men who had joined the Civil Rights Movement long before it was hip and risked their life by travelling to rural Mississippi in the early 1960s as part of a movement known as “The Freedom Riders”.

Keith Forsyth, part-time cabbie and lock picker

Forsyth was the one-man entry crew. While the others sat around a table up in the attic, Forsyth installed a board with multiple locks lined up like a hardware store collection. While the others debated entry strategies, escape routes and how to avoid being arrested, Forsyth picked locks. “Every lock is an individual, they all behave differently so I would go up and down practicing. I would do all [the locks] clockwise, rotating and going up and then back counterclockwise. Every so often I would either swap out a lock or I would take a lock out, take it apart and put a new combination in it. When I was really good, I probably could do most locks in about 30 seconds.”

As the burglary plan took shape, Forsyth was given another task: he would help with surveillance. The burglars began night operations, staking out the Media FBI office in pairs. They developed a formal routine. Every weeknight from 7PM to midnight the crew spied, took notes and honed the details of the operation.

“It was boring. You’re watching out the door, constantly waiting for a cop car to go by. A cop car goes [by] and then you wait another hour before you see the next one,” said Forsyth. “You have two people sitting in the back of a van with curtains over the windows in the dark, for hours at a time. It would be pretty hard to explain that if a cop actually saw your eye move behind the curtain.”

The activists were clear that the raid had to take place at night, after the agents had left but not so late as to raise suspicions. They found an ideal date. On the 8th of March, 1971, Joe Frazier was scheduled to fight Muhammad Ali. Millions would be watching and listening. While Ali and Frazier fought inside Madison Square Garden, the burglars could use the noise of the radio and TV broadcasts as cover.

After two full months of casing the FBI by night, the team understood well the outside routines. But what was happening inside the FBI offices? The Citizens’ Commission agreed that someone needed to spend some time undercover in the offices.

Bonnie Raines with her daughter, Lindsley, in 1971, the year of the robbery

Bonnie Raines volunteered. She looked younger than her 29 years, had a bubbly Midwestern charm and was extremely attractive. In late February, she disguised her long hair by carefully tucking it inside a woollen hat. She wore oversized glasses that were not part of her normal getup. A pair of leather gloves allowed her to take notes without leaving fingerprints. Under the guise of investigating work opportunities for women at the FBI, Bonnie set up an appointment to interview an agent inside the office. While Bonnie kept the conversation on track, she made a handful of mental notes. The filing cabinets did not appear to have sophisticated locks, and there was no visible alarm. There was also a second entryway, a door barricaded by huge filing cabinets. Loaded with information, Bonnie left the office surer than ever that the operation was possible.

As plans began to solidify, Jonathan Flaherty, one of the burglars, got cold feet. With little explanation, Flaherty left the group, hardly explaining his fears or motivations. The group was stunned. Flaherty could sink them all with a single phone call. Davidon pushed on. He tried to ignore the possibilities of the defector. He’d already hurdled dozens of challenges.

***

At 7PM, on the 8th of March, the burglars gathered at a Holiday Inn several miles from the FBI office. They arrived in separate cars and waited. Forsyth was sent to pick the locks. He had already scouted the premises, found a pair of locks he could pick, and figured his well-practiced routine would take approximately 30 seconds. He approached the office in a Brooks Brothers suit and tie, clean-shaven and confident, but when he saw the door, he panicked. A second, far more sophisticated lock had recently been added, one that would be impossible for him to pick. “I was very upset, because immediately my plan had been to go up there, open those two locks, make sure there was no alarms and leave. I planned to be out of there in five minutes or less. And so my immediate instinctive reaction was that this whole thing was down the tubes.”

Forsyth returned to the Holiday Inn, “I can’t do it,” he bluntly told the gathered crew. Davidon marshalled the frustration and began to think aloud. What other ways might work? Do we have a second door? During her casing mission, Bonnie had seen another door, but it was barricaded by a huge filing cabinet. Davidon thought it would work, while also warning that knocking over the file cabinet meant near-sure arrest. They decided to go for it and headed back to the office.

Now Forsyth’s bragging rights were tested. He found the barricaded door, which had just one lock. He picked that in his standard 30 seconds. Then using a crowbar and part of a car jack he painstakingly inched the massive file cabinet away from the door. Instead of a quick 30-second entry, it was closer to an hour of painstaking work. “My feet are braced up against the wall and I am pulling the jack very, very slowly trying to feel what is happening on the other side. Trying to feel whether this thing is slipping or tipping or not,” said Forsyth. “I was trying to stay calm but, you know, what are you going to say if somebody walks up and says, ‘By the way, young man, why are you laying on the floor with a four-foot steel bar in your hands stuck inside the FBI’s door?’”

While he strained, Forsyth silently thanked Ali as sounds of the heavyweight fight echoed throughout the building. Then he panicked. “I heard this sort of banging, a bang sound from inside, and of course I froze instantly. It was an old building. Was this the steam heat? Or was it an FBI agent who tripped over something? I had no way of knowing. “

Forsyth finally wedged the door open far enough to slip his skinny frame into the FBI offices. “I had this little moment where I thought, ‘Well, if they’re in there I’m going to find our right now.’ I squeezed through and tried to be as calm as I could. I looked around and there was nobody there.”

Next, a two-man, two-woman team entered the FBI offices carrying empty suitcases. They worked stealthily in the dark. A flashlight dimmed with tape was used sparingly. The “inside crew” methodically wrenched open desk drawers and file cabinets. Careful not to make noise or leave the slightest evidence, they quietly filled up their oversized suitcases with documents. They also grabbed an autographed photo of J Edgar Hoover as a trophy. The well-dressed burglars then strolled out to waiting cars in front of the offices, loaded up two vehicles with suitcases and were driven off.

The Quaker farmhouse 40 miles outside of Philadelphia, where the burglars reconvened after the robbery to examine the stolen documents. (Photo by Betty Medsger)

Davidon had long before decided that the documents should be kept at a central location, preferably rural. He didn’t want to risk an FBI raid in Philadelphia, so he quietly asked a friend to lend him the farmhouse at Friendship Farm, a Quaker retreat. Once the burglars reconvened at the farmhouse they immediately opened the suitcases and began sorting documents. From the onset they had agreed to destroy any legitimate criminal records – alerting bank robbery suspects that the FBI was after them was not part of the plan. They wanted evidence the FBI was harassing political activists. As Davidon had repeatedly stated to the group, if Hoover was trying to squash dissent in the United States, the documents would prove it.

The group spread the documents across the kitchen table, counters, a dining room table and even atop chairs as they began sorting. Within an hour they found evidence. In an internal FBI document, agents were taught that harassing and infiltrating legitimate political organisations was a particularly effective technique. It might help, the document suggested, to “enhance the paranoia… get across the point there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox”.

Another document was a routing slip with the word COINTELPRO – short for Counter Intelligence Programme – a top secret programme little known outside the FBI, which was at the heart of the Bureau’s dirty tricks and harassment campaigns versus political activists.

“We discovered very quickly that we had not acted in vain. Now we had documentation that proved our suspicions to be accurate,” said John Raines. “And then, with those documents, we were able to get the proof on what J Edgar Hoover was making his agents do.”

The burglary had literally turned the FBI inside out. The masters of covert entry and burglaries had themselves been targeted. “I don’t think anyone [at the FBI] ever thought anyone would have guts enough to try to break into the FBI,” said Swearingen, the former agent. “The frame of mind in the FBI was ‘Nobody’s going to break into an FBI office. They’ve got to be crazy.’ But hey, people break into banks all the time.”

Hoover’s paranoia flourished. Was Media the first of many attacks? Would all his secrets be revealed? Already weakened by age and losing his grip on power, he panicked. He ordered armed agents to sleep inside FBI offices nationwide. “I would go to the Santa Barbara [FBI] office and lock the door at night and I would sleep in there overnight. We had old army cots…and that was nationwide,” said former FBI agent Swearingen. “They spent millions of dollars putting in a security system for all these different resident agencies around the country. It’s like they locked up the barn after the horse was stolen.”

The next hit on Hoover, however, came not from the burglars but from The Washington Post. The Citizens’ Commission sent the Post a packet of 14 government documents. Attorney General John Mitchell got wind and pressured executive editor Ben Bradlee to keep the information secret. Bradlee refused, citing the public interest in the FBI’s activities. It was clear to Bradlee and young reporter Betty Medsger that the original documents mailed to the Post were the tip of a far larger scandal. Medsger poured her energy into the story – the documents had been addressed to her, and she quickly figured that her previous job writing about anti-war activists for Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin was directly connected to the burglars choosing her.

The Burglary, by Betty Medsger, published through Alfred A Knopf

The Post supported her work with front-page exclusives and a harsh editorial condemning the FBI. For Medsger, it would be the story of her life. In her recently released book The Burglary, Medsger weaves together the tales of the burglars and the long history of Hoover’s disdain for democracy.

For Hoover, the lack of investigative leads in the burglary was infuriating. Particularly galling to the FBI director was the lack of arrests. Despite a six-year investigation and a file that stretched to 33,000 pages, no member of the Citizens’ Commission was ever charged. The case was eventually closed, but the FBI was never the same. “It brought the FBI to its senses. Up until that time, they were just kind of free-ruling and doing whatever they felt they might want to do or maybe should do,” said Swearingen, the former agent. “But [the Media break-in] brought that to a screeching halt.”

RetroReport just put out a short documentary on the Citizen’s Commission. Watch it right here.

Jonathan Franklin is an independent reporter who writes often for the Guardian. He can be followed @Franklinblog. Email inquiries, news tips and secret documents can be sent to chilefranklin2000@yahoo.com.

By Jonathan Franklin

Find this story at 9 January 2014

© 2014 Vice Media Inc.

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows; Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets

One night in 1971, files were stolen from an F.B.I. office near Philadelphia. They proved that the bureau was spying on thousands of Americans. The case was unsolved, until now.

PHILADELPHIA — The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when nobody is watching.

So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside.

They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.

“Heroes. And a reminder to those who naively believe that the government can be trusted with the power to run a surveillance state. How quickly we forget Hoover and Nixon.”

The burglary in Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, is a historical echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance. The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.

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John and Bonnie Raines, two of the burglars, at home in Philadelphia with their grandchildren. Mark Makela for The New York Times

“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth, who is finally going public about his involvement. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”

Mr. Forsyth, now 63, and other members of the group can no longer be prosecuted for what happened that night, and they agreed to be interviewed before the release this week of a book written by one of the first journalists to receive the stolen documents. The author, Betty Medsger, a former reporter for The Washington Post, spent years sifting through the F.B.I.’s voluminous case file on the episode and persuaded five of the eight men and women who participated in the break-in to end their silence.

Unlike Mr. Snowden, who downloaded hundreds of thousands of digital N.S.A. files onto computer hard drives, the Media burglars did their work the 20th-century way: they cased the F.B.I. office for months, wore gloves as they packed the papers into suitcases, and loaded the suitcases into getaway cars. When the operation was over, they dispersed. Some remained committed to antiwar causes, while others, like John and Bonnie Raines, decided that the risky burglary would be their final act of protest against the Vietnam War and other government actions before they moved on with their lives.

“We didn’t need attention, because we had done what needed to be done,” said Mr. Raines, 80, who had, with his wife, arranged for family members to raise the couple’s three children if they were sent to prison. “The ’60s were over. We didn’t have to hold on to what we did back then.”

A Meticulous Plan
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Keith Forsyth, in the early 1970s, was the designated lock-picker among the eight burglars. When he found that he could not pick the lock on the front door of the F.B.I. office, he broke in through a side entrance.

The burglary was the idea of William C. Davidon, a professor of physics at Haverford College and a fixture of antiwar protests in Philadelphia, a city that by the early 1970s had become a white-hot center of the peace movement. Mr. Davidon was frustrated that years of organized demonstrations seemed to have had little impact.

In the summer of 1970, months after President Richard M. Nixon announced the United States’ invasion of Cambodia, Mr. Davidon began assembling a team from a group of activists whose commitment and discretion he had come to trust.

The group — originally nine, before one member dropped out — concluded that it would be too risky to try to break into the F.B.I. office in downtown Philadelphia, where security was tight. They soon settled on the bureau’s satellite office in Media, in an apartment building across the street from the county courthouse.

That decision carried its own risks: Nobody could be certain whether the satellite office would have any documents about the F.B.I.’s surveillance of war protesters, or whether a security alarm would trip as soon as the burglars opened the door.

The group spent months casing the building, driving past it at all times of the night and memorizing the routines of its residents.
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Mr. Forsyth today. Mark Makela for The New York Times

“We knew when people came home from work, when their lights went out, when they went to bed, when they woke up in the morning,” said Mr. Raines, who was a professor of religion at Temple University at the time. “We were quite certain that we understood the nightly activities in and around that building.”

But it wasn’t until Ms. Raines got inside the office that the group grew confident that it did not have a security system. Weeks before the burglary, she visited the office posing as a Swarthmore College student researching job opportunities for women at the F.B.I.

The burglary itself went off largely without a hitch, except for when Mr. Forsyth, the designated lock-picker, had to break into a different entrance than planned when he discovered that the F.B.I. had installed a lock on the main door that he could not pick. He used a crowbar to break the second lock, a deadbolt above the doorknob.

After packing the documents into suitcases, the burglars piled into getaway cars and rendezvoused at a farmhouse to sort through what they had stolen. To their relief, they soon discovered that the bulk of it was hard evidence of the F.B.I.’s spying on political groups. Identifying themselves as the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., the burglars sent select documents to several newspaper reporters. Two weeks after the burglary, Ms. Medsger wrote the first article based on the files, after the Nixon administration tried unsuccessfully to get The Post to return the documents.

Other news organizations that had received the documents, including The New York Times, followed with their own reports.
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At The Washington Post, Betty Medsger was the first to report on the contents of the stolen F.B.I. files. Now, she has written a book about the episode. Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Ms. Medsger’s article cited what was perhaps the most damning document from the cache, a 1970 memorandum that offered a glimpse into Hoover’s obsession with snuffing out dissent. The document urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups.

“It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox,” the message from F.B.I. headquarters said. Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college campuses.

But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities was an internal routing slip, dated 1968, bearing a mysterious word: Cointelpro.

Neither the Media burglars nor the reporters who received the documents understood the meaning of the term, and it was not until several years later, when the NBC News reporter Carl Stern obtained more files from the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, that the contours of Cointelpro — shorthand for Counterintelligence Program — were revealed.

Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide.
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The F.B.I. field office in Media, Pa., from which the burglars stole files that showed the extent of the bureau’s surveillance of political groups. Betty Medsger
Recent Comments
silentbear 28 days ago

In celebration of these folks actions, I’d like to share this song:http://youtu.be/4JIbCZen1Tg
Pat Shea 28 days ago

People in the movement knew they were getting spied on anyway. At UW – Madison, the COINTELPRO photographers would lurk in the alleys along…
Paul Lerch 28 days ago

Two thumbs up to the Rainses’, Keith Forsyth and the five others who had the courage to really put themselves at risk in order to take an…
See All Comments

“It wasn’t just spying on Americans,” said Loch K. Johnson, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia who was an aide to Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho. “The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.”

Senator Church’s investigation in the mid-1970s revealed still more about the extent of decades of F.B.I. abuses, and led to greater congressional oversight of the F.B.I. and other American intelligence agencies. The Church Committee’s final report about the domestic surveillance was blunt. “Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies, and too much information has been collected,” it read.

By the time the committee released its report, Hoover was dead and the empire he had built at the F.B.I. was being steadily dismantled. The roughly 200 agents he had assigned to investigate the Media burglary came back empty-handed, and the F.B.I. closed the case on March 11, 1976 — three days after the statute of limitations for burglary charges had expired.

Michael P. Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said that “a number of events during that era, including the Media burglary, contributed to changes to how the F.B.I. identified and addressed domestic security threats, leading to reform of the F.B.I.’s intelligence policies and practices and the creation of investigative guidelines by the Department of Justice.”

According to Ms. Medsger’s book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I.,” only one of the burglars was on the F.B.I.’s final list of possible suspects before the case was closed.
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Afterward, they fled to a farmhouse, near Pottstown, Pa., where they spent 10 days sorting through the documents. Betty Medsger

A Retreat Into Silence

The eight burglars rarely spoke to one another while the F.B.I. investigation was proceeding and never again met as a group.

Mr. Davidon died late last year from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He had planned to speak publicly about his role in the break-in, but three of the burglars have chosen to remain anonymous.

Among those who have come forward — Mr. Forsyth, the Raineses and a man named Bob Williamson — there is some wariness of how their decision will be viewed.

The passage of years has worn some of the edges off the once radical political views of John and Bonnie Raines. But they said they felt a kinship toward Mr. Snowden, whose revelations about N.S.A. spying they see as a bookend to their own disclosures so long ago.

They know some people will criticize them for having taken part in something that, if they had been caught and convicted, might have separated them from their children for years. But they insist they would never have joined the team of burglars had they not been convinced they would get away with it.

“It looks like we’re terribly reckless people,” Mr. Raines said. “But there was absolutely no one in Washington — senators, congressmen, even the president — who dared hold J. Edgar Hoover to accountability.”

“It became pretty obvious to us,” he said, “that if we don’t do it, nobody will.”

The Retro Report video with this article is the 24th in a documentary series presented by The New York Times. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors led by Kyra Darnton, a former “60 Minutes” producer. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle.

A version of this article appears in print on January 7, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows. Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe

By MARK MAZZETTIJAN. 7, 2014

Find this story at 7 January 2014

© 2014 The New York Times Company

“It Was Time to Do More Than Protest”: Activists Admit to 1971 FBI Burglary That Exposed COINTELPRO

One of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era has been solved. On March 8, 1971, a group of activists — including a cabdriver, a day care director and two professors — broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They stole every document they found and then leaked many to the press, including details about FBI abuses and the then-secret counter-intelligence program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social and political movements, nicknamed COINTELPRO. They called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. No one was ever caught for the break-in. The burglars’ identities remained a secret until this week when they finally came forward to take credit for the caper that changed history. Today we are joined by three of them — John Raines, Bonnie Raines and Keith Forsyth; their attorney, David Kairys; and Betty Medsger, the former Washington Post reporter who first broke the story of the stolen FBI documents in 1971 and has now revealed the burglars’ identities in her new book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.”

Click here to watch the one-hour Part 2 of this interview.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Today, we will spend the rest of the hour unraveling one of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era. On March 8th, 1971, a group of eight activists, including a cab driver, a daycare director and two professors, broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they found. The activists, calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, soon began leaking shocking details about FBI abuses to the media. Among the documents was one that bore the mysterious word “COINTELPRO.”

AMY GOODMAN: No one involved in the break-in was ever caught. Their identities remained a secret until this week. Today, three of the FBI burglars will join us on the show, but first I want to turn to a new short film produced by the nonprofit news organization Retro Report for The New York Times. It’s titled Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets.

NARRATOR: It’s the greatest heist you’ve never heard of and one of the most important.

HARRY REASONER: Last March, someone broke into the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania, stole some records and mailed copies of them around to the several newspapers.

NARRATOR: Those records would help bring an end to J. Edgar Hoover’s secret activities within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: He ordered his agents not only to expose New Left groups, but to take action against them to neutralize them.

UNIDENTIFIED: Many Americans were tapped and bugged, had their mail opened by the CIA and the FBI.

NARRATOR: The burglars were never caught, and the details have remained a mystery until now. A new book, The Burglary, reveals for the first time who did it and how they used a crowbar to pry open one of the best-kept and darkest secrets in American history.

JOHN RAINES: We were early whistleblowers before whistleblowers were known as such.

NARRATOR: The burglars are stepping out of the shadows just as new revelations about secret intelligence operations have many people asking, “How much is too much when personal privacy is at stake?”

In the spring of 1970, the war in Vietnam was raging.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: American battle deaths in Vietnam now number 40,142.

NARRATOR: And at home, antiwar protesters and law enforcement officers were violently clashing.

BONNIE RAINES: It felt like a nightmare was unfolding. I took what was outrage and horror about what was going on, and I realized that I had to take it somewhere.

NARRATOR: Bonnie Raines worked at a daycare center in Philadelphia. Her husband John taught religion at Temple University. They were the very picture of a golden couple.

BONNIE RAINES: We had an eight-year-old, a six-year-old and a two-year-old. We were family folks who also wanted to keep another track active in our lives, which was political activism.

NARRATOR: That activism attracted the attention of the FBI. Its director, the powerful and feared J. Edgar Hoover, perceived the antiwar movement, which ranged from radical revolutionaries to peaceful protesters, as a threat to national security.

BONNIE RAINES: At one rally, I had one of my children on my back, and not only did they take my picture, but they took her picture.

NARRATOR: Protesters like the Raines became increasingly convinced the FBI was conducting a covert campaign against them, tapping their phones and infiltrating antiwar groups.

JOHN RAINES: We knew the FBI was systematically trying to squash dissent. And dissent is the lifeblood of democracy.

NARRATOR: Determined to get proof, the FBI was crossing the line, fellow activist and Haverford physics professor William Davidon hatched a plan. He reached out to the Raines and six others, including a social worker, a graduate student and a taxi driver named Keith Forsyth.

KEITH FORSYTH: We agreed to meet someplace where we could talk. And he says, “What would you think about the idea of breaking into an FBI office?” And I look at him, and I’m like, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I was pretty vehement in my opposition to the war, and I felt like marching up and down the street with a sign was not cutting it anymore. And it was like, OK, time to—time to kick it up a notch.

NARRATOR: The crew decided to break into a small FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania.

KEITH FORSYTH: Once I got over the shock of thinking that this was the nuttiest thing I’d ever heard in my life, I’m like, this is a great idea, because we’re not going to make any allegations; we’re going to take their own paperwork, signed by their own people, including J. Edgar Hoover, and give it to the newspapers. So, let’s see you argue with that.

NARRATOR: In the Raines’ third-floor attic, the team divvied up responsibilities and assigned tasks. They hung maps to learn about the neighborhood, planned escape routes, and they took extensive notes on the comings and goings in the building.

KEITH FORSYTH: I signed up for a correspondence course in locksmithing. That was my job, to get us in the door. Practiced several times a week. After a month, you get pretty good.

NARRATOR: Bonnie was assigned the job of going inside and casing the office.

BONNIE RAINES: I was to call the office and make an appointment as a Swarthmore student doing research on opportunities for women in the FBI. So they gave me an appointment. I tried to disguise myself as best I could, and I went to say goodbye, and I acted confused about where the door was, and that gave me a chance then to check out both rooms and know where the file cabinets were.

NARRATOR: Bonnie discovered there was no alarm system and no security guards. She also found a second door leading inside.

JOHN RAINES: When she came back with that news, we became convinced, yes, I think we can get this done. We had more to lose than anybody else in the group, because we had these kids.

BONNIE RAINES: We faced the reality of, if we were arrested and on trial, we would be in prison for very many years. He had to make some plans for that.

NARRATOR: With a solid understanding of how they would conduct the break-in, they now needed to figure out when.

JOHN RAINES: March 8th, 1971, Frazier and Ali were fighting for the championship of the world. And we had the feeling that maybe the cops might be a little bit distracted.

NARRATOR: While the crew waited at a nearby hotel, Forsyth arrived at the office alone.

KEITH FORSYTH: Pull up, walk up to the door, and one of the locks is a cylinder tumbler lock, not a pin tumbler lock. And I just about had a heart attack. Bottom line is, I could not pick that lock.

NARRATOR: They almost called it off. But that second door that Bonnie noticed gave them another chance.

KEITH FORSYTH: At that point, you know that you’re going to have to wing it. Knelt down on the floor, picked the lock in like 20 seconds. There was a deadbolt on the other side. I had a pry bar with me, a short crowbar. I put the bar in there and yanked that sucker. At one point, I heard a noise inside the office. And I’m like, “Are they in there waiting for me?” Basically said to myself, “There’s only one way to find out: I’m going in.”

NARRATOR: Next, the inside crew walked into an empty office wearing business suits and carrying several suitcases. They cleaned out file cabinets and then made their way downstairs to the getaway car and drove off unnoticed. The group reconvened at a farmhouse an hour’s drive away and started unpacking.

KEITH FORSYTH: We were like, “Oh, man, I can’t believe this worked.” We knew there was going to be some gold in there somewhere.

JOHN RAINES: Each of the eight of us were sorting files, and all of a sudden you’d hear one of them, “Oh, look! Look at this one! Look!”

NARRATOR: After several long nights digging for documents that looked the most revealing, the burglars sent copies to journalists, including Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger.

BETTY MEDSGER: And the cover letter was from the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the first file that I read was about a group of FBI agents who were told to enhance the paranoia in the antiwar movement and to create an atmosphere that there’s an FBI agent behind every mailbox.

NARRATOR: Attorney General John Mitchell asked the Post not to write about the stolen documents, saying it could endanger lives.

BETTY MEDSGER: The attorney general called two key editors and tried to convince them not to publish.

NARRATOR: But the Post did publish the story, on the front page. It was the first of several reports and told how agents turned local police, letter carriers and switchboard operators into informants.

BETTY MEDSGER: There were very strong editorials calling for an investigation of the FBI.

NARRATOR: Another stolen document would prove even more explosive: a routing slip marked with a mysterious word, “COINTELPRO.” While reporters tried to uncover its meaning, the FBI was desperate to find the burglars. The bureau put nearly 200 agents on the investigation. Hoover’s best lead was the college girl who had visited their office.

BONNIE RAINES: His command was “Find me that woman!”

NARRATOR: Agents actively searched for Bonnie, but there were many antiwar activists who fit her description.

JOHN RAINES: We could hide within, you know, thousands of people. There were so many of us who were active.

NARRATOR: Two years later, NBC reporter Carl Stern figured out the meaning of that word, COINTELPRO.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: Secret FBI memos made public today show that the late J. Edgar Hoover ordered a nationwide campaign to disrupt the activities of the New Left without telling any of his superiors about it.

CARL STERN: Many of the techniques were clearly illegal. Burglaries, forged blackmail letters and threats of violence were used.

NARRATOR: The FBI initially defended its actions.

CLARENCE KELLEY: The government would have been derelict in its duty, had it not taken measures to protect the fabric of our society.

NARRATOR: But the bureau’s techniques were worse and the targets more far-reaching than the burglars ever imagined.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Diplomats, government employees, sports figures, socially prominent persons, senators and congressmen.

WALTER CRONKITE: The FBI at one time sought to blackmail the late Martin Luther King into committing suicide.

UNIDENTIFIED: Marriages were destroyed. Violence was encouraged. Many Americans were tapped and bugged, had their mail opened by the CIA and the FBI, and their tax returns used illegally.

AMY GOODMAN: An extended excerpt from Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets, a short film produced by Retro Report for The New York Times. To watch the full video, visit RetroReport.org.

When we come back, three of the activists join us in studio—Keith Forsyth, Bonnie and John Raines—as well as the former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, who first broke the story of the stolen FBI documents in 1971. This week, she revealed the identities of the burglars in her new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. We’ll go back in time and talk about today, as well. This is Democracy Now! Back in a moment.

[break]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Joining us now in our studio are three of the activists who broke into the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8th, 1971. The break-in led to revelations about the FBI’s secret COINTELPRO program that targeted activists across the country.

None of the burglars were ever caught. On Tuesday, their identities were revealed for the very first time. Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Raines and John Raines all lived in Philadelphia in 1971. Forsyth was working as a cab driver. He was chosen to pick the lock at the FBI office. Bonnie and John Raines hosted many of the planning meetings for the burglary at their home, where they were raising three children. Bonnie, who worked as a daycare director, helped case the FBI office by posing as a college student interested in becoming an FBI agent. John Raines was a veteran of the Freedom Rides movement and a professor at Temple University. He used a Xerox machine at the school to photocopy many of the stolen documents.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Betty Medsger, author of the new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. Medsger first reported on the stolen documents while working at The Washington Post. She uncovered the identities of most of the burglars in her new book.

And we welcome you all to Democracy Now! Keith, I want to begin with you. Talk about the time and how you ended up going into the FBI office. What spurred you on?

KEITH FORSYTH: So, at that time, we had just, within a few years, gone through the sort of peak of the civil rights movement, and many of the laws, like the Voting Rights Act, had been passed some years before, but the reality of racial justice was still far from complete. There were—the war in Vietnam was raging at that point in time. And so, there were many, many people who were working for change in those areas, in particular.

My main focus at that time was the antiwar movement. I was, you know, spending as much time as I could with organizing against the war, but I had become very frustrated with legal protest—didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere. The government wasn’t listening. The war was escalating and not de-escalating. And I think what really pushed me over the edge was, shortly after the invasion of Cambodia, there were four students killed at Kent State and two more killed at—at Jackson State. And—I’m sorry, I’d think I’d have this down after all these years. And that really pushed me over the edge, that it was time to do more than just—than just protest and just march with a sign. And I joined the so-called Catholic Left, which is where I met John and Bonnie and also Bill Davidon. And from there, the next step was the Media action.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Keith, could you also talk about how you were invited to join this plan to break into—by William Davidon?

KEITH FORSYTH: If memory serves, he called me on the phone and asked—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain who William Davidon was.

KEITH FORSYTH: Oh, I’m sorry. Bill Davidon, at that time, was a professor of physics at Haverford College, and I knew him mainly as a fellow activist in the peace movement. He was very prominent in Philadelphia in both the legal and the illegal peace movements. And he called me on the phone one day and asked me if I wanted to come to a party, which was code for an action. And I believe I said, “Sure, I’m always up for a party.” You can check the FBI transcript, because they were tapping his phone at the time. And so, we met at an outdoor location, where we couldn’t be bugged, and he presented the idea to me then.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Bonnie Raines, talk about your involvement. What motivated you? You were a young mother of three.

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: How old were your children?

BONNIE RAINES: They were eight, six and two at that time. We’ve since had a fourth child. I became involved, as Keith said, beginning with the civil rights movement and when we lived in New York and were students. Then we moved to Philadelphia, very much opposed to the war in Vietnam, and found a whole community of activists in Philadelphia. We became acquainted with the—what was called the Catholic Left at that time. And the Berrigan brothers, Bill and Dan, were the leaders in that. And we participated with that group, called the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, in a draft board raid. We went into a draft board in the middle of the night as part of the draft resistance movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Where was that?

BONNIE RAINES: In North Philadelphia, a draft board in North Philadelphia. We targeted that draft board because it was in one of the poorest sections of the city, where they were bringing many, many, many young, poor young men into the armed forces to be sent as cannon fodder to Vietnam. Our government was lying to us about the casualties, both civilian and military casualties. So I participated, along with John, in going into a draft board and removing files and destroying those files so those young men could not be drafted.

AMY GOODMAN: And you mentioned the Berrigan brothers, the priests.

BONNIE RAINES: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Phil, the late Phil Berrigan—

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: —and Father Dan Berrigan—

BONNIE RAINES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —who’s still alive. Catonsville, how significant in 1969 was this for you? I wanted to go to a clip right now—

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: —of the Catonsville action. That was Catonsville, Maryland, where a group of activists, led by Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan, burned draft cards with napalm. They stole hundreds of draft records and torched them. They were sentenced to three years in prison, their action helping ignite a wave of direct actions against the draft in the Vietnam War.

FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: We do not believe that nonviolence is dead, and that we don’t believe in interposing one form of violence for another, and that we believe that an action like this will still speak to our fellow Americans and bring home to them that a decent society is still possible, but it’s totally impossible if these files, and what they represent, are preserved and honored, and even defended, as those poor women tried to.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Father Dan Berrigan, as they stood around in a circle and burned, with napalm—napalm being used in Vietnam—draft records.

BONNIE RAINES: Yes, mm-hmm. That was a very dramatic moment for all of us, I believe. It took civil disobedience to another level and really brought us, clearly, to another level of protest against the war in Vietnam. And we followed their lead in targeting the draft as one of the real evil systems of that war. And that’s how we became involved in covert actions with draft boards in Philadelphia.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, John Raines, can you talk about your sense that the antiwar movement itself had been infiltrated by FBI informants?

JOHN RAINES: Oh, sure. I mean, that was obvious, for any of us who were involved in the civil rights movement, because it happened in the civil rights movement. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was all over the civil rights movement with infiltrators and surveillance, intense surveillance, and people that would report back on meetings and so on. And, of course, we’d all know that J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI went after Martin Luther King, tried to discredit him—indeed, even sent him a note suggesting that because of his activities with other women besides his wife, he now had no option but to commit suicide. That note was sent to Dr. King, suggesting—and it was from the FBI, suggesting that Dr. King commit suicide. So that we knew, from the civil rights actions, that J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI were very much against anything that promised significant social change. We brought that information, that knowledge, north with us when we came to the antiwar movement. And it became clear that the tactics he used to disrupt and destroy—try to destroy the protest movement in the South, he was using once again against the protesters against the war in Vietnam.

The problem was, J. Edgar Hoover was untouchable. He was a national icon. I mean, he had presidents who were afraid of him. The people that we elected to oversee J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI were either enamored of him or terrified of him. Nobody was holding him accountable. And that meant that somebody had to get objective evidence of what his FBI was doing. And that led us to the idea that Bill Davidon suggested to us: Let’s break into an FBI office, get their files and get what they’re doing in their own handwriting.

AMY GOODMAN: You and Bill Davidon were professors.

JOHN RAINES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: He a professor at Haverford, you a professor at Temple University.

JOHN RAINES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you feel about the risk that you were taking? Were you concerned about getting caught?

JOHN RAINES: Well, Bonnie and I were parents, and we had three kids under 10, and that was a very serious consideration. We had to be persuaded that we could get away with this. And we had learned nice burglar skills from priests and nuns. And we had cased the FBI office in Media very carefully.

AMY GOODMAN: You had thought about Philadelphia, but thought it was too secure?

JOHN RAINES: Oh, yes, it was a big building downtown, as—you couldn’t touch that. But Media, you could. And we felt quite confident that if we could get in there and get out without leaving any physical evidence behind, that we could then disappear into the very, very large antiwar movement, thousands of people in the Philadelphia area.

AMY GOODMAN: You had prepared, in case you were caught, to have your children taken care of?

BONNIE RAINES: We had. We had. We knew the risks. We knew the jeopardy. We weren’t going to be reckless. We weren’t going to move ahead with our involvement except with the leadership of Bill Davidon, who we all had so much admiration and respect for. But we did feel that it was necessary to speak to John’s older brother and his wife and to my mother and father about caring for our children if—should the worst happen and we would be convicted and sent to federal prison.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith Forsyth, you chose the night of the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight—

KEITH FORSYTH: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: —to break in. Why? Why was this so significant, March 8th, 1971?

KEITH FORSYTH: Well, it was just—you know, there were many steps that we took to try to avoid getting caught, and this was one of them, because whoever suggested it—and I have no idea who it was—thought that it would add to the distraction, not only of the police, but of just people in general. The building in which the office was located had a live-in supervisor, and his apartment was directly below the FBI office. So, he was going to be on the next floor down while we were inside walking around opening cabinets. So, anything that could keep his mind off of the ambient sounds sounded like a good idea.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: How did you know that you would find what documents you would find, or did you know?

KEITH FORSYTH: We didn’t know. We were—we were pretty sure. You know, bureaucracies are the same everywhere. They love to keep records. But we really—we were taking a shot. So, in that sense, we got lucky that they did keep records.

AMY GOODMAN: This brings Betty Medsger into the story, whose book this week, The Burglary, reveals the identities of the activists involved in this burglary. Looks like J. Edgar Hoover found his match in this group of people. Talk about receiving in the mail the documents. You were a reporter at the time for The Washington Post.

BETTY MEDSGER: OK. I’d just like to say something about Bill Davidon, if I might, first, that the idea was Bill’s. And Bill participated in preparations for the book and the documentary that’s been made, 1971. And we should note that we’re all very sorry that Bill’s not with us. Bill died in November. But he was sort of a genius in coming up with this idea, because although many people in the various movements at that time thought that there was—there were FBI informers in their organizations, there was no evidence of that, and the public didn’t know. And Bill had this deep commitment that if the public could be presented with evidence, they would be very upset. Even though there—Hoover was an iconic figure, that if they knew that there was massive surveillance of the—political surveillance, that they would care and do something. And that’s what happened.

I was a reporter. And one day this envelope appeared in my mailbox. And it said it was from Liberty Publications—that was the return address—Media, Pennsylvania. That didn’t mean anything to me. But when I opened it, there was a cover letter, said it was from Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. That was a new organization to me. And there was—the letter explained that a group of eight people had burglarized an FBI office on the night of March 8th, and that enclosed were some of the files that they had removed from the office.

And some of those files were very shocking. I think the one—and you showed the excerpt from this on the Retro Report—the first shock—and this also resonated very much with the public when it was published and discussed—was the one that instructed agents to enhance the paranoia and then also make people think that there’s an FBI agent behind every mailbox. And that was a pretty stunning statement and said so much. And the burglars were—themselves, were shocked, I understand, when they found that the first—saw that document the first night after the burglary. So that stunned me.

And I guess the other files—there were many about individuals, and they were all serious, but the—one of the things that I remember most from those files was the truly blanket surveillance of African-American people that was described. It was in Philadelphia, but it also prescribed national programs. And it was quite stunning. First, it described the surveillance. It took place in every place where people would gather—churches, classrooms, stores down the street, just everything. But it also specifically prescribed that every FBI agent was supposed to have an informer, just for the purpose of coming back every two weeks and talking to them about what they had observed about black Americans. And in Washington, D.C., at the time, that was six informers for every FBI agent informing on black Americans. The surveillance was so enormous that it led various people, rather sedate people in editorial offices and in Congress, to compare it to the Stasi, the dreaded secret police of East Germany.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you talk about how the editors at The Washington Post responded when you showed them these documents?

BETTY MEDSGER: The editors responded very positively to them. I should point out that—two things. First, this was the first time that a journalist had ever received secret government documents from a source who had—from the outside, an outside source who had stolen the documents. So that tended to pose a different kind of consideration as to what you would do—in their minds, as to what you’d do with the documents. But it was a particularly tough decision for Katharine Graham, who until this time had never faced anything like this.

AMY GOODMAN: The publisher.

BETTY MEDSGER: The publisher, Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, because it was the first time that she had been faced with a demand from the Nixon administration that she suppress a story. And she did not want to publish. And the in-house counsel, the lawyers, also did not want to publish. But two editors, from the beginning, realized it was a very important story and pushed it—Ben Bradlee and Ben Bagdikian. I was just back there innocently writing my story, talking—I had been a reporter in Philadelphia and was talking to sources from the past, confirming information. Didn’t know until 6:00 that there was a question as to whether or not they would publish. By 10:00 that night, she decided to publish.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the reaction, and the reporters who did not get to publish the story, because you weren’t the only person that these activists sent the documents to.

BETTY MEDSGER: They sent them to five people. These are the first files that they released. They sent them to Senator George McGovern and Representative Parren Mitchell from Baltimore. And they immediately returned the files to the FBI when they received them and didn’t make them public. They sent them to three journalists. In addition to sending them to me, they sent them to Jack Nelson at the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times —

AMY GOODMAN: The great crusading reporter who wrote Terror in the Night about the Klan in the South.

BETTY MEDSGER: Right, and Tom Wicker, columnist then at The New York Times. Now, it’s also important to keep in mind, in addition to the fact that we didn’t really know—the public didn’t know what was happening inside the FBI, that very few journalists ever wrote investigative work or critical comment about the FBI. And Jack Nelson and Tom Wicker were two of about three or four who had, up until that point. At the L.A. Times, Jack never received the envelope, even though it was addressed to him, and it was delivered to the FBI immediately. I didn’t know this until years later, when I read the investigative report on the FBI’s investigation. It’s a little less clear what happened at the Times as to whether Tom Wicker received, and what they did do was the same thing: They immediately gave the files to the FBI. And—but they apparently kept them and copied them, unlike the L.A. Times, because the day after we broke the story, then they wrote stories on the same files.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith, before we go to break, can you talk about parallels to today? It is hard to look at—and for a moment, I want to turn to the Church Committee hearings that took place a few years later. Senator Frank Church of Idaho led this investigation. The Senate’s Church Committee investigated the CIA and FBI’s misuse of power at home and abroad. The multi-year investigation in the mid-’70s followed the exposure of COINTELPRO, which stands for Counterintelligence Program—and it was the first time people had seen that word, was in the documents you released—examining the FBI and CIA’s efforts to infiltrate and disrupt leftist organizations, the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, and much more. This is Senator Frank Church speaking during one of the committee’s hearings.

SEN. FRANK CHURCH: We have seen today the dark side of those activities, where many Americans, who were not even suspected of crime, were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, they were discredited, and, at times, endangered.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee hearings led to major changes in what the FBI could do, and also dealing with the press, as well. You listen to Frank Church, you could be hearing possible hearings today, though they haven’t started, to do with Edward Snowden.

KEITH FORSYTH: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts on Edward Snowden today?

KEITH FORSYTH: I think there are some parallels. It’s not an exact parallel. But, to me, one of the most significant ones is that not long before Edward Snowden released these documents, James Clapper went in front of Congress and the American public and was asked a direct question whether the NSA was engaged in this kind of surveillance, and he said no, which was obviously a lie. And I think if he had said, “Oh, we can’t talk about that because that’s national security,” I might have had some respect for that answer. But to come out and lie to the public about it—and, of course, not suffer any punishment as a result—so, to me, Edward Snowden—I’ve seen no evidence, personally, that Edward Snowden has released anything that was actually harmful to our national security. You know, certainly has been embarrassing, but, to me, the young man is definitely a whistleblower and has performed a great service by enabling us to have the conversation. You know, we couldn’t—we couldn’t have the conversation about whether this is right or wrong before, because we were not told about it. So he’s made that conversation possible, and I think—I think we owe him something, a debt for that.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and come back to this conversation. Our guests are Keith Forsyth and Bonnie and John Raines. They were part of the—what they called themselves, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, activists during the Vietnam War era who broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and took the documents they got and sent them to The Washington Post and other publications to let people know what the FBI was doing. We’re also joined by the woman who has revealed the names of these activists—and we’ll talk about why they decided to come forward—Betty Medsger, former Washington Post reporter, author of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we continue our discussion looking at how activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and disclosed secrets about the FBI’s COINTELPRO program—that’s Counterintelligence Program—first came to public attention with the release of these documents. We are joined, as well as Bonnie and John Raines, who were among those who broke into the FBI office that day, March 8th, 1971, by the reporter who broke the story then and now, released the names of those involved with this break-in, Betty Medsger. She wrote The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. We’re also joined by David Kairys, who has represented this group until this day for what, more than 40 years?

DAVID KAIRYS: Forty-three years.

AMY GOODMAN: Forty-three years. But, John Raines, why have you decided to come forward 43 years—what, 42 years later?

JOHN RAINES: Well, the simple answer is: A book came out. And, of course, that’s not accidental. We decided years ago that we would trust Betty with this story. And she’s done a wonderful job, spending years of research writing a very substantial book. It tells a very interesting story.

We decided that it was time to, once again, come forward with the question of government surveillance, government intimidation, and the right of citizens to vocally dissent. I think that the gasoline of democracy is the right to dissent, because wherever there’s power, wherever there’s privilege, power and privilege are going to try to remove, insofar as they can, from public discourse anything they want to do. That leaves the citizens’ right to dissent as the last line of defense for freedom. Now, that’s what we were faced with back in 1970s. I think that’s what we’re faced with once again today. It should not surprise us. I mean, it should not surprise us that those in power in Washington want to make the decisions that really count off stage, out of sight from the rest of us. But democracy depends upon the rights of citizens to have the information they need in order for them, the citizens—who are the sovereigns—for them to decide what the government should be doing and should not be doing. They must have that information so that they can make up their minds.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that moment that night when Betty Medsger came over and you revealed who you were. What year was it?

JOHN RAINES: I think that was in 1988. We had known Betty when she was a reporter there in Philadelphia.

AMY GOODMAN: That was more than 20 years ago.

JOHN RAINES: Oh, more than 20 was ago. And Betty was then living in San Francisco, but she was on a trip to the East Coast. And we invited her for supper, and Betty was nice enough to say, “Sure, I’ll come.” And I think it was—we had had supper, and finally, our youngest daughter, Mary, came down. She was, I think, 12 or 13, something like that. And without thinking about it, I just said, “Mary, come on in. We want you to meet Betty Medsger, because she was the one that we sent those FBI files to.” And Betty’s chin dropped down to her chest, and it was out of the bag. That’s how it started.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: David Kairys, as the attorney who has worked on this case for so long, could you talk about the significance of the statute of limitations on the case, as well as what you saw as the illegality—what was indeed the illegality of what these documents exposed about what the FBI was doing?

DAVID KAIRYS: Well, sure. The statute of limitations, by any fair reading, is five years. The FBI themselves closed the file in 1976, because five years had elapsed and there was no charges. Excuse me. There are arguments one can make, but there’s really no legitimate or good-faith basis to bring any legal—any legal charges at this point.

As for the illegality of the FBI, they’re supposed to enforce the law. Here they are interposing themselves as almost a political counterforce to stop certain movements. And it had a direction to it: They were stopping left-liberal movements. And they were using techniques that we usually associate with state police in countries and systems that we usually think of as alien.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And how did you come to become involved in the case?

DAVID KAIRYS: Well, I was regularly doing civil rights work, and I was—I would represent demonstrators of all kinds. And so, two of them checked with me before, what’s my home number. And they—Keith kids me that he’s still got my phone number from back then on his arm. And so, that was the beginning. I didn’t know then exactly what they were going to do, but then two of them got arrested in the Camden 28 case, where I was lead counsel.

AMY GOODMAN: And, in fact, remarkably, five days before this break-in, Bill Davidon met with Henry Kissinger at the White House, the national security adviser for Richard Nixon.

DAVID KAIRYS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We don’t have time for the story, but we’re going to talk about it in our post-show interview, and we’ll post it online at democracynow.org. How was this secret kept for so many decades? It’s not just the two of you, John and Bonnie Raines; there were nine of you. One person dropped out. There were eight of you. This is decades later. How did you keep this secret?

BONNIE RAINES: Well, we—

AMY GOODMAN: A hundred FBI agents looking for you. And, Bonnie, you had gone into the FBI office in Media to case it out and pretend you were a young woman looking for an FBI job and sat with the official there.

BONNIE RAINES: Mm-hmm, and did not know, following that, that there was a sketch that was then circulated of me by the FBI. It was—we knew—

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

BONNIE RAINES: We knew that we had to pull the curtain down, not meet after we did our work, and just not talk about it with anybody at all, because our work was done at that point, and we were not looking for anything more than for the general public and Congress to follow suit in a way that we hoped they would.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel it accomplished what you wanted?

BONNIE RAINES: I think, in certain ways. In certain ways, it did. We were encouraged when there was a Church Committee that was—that was taking their task seriously, and there were reforms that did take place.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for all being with us, and also thank Johanna Hamilton. Her film, 1971, on the same subject, is just coming out. We’ll be interviewing her. The book is The Burglary. Thanks so much, all, for joining us.

Find this story at 8 January 2014

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