Tag: FBI

In one of the seminal acts of anti-abortion terrorism, the Emma Goldman Clinic for Women in Iowa City was firebombed.

The Carter Justice Dept. ordered the local FBI station to drop everything else and solve the crime, an order which did not sit well with the Resident Agent, himself an anti-abortion zealot.

He came up with a theory which would justify his continuing surveillance of the local lefties, suggesting that the bombing had either been a ploy for fundraising, or the result of a lovers’ spat, theories which he kept planting in the local press.

He proceeded to stalk my friend Steve Wilson (later changed his name to Jackson Clubb, who posted at kos as MadCityRag until his death a month ago) grilling his neighbors, etc. Jackson at the time was dating a member of the collective running the clinic.

The firebombing was never officially solved. No charges were filed against Jack, probably because the US Attorney wasn’t buying the FBI agent’s crap.

(Jack later moved to Madison, where we partnered in publishing Zenger, “the Nation’s Underground Newspaper,” from 1987 until 1993.)

I posted this over at DailyKos the other day and some people said posting it here would be a good idea. So here I am.

Here I’ve compiled a lengthy list on the ongoing discussion (read: illegal implementation and defense) of torture. I just think it is really interesting, in hindsight, to go re-read articles where various agencies commented on torture.

I’m not trying to prove a point that torture doesn’t work, so we shouldn’t use it. We should never use it even if it ‘works’ because it’s cruel, inhumane and un-American. There is no excuse to use torture and there never will be. I am writing this because I’m actually wondering, given all these comments about how it doesn’t work, why was it still used?

Honestly, it makes no sense. It hampered evidence gathering and trials of real terrorists and everything else, along with being completely immoral. I doubt we’ll ever get any answers but I figured I’d put it out there.

For the Soldier who fights for Truth, calls his enemy his brother. — William Blake

Jason Leopold had an amazing find when perusing a new released FBI document the ACLU posted on their site earlier this week. [Update: Leopold informs me that the document was released in Dec. 2004, but he caught the info while perusing the ACLU collection over these past months.]

Senior FBI agents stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail — dated May 22, 2004 — followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential executive order.

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies….

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the “federal agencies” acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

When earlier this month the ACLU released a new slew of FOIA documents — unredacted portions of Admiral Church’s 2005 report on detainee abuses at “war on terror” prisons abroad — the spin machine of the American Psychological Association sprang into action. APA propagandist, and Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke was called upon to take up the cudgels, whereupon he wrote an unctious, dissembling letter to the ACLU.

In a letter dated May 15, Behnke praised ACLU for “uncovering details surrounding the treatment of detainees at detention facilities run by the U.S. government around the world.” Then he reiterated APA’s paper commitment to “the humane treatment of detainees.” In between the lofty presentation of ideals and grand commitments, Behnke also made the following points (quoting from his letter, which has circulated via email, but not to my knowledge is online — bold text below is my editorial emphasis):

(h/t to GreyHawk for pointing to this story. GH’s post at epluribus media.)

Yes, the FBI kept a “War Crimes” file about GTMO. So reports the NY Times in  Report Details Dissent on Guantánamo Tactics:

WASHINGTON – In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.

Ordered closed down by whom exactly?

Welcome to the United States of Gattaca. The Washington Post is reporting that the Bush administration is expanding DNA collection of people arrested for crimes.

The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.

The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes…

Anyone now arrested of a federal crime will have their DNA collected. With the past examples of abuse of the justice system by the Bush administration, it isn’t difficult to imagine how this change in policy could be abused. When the policy is implemented, roughly 1.2 million people a year will have their DNA collected.

This is a both hilarious and sad illustration of why we are losing the “war on terror”:

Whitey Bulger has found himself at the center of another “mandatory kill,” though this one was ordered by a photo agency seeking to delete an image from their archives. The alert was prompted by the F.B.I.’s admission that they misidentified a German couple vacationing in Sicily as the reputed Boston crime boss and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig.

Despite no apparent problems with the law, the couple somehow evaded the F.B.I.’s global manhunt for months. Indeed, they delivered themselves to the authorities after seeing themselves on Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst, a German show about fugitives that preceded “America’s Most Wanted.”

After seeing one of their best leads dissolve, the F.B.I. remained determined. “We’re going to continue our worldwide media outreach to arrest Mr. Bulger and his companion,” Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman, told The Boston Globe. An alleged audio clip of Mr. Bulger speaking on the phone to “Tammy,” who dialed the wrong number, and others was released in January.

Emphasis added.

For those of you who don’t know, James “Whitey” Bulger is the Boston crime boss who served as the basis for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed”.

What can you say?  The F.B.I. misidentified a random German man as one of its ten most wanted criminals, and then couldn’t find this innocent German man who wasn’t trying to hide from them for six months, and only eventually found him because he turned himself in.

At this point, I’m thinking we’re going to find the Lindberg baby before Osama bin Laden.

Both The Progressive and the ACLU have stories up over on their sites about how the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have recruited tens of thousands of members of corporate America to be the “eyes and ears” of the government. In return, they receive secret briefings on terrorism. The program is called InfraGard, and from The Progressive story:

The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does-and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

(The following was first posted on January 7, 2007 at the Daily Kos website. It is being reprinted here as of significant interest to readers of this blog. I have no reason to believe that anything important has changed since this article was originally written. One exception might be the peregrinations undertaken by the American Psychological Association on the question of interrogations, which can be followed in numerous other articles at my blog. Another exception would be revelations that emerged during the year regarding psychologist participation in U.S. government torture, and this additional material is included in the following text in the form of an editorial emendation.)

I recently came across an FBI report on a conference jointly sponsored by the FBI and the American Psychological Association. Given the recent and ongoing controversies over the use of psychologists and other medical personnel in U.S. torture programs abroad, I thought a close examination of the matter of this conference could be interesting. — What you will read may shock you (especially if you are interested in mental health practice). It will certainly enlighten you, and help fill in the gaps that exist in our understanding of U.S. interrogation techniques, the “war on terror”, and the government campaign to curtail our liberties.