(Photo via ArabianBusiness.com)
A senior Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official called the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) intelligence activities “felonious” and a “violations of US citizen’s rights” in an e-mail message sent last November.
The message, revealed by Truthout’s Jason Leopold and Matthew Harwood, was part of a trove of 5 million emails that the hacker group Anonymous obtained from the well-connected intelligence firm Stratfor and then turned over to WikiLeaks. The FBI official’s e-mail was sent to Fred Burton, the vice president for intelligence at Stratfor.
Truthout notes that the full e-mail message “hints at even worse civil liberties violations not yet disclosed.” The senior FBI official also says that the NYPD’s activities would make “[former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL[PRO], [and the] Red Squads” look like “rank” amateurs.
The NYPD’s intelligence division is responsible for the department’s widespread practice of spying on Muslims in the Northeast with no probable cause. NYPD informants infiltrated mosques, Muslim student groups and Middle Eastern-owned restaurants, eavesdropped on conversations and recorded what they heard in police files. The Associated Press began revealing the NYPD’s surveillance program last August.
It is the latest instance of the FBI voicing criticism of the NYPD’s activities. Back in March, the head of Newark’s FBI division said that the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims was harming counter-terrorism efforts. But it’s important to note that the FBI routinely engages in similar practices that the NYPD is being criticized for.
Since 9/11, the FBI has entrapped young Muslim men and conducted widespread surveillance of mosques. Speaking to Truthout, Mike German, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the FBI email “ironic.” More from German:
The FBI has engaged in widespread spying on the Muslim American community as well, including counting mosques and mapping Muslim neighborhoods, infiltrating mosques with informants, and using the guise of community outreach to spy on Muslim religious and advocacy organizations…
This agent suggests the FBI knew the NYPD Intelligence agents were involved in widespread ‘felonious’ activity in violation of Americans’ civil rights, yet the FBI does not appear to have opened a civil rights investigation or done anything to stop this illegal activity. Our laws are designed to apply equally to protect all of us, including to protect us from illegal police activity. When the FBI abdicates this responsibility, all Americans suffer
So let the speculation begin! What would be worse than unconstitutional surveillance, and also something the NYPD would be inclined to do? …This is not unlike speculation about what is in Romney’s tax returns that he wants to keep hidden. The difference, of course, is that the NYPD activity is likely, even certain, to include serious violations of human rights.
We already know that the FBI and NYPD have entrapped people, doing everything they could do ‘encourage’ those who might otherwise have done nothing to attempt acts that might be considered violence. (Glenn Greenwald has written extensively on the constitutional issues regarding this.)
So what else is there? Is the NYPD engaging in ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ as in the 1970s and earlier? Are they stealing identities, creating false ones? In the 1960s, the FBI and police forces infiltrated groups, tried to encourage rifts and also encouraged acts of violence. During the 2004 RNC in New York, there was at least one instance of the NY cop committing a criminal act with the NYPD trying to pass it off as protester violence. In Central America during the Reagan atrocities, US-supported terrorists dressed up as Nicaraguan soldiers, committed atrocities, then blamed them on the Nicaraguan government under Daniel Ortega.
Speculation like this borders on the irresponsible. Sadly, the track record of the NYPD and FBI and others in the US make it necessary.
hughsanson
British did something like this in Basra.They were setting fires or shooting at a crowd. They were wearing local dresses and outfits.They were caught by locals and put in prison.The prison was later broken into by UK-militray to remove them from possible prosecution. in 2006 0r 2007.It was reported by Uk media.
last year when UK and French soldiers were active in Libya they were sure not wearing her majesty’s Gurkha shorts.
i remember that train. they took photos of them. it was a real scandal.
You are talking about the captured SAS soldiers held in a prison.
“An undercover operation to track down a senior Iraqi policeman believed to be responsible for murdering dozens of civilians was thwarted after the SAS soldiers, dressed as Arabs, were spotted by plain clothes Iraqi policemen.
The soldiers engaged in a gun battle before being captured and taken to Jamiat police station in the southern Iraqi city. ”
link to telegraph.co.uk
link to dailymail.co.uk
Often special forces soldiers dress as the population and are not in uniform, for obvious operational reasons.
Often special forces soldiers dress as the population and are not in uniform, for false flag operational too.
to track down a senior Iraqi policeman believed to be responsible for murdering dozens of civilians
allegedly. we learned how UK special forces can operate from what took place in ireland.
So, if the SAS were ‘tracking’ someone, they needed to load up their car with ‘explosives’? And ‘kill’ an innocent Iraqi policeman? Daily Mail article.
Speculation like this borders on the irresponsible.
hugh, i know that comment is a bit of tongue in cheek, but we have the template for this type of conduct that was standard operating procedure in the 60s-70s, so i’d walk it backwards. when ‘terrorism’ charges are filed, the first part of any analysis should be to look at the government’s involvement in the alleged plot or attack, not the ‘terrorist’ bona fides of the defendant/s. (a study of the SLA, Weather Underground, and infiltration of the Black Panthers, etc. is a good basic education for this kind of activity.)
Hi, marc b. Oh, I’d look at the bonafides of the defendants as well. The greatest collection of misfits, mentally challenged Trinidadians, unsuccessful car dealers with money problems, drug dealers with legal issues, people who’d never in a million years know how to acquire and set up ‘explosives’ and ‘detonators’?
I’d also look at the bonafides of the ‘terrorism’ think tanks and ‘experts’ while we’re at it.
Why is it left to alternative media to dig up this information?
who’d never in a million years know how to acquire and set up ‘explosives’ and ‘detonators’?
you’re right. if i remember correctly, there was testimony in the first trade center bombing case that the detonator or timer (some integral part or another) was literally supplied to the perps by a government informant. brilliant.
“who’d never in a million years know how to acquire and set up ‘explosives’ and ‘detonators’?”
Don’t worry, there’s tons of mentally unbalanced misfits coming out of the US Army who do know how to “acquire and set up ‘explosives’ and ‘detonators’?” So we’ll get our competent terrorists soon enough.
The numbers of army suicides and PTSD figures are staggering. Cannon fodder all, and though I respect them for their service, there’s no way you can account for what they go through.
I respect them for their service
i respect individual service, but their motivation is mistaken. most service members have consciously made a choice to risk their lives for what they believe is the greater good. unfortunately as someone said, ‘war is a racket’.
it’s time for someone to sue the nypd.
Isn’t the Center for Constitutional Rights suing them?
The problem is that courts are consistently ruling in favor of the government (another thing Greenwald has written about).
Judges, like Congresspersons, administration officials and media pundits, do not want to bring onto themselves the full smear campaign that could threaten their careers, if they do something that puts them on the wrong side of the line dividing the community from the major existential threat to it. Daylight is needed around permissible positions on the whole variety of issues important to Zionists and Neocons, yet daylight itself is considered an existential threat. It reminds me of what it was like in the Deep South, when white children in their segregated schools were intimidated about saying anything sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement or the plight of African Americans. Ugly racists would taunt such comments loudly, “Oh, so you’re a N—– lover, HaHaHa. So&so is an N—– lover. So&so is an N—– lover. [no further conversation possible - much easier to avoid bringing the subject up in the first place.]” Federal judges, however, have lifetime tenure, and are sworn to uphold the constitution, so you’d expect better. There needs to be room – daylight – in our culture for people to question whether the threat is real, or merely a distorted view through racist glasses.
No wonder, look who they are learning from.
NYPD Now Has an Israel Branch
No wonder, look who they are learning from.
NYPD Now Has an Israel Branch
link to huffingtonpost.com
bijou, adam’s got this post up
link to mondoweiss.net
Jeff Halper warned about this over two years ago in a Seattle interview on YouTube that I’ve linked to so many times here not going to bother. They’re using Israeli military/security companies to train local law enforcement. Gets around our laws about the military. He warned about the training of Brazilian forces and what’s coming up for the Rio Olympics. That’s already happening. Getting the favelas off the streets with I/P tactics. He said the Canadian border patrol has been trained in I/P tactics as well…treating everyone like a suspect who isn’t white bread.
When our security services act in this way-I’m thinking of operation Gladio in Europe, the CIA facilitating the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles, I wonder how “secure” they really make us?
I have long felt that the slogan, term, buzz-word, incantation “national security” when used as an explanation for doing police-work , spy-work, military-work and especially as an explanation to courts as to why these “works” should not be subject to constitutional or legal scrutiny (and “secret” evidence not be subject to cross-examination etc.) is wholly amorphous, meaningless, and thus a Wizard-of-Oz slogan, curtain, Shazam!, magic, but wholly illogical in the context of the USA. I doubt it can even be given meaning or has ever been defined by statute, by the courts, or otherwise. It seems to mean: “Let government types do what they want without oversight, limitation. It means that works undertaken in the name of national security are immune from legal restriction and impune [unpunishable].”
IMO, the USA is entirely “secure” (apart from contra-constitutional political attacks from the right-wing politicians, but that is another matter).
No country, no group such as al-Qa’eda, can attack the USA in such as way as to make it insecure as a country. And none will. We are “safe” as a country, even if not strictly safe from criminal and paramilitary attacks (such as 9/11). Even 9/11 did not damage the USA very much or threaten its “security”. It was simply a huge criminal attack, possibly also a “terrorist attack” (though I never heard that it was interpreted as an attempt to persuade the American people to do or stop doing anything — which distinguishes ‘terrorism” from other forms of violence).
The biggest threat to the USA is the take-over of everything by the “security forces” (police, FBA, CIA, Military, at many othe3rs I should think, and all tjhe spying agencies and privately-run government-paid above-the-law militias (e.g., Black Water), which the courts and government have decided to allow in the “name” of “national security”.
Scandalous!
Unfortunately, pabelmont, “national security” means, in short, controlling every other nation’s natural resources and establishing a global hegemony.
Funny me, I thought building up the middle class and ensuring a stable social, health and education safety net would better ensure “national security”.