Posts Tagged ‘FBI’

Wynton Hall

FBI Warns of ‘Anti-Government’ Extremists

by Wynton Hall

At a Federal Bureau of Investigation conference on Monday, FBI agents said state and local law enforcement should be on alert for people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens,” individuals who believe they are not subject to any type of government authority.

According to Reuters, these anti-government extremists “may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.”

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

“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

The heightened concern against “sovereign citizens” is the result of the rise in legal convictions from 10 such cases in 2009 to 18 cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

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Liberty Chick

BREAKING: Anonymous Hits FBI, DOJ, Others After Feds Bust File Sharing Website

by Liberty Chick

The collective of hackers known as Anonymous attacked numerous government and recording industry websites this evening, shutting the sites down for hours as of this posting.

The attacks stem from a two year investigation into content sharing website Megaupload.com.  The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment today (after waiting an extra day to avoid coinciding with the SOPA protests), shut down the Megaupload website and arrested up to eight people in connection with the bust, including Megaupload founder Kim “Dotcom” Schmitz.  The actions provoked anger and triggered retaliation from Anonymous, according to Twitter accounts that regularly tweet news related to the collective of hackers.

The list of affected targets includes the Department of Justice, the FBI, Recording Industry Association of America, UniversalMusic.com, and others.  There are also reports that the US Patent and Trademark Office may have been targeted as well.

From the Washington Post:

Federal authorities Thursday indicted two firms and shut down one of the Web’s most popular sites for sharing illegally pirated material, triggering a quick response from hackers who claimed credit for taking down the Web sites of the Justice Department, Recording Industry Association of America and other media companies in retaliation.

The grand jury indictment, which caps a two-year investigation, charges seven people and Megaupload.com and other related sites with running an international organized criminal enterprise. Investigators said the group generated more than $175 million in income and cost copyright owners more than $500 million.

Justice Department officials said yesterday that the timing of its indictment was coincidental and had nothing to do with a debate on Capitol Hill over a bill that took aim at piracy online.

“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice Department and FBI said in a statement.

Nevertheless, the federal action angered hackers, escalating the growing battle between the Web’s powerbrokers, both legitimate and illicit, and Washington, which has been seeking ways to clamp down on pirated content.

The Department of Justice released a statement on its website tonight, stating in part (since the DoJ site is down, portions of the statement are available at Mercury News, Silicon Valley):

“The Department of Justice web server hosting justice.gov is currently experiencing a significant increase in activity, resulting in a degradation in service,” the agency said in a statement. “The Department is working to ensure the website is available while we investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause of the disruption.” (more…)

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro

EXCLUSIVE–Former Bush Counternarcotics Advisor: We’re Losing the Drug War Because of Government Bureaucracy

by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro

Big Government has obtained exclusive excerpts of a book scheduled to be released next month, which outline problems with the federal government’s handling of the drug war.

The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

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Trevor Loudon

Communist Party Targets Veterans for Recruitment: How Will Their Skills Be Utilized?

by Trevor Loudon

Always ready to recruit the embittered  and disgruntled at any opportunity, the Communist Party USA has established a special veterans committee. The target – demobilized Iraq War veterans.


From the People’s World;

With the Iraq war officially over, leaving 4,500 U.S. troops and 100,000 Iraqis dead plus tens of thousands wounded, the soldiers who fought and experienced the horror are returning home. They’re stepping out of one war zone and into another.

Faced with high rates of unemployment and discrimination in hiring, many are coping with horrific injuries and post traumatic stress disorder, fueling drug and alcohol abuse, and divorce and record suicide rates.

The experience is causing veterans to draw basic conclusions about the real nature of U.S. foreign policy and even capitalism.

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Wynton Hall

Insider Trading: Wiretaps for You, Profits for Congress

by Wynton Hall

CNBC Senior Editor John Carney asks: “Why is the government treating insider traders like mobsters?”

As Mr. Carney explains, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission now use wiretapping to conduct insider trading probes, a move Mr. Carney believes is “out of proportion” to the crime.   Furthermore, Mr. Carney points out that “Congress has signaled out a few categories of criminal activity that can be pursued by wiretaps—and insider trading isn’t one of them.”

Mr. Carney’s observations came in response to a Bloomberg News report by Patricia Hurtado that the FBI engaged in a five-year “historic, sprawling, nationwide insider-trading initiative” that “is the biggest insider trading investigation since the days of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, and the largest ever in the world of hedge funds.”

The bigger point, of course, is the hypocrisy and double-standard inherent in the system.

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Publius

AP Sources: FBI Declined to Pursue NYC Bomb Plot

by Publius

In case you thought the Black Panther voter intimidation case, Fast and Furious, cracking down on Gibson Guitars, and attempting to give Kaleid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial weren’t enough, get ready to add another entry to Attorney General Eric Holder’s greatest hits:

NEW YORK (AP) – Federal authorities declined to pursue a case against an “al-Qaida sympathizer” accused of wanting to bomb police stations and post offices in New York City because they believed he was mentally unstable and incapable of pulling off the alleged plot, two law enforcement officials said Monday.

New York Police Department investigators sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as their undercover investigation of Jose Pimentel unfolded, the officials said. Both times, the FBI concluded that he wasn’t a serious threat, they said.

The FBI concluded that 27-year-old Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office declined to comment on Monday. New York City authorities said that the FBI was involved in the case, but did not specifically say they declined to pursue the charges.

“We just believed that we couldn’t let it go any further. We had to act,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. (more…)

Ron Capshaw

Birth of the Democratic Campaign Tactics: 1964

by Ron Capshaw

Forty seven years ago this week, Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in the biggest landslide since 1936. Today, both left and right see in Goldwater’s defeat the beginnings of the conservative revolution that would bring Ronald Reagan into office in 1980. Missed in this thesis, though, is how 1964 was a prime example of modern Democratic campaigning with its allies — the mainstream media — that we suffer under today. It was also a historic turning point that might have been avoided.

It is fashionable for the Left to co-opt Barry Goldwater as they have Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton called him a “patriot” and James Carville characterized him a “principled conservative,” at odds with today’s “loony right.” But this was not so in 1964. The mainstream media, not called that then, labeled him a fascist. Walter Cronkite said of him that “Goldwater was going places, among them Nazi Germany.” Psychiatrists lined up behind the Johnson campaign, declaring Goldwater “emotionally unstable.” Reporters were aware that LBJ was heightening the conflict in Vietnam, but said nothing while LBJ promised not to send “American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

Journalists on the campaign trail saw Johnson drunkenly board a plane armed with nuclear weapons and then accidentally drop them on the United States. Luckily, by the grace of God, they did not go off. None of this was reported, while newspapers editors worked in overdrive to portray Goldwater as eager to push the button. Today, pundits argue that dirty tricks by Carville and Begalia were something new on the horizon for Democrats and were borrowed from decades of Republican campaigns. But Johnson was a pioneer of the Clinton War Room. He used the FBI to wiretap the candidate, bought political information from Goldwater defectors, and in an eerie foretaste of Watergate, put domestic CIA chief Howard Hunt on the White House payroll to infiltrate, even burglarize, Goldwater headquarters (with Democratic blessing, Hunt filtered his findings and received cash through a dummy corporation called National Press). What is striking about these tactics was how unnecessary they were. Johnson beforehand knew he was going to win, but he wanted “to crucify” Goldwater nonetheless.

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Frank Salvato

When Government Knows No Limitation: New DOJ Rules Allow More Intrusive Searches

by Frank Salvato

I was once told by someone involved in a federal investigation not to let any identified federal law enforcement officer into your house without: a) a warrant and b) your lawyer present. At the time, this notion seemed a bit less than cooperative. Shouldn’t law-abiding citizens be able to live their lives free from the fear that our own government would underhandedly manipulate our rights in their pursuit of an investigation? After all, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution enumerates a limitation on the federal government, one that prevents “unreasonable search and seizure.” Today, this enumerated protection is being ignored by – of all institutions – the U.S. Justice Department, under the darkened shadow of Attorney General Eric Holder.

A recent column by The Atlantic’s Emily Berman, a Furman Fellow and Brennan Center Fellow at NYU School of Law, informs the citizenry:

It just got easier for the federal government to collect information about innocent Americans — and those Americans have had surprisingly little say in the matter.

On October 15, the FBI reportedly implemented new rules that relax restrictions on, and oversight of, the FBI’s intelligence collection activities. Although they are not available to the public, reports indicate the changes permit FBI agents to search an individual’s trash with the goal of finding material that might pressure him into becoming a government informant, grant agents the authority to search commercial or law enforcement databases without first opening an investigation, and reduce the type of investigations subjected to heightened oversight because of their relationship to protected First Amendment expression, association, or religious practice.

This is the third modification of the FBI’s intelligence collection authorities since September 11, 2001. First in 2002, again in 2008, and finally, just last week, amendments were adopted with scant public attention and with minimal — if any — congressional involvement. Groups and communities concerned about the new rules’ impact on civil liberties, particularly the risk of religious or ethnic profiling, also had no constructive input.

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Rebel Pundit

Continuing Coverage: #OccupyChicago Leaders Make Demands to Rahm

by Rebel Pundit

The following video features the demands made by Occupy Chicago activists Andy Thayer and Joe Iosbaker during the invasion they led into City Hall yesterday.

The march of the moochers stormed the building and marched clockwise in the lobby, rather than their usual counter-clockwise marching. The angry mob then proceeded to the 5th floor and continued their protest at the doors to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office.

Thayer’s demands included being granted permits to protest the G-8 and NATO Summit being held in Chicago this coming May as well as dropping the charges against fellow “occupiers.” He was followed by Iosbaker with statements on an SEIU resolution to support their demands and comments on his current investigation by the FBI.

Iosbaker also noted that they were notified that Northwestern University Law School has changed their graduation so that the students will not be downtown during the G-8 and NATO protests next may. They were reportedly warned by the FBI that it would be too dangerous.

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Rebel Pundit

Radicals Leading #OccupyChicago to #OccupyCityHall Under Investigation by FBI for Terror Links

by Rebel Pundit

Today Occupy Chicago protesters stormed City Hall to let Mayor Rahm Emanuel know their displeasure in the recent arrests of the Occupy campers at Grant Park on Michigan Avenue.

They were lead by radical anti-war activists Joe Iosbaker and Andy Thayer, who we have reported on in the past for their ongoing investigations by the FBI. In September of 2010 they were targeted for suspicion of providing material support to Hamas, the F.A.R.C. and other terrorist organizations.

Photo H/T: FoundingBloggers

Here is footage of Thayer last spring addressing a Chicago crowd and calling for “action” like we saw in Egypt.


Thayer and Iosbaker have played a key roll in organizing massive demonstrations in Chicago this coming May for the G-8 and NATO summits. The recent anti-war and Occupy protests have served as a clear rally cry to build momentum and support for these demonstrations next spring. The tandem duo worked their message and demands for G-8 and NATO protest permits into todays Occupy City Hall protest.

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Publius

#OccupyCivility: FBI Investigates Assassination Threat Against GOP Rep. Schilling

by Publius

From The Hill:


The FBI and U.S. Capitol Police are investigating an online threat made against Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) offering a $75,000 reward for his assassination.

Schilling learned of the threat in an email alert Tuesday night, according to his spokeswoman, Andrea Pivarunas. Sherriff’s deputies reportedly responded to the congressman’s district home, and have passed the matter on to the FBI and Capitol Police.

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Thomas Ryan

The Email Archive of the #OccupyWallStreet Movement: Anarchists, Socialists, Unions, Democrats and Their Plans

by Thomas Ryan

[Editors' Note - Crowdsourcing: At the end of this post, you will find links to download the #OccupyWallStreet email archive described earlier today by Andrew Breitbart. Send your thoughts, observations, and findings to feedback@breitbart.com, or post them in the comment section.]

On August 10, 2011, the hacker group “Anonymous” announced that it would join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. That’s what sparked my interest in monitoring #OccupyWallStreet.

I reached out to a colleague and asked if he would be interested in studying the protest with me. At first, it seemed disorganized, and we believed it would only be a few hundred protestors.

As we engaged in monitoring its growth, we recruited other people to help us begin the collection of data available via social media. We began mapping out key players, and monitored Anonymous’s efforts to organize protests in the San Francisco Bay area public transportation system (#opBART) in order to detect patterns and key influencers.

Then, at the end of August, we were alerted by a fellow researcher that information about USDoR (U.S. Day of Rage, to which Occupy Wall Street is connected) had been posted on Shamuk and Al-Jahad, two Al-Qaeda recruitment sites. We began to take the “Occupy” protest more seriously, and dedicated more time to research and monitoring.

Days later, Anonymous announced that it would be releasing its new DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) tool. Because of the Al-Qaeda posting, we contacted the New York Field Office of the FBI so they could investigate the potential threat. From that point on, we decided we needed to include the Human Element of Intelligence (HUMINT), and to infiltrate the protestors to map their ties to Anonymous, and to the postings on Shamuk and Al-Jahad.

A few of us had attended several of the pre-protest meet-ups and training classes. The Civil Disobedience training was taught by Elliot “Smokey” Madison, a New York-based anarchist who is a member of the People’s Law Collective, a voluntary group that advises protesters on legal issues arising from their actions. The Media training was taught by Vlad Teichberg, a New York based anarchist who is a member of the Glass Bead Collective, an artistic activist group.

After attending these meetings and socializing with those present, several of our team members were added to all the mailing lists of the “Occupy” group. That is how we created the email archive that we are sharing with you (see below). In addition to the involvement of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals, the emails also reveal heavy union involvement from the beginning of the “Occupy” movement, as well as discussion about the role of the Democratic Party, and how the movement should respond to President Barack Obama.

The emails also reveal that the Occupation attempted to provoke the New York Police Department prior to some of the clashes that occurred with activists.

Additionally, the emails reveal the many failed efforts of the hacker collective Anonymous. If those efforts had succeeded, they may have damaged the global economy.

Some examples are:

We are sharing the email archive because we believe the public needs to know the hidden agendas behind the Occupation–the socialist, anarchist, and other agendas that have not been reported in the mainstream media.

Email archive:

.pst format: primary and alternate

.csv format: primary and alternate

Andrew Breitbart

‘Crowdsource’ This: Emails Expose #OccupyWallStreet Conspiracy to ‘Destabalize’ Global Markets, Governments

by Andrew Breitbart

We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game.

- Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011

In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.

The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.

Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.

Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.

The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government, and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.

In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news story that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California.


OWSMailList_0001-3

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Publius

US Thwarts Major Iran-linked Terror Plot

by Publius

From AFP:


US agents have foiled what has been called a “significant terrorist act” linked to Iran which called for the assassination of the Saudi US ambassador and other attacks, ABC News reported Tuesday.

The Justice Department scheduled an announcement at 1800 GMT on what it called “significant national security enforcement action.”

ABC said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington.

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Tom Fitton

Tiffany Hartley Testifies to Congress, JW Files Three FOIA Lawsuits

by Tom Fitton

Last week, Judicial Watch and its client Tiffany Hartley jacked up the heat on the Obama administration to provide some answers related to the murder of Mrs. Hartley’s husband, David, who was gunned down in September 2010, apparently at the hands of a Mexican drug cartel. Mr. and Mrs. Hartley were driving jet skis on Falcon Lake, which sits on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, when gunmen opened fire from a nearby boat striking Mr. Hartley in the head.

The Obama administration, for its part, seems to have ended its participation in the murder investigation and is now giving Mrs. Hartley the stiff arm regarding her request for information.

That’s where we come in.

On September 16, Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the Department of State, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to obtain all government records pertaining to the September shooting, including Obama administration communications with Mexican law enforcement officials, military authorities, and other Mexican officials.

CNN’s Justice Blog had the story:

Almost a year has passed since Tiffany Hartley’s husband was shot and killed while on a personal watercraft on Falcon Lake, which sits on the border and is shared between Texas and Mexico.

Now she has sued the State Department, the Justice Department and the FBI in an attempt to get answers about what happened that day and why no one has been brought to justice in the killing of David Hartley.

It is believed that he was shot by members of the Zetas drug cartel, but no one has been arrested or even named as a suspect in his death.

With the help of Judicial Watch, an organization dedicated to investigating corruption, Tiffany Hartley filed the three Freedom of Information Act lawsuits Friday.

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Bob McCarty

‘Operation Fast and Furious’ Coverup Not Unique

by Bob McCarty

Documents obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel suggest a third gun linked to “Operation Fast and Furious” was found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder, according to the network’s exclusive report Friday. Further, those documents appear to contradict earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government’s now infamous gun interdiction scandal, and network sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. But is this a unique occurrence? One man says, “No.”

Jesse Trentadue has seen similar behavior during his investigation of the Oklahoma City Bombing, an effort he hoped would lead to the truth about the death of his brother, Kenneth Trentadue several months after the bombing while in custody at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City.

Via the Freedom of Information Act, Trentadue has, for more than three years, sought copies of the videotape images captured by more than 20 surveillance cameras operating in the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City prior to 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. In addition, he’s tried to obtain a copy of the original videotape taken by the dashboard camera on Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Hanger’s vehicle showing the arrest of Timothy McVeigh a short time later on the same morning.

While the FBI did produce tapes from the buildings around the Murrah Building, the tapes had been edited, Trentadue said. As for the tapes from the cameras on the Murrah Building, the contents of which are describe in a timeline prepared by the Secret Service, the FBI claims it cannot find.

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Publius

Feds Raid Solyndra Headquarters

by Publius

From NBC Bay Area News:

FBI agents armed with search warrants descended this morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda this morning.

The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy’s inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.

Agents arrived at 7a.m. and are examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, closing the factory down. A CNBC photographer on the scene says the FBI has promised a press conference. An agency spokesperson at its San Francisco headquarters says he’s unaware of any such plans.

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup hundreds of millions of dollars in low interest loans.

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Bob  Owens

Five Gunwalker Questions the Media Won’t Ask, and the Obama Administration Won’t Answer

by Bob Owens

So far, the shuffling of employees–and some might argue, the buying of their silence–has been the only reaction to the Gunwalker scandal, in which various agencies of the federal government conspired to assure the success of straw purchasers and smugglers running guns to a violent Mexican drug cartel.

In the months since the scandal was revealed, the Department of Justice (DOJ) , BATF, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division (IRS-CD), Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State, have conspired to stonewall and House and Senate investigations that have been launched to investigate a scandal that appears to be worse than Iran-Contra and Watergate combined.

The scandal is not complicated, and would be revealed by the answering of five simple questions that the media dare not demand answers to from this Administration.

  1. Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?
  2. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?
  3. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?
  4. Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in Texas, Florida, and other states as evidence suggests?
  5. What, precisely, did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?

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Rebel Pundit

Radical Activists Preparing for Massive Demonstrations at Chicago NATO & G-8 Summit

by Rebel Pundit

In June we reported on newly elected Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel using his clout to bring the 28-member NATO meeting and G-8 Summit to town in 2012. Also, in bringing the meetings to Chicago, the city will likely be confronted with the usual large-scale protests, which are most often comprised of violent anarchist revolutionaries.

The Chicago Tribune is now reporting that activists in Chicago are indeed planning large-scale demonstrations in Chicago, and have filed requests with the city to obtain protest permits.

From the Trib:

Activists are planning massive demonstrations to coincide with the G8 and NATO summits in Chicago scheduled for spring 2012, with crowds of protesters likely to reach “tens of thousands,” organizers said.

More than 160 members representing about 50 groups from across the U.S. and Canada gathered Sunday at the Chicago-Kent College of Law to discuss strategy and start planning two large-scale protests and a march during the weeklong joint summit, which is set for mid-May 2012.

Chicago could see crowds of protesters similar to the 35,000 or so activists who descended on St. Paul, Minn., during the 2008 Republican National Convention, said Joe Lombardo, co-coordinator for the New York-based United National Anti-War Committee.

Chicago activist Joe Iosbaker, who helped organize the RNC protests in 2008, and radical gay rights and anti-war activist Andy Thayer, whose homes were raided by FBI agents in October 2010 for suspected ties to funding Hamas and other terrorist organizations, are helping to organize the protests.

According to the Trib, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy recently stated that the department is preparing for “mass arrests” of protesters during the summit.

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Tom Fitton

FBI Tries to Censure Agents, Fails

by Tom Fitton

A few weeks ago, I told you that Judicial Watch is investigating a decision by the Obama Justice Department to shield from prosecution a radical terrorist who was involved in financing the terrorist group Hamas. His name is Omar Ahmad and he is one of the co-founders of the radical Council on American Islamic Relations (known as CAIR).

We think it’s important that the American people know why our federal government is protecting terrorists and terrorist-fronts (such as CAIR) here at home, while our men and women in uniform continue to spill their blood fighting terrorists abroad. It makes a mockery of the sacrifice of our military and military families, and represents a nonsensical approach to national security to say the least.

This is a battle we have been fighting for a very long time. Judicial Watch has been heavily involved in exposing the financial networks that make terrorism possible going back almost ten years now. In the days after 9/11, Judicial Watch called on the Bush administration to investigate and, if necessary, shut down terrorist front groups. (We listed them by name.) We also published a special report demonstrating how these terrorist financial networks operate and who operates them.

Perhaps most importantly, we took on the case of two FBI agents — Special Agent Robert Wright and retired Special Agent John Vincent — who were silenced by the FBI when they attempted to expose the government’s mishandling of terrorism investigations in the days before 9/11.

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