FBI finally acknowledges it DOES have documents on murdered journalist Michael Hastings - of course it took a lawsuit to get the truth out of them ! Secret Service targeted Aaron Swartz ( anyone see a pattern ? ) Obama tries the " Clapper " ...... NSA funds a top secret 60 million center to process private emails , cell phone calls and google searches ? Police state updates.......

http://www.infowars.com/fbi-admits-it-has-documents-on-michael-hastings/

FBI Admits It Has Documents On Michael Hastings

Federal agency initially denied it had investigated Rolling Stone journalist

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 16, 2013

The FBI has tacitly admitted that it possesses documents pertaining to Michael Hastings despite initially claiming that it had never investigated the Rolling Stone journalist, who complained of being under scrutiny by the federal agency in the hours before his death.

Image: Michael Hastings

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated that the FBI has likely located responsive records pertaining to investigative journalist Michael Hastings, who died in a tragic car accident in Los Angeles in June, and the agency expects to finish processing the records in about three weeks,” reports Jason Leopold, who along with Ryan Shapiro filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI in an attempt to obtain any records the federal agency held on the reporter.

When the FBI failed to respond to the initial request, Leopold and Shapiro filed a lawsuit

“The FBI has completed its search for potentially responsive records and expects to finish processing the records by September 9,” the DOJ response states (PDF), confirming that the FBI does indeed have documents pertaining to Hastings.

However, the government’s attempt to delay the release of the documents prompted lawyer Jeffrey Light to argue that there is an “urgent need to inform the public regarding records maintained by the FBI about Mr. Michael Hastings.”

The revelation goes a long way to confounding claims made by the FBI shortly after Hastings’ death that, “At no time was journalist Michael Hastings under investigation by the FBI.”

Hastings sent an email hours before his death stating he was “onto a big story” and needed “to go off the rada[r] for a bit.” Friends and colleagues confirmed that the journalist was “very paranoid” about the feds watching him.

According to whistleblower organization WIkileaks, Hastings contacted a Wikileaks attorney “just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.”

A separate close friend of Hastings also told Infowars that the journalist’s home was visited by agents from an unnamed federal agency the day before his death.

Hastings was killed in the early hours of June 18 in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.when his Mercedes crashed into a tree at high speed and exploded into flames, sparking theories that the journalist, who was working on a major exposé of the CIA and had received death threats, could have been assassinated.

Report: Secret Service Targeted Aaron Swartz

Published 1, August 15, 2013 Academics , Constitutional Law , Criminal law , Media , Politics ,Society 37 Comments 

This week we got another insight into the focus of the security agencies in the United States. Documents revealed that the U.S. Secret Service kept free-information activist Aaron Swartz under close watch until he killed himself following an abusive prosecution by the Administration. At the same time, the CIA reportedly zeroed in on famed MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky despite earlier denials. The prior investigation of Chomsky and the more recent investigation of Swartz shows little has changed in how civil libertarians are viewed by the government.

The CIA previously denied any records relevant to monitoring Chomsky’s movements or associations. However, a response by the CIA to Freedom of Information Act that suggests such monitoring by the CIA. Chomsky, 84, was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll. The CIA inquiry appears to be from many years ago, but the denial of such records was relatively recent.

We have previously discussed the Swartz case and how the Obama Administration hounded Swartz in an abusive prosecution until he finally hanged himself at the age of 26. It now turns out that the Secret Service joined in this campaign against the free information activist, including securing documents and electronic devices seized during a search of Swartz’s home and research office at Harvard University.

The full-court press against Swartz appears to be due to his advocacy for free access to information and Internet freedoms. However, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz moved to shield the names of prosecutors who were responsible for this highly criticized prosecution. In the meantime, Ortiz has simply moved on without any professional repercussions for the hounding of Swartz. Ortiz has been admonished in prior cases for her abusive tactics. However, she remains a favorite of the Administration and was recently featured in a national television ad on elder fraud.

The effort directed against Swartz shows the level of hostility by this Administration for Internet advocates and its unrelenting efforts to carry out demands from lobbyists to criminalize copyright and trademark laws. The involvement of the Secret Service in the abusive campaign against Swartz is chilling. Swartz was an internationally respected voice for freedom, but our government clearly saw him as a threat. That alone says volumes about the current state of our political system.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_multiple_denials_cia_admits_to_snooping_on_noam_chomsky

Obama Picks Clapper For Panel To Review Programs That He Previously Lied About Before Congress

Published 1, August 14, 2013 Constitutional Law , Criminal law , Media , Politics147 Comments 

President Barack Obama was widely ridiculed last week for his latest effort to quiet public unrest over his massive warrantless surveillance programs. As we discussed, Obama made statements on the program and Snowden that were disengenuous at best and viewed by civil libertarians as facially dishonest. His main “reform” was the rather laughable suggestion that his Administration, once again, would review itself and he would create yet another hand-picked committee to monitor his unchecked authority. While some of us said that Obama’s comments showed almost open contempt for the intelligence of the public and the independence of the press, nothing prepared us this week for his announcement on who would head the review: National Intelligence John Clapper. That’s right. Clapper, the man who admitted to lying before Congress on these programs and has been protected by Congress and Attorney General Eric Holder from a perjury charge. The White House announced Clapper’s selection on Monday and Clapper issued a statement announcing his intention to find a way to preserve national security while “maintaing the public trust.” On Tuesday, the outcry over Clapper’s selection led the White House to try to backpedal and explain this insulting appointment. The White House now says that Clapper will not “lead” the panel and that it will remain “independent” even with his looming presence.

Continue reading ‘Obama Picks Clapper For Panel To Review Programs That He Previously Lied About Before Congress’

NSA Funds New “Top Secret” $60 Million Dollar Data Lab

Center will analyze information from private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 16, 2013

The National Security Agency is funding a “top secret” $60 million dollar data analysis lab at North Carolina State University which will scrutinize information collected from private emails, phone calls and Google searches.

“The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences will be launched in a Centennial Campus building that will be renovated with money from the federal agency, but details about the facility are top secret. Those who work in the lab will be required to have security clearance from the U.S. government,” reports the News & Observer.

The project was initially supposed to be revealed in June, but the scandal surrounding the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program prompted the university to delay the announcement, with faculty staff citing, “that bit out of The Guardian (newspaper) on NSA collecting phone records of Verizon customers.”

According to NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson, the program will revolve around “making sense out of the deluge of data that we’re all swimming in every day,” although the university denies that it will be involved in “mass surveillance”.

However, according to an Associated Press report, the data lab will analyze information collected by the NSA’s new $2 billion dollar data center in Bluffdale, Utah, which is set to collect ”complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

AD
State Of Mind: The Psychology Of Control, from the creators of A Noble Lie. A film that reveals much of what we believe to be truth is actually deliberate deception.

According to the AP report, the new data lab will help perfect technology that will “analyze that data for patterns identifying terrorists and other security threats.”

The announcement of the new data center coincides with a Washington Post report which reveals that the NSA “has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.”

During a press conference last week, President Obama claimed that the agency was not “actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.”

Pollice state updates.....

Why Are SWAT Teams Answering Routine Police Calls?

truth-out.org
August 16, 2013

The SWAT team is the big guns of policing in the United States, reserved for kidnappings, gunmen and other highly dangerous and potential volatile situations. Right?

Wrong, apparently, because in recent years, the use of SWAT teams for routine law enforcement matters has been on the rise, with sometimes fatal consequences. These highly trained police personnel are being sent out on gambling raids, ordered to break up underage parties and even dispatched to handle student loan fraud. Not the best use of taxpayer resources, given the expense of maintaining a SWAT team and sending members out on calls, but more than that, it’s a troubling indicator of something going deeply wrong in America.

In the United States, the police are kept separate from the military for a number of social and political reasons. Paramilitary forces like SWAT teams, developed in 1960s Los Angeles to address considerable social unrest, are intended to be used judiciously, in situations where a threat to civilian wellbeing and social stability is so significant that it justifies the use of considerable force and organized military tactics against members of the civilian community.

Read more

SWAT Ties Up Students, Blows Out Tires During Bus Hijacking Drill

“Then he started tying everybody down and it just got really scary”

Julie Wilson
Infowars.com
August 15, 2013

Just when you think you’ve become numb to terror drills, a drill emulating a school bus hijacking leaves you shocked and speechless.

Officials in the small town of Rossford, Ohio, with a population of 6,293 as 2011, felt the need to run a school bus hijacking drill on students who were en route to an event.

School teachers, administrators and transportation directors set up chairs in an empty parking lot as if they were at a social gathering about to watch some sort of entertainment. The “entertainment” that they were about to witness, was a live feed of their town’s schoolchildren being held hostage during a school bus hijacking.

In the drill a strange man armed with a large weapon hijacks the school bus and ties up the frightened teenagers with what appears to be electrical tape.

The hijacking occurred on the other side of town, but the school bus made its way to the parking lot where the crowd was waiting. The audience watched calmly as SWAT moved towards the bus blowing out the tires and “rescuing” the tied up children one by one.

Advertisement
An emotional roller coaster from start to finish, American Drug War 2 follows the unimaginable story of a young boy battling cancer.

“I didn’t know what was going on, because at the start he was just a normal person and then he pulled out a gun and a mask, and put it all on. Then he started tying everybody down and it just got really scary,” said teenage passenger Justin Klocko.

WJRT reports that “organizers began planning for the drill in May, focusing on every detail.”

“Students say it’s an experience they’ll never forget, and one they hope they never to have to relive,” reported WJRT.

One female passenger said, “It’s good to know that when this does happen, there’s people there to stop it.”

A recent Infowars report described how “multifarious ‘terror threats’ have managed to spread into nearly every city and state across the country preparing first responders and conditioning citizens for any kind of ‘emergency’ you can think of.”

Cities and states continue to expend money and resources on terror drills with the small town of Rossford being no exception.

Marine Corps Colonel: Homeland Security Building “Domestic Army”

Fallujah veteran says government is afraid of its own citizens

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 15, 2013

A former Marine Corps Colonel who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers warns that the Department of Homeland Security is working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens.

The comments by the Colonel Peter Martino were made during public testimony at a Concord City Council meeting on Tuesday. The meeting concerned a decision on whether to accept a $260,000 Homeland Security grant on behalf of the Central New Hampshire Special Operations Unit to purchase a BearCat armored vehicle.

The purchase of the vehicle has been surrounded by controversy after the city’s Police Chief wrote in an application filing to the DHS that the vehicle was needed to deal with the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.

Referencing signs in the crowd which read “More Mayberry, Less Fallujah,” the Colonel spoke of how he didn’t even have armored vehicles when he was stationed in Fallujah.

Martino’s role as a Ministry of Defense coordinator was to command, train and equip the Iraqi Army, noting that he helped do everything he could “to make it as strong as possible,” but that “Homeland Security would kick their butts in a week.”

Stressing that it was unlawful and unconstitutional to use US troops on American soil, the Colonel warned, “What’s happening here is we’re building a domestic military,” adding that police are now “wearing the exact same combat gear that we had in Iraq, only it was a different color.”

Martino warned that the DHS was following military tactics by, “pre-staging gear and equipment” in order to build a “domestic army” while shrinking the US military “because the government is afraid of its own citizens.”

The Colonel slammed the idea of law enforcement purchasing militarized vehicles for domestic security, noting, “The last time more than ten terrorists were in one place at the same time was September 11th and all these vehicles in the world wouldn’t have prevented it nor would it have helped anybody.”

“I don’t know where we’re going to use this many vehicles or this many troops,” he continued, “Concord is just one cog in the wheel – we’re building an army over here and I can’t believe that people aren’t seeing it – is everybody blind?”

AD

State Of Mind: The Psychology Of Control, from the creators of A Noble Lie. A film that reveals much of what we believe to be truth is actually deliberate deception.

In his initial application to the DHS for the grant to purchase the armored vehicle, Police Chief John Duval wrote, “The State of New Hampshire’s experience with terrorism slants primarily towards the domestic type. We are fortunate that our State has not been victimized from a mass casualty event from an international terrorism strike however on the domestic front, the threat is real and here. Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges.”

Duval’s characterization of activists from across the political spectrum as terrorists prompted outrage but he refused to apologize, merely clarifying that his application may not have been worded correctly. Following the removal of the terms Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire from the application, the DHS made it clear that the grant would be approved.

As the Concord Monitor reports, Tuesday’s public testimony also included a warning from Irena Goddard, who grew up in Czechoslovakia.

“I do not want this deadly intimidation force of a military vehicle to suppress free speech, much like what was done with communist military tanks in Czechoslovakia,” she said.

Resident Jesse Mertz remarked that the militarization of law enforcement signaled that, “The military industrial complex has infiltrated every part of our society to the point where it’s now happening in our hometowns, and we’re seeing stuff occur that people said would never happen in our own country.”

The Concord Council delayed the decision to purchase the vehicle and the matter will be taken up once again at next month’s meeting.