Staged Terror, Fukushima Crime Syndicate, Conspiracy Reality

9/11 Blogger







On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to NYU professor and author of 'Fooled Again', Mark Crispin Miller about voting fraud, 911 and how the term 'Conspiracy Theory' shuts down objective debates. Abby then speaks with Kurt Haskell, Congressional Candidate for Michigan's 7th District, about his experience on the flight with the Christmas day Underwear Bomber that completely contradicts the government's narrative. BTS wraps up the show with a look at the intertwined relationship between the Japanese Yakuza crime syndicate and the nuclear energy industry in Japan.

LIKE Breaking the Set @ http://fb.me/BreakingTheSet

FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

Chemist told Mass. police she 'messed up bad'

MyFoxBoston

Chemists who worked with the woman at the center of a Massachusetts state drug lab scandal told investigators they had concerns about her work for several years, but they either convinced themselves they were invalid or reported them to supervisors who failed to intervene.

Defense attorneys say they're troubled by the latest revelations in the case, contained in a lengthy state police report compiled for the attorney general's office, which is investigating, and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Annie Dookhan admitted to investigators that she faked drug sample results for two to three years, forged signatures and skipped proper procedures, according to the report.

Attorney Rosemary Scapicchio, who represents several defendants whose samples Dookhan handled, called for federal officials to take over the probe.

"I can't imagine she could have been this corrupt without someone noticing," she said. "The investigation needs to go deeper than Annie Dookhan to get to the point of 'How did she get away with it?'"

State police say Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples submitted in the cases of about 34,000 defendants during her nine years at the Boston lab. She resigned in March amid an internal investigation by the Department of Public Health. A handful of defendants have already been released or had their sentences suspended, and the state has created a central office to examine cases Dookhan was involved with and figure out how to deal with them.

After state police took over the lab in July as part of a state budget directive, they said they discovered her violations were much more extensive than previously believed and went beyond sloppiness into deliberate evidence mishandling.

Supervisors suspended Dookhan's lab duties in June 2011, when she was caught forging a colleague's initials on paperwork after taking 90 drug samples from evidence, according to police. But she told police later she disobeyed orders and continued to access an evidence database and give law enforcement officials information on their cases.

On Aug. 30, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered state police to close the lab.

That day, a police lieutenant spoke with Dookhan to tell her she should get an attorney because she could face criminal charges.

Dookhan cried on the phone. She said she was involved in a long divorce from her husband, didn't have money and didn't know any lawyers.

Anne Goldbach from Committee for Public Counsel Services, which oversees legal representation for indigents, said the interviews included in the police report show the problems at the now-closed Hinton State Laboratory are more troubling than originally believed. She said it appears there was unsupervised access to the evidence office and safe.

Goldbach said because Dookhan was in charge of quality control equipment, other chemists could have gotten false test results without knowing it.

"It calls into question all the testing done by the lab," she said.

Attorney John T. Martin said Wednesday that he noticed a pattern of suspicious behavior from Dookhan while looking over his clients' cases.

He said in four cases, Dookhan determined the weight of the drug sample was just 1 gram above the amount needed for a more serious penalty even though police reports made the seizure seem smaller.

Concerns from Dookhan's colleagues prompted two supervisors to audit her work in 2010, but they just looked at paperwork and didn't retest drug samples.

Things started to unravel in spring 2011 with the forging incident. A colleague told police it was "almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught."

One lab supervisor told police later that he believed Dookhan had a mental breakdown.

Dookhan told investigators several times in an August interview that she knew she had done wrong.

"I screwed up big time," she said, according to the report from investigators for Attorney General Martha Coakley's office. "I messed up bad. It's my fault. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."

Authorities haven't filed charges against Dookhan or commented on her possible motives as their probe continues. Dookhan hasn't responded to repeated requests for comment.

In the Aug. 28 interview with two investigators at her home, Dookhan first denied doing anything wrong when she analyzed drug samples.

She changed her story after they confronted her with a retest of a suspected cocaine sample that came back negative after Dookhan identified it as the narcotic. Police also told her the number of samples she reported analyzing was too high and she couldn't have completed all the tests.

The report shows Dookhan then admitted identifying drug samples by looking at them instead of testing them, called dry labbing.

She said she tested about five out of 25 samples she got from evidence, after routinely getting a large number of samples from different cases out of the evidence room. She also told investigators that she contaminated samples a few times to get more work finished but that no one asked her to do anything improper.

"I intentionally turned a negative sample into a positive a few times," Dookhan said in a signed statement she gave police.

Dookhan also told investigators she routinely skirted proper procedures by looking up data for assistant district attorneys who called her directly.

Wrongly convicted inmates freed but get little help

USA Today
Brad Heath



Former inmates abruptly freed after spending up to six years in federal prison even though they were "legally innocent" are coming home with less help than the government typically provides the guilty after they are released.

Kim Harris was declared legally innocent and
released from prison with little more than a
bus ticket and the clothes she was wearing.

Most of them have received little more than a bus ticket. Federal law does not require the government to help them search for jobs or find basic necessities such as clothing and a place to live, assistance the guilty routinely receive during their post-prison supervision, partly to keep them from returning to crime.

Judges in North Carolina have so far ordered the government to release at least 17 inmates in one of the largest episodes in recent memory of federal prisoners having their convictions overturned. It follows a USA TODAY investigation this year that identified 60 people incarcerated for gun possession even though a court later determined that they had not committed a federal crime. The U.S. Justice Department had originally argued that they should remain in prison anyway, but reversed its position last month "in the interests of justice," according to court records.

• STORY: Woman fights to start over after conviction overturned

Neither the courts nor the Justice Department could estimate how many more prisoners might ultimately be released. Dozens of other inmates from North Carolina still are waiting for judges to decide whether their convictions should be thrown out, too.

"A lot of people would say they need help finding a job, but it's really they need help finding underwear," said Theresa Newman, who runs a wrongful convictions program at Duke University's law school. "At a minimum, the state and the federal government should help innocent people make the transition out."

The Justice Department would not comment on the record about help for the freed prisoners, saying instead that it is trying to make sure innocent prisoners are freed. Spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said prosecutors "are working with the court, the probation office and the federal public defenders to ensure that these matters are addressed as effectively and quickly as possible."

At least 10 states provide services such as job training, health care and housing assistance to wrongfully convicted prisoners, according to an Innocence Project study. Most states and the federal government also provide some help in finding social services once someone serves his full prison sentence and is released on parole or supervision, though that help is not available to people whose convictions are overturned.

Compensation for the time they were locked up is even less likely. Federal law permits the government to pay people up to $50,000 for every year they were wrongly imprisoned, but the ex-prisoners -- almost all of whom could have been convicted of state crimes with lesser penalties -- are unlikely to meet its strict eligibility requirements.

"Exonarees fall into this hole where there really isn't a re-entry program for them. Their path to re-entry is often more difficult than someone who has legitimately served time," said Michele Berry, an Ohio lawyer who has handled wrongful conviction cases there. She said that means prisoners freed because they are innocent could have a harder time after they are released than guilty inmates who finish their sentences.

Brookston Cooke, freed in August from a federal prison in Pennsylvania, said he is struggling to find a job and get his license renewed. So far, he's had little success and no real help. "Right now that's my biggest challenge," he said. "Getting back to a normal life."

USA TODAY's investigation found that the Justice Department had done almost nothing to identify prisoners such as Cooke — many of whom did not know they were innocent — and had argued in court that they should remain imprisoned even though its lawyers agreed they had not committed a federal crime.

Federal law bans people from having a gun if they have previously been convicted of a crime that could have put them in prison for more than a year. In North Carolina, however, state law set the maximum punishment for a crime based on the prior record of whoever committed it, meaning two people who committed the same crime could face vastly different maximum sentences.

For years, federal courts there said that didn't matter. If someone with a long record could have gone to prison for more than a year, then all who had committed that crime are felons and cannot legally have a gun, the courts maintained. But last year, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said judges had been getting the law wrong: Only people who could have faced more than a year in prison for their crimes qualify as felons. Its decision meant thousands of low-level offenders are not committing a federal crime by having a gun.

In addition to the 17 people who have been freed from prison so far, federal courts in North Carolina have overturned 12 more convictions. Most of those people had already served their prison sentences and were on supervised release by the time their convictions were thrown out.

Calls for crime lab to shut down amid more evidence doubts

MPR News
Madeleine Baran

The St. Paul crime lab is housed at the
St. Paul Police Department in St. Paul, Minn.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012.

As questions about the St. Paul police crime lab spread to fingerprint evidence, top defense attorneys say the lab needs to shut down entirely until it can prove that its work is reliable.

The lab already suspended drug testing in July after employees testified they did not follow any written procedures and relied on equipment that may have been clogged with cocaine. The allegations alarmed many in the criminal justice system and threw thousands of drug cases into question in Dakota, Washington, and Ramsey Counties. Police Chief Thomas Smith replaced the lab director and hired two out-of-state companies to conduct an independent review. The Dakota County hearing that exposed the problems in the lab is ongoing.

Despite the damaging allegations, most of the lab is still open. Every day, employees analyze fingerprints and process other evidence from crime scenes. Their findings are used to help convict people of a variety of crimes, including homicide, burglary and rape. That alarms defense attorneys who specialize in forensic science.

"I just can't imagine that there aren't serious, serious questions about what's going on in the other parts of the crime laboratory," said assistant state public defender Pam King. "I don't understand why they have that laboratory open at all."

FINGERPRINT WORK UNDER SCRUTINY

Defense attorneys say they will question any evidence that comes out of the lab. Already, at least one attorney is challenging the lab's fingerprint work. Back in May, two months before the drug testing problems came to light, Washington County public defender Rebecca Waxse asked a judge to decide whether the lab's fingerprint methods were reliable enough to be admitted as evidence in a burglary case.

Her written request contained an alarming accusation. "According to the St. Paul Crime Lab, they do not have standard operating procedures or formal protocols in place to govern the process of fingerprint analysis," she wrote.

Washington County Judge Gregory Galler denied the request. The case is still pending.

Waxse declined to discuss the fingerprint case in any detail or say whether she plans to file a new request based on the recent revelations about the lab's work.

"We need to do more investigation before we can make any true determinations about what we're going to do next," she said.

Video: Unanswered questions. Story continues below.



Washington County Criminal Division Chief Fred Fink, who is prosecuting the case, said he plans to investigate how the lab analyzes fingerprints. He declined to say what he will do if he uncovers any problems.

Washington County arguably has less at stake because, according to Fink, this is the only fingerprint case that was sent to the St. Paul lab. Fink said he's not even sure how it ended up there.

"That was an aberration," Fink said. "Historically, we've only sent drug cases to the St. Paul police lab. Somebody took a wrong turn."

Public defenders in other counties that rely more heavily on the St. Paul crime lab's fingerprint work said they will watch the challenge closely. They said prosecutors should be prepared for more challenges to the lab's fingerprint work.

Austin Police Provocateurs Coordinated With Houston Through Fusion Center

OccupyAmericaSocialNetwork

For more on the Gulf Port 7 and Austin Police Infiltration of Occupy Austin see Undercover Austin Officer Enabled Houston Felonies, Judge Campbell Is Not Amused, and Kit’s Gulf Port 7 Interview.

Austin Police coordinated felony arrests at the Gulf Port Shutdown with Houston Police through the fusion center known as Austin Regional Intelligence Center.

The pre-trial hearings for the Gulf Port 7 case continued on September 6, 2012; although the Austin Police Department presented the information Judge Joan Campbell requested at the previous hearing, most of it was done in camera – in private, where defense and accused activists could not access it. What was revealed is troubling — that APD coordinated the day’s actions with Houston police through the local Texas fusion center, known as Austin Regional Intelligence Center. This, of course, raises the question of to what degree federal authorities were involved in the entrapment of Occupy activists; I personally witnessed Department of Homeland Security vehicles on the ground at the Occupy Houston encampment on December 12, in addition to photographing men in unknown military-like uniforms who were observing the port shutdown.

Further, it appears that officials involved may have made a decision to withhold information that was requested by Ronnie Garza’s defense attorney. This is in direct violation of Brady disclosure. Campbell’s frustration with the behavior of the state is clear in court transcripts, as she gives lawyers a lesson in this essential aspect of criminal law:

Read more:

Austin Police Provocateurs Coordinated With Houston Through Fusion Center - posted by james at Occupy America Social Network

APD: Officers infiltrated Occupy movement

MyFoxAustin

In December, Occupy protesters, some of which were from Austin, blocked the entrance of a Houston port.

A group of protestors were charged with a felony because they linked their arms with a device called a "lockbox". They claim Austin Police helped them make it and now they want charges to be dropped.

Dave Cortez, an Austin Occupier claims he had interaction with one of the undercover officers.

"Supplying and encouraging these folks in Houston to be more aggressive with their actions," said Cortez. "This man would attend our meetings pull me aside and say we need to do more aggressive actions which he encourage the folks to do in Houston."

Austin Police confirmed Friday undercover officers infiltrated the group to gain intelligence about plans of breaking the law.

"Based on concerns from citizens in the movement and actual criminal activity taking place in downtown and city hall plaza it was determined plain clothes officers blending in with the surroundings was necessary in the safety of participants and the community," said Austin PD Assistant Chief Sean Mannix.

Maninx says one of their detectives testified in Harris County Court.

The Assistant Police Chief walked out afterwards dodging reporter questions saying there is no internal investigation. He says because of the nature of the ongoing criminal trial in Harris County he can not make any further comment.

"If it's true I'd expect city council to hold everyone of those officers and the police chief accountable," said Jim Harrington with the Texas Civil Rights Project. "These are the people who are supposed to be applying the law and upholding the law."

He says if the allegations are true, APD went too far.

"It's perfectly fine to infiltrate and watch but when you cross the line and enable a crime and become part of a crime you're called a provocateur," said Harrington.

Anarchists and lawbreakers: Media ramps up propaganda prior to RNC

PressTV

Jacob Crawford has produced a video for Indybay.org documenting the brazen scare tactics and fear-mongering used by the establishment media in the days and weeks before the RNC show now underway in Tampa, Florida.

The video reveals just how politically naive and one-dimensional the corporate media is - for instance, describing the hacker group Anonymous as anarchists (see Biella Coleman‘s disputation of this). It reveals the establishment’s overall agenda to discredit and delegitimatize all the RNC protesters and conflate them with violent anarchists (who have been repeatedly exposed as agents provocateurs). Anarchists are now portrayed as a domestic terror threat by the government and the corporate media.

The simple and mythical nature of the propaganda is designed to play on the emotions of the politically uninitiated and produce a knee-jerk reaction against street demonstrations previously protected by the First Amendment.

Earlier this month, prisonplanet.com reported on a bulletin released by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warning that “anarchist extremists” may use IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, during both conventions.

Left unmentioned is the fact downtown Tampa is now a virtual police state and this is a now feature of all “official” events, from globalist confabs to political conventions. Speaking engagements by establishment political candidates have provided the TSA with an excuse to rifle through bags and conduct impromptu searches.

Tampa cops have used control freak rules dictating what citizens can carry in public during the convention to circumvent the protests of puppeteer activists.

“One deputy told a group of protestors carrying an oversized puppet of Mitt Romney the sticks they were using to hold up the puppet’s arms were against the rules,” Bay News 9 reported today.

The “code” imposed on the residents of Tampa, Florida, is another example of the state acclimating the public to the incremental imposition of a police state under the guise of national security and supposedly protecting us from phantom terrorists.

Warning to Activists: Agent Provocateurs Want to Make You a Terrorist

Intelhub

J.G. Vibes

For hundreds of years the establishment has used agent provocateurs as a means of discrediting protest movements that spoke out against the injustice that was being perpetrated by the ruling class.

Provocateurs are basically undercover agents, who infiltrate activist groups and try to provoke or push various members of these groups into doing something illegal that they can then immediately be arrested for.

Even if the activists aren’t arrested, the incident can then be used as a propaganda piece against dissenters everywhere.  This is how things have played out throughout the course of American history, and im sure it goes back much further than that.

In the past you could expect one of these snakes to be at protests trying to get people to throw bricks through windows, or even just doing it themselves when all else failed.  This usually supplied the pretext for violent crackdowns on protestors, and a justification for the use of excessive force.

However, in recent years with the general population becoming more discontent, these provocateurs are taking more extreme measures and hatching plots that could get innocent protestors sent away for life, or worse.

I’m talking of course about the fabricated “terror” plots that the establishment has been walking people into since at least the signing of the patriot act.  First these plots were surrounding Muslims on airplanes with fake bombs.  This trend continued for years and resulted in the prosecution of several people.

These “underwear bomber” cases, as they later came to be known, served as the excuse for the expansion of the TSA and the rollout of the radioactive naked body scanners that have become so controversial.

Since occupy wall street became a household name, the government is now turning their attention away from the phoney Muslim threat and towards the dissenters at home who have now been branded “domestic terrorists”.

This past weekend in Chicago, a group of young occupy protesters were infiltrated by a federal agent, who supplied them with all sorts of contraband and then immediately had them arrested.  This set up was nearly identical to one that took place just weeks ago, prior to the mayday protests in Ohio.

The police are putting forward a narrative about violent terrorist masterminds, when in reality it was the undercover agents themselves who put the plot into motion and provided all of the materials.

These incidents should serve as a warning to activists everywhere to keep their guard up and to avoid people who start talking about this kind of sketchy activity.  Many of you reading this probably think that this should go without saying, but it’s become apparent that it is not very difficult for police to ensnare people in these false flag set ups.

This should be an issue that is discussed regularly at activist meetings and occupy general assembly’s worldwide.

While this may seem like a topic that should be unspoken and common sense, it is still one of the most damaging tactics that has been used against dissenters thus far, both in terms of public relations and the toll taken on the lives of those who get caught up in these traps.

As we have seen many times in the past, hurting people, blowing things up and destroying property accomplishes nothing for the cause of freedom.  This kind of behavior actually provides the mainstream media with propaganda opportunities that will be used to perpetuate the myth that anyone who disagrees with authority is dangerous and violent.

As long as this myth endures the public will continue to fund and allow their own enslavement, as well as yours and mine.

From now on we should all be especially careful about the kinds of things that new friends are bringing into our houses.  If someone approaches you acting shady, or offers to give you anything illegal especially related to weapons or explosive material, you need to get yourself out of that situation as smoothly as possible and don’t accept anything that person is going to offer you.

Try to disagree with them as politely as possible if they mention anything about violence, anything that is said to an undercover cop will definitely come back up in court and be used to demonize the accused.

With two cases like this popping up in two different cities so close to each other, it is quite possible that there are undercover units in activist movements in every city, especially the occupy movement due to all of the press that it got last season.

Be careful out there, and make sure your friends and local community members are aware that there has been widespread infiltration of protest movements and that they should be highly suspicious of people who start talking openly about violent or destructive behavior.

Recent sources:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/05/entrapment-of-cleveland-5-and-the-nato-3-is-nothing-new/

This article originally appeared at Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance

Feel free to email me at jgvibes@aotmr.com with any tips, suggestions or disagreements.

J.G. Vibes is an author, and artist — with an established record label. In addition to featuring a wide variety of activist information, his company Good Vibes Promotions hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his new book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, at his website www.aotmr.com and facebook page.

FBI Agents Raid Homes in Search of “Anarchist Literature”

From the Trenches

Green is the New Red – by Will Potter  When FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents raided multiple activist homes in the Northwest last week, they were in search of “anti-government or anarchist literature.”


The raids were part of a multi-state operation that targeted activists in Portland, Olympia, and Seattle. At least three people were served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury on August 2nd in Seattle.

In addition to anarchist literature, the warrants also authorize agents to seize flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.


The listing of black clothing and flags, along with comments made by police, indicates that the FBI may ostensibly be investigating “black bloc” tactics used during May Day protests in Seattle, which destroyed corporate property.

If that is true, how are books and literature evidence of criminal activity?

To answer that, we need to look at the increasing harassment, surveillance, and prosecution of anarchists and political activists associated with the Occupy Movement.

In some cases, such as the May Day arrests in Cleveland, the FBI has been so desperate to arrests “anarchist terrorists” that it supplied them with bomb-making materials and used an informant to entrap them. The same thing happened in Chicago.

The motivation for these operations, and the instruction that “anarchist” means “terrorist,” is coming straight from the top levels of the federal government. As I recently wrote, new documents show that the FBI is conducting “domestic terrorism” training presentations about anarchists.

The FBI presentation described anarchists as “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities.”

This is the guilt-by-association mentality that is guiding FBI and JTTF assaults on political activists; if agents find “anarchist literature” in a raid, it is evidence of criminalactivity because anarchism, in and of itself, is criminal activity.

The Seattle grand jury may or may not be investigating May Day protests. What’s clear, though, is that the grand jury is being used as a tool in this criminalization of those suspected as “anarchists.” Grand juries are secretive processes that are frequently used against political activists in order to acquire information. They are fishing expeditions. If activists refuse to testify about their personal beliefs and political associations, they can be imprisoned. Jordan Halliday, for example, was recently released after serving more than six months in prison (and being imprisoned once already for four months) for asserting his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to provide information about the animal rights movement.

As one organizer with Occupy Seattle said after the raid: “…we are not being raided for connection to any crime, but to some political ideology that the police think we have.

“I was just doing research on the old Pinkerton strikebreaking paramilitaries, so it’s kind of funny, you know, to have that old Red Scare history burst through my front door at six AM.”

Did Chicago police mastermind alleged NATO terror plots?

Russia Today

After a weekend of violent altercations in Chicago, Illinois between police officers and demonstrators protesting the NATO Summit, many questions remain unanswered over a string of alleged terrorist plots foiled by law enforcement.

At least 11 men were arrested in three separate incidents in the days before this weekend’s conference of world leaders in the Windy City. As events wind down on Monday, however, half of those originally detained have been released with no charges pressed and little explanation from investigators. Of those that remain behind bars, all have been linked to two alleged police informants, “Mo” and “Gloves,” that are believed to have worked undercover with law enforcement to infiltrate the Chicago activism community.

The attorney representing three men arrested on terrorist-related charges on Wednesday says that the alleged crimes in question were perpetrated by Chicago police officers and reeks of entrapment. Those close to individuals apprehended this week on separate but similar charges also say that the alleged crimes in those cases are full of holes and seem equally suspicious.

Three of the men arrested Wednesday night remain in custody on Monday for allegedly conspiring to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possessing of an explosive incendiary device. The trio was swept up in a raid in the Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport at around 11:30 that evening that ended with nine suspects behind bars. After two days of unanswered questions, however, six of the men were quietly released without charges.

One of those men, who gave his name to the Chicago Tribune as Robert Lamorte, says he had only been in town for an hour when he was arrested by a swarm of police clad in riot gear with weapons drawn.

"I'm leaving here first chance I get," Lamorte tells the paper. "I don't want to deal with any more problems."

OWS being discredited by the US government?

Editor's Note: What's the biggest threat to the establishment? The "Occupy Movement" or scores of people achieving major delegate victories on behalf of Ron Paul in states throughout the country?

FBI Supplies Cleveland 'Anarchists' with Fake Bombs, Arrests Them

Atlantic Wire
Alexander Abad-Santos

Whew. The FBI arrested five "anarchists" last night, who allegedly had their sights set on blowing up a Cleveland area bridge and no, it has nothing to do with the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden.

Actually, it turns out the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Brecksville Station wasn't in any real danger, as CBS reports that "the sting operation supplied the anarchists with what they thought were 'explosives' and bomb-making materials," but that didn't stop the anarchists from allegedly charting out a Chistopher Nolan-style plot of distracting law enforcement officials with smoke bombs "in order for the co-conspirators to topple financial institution topple financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland" or planning to detonate the bridge remotely using C-4 explosives. The sting does bring to mind questions of entrapment and the war on terror, and the similar case of Amine El Khalifi who the FBI arrested in February for planning to blow up restaurants and other targets in Virginia, after they had supplied him with a dummy suicide vest and a fake gun (which he thought were real).  El Khalifi could face life in prison (he's pending indictment), while CBS notes that the five arrested "anarchists" will appear before a federal magistrate today.

Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.

New York Times

David K. Shipler

THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. 

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested. 

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust. 

This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps. 

Police who lie: False testimony often goes unpunished

The Star
Jesse McLean and David Bruser

A justice accused Niagara Region police
chief Wendy Southall of failing to act
after learning senior officers lied about a tip
that led to one of the largest drug busts
in Ontario history.

The first time Toronto police Det. Scott Aikman deceived the court, a judge denounced his “misleading” testimony and threw out a cocaine charge against a man.

The second time, Det. Aikman’s story explaining why he and his partner searched a minivan led to the acquittal of four suspects.

accused of masterminding an international credit-card data-theft ring.

Aikman “either fabricated or concealed evidence” to justify the van search, the judge said. The four suspects, charged with a total of 321 offences, walked free.

Was Aikman disciplined for his conduct in court?

“No. Of course not,” said Aikman, explaining to the Star that he had done nothing wrong.

A coast-to-coast Toronto Star investigation found more than 120 police officers have been accused by judges of outright lying, misleading the court or fabricating evidence since 2005. Many of the officers have gone unpunished.

Police who lie: How officers thwart justice with false testimony

There is so little oversight of the problem that in some jurisdictions police forces did not know judges found that their officers misled the court. Internal investigations into four cases — three in Peel, one in York — were started after the Star brought the courtroom misconduct to the departments’ attention.
Compounding the lack of oversight is a lack of accountability to the public.

Big-city forces, including Montreal and Calgary, refused to say whether their officers were disciplined.
At the Toronto Police Service, where at least 34 officers have come under fire from judges for being untruthful in court in recent years, there is little indication Chief Bill Blair considers the judges’ findings a call for change.

The chair of the civilian oversight Toronto Police Services Board, Alok Mukherjee, told the Star he is troubled by this “serious issue” and wants something done to stop the lies from eroding the public’s trust in his police force.

“If we say a police officer takes an oath of office to uphold the law, if we require that they must be of good moral character and integrity …then someone who is found to have lied or falsified their notes, can they be said to be upholding their oath? Can they be said to have demonstrated integrity?” he said. “My simple, non-legal mind says: That’s misconduct.”

The Star sent letters to police forces across the country asking how they responded to the judicial findings questioning their officers’ credibility. The reactions ranged from receptive to unaware to dismissive.

Occupy Movement : URGENT WARNING: Look out for Police Provocateurs

American Muslim Alleges FBI Had a Hand in His Torture

Mother Jones
Nick Baumann

EXCLUSIVE: Yonas Fikre believes the US government played a role in his hellish three-month detention in the United Arab Emirates.

Last June, while Yonas Fikre was visiting the United Arab Emirates, the Muslim American from Portland, Oregon was suddenly arrested and detained by Emirati security forces. For the next three months, Fikre claims, he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured. Fikre says he was beaten on the soles of his feet, kicked and punched, and held in stress positions while interrogators demanded he "cooperate" and barked questions that were eerily similar to those posed to him not long before by FBI agents and other American officials who had requested a meeting with him.

Fikre had been visiting family in Khartoum, Sudan, when, in April 2010, the officials got in touch with him. He agreed to meet with them, but ultimately balked at cooperating with FBI questioning without a lawyer present and he rebuffed a request to become an informant. Pressing him to cooperate, the agents told him he was on the no-fly list and could not return home unless he aided the bureau, Fikre says. The following week he received an email from one of the US officials; it arrived from a State Department address: "Thanks for meeting with us last week in Sudan. While we hope to get your side of the issues we keep hearing about, the choice is yours to make. The time to help yourself is now."

Fikre made his way to the UAE the following year, where, he and his lawyer allege, he was detained at the request of the US government. They say his treatment is part of a pattern of "proxy" detentions of US Muslims orchestrated by the the US government. Now, Fikre's Portland-based lawyer, Thomas Nelson, plans to file suit against the Obama administration for its alleged complicity in Fikre's torture.

"There was explicit cooperation; we certainly will allege that in the complaint," says Nelson, a well known terrorism defense attorney. "When Yonas [first] asked whether the FBI was behind his detention, he was beaten for asking the question. Toward the end, the interrogator indicated that indeed the FBI had been involved. Yonas understood this as indicating that the FBI continued to [want] him to work for/with them." Nelson, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Council on American Islamic Relations are assembling a high-powered legal team to handle Fikre's case in the United States.

Federal Court Orders FBI To Turn Over Evidence for Independent Forensic Analysis in 1990 Judi Bari Car Bombing Case

HumboldtHerald

In an order dated March 31, 2012 and released today, Honorable Claudia Wilken, United States District Judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed a March 21, 2011 Order by Magistrate Judge James Larson, directing the United States, through the FBI, to turn over evidence in the 1990 car bomb assassination attempt of Judi Bari in Oakland, CA to a third party forensic laboratory for independent testing.

“This is a historic and momentous development,” said Ben Rosenfeld, attorney for plaintiff Darryl Cherney, Judi Bari’s co-organizer in the sustained campaign to preserve California’s ancient redwoods, who was also injured when the bomb went off. Cherney went to Court in 2010 to prevent the FBI from destroying the evidence. That evidence includes a mostly intact explosive device built by the same hands as the car bomb, as well as a cardboard sign, and latent fingerprints.

The FBI never subjected this evidence to basic forensic examination. Its lawyers contacted Cherney’s lawyers in 2010 announcing plans to destroy the evidence. In 2002, an Oakland federal jury found three FBI agents and three Oakland police officers liable for violating Bari and Cherney’s First and Fourth Amendment Rights by trying to frame them by falsely accusing them of transporting the bomb which nearly killed them. The FBI never looked elsewhere.

Cherney alone has continued to pursue the bomber(s). With co-Director Mary Liz Thompson, he just released a new documentary entitled Who Bombed Judi Bari? (http://whobombedjudibari.com/). The evidence, hitherto sealed away in an FBI locker, may finally yield an answer to that question.
Request a copy of the Court order via one of the contacts above, or look it up on PACER under federal Case No. 91-01057 (Document Number 686). For historic information about the case, visit www.judibari.org.

Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI 'entrapment' tactics

Guardian
Paul Harris

In June, four men were jailed for 25 years over a US terror plot. The FBI painted them as dedicated fanatics, but were they lured by the promise of cash from a fake informant?

Imam Salahuddin Muhammad could hardly miss Shahed Hussain when he first appeared three years ago at his mosque in the dilapidated town of Newburgh, just 60 miles up the Hudson River from New York.

Hussain was flash, drove expensive cars and treated people to gifts of cash and food. He also had radical opinions that stood out in a mosque that welcomed Shia and Sunni followers and had good relations with local Jewish and Christian communities.

"This guy said women should not be heard, not be seen. I thought that was strange," Muhammad told the Guardian as he sat in his office inside Newburgh's mosque." Muhammad, who is a black American convert, had no idea how strange things would get.

Hussain would make Newburgh's Muslim community famous when earlier this year four other black Newburgh Muslims were jailed for 25 years for a 2009 plot to fire a Stinger missile at US military planes. They also planted car bombs, packed with lethal ball bearings, outside Jewish targets in the wealthy New York suburb of Riverdale.

Prosecutors painted them as America-hating terrorists bent on slaughter. All four followed the instructions of Hussain, who meticulously organised the scheme: from getting the missile and bombs, to reconnaissance missions, to teaching the tenets of radical Islam.

The "Newburgh Four" now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.

Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh's grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.

Iran warns US to avoid clash over nuclear programme

Guardian

Iranian foreign minister says America has 'lost its wisdom and prudence' as tensions mount over Tehran's enrichment efforts

The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said
his country was 'prepared for the worst'

Iran has warned the US not to set the two countries on a collision course over Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme, as diplomatic tensions reflected growing concern that the Middle East might be on the verge of new conflict.

The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, spoke amid reports that the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has been trying to rally support within his country for an attack.

The Guardian revealed that the UK was advancing contingency plans for joining American forces in a possible air and sea campaign against military bases in Iran.

The revelations led to Nato insisting on Thursday that it would play no part in any military action, and provoked the rebuke from Salehi, who insisted that any attack by either Israel or the US would provoke immediate retaliation. He also accused Washington of recklessness.

"The US has unfortunately lost its wisdom and prudence in dealing with international issues," he told reporters during a visit to Libya. "Of course we are prepared for the worst, but we hope that they think twice before they put themselves on a collision course with Iran."

In a separate interview with a Turkish newspaper, Salehi claimed Tehran was ready for war with Israel. "We have been hearing threats from Israel for eight years. Our nation is a united nation … such threats are not new to us," he said. "We are very sure of ourselves. We can defend our country."

The pressure on Iran has been building since allegations surfaced of a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The White House insists Tehran was behind the plot, but the Iranian regime has denied that.

The episode added to US concerns about Iran's nuclear enrichment programme and the increasing belligerence of its regime. Intelligence suggests that some of the Iranian centrifuges that can produce weapons-grade uranium are being hidden inside a fortified military base in Qom, about 100 miles south-west of Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Authority will next week deliver its latest bulletin on Iran's nuclear programme and is expected to provide fresh evidence of covert plans to engineer warheads.

FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

IPS
Gareth Porter

When they are not busy supplying drugs to Mexican
drug lords, they're tapping their Mexican contacts
to help create a false flag to implicate Iran.

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) - While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.