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So Much Of What The CIA Used To Do Covertly It Now Does Overtly – Caitlin’s Newsletter

Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2021

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and the public is too brainwashed and gaslit to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/so-much-of-what-the-cia-used-to-do

Caitlin Johnstone

In the later years of an abusive relationship I was in, my abuser had become so confident in how mentally caged he had me that he’d start overtly telling me what he is and what he was doing. He flat-out told me he was a sociopath and a manipulator, trusting that I was so submitted to his will by that point that I’d gaslight myself into reframing those statements in a sympathetic light. Toward the end one time he told me “I am going to rape you,” and then he did, and then he talked about it to some friends trusting that I’d run perception management on it for him.

The better he got at psychologically twisting me up in knots and the more submitted I became, the more open he’d be about it. He seemed to enjoy doing this, taking a kind of exhibitionistic delight in showing off his accomplishments at crushing me as a person, both to others and to me. Like it was his art, and he wanted it to have an audience to appreciate it.

I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he made an observation we’ve discussed here previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public perception.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/jU58mrEpPvU?start=234&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

“If you go and Google, and I hope your viewers do, Operation Mockingbird, what you will find is that during the Cold War these agencies used to plot how to clandestinely manipulate the news media to disseminate propaganda to the American population,” Greenwald said. “They used to try to do it secretly. They don’t even do it secretly anymore. They don’t need Operation Mockingbird. They literally put John Brennan who works for NBC and James Clapper who works for CNN and tons of FBI agents right on the payroll of these news organizations. They now shape the news openly to manipulate and to deceive the American population.”

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and the public is too brainwashed and gaslit to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

They’re just rubbing it in our faces now. Like they’re showing off.Ben Norton @BenjaminNortonBellingcat got funding from the US gov-funded NED. It acts like an unofficial NATO propagandist, obsessively focusing on Western enemies. June 25th 2017137 Retweets174 Likes

And that’s just the media. We also see this flaunting behavior exhibited in the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a propaganda operation geared at sabotaging foreign governments not aligned with the US which according to its own founding officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The late author and commentator William Blum makes this clear:

See then rest here

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The Rutherford Institute :: The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, the FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes a Day | By John & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2021

For example, this is the agency that used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over the injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_fbis_mafia_style_justice_to_fight_crime_the_fbi_sponsors_15_crimes_a_day

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”— Friedrich Nietzsche

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Think about it.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.

Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government.

Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.

Which country has conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins? The U.S. government.

What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

So why is the government doing this? Money, power and total domination.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

See the rest here

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Torture Enters the Courtroom – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/andrew-p-napolitano/torture-enters-the-courtroom/

By Andrew P. Napolitano

For the first time in American history, a federal judge last week authorized the government to admit as evidence in a criminal case in a public courtroom words uttered by the defendant that were obtained under torture.

The fruits of torture — which is any cruel or degrading or intentionally painful or disorienting behavior visited upon a person in captivity to induce compliance or to gratify the torturer — are not permitted in any court in the United States, and their inducement is criminal.

Here is the backstory.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a low-level former member of the Taliban, is accused with others of plotting the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. He has been in U.S. custody since 2002 and at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004. When he was first captured, he was turned over to the CIA for interrogation, not the Department of Justice for prosecution.

The practice of the federal government immediately following 9/11, when it captured anyone overseas from whom it believed it could extract national security information, was to hand the person over to the CIA for torture — the feds call it “enhanced interrogation” — at a “dark site” in a foreign country with which the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty.

The reason for the location of the torture was the erroneous belief by DOJ and CIA officials that torture conducted or condoned by American personnel is not prosecutable if it occurs outside the U.S.

That has never been the law in the U.S., but it has been the practice of the DOJ and the CIA to shield their personnel with secrecy when they are caught engaging in torture in a foreign country.

However, because either the tortured person or someone connected to whatever the tortured person revealed was to be tried in a federal court, and because no federal court can admit evidence against a defendant that was obtained under torture, the feds devised a scheme around this.

That scheme called for FBI “clean teams” to interrogate the tortured person after the torture was completed, using conventional and lawful interrogation techniques. These techniques often proved more successful than CIA torture. Because these techniques were lawful, and the person being interrogated was advised of his rights and treated humanely by the FBI, the information thus obtained from him was usable in federal court.

At trial, a defendant can always demonstrate that he had been tortured, not to obtain the jury’s sympathy but to enable his lawyers to argue to the jurors that they should disregard as unconstitutional, immoral, unlawful and un-American whatever evidence the torture produced.

Al-Nashiri’s lawyers told the court and the prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay that they intend to argue at trial to the jury that the government has the wrong man and that the true plotters have already been killed by U.S. forces. The feds, in order to counter that argument, told the court that they have statements that al-Nashiri made during his torture that can arguably be used to question his defense.

If the trial judge in the court in Guantanamo Bay had followed the law — the Constitution, the statutes and the rules of procedure, all of which profoundly reject the fruits of cruel and unusual punishment and shocking behavior — as well as American history, he would have excluded from the trial whatever al-Nashiri told his torturers while they had a broomstick well into his rectum.

If the trial judge had followed the law and our values, he would have dismissed the case against al-Nashiri because the government’s behavior shocks the conscience. If the trial judge had followed the law, he would have ordered the torturers into his court room and had them arrested on the spot.

But the trial judge in this case did not follow American law and rejected American values and all sense of human decency when he authorized the government to introduce at trial a partial transcript of the statements al-Nashiri allegedly made under torture. He also broke with 230 years of precedent. He also gave judicial credibility to governmental barbarism and nihilism in the extreme, which holds that individual human beings are subject to the state and, since their rights come from the state, they and their rights exist at the pleasure of the state.

The government lies, cheats, steals and kills; and it has written laws that permit it to do so and make legal recourse against it nearly impossible.

But nothing it does is more damnable than torture.

Torture is the ultimate triumph of the state over a person and the ultimate degradation of personhood. It is a complete rejection of the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And it doesn’t work.

The history of torture is the history of victims divorced from reality by overwhelming fear and unbearable pain and willing to say whatever the torturers demand in return for a cessation of the pain. Stated differently, the fruits of torture are divorced from the truth. As a truth-producing mechanism, torture is a failure.

Many appeals remain for al-Nashiri before his jury trial comes to pass; and torture — with all its sufferings by victim and perpetrators — is part of the history of his case. I trust that saner judicial heads in the appellate process will prevail and this precedent-shattering and monstrous decision will soon be overturned. But its damage is done.

The government of the United States engages in torture and will continue to do so until the torturers are punished. And the prosecutors for whom the torturers work will someday try again to get the fruits of their barbaric behavior legitimized in an American courtroom.

When will the government stop the use of torture? Whom will it torture next? Why does it swear to uphold the Constitution and then trash it?

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

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The Rutherford Institute :: Make Way for the Snitch State: The All-Seeing Fourth Branch of Government | By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2021

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/make_way_for_the_snitch_state_the_all_seeing_fourth_branch_of_government

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“It is just when people are all engaged in snooping on themselves and one another that they become anesthetized to the whole process. As information itself becomes the largest business in the world, data banks know more about individual people than the people do themselves. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.”—Marshall McLuhan, From Cliche To Archetype

We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.

This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.

Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace.

Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.

It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

We’re being surveilled right down to our genes,

See the rest here

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Dangerous Anti-Science Conspiracy Theorists To Continue Wearing Masks Outside

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2021

“We have no idea what is going through these people’s minds,” said FBI spokesman Arnold Briggs. “They were so eager to get injected with something, and yet they insist on masks like they don’t think the vaccination did anything.

https://babylonbee.com/news/people-still-wearing-masks-to-be-locked-away-for-being-dangerous-lunatics

U.S.—The pandemic has come with big changes for everyone, and in some, it’s caused downright insane behavior. Perhaps the most insane are those who were eager to get the vaccine and yet insist on wearing a mask like they have no idea what a vaccine is. Law enforcement is finally going to do something, as they’ve announced they will now apprehend and lock up these lunatics for the protection of themselves and others.

“We have no idea what is going through these people’s minds,” said FBI spokesman Arnold Briggs. “They were so eager to get injected with something, and yet they insist on masks like they don’t think the vaccination did anything. Some even try to put masks on children. These are crazy, crazy people, and they need to be isolated from society — but not because of COVID-19, from which they are no longer at risk.”

The FBI is telling everyone not to approach any vaccinated person wearing a mask but to instead call authorities. They will then apprehend the individual and try to reason with the person, explaining what a vaccine is and why people wear masks so that maybe the person will understand why they should take it off. If that doesn’t work, the individual will be locked in an insane asylum, where hopefully a series of electroshocks will jump-start the brain into working again.

Most people are happy about this new policy, but dangerous lunatics oppose it. “Mask! Gotta wear a mask!” said one deranged vaccinated person who was wearing a mask outside. “Maaaaaask!” he yelled as he was carted away.

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The “Russian Threat” – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on April 26, 2021

Today even in Republican and conservative circles to question Putin’s demonization raises disapproving eyebrows (the same for China and Iran).  The US Establishment has succeeded in labeling objective analysis as “pro-Russian” (or pro-Chinese or pro-Iranian). This means that an objective view of US/Russian relations is off-limits to US policymakers.  

The “Russian threat” is another hoax, one that will destroy the world.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/04/25/the-russian-threat/

Paul Craig Roberts

During 2016  CIA director John Brennan and FBI director James Comey, together with the corrupt Democrat party, began orchestrating Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from reducing the risk of nuclear war by normalizing relations with Russia.  President Trump tried to nip a New Cold War in the bud, but that was not in the interest of the power and profit of the military/security complex which desperately needs the “Russian threat” as its raison d’etre. 

Stephen Cohen, myself and a few others expressed concern that the tensions between the two  nuclear powers were being driven to more dangerous highs than ever existed during the 20th century Cold War.  Many websites joined in debunking the orchestrated Russiagate fabrication.

To discredit these voices, a new website, PropOrNot, suddenly appeared with a list of 200 “Russian agents/dupes.”  Those of us who had raised red flags about Russiagate and the worsening of tensions were on the list. The Washington Post gave the accusation credibility by reporting the PropOrNot accusation that those who dissented from a hostile policy toward Russia were “Putin agents.”

A number of the falsely accused websites were intimidated and abandoned the truth.  CounterPunch went even further. It dropped its best and most incisive writers—people such as Mike Whitney and Diana Johnstone.  CounterPunch, which  had once collected, published, and marketed a collection of my essays as a book, suddenly discovered that it preferred fiction over fact.  Other websites that had religiously reproduced all of my columns now became selective about which parts of the official narrative they would permit to be examined on their sites.  This was, perhaps, the beginning of the movement to de-platform all who challenge the narrative.

The threat to truth-tellers has now been elevated by election thief Joe Biden’s latest Executive Order declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat.” Pepe Escobar reports that Biden’s order opens every American to being accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. “A sub-paragraph (C), detailing ‘actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad,’ is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.”

“Supports Russia’s position” includes an objective description and non-partisan analysis of Russian policy. The crucial point is that, in effect, Biden’s executive order places everyone reporting objectively on Russia’s political positions as a potential threat to the United States.  https://www.unz.com/pescobar/putin-rewrites-the-law-of-the-geopolitical-jungle/  

If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we have undergone the complete collapse of the United States.  Truth is prohibited in the media, school systems, and universities if it conflicts with the elite agendas served by the official narratives. The First Amendment is dead and buried. Free speech is reserved for the official narratives, such as “systemic racism”  and “Russian threat.” Those who exercise their Constitutional right find themselves de-platformed or fired.  

To understand how the victory of propaganda over truth elevates the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon, consider the difference between the 20th century and 21st century cold wars.

In the original Cold War both Soviet and American leaders worked to defuse tensions.  Agreements were made on arms control and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. There were regular meetings or summits between American and Soviet leaders.  Diplomatic decorum was maintained.  There were agreements that permitted each side to inspect the other’s compliance.  

This process began with President John F. Kennedy and  Soviet First Secretary Khrushchev.  It continued through President Reagan and, more or less, President George H. W. Bush.  It ended with the Clinton regime and has been downhill ever since.  President Trump intended to reduce the dangerous tensions, but was not permitted.  Indeed, his intent was sufficient cause for the Establishment to drive him from office.  2020 was a coup, not an election.

In the 20th century Cold War Russian experts differed in their assessments of the threat, and their differences were publicly aired. Differing assessments were debated. Dissenters were not demonized as Russian agents.  Today American Russian experts find that being Russophobic is a career boost. In the 20th century the New York Times and Washington Post were aligned with peace efforts. Today they are part of the neoconservative warmongers’ propaganda ministry.

The alarming conclusion is that since the Clinton regime, the US government has worked consistently to worsen relations with Russia even to the extent of publicly demonizing the Russian president and strangling objective debate in the US.  This is the perfect foundation for war.

All the while insouciant Americans elected governments that successively raised the likelihood of nuclear annihiliation while shutting down dissident concerns.  As I reported on March 17, “In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda.  Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.”

Today even in Republican and conservative circles to question Putin’s demonization raises disapproving eyebrows (the same for China and Iran).  The US Establishment has succeeded in labeling objective analysis as “pro-Russian” (or pro-Chinese or pro-Iranian). This means that an objective view of US/Russian relations is off-limits to US policymakers.  

The “Russian threat” is another hoax, one that will destroy the world.

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FBI Raids Business Renting Anonymous Safety Deposit Boxes, Forces Customers To Reveal Identity To Get Stuff Back

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2021

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FIB: privacy is illegal. Not new news.

Beverly Hills attorney Nina Marino, who represents several US Private Vaults clients, said that even if there were some criminal customers, “that does not authorize the government’s conduct in this sweeping action of not only seizing innocent box owners’ property, but viewing that property.”

“Every single person that paid money on a monthly basis did that with the expectation of maintaining their anonymity, and it’s just outrageous that the government has such low regard for the 4th Amendment and for an individual’s expectation of privacy,” she added.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-raids-business-renting-anonymous-safety-deposit-boxes-forces-customers-reveal?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

Tyler Durden's Photoby Tyler Durden

In a case that’s already sparked one lawsuit, a Beverly Hills strip mall business which rents private, anonymous safe deposit boxes was raided by the FBI last month – at which time the agency conducted a blanket seizure of hundreds of customers’ belongings.Federal agents relied on informants and at least one undercover officer to gather information about transactions that took place at U.S. Private Vaults.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

To retrieve their valuables, customers will need to “identify themselves and subject themselves to an investigation to verify their legal ownership,” according to the Los Angeles Times, which noted that one customer has already gone to court claiming that the government overreached by confiscating the contents of every security box.

The company, U.S. Private Vaults, has been accused of laundering money for drug dealers – who anonymously stashed guns, drugs and cash.

In an indictment against U.S. Private Vaults, Inc., the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles accused the company of marketing itself deliberately to attract criminals, saying it brazenly promoted itself as a place customers could store valuables with confidence that tax authorities would be hard-pressed to learn their identities or what was stored in their locked boxes. To access the facility, customers needed no identification; it took just an eye and hand scan to unlock the door.

“We don’t even want to know your name,” it advertised, according to prosecutors.  –Los Angeles Times

The feds used “multiple informants and at least one undercover police officer who posed as customers” to surveil the store and gather information about its customers.

One of the company’s owners and several employees are accused of being involved in drug sales that took place at the business, as well as helping customers to convert cash into gold in a way that would avoid suspicion. Of note, U.S. Private Vaults shared a storefront with Gold Business – named as a co-conspirator in the indictment – which is accused of helping customers convert cash into gold to avoid having to report currency transactions which exceed $10,000.A sign taped to the front door of U.S. Private Vaults instructs customers on how to recover their possessions.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

In the March 9 indictment that was unsealed Friday, a federal grand jury charged U.S. Private Vaults with three counts of conspiracy — to launder money, distribute narcotics and structure cash transactions to dodge detection. None of the people who are allegedly behind the operation were named in the court records. It is was not immediately clear whether any individuals will face criminal charges as well. –Los Angeles Times

The FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency took five days to go through and process all the boxes after the raid began on March 22, according to court documents. US prosecutors argued on Friday that while the original warrant remains under seal, the magistrate judge who approved it thought that the sweeping seizures were appropriate.

“The government seized the nests of safety deposit boxes because there was overwhelming evidence that USPV was a criminal business that conspired with its criminal clients to distribute drugs, launder money, and structure transactions to avoid currency reporting requirements, among other offenses,” prosecutors claimed in papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.

According to prosecutors, the raid produced an unspecified number of weapons, fentanyl, OxyContin, and “huge stacks of $100 bills” which were flagged by drug-sniffing dogs. One box reportedly had $1 million in cash.

The indictment was unsealed on Friday – just one hour before a court-issued deadline to respond to a lawsuit brought by a US Private Vaults customers who alleged that the blanket seizure was unconstitutional.

The unnamed customer, listed in court papers as John Doe, said the search warrant should not have authorized seizure of the jewelry, currency and bullion that he kept in his three boxes at U.S. Private Vaults, because there was no probable cause to suspect the person committed a crime.

“Just as the tenant of each apartment controls that space and therefore has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, each of the hundreds of renters of safety deposit boxes … has a separate reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her separately controlled box or boxes,” the person’s attorney, Benjamin N. Gluck, wrote in the complaint. –Los Angeles Times

The customer seeks to stop the FBI from requiring anonymous customers to reveal themselves and undergo an investigation to verify legal ownership of their valuables – with attorney Benjamin Gluck arguing that the government is holding his  client’s goods “hostage” until he identifies himself. Gluck pointed to a statement by assistant US Attorney Andrew Brown describing the procedure for retrieving valuables.

“Though Mr. Brown perhaps deserves credit for his candor, his announced plan is grossly improper and manifestly unconstitutional,” wrote Gluck, noting that Brown had previously conceded in court papers that some US Private Vaults customers were “honest citizens to whom the government wishes to return their property.”

“But the majority of the box holders are criminals who used USPV’s anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth,” he wrote. “To distinguish between honest and criminal customers, the government must examine the specific facts of each box and each claim, precisely what the anonymous plaintiff wants to prevent by refusing to disclose not only his identity, but even the specific boxes he claims are his.”Federal agents have seized evidence from U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills business that has been charged with three counts of conspiracy.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Beverly Hills attorney Nina Marino, who represents several US Private Vaults clients, said that even if there were some criminal customers, “that does not authorize the government’s conduct in this sweeping action of not only seizing innocent box owners’ property, but viewing that property.”

“Every single person that paid money on a monthly basis did that with the expectation of maintaining their anonymity, and it’s just outrageous that the government has such low regard for the 4th Amendment and for an individual’s expectation of privacy,” she added.

UCLA law professor Beth Colgan called the issue “fascinating,” adding that the big question is whether the search warrant was based on sufficient probable cause to believe that evidence of criminal wrongdoing would be found in virtually all of the safe deposit boxes.

“I would just be very surprised if a judge had approved a warrant that would allow the FBI to go through every single box absent evidence that the entire system was corrupt,” said Colgan. “Maybe they have the evidence, and that’s the thing we don’t know.”

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WHO IS SHAKING THE JAR? – The Burning Platform

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2021

“If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit.” – Glenn Greenwald

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/03/22/who-is-shaking-the-jar/

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?” – Shera Starr

Who's Shaking the Jar? - The Thinking Conservative

A few weeks ago, I saw the above quote in Jeff Thomas’ article Learning from Ants, and it has been reverberating in my mind ever since. It is a perfect analogy for what has been happening in this country for years, with the jar lately being shaken at a rate faster than a Biden vote count increase at 3:00 am in a swing state. Everyone in this country, and the world, is at each other’s throats. Who is shaking the jar? Why are they shaking the jar? Why do they want us fighting each other?

If they keep us focused on fighting each other, they believe we will not notice their reprehensible criminality, as they manipulate the masses through psychological engineering and the employment of propaganda techniques to push their desired narrative. If you ask someone – who is shaking the jar? – they will likely answer based on the standard left vs right, liberal vs conservative, white vs black paradigm which has been created by those benefiting from conflict. It is always a safe bet to follow the money when trying to identify the culprits.

The elevated intensity of manipulation by those pulling the strings of societal discontent reveals much about their level of desperation in creating more chaos, because the awakening of more to the truth, endangers their wealth, power, and control. They have turned the shaking power up to eleven in the last year, as an implosion of the Ponzi financial system was looming as we entered 2020, and the Deep State oligarchs needed cover to implement a massive injection of liquidity into the veins of Wall Street bankers, the medical industrial complex, and mega-corporations like Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target.

The weaponization of a contagious, but highly non-lethal to anyone under 80 years old, flu became the perfect camouflage of fear to bailout the teetering financial system and creating turmoil, chaos, and distrust among the populace. The non-stop fear mongering was purposely ramped to keep the public distracted while the national wealth pillaging operation proceeded at a breakneck pace behind the scenes. $600 for you and $10 trillion for them.

The monstrous effort to polarize the country by the psychopaths in suits pulling the strings of societal disgruntlement has the ultimate purpose of subjugation and dominion over every aspect of our lives. They no longer feel the need to conceal their treachery, as they openly proclaim their Great Reset, where you will own nothing and be happy – living in a 200 sq ft shipping container, eating synthetic meat, drinking Gates endorsed reprocessed piss, snacking on bugs, and praying their windmill and solar power works on calm cloudy days as a frigid winter storm front arrives.

A right-wing meme on Twitter positioning George Soros as the originator of a coronavirus world conspiracy involving Bill Gates, James Comey, Rep Adam Schiff and others

None of this is an accident. It is not occurring naturally. This is the result of a designed blueprint to control and rule the world by a relatively small cadre of billionaire oligarch globalists, Big Tech despots, bought off politicians, the banking cabal fronted by their puppets at the Federal Reserve, surveillance state operatives, military industrial complex parasites, captured corporate media, mega-corporations, and mid-level government apparatchiks sucking on the teat of the Deep State.

These people are the real government who had been pulling the strings behind the curtain, but now feel emboldened to openly execute their plans, after observing how easily the masses could be manipulated and controlled through fear during this conveniently engineered pandemic. Decades of dumbing down the populace through government run public school indoctrination disguised as education, has produced millions of non-critical thinking barely sentient consumers who have their beliefs fashioned, choices formed, and opinions dictated by manipulative men operating in the shadows.

Those pulling the strings understand the psychological processes, societal relationships, and technology driven social media addictions of the masses. They know how to sell a narrative based upon the emotions, feelings, fears and biases of the masses. With so few capable of critical thinking and seeing through their deceptive manipulation of the story-line, complete control over mainstream and social media gives those pulling the strings tremendous power over the direction of society.

And if they can keep the majority at each other’s throats, distracted by trivialities, minutia, false narratives, and unable to decipher the truth, they can keep us subjugated and constrained while they pilfer and pillage the wealth of the nation. It is a despicably audacious plan but is working to perfection. But, as always with humans, their hubris and myopia have convinced themselves they are infallible and immune to defeat. Their greed and arrogance will ultimately lead to their downfall.

Fighting in Our Streets and God | Tennessee Bible College

Glenn Greenwald recently called out the faux journalists working in the corporate media complex for their shamefully pathetic attempt to twist the truth into the false narrative required by their Deep State puppet masters. They are nothing but highly paid whores doing tricks at the behest of their oligarch pimps.

See the rest here

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The Rutherford Institute :: Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2021

According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/digital_trails_how_the_fbi_is_identifying_tracking_and_rounding_up_dissidents

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.”—Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times

Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps.

With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up.

Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

This is what it means to live in a suspect society.

The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Capitol riots shows exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.

Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents are compiling a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The amount of digital information is staggering: 15,000 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage; 1,600 electronic devices; 270,000 digital media tips; at least 140,000 photos and videos; and about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones.

And that’s just what we know.

More than 300 individuals from 40 states have already been charged and another 280 arrested in connection with the events of January 6. As many as 500 others are still being hunted by government agents.

Also included in this data roundup are individuals who may have had nothing to do with the riots but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.

In a suspect society such as ours, the burden of proof has been flipped: now, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.

For instance, you didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol riots to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators have reportedly been tracking—and questioning—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol. One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long.

All of the many creepy, calculating, invasive investigative and surveillance tools the government has acquired over the years are on full display right now in the FBI’s ongoing efforts to bring the rioters to “justice.”

FBI agents are matching photos with drivers’ license pictures; tracking movements by way of license plate toll readers; and zooming in on physical identifying marks such as moles, scars and tattoos, as well as brands, logos and symbols on clothing and backpacks. They’re poring over hours of security and body camera footage; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts.

It’s not just the FBI on the hunt, however.

They’ve enlisted the help of volunteer posses of private citizens, such as Deep State Dogs, to collaborate on the grunt work. As Dinah Voyles Pulver reports, once Deep State Dogs locates a person and confirms their identity, they put a package together with the person’s name, address, phone number and several images and send it to the FBI.

According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

The lesson to be learned: Big Brother, Big Sister and all of their friends are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

The government has the know-how.

See the rest here

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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FBI’s Ridiculous “Capitol Siege Pipe Bomb” Video Is An All-Out Assault on Common Sense – Revolver

Posted by M. C. on March 13, 2021

Just last week, the FBI confessed to Congress – and not without prodding from Senator Ron Johnson – that no guns had actually been recovered or confiscated on Capitol grounds.

Just this week, it leaked out from court filings that the FBI has now indicted one of their own Federal informants – a third one, apparently – who the FBI originally paid to infiltrate the group in the first place.

If we find out months from now that one or more of the violent “terror” plots associated with 1/6 were actually an Infiltration-Incitement-Indictment story like the Whitmer Plot, will history be rewritten to reflect the Big Reveal?

Or will The Narrative become sacred before it can be challenged?

https://www.revolver.news/2021/03/fbis-ridiculous-capitolsiege-pipe-bomb-video-is-an-all-out-assault-on-common-sense/

This week, the FBI released video footage of their key suspect in the vaunted “pipe bombs planted at DNC and GOP offices” plot from the MAGA Capitol protests of 1/6. Much is riding on this “pipe bomb” plot being legit, because the “armed insurrection” narrative is falling apart without it. 

Just last week, the FBI confessed to Congress – and not without prodding from Senator Ron Johnson – that no guns had actually been recovered or confiscated on Capitol grounds. That admission corroborates the thorough review by AmGreatness’s Julie Kelly of more than 200 DOJ charging documents, and whose conclusion went completely unmentioned by either FBI Director Chris Wray or incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland in their fire-and-brimstone assessments of the deadly threat MAGA protesters posed that day. https://www.youtube.com/embed/AlxsZ-kQ5Ks?start=267&feature=oembed

With the “Guns at Capitol” meme down, only two serious, terroristic plots implicating MAGA on 1/6 remain. One is the “guns & bombs stashed in cars and outside the city” plots, principally related to the Oath Keepers, which has been the subject of an exhaustive forthcoming Revolver News investigation; the other is this eagerly-hyped “pipe bomb” plot.

So this “pipe bomb” plot better be real, and it better be the authentic act of a genuine Trump supporter, or basically all they have left is the strange case of the “Oath Keepers” – and we will tell you in advance that is not looking pretty for The Narrative or the FBI. 

The Tale of The Tape

Let’s take a deeper look at this week’s FBI roadshow. More than two full months after the event in question, after circulating hundreds of high-resolution close-ups of MAGA Moms and teenage girls, the public finally gets two minutes of grainy, low-res source footage that the FBI surely had access to within days – or at most weeks – of 1/6: 0:04 / 4:47

WATCH: Check out Darren Beattie’s latest interviews

The video release came with tremendous FBI fanfare. A full-length Twitter thread, a formal press release plus distributions on YouTube and Facebook, and even personal, heartfelt entreaties in an almost selfie-style video from FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono to the public to please, please help us.

If the name Steven D’Antuono sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Readers might recall a must-read Revolver Exclusive from months ago detailing how D’Antuono appears to have helped frame the MAGA movement from his own local Detroit FBI Field Office, overseeing his Federal agents’ Infiltration-Incitement-Indictment sting operation of loners and losers during the so-called “Gretchen Witmer Kidnapping” plot. Then, with only a year of leadership in Detroit, D’Antuono was strangely and immediately promoted to the FBI Washington Field Office right before the election.

In the Whitmer Plot, once you get past the screaming headlines implying MAGA crazies plotted to storm the Michigan Capitol building and kidnap the Governor, you find that more than 25% of the plot’s participants were all FBI operatives (at least two undercover informants, and at least two undercover agents) who assumed key leadership roles in inciting a bunch of mentally unstable people in a Facebook chat group to do something stupid.

Just this week, it leaked out from court filings that the FBI has now indicted one of their own Federal informants – a third one, apparently – who the FBI originally paid to infiltrate the group in the first place.

If we find out months from now that one or more of the violent “terror” plots associated with 1/6 were actually an Infiltration-Incitement-Indictment story like the Whitmer Plot, will history be rewritten to reflect the Big Reveal?

Or will The Narrative become sacred before it can be challenged?

That is why we must demand these answers now, and let the chips fall where they may.

The point is, straight after FBI agents stirred up a “domestic terror” plot to blame on MAGA in October 2020, the same local FBI director who ran that FBI operation in Detroit is immediately moved to local Washington, DC and placed in charge of the “domestic terror” events of the MAGA Insurrection. Don’t worry, a whole lot more on this is coming in the next Revolver installments.

Let’s get back to Director D’Antuono’s personal plea this week:

“These pipe bombs were viable devices that could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death. We need the public’s help to identify the individual responsible for placing these pipe bombs to ensure they will not harm themselves or anyone else.” pic.twitter.com/hychpmD5v3

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) March 9, 2021

They’re stumped, you see. The God-tier surveillance state Orwellian Panopticon powers the FBI harnessed to swiftly identify more than 300 Capitol trespass suspects have suddenly failed them. They’re at their wits end now, and it’s down to the old-fashioned way: Uncle Sam needs you, American Citizen, to identify The Single Most Lethal Terrorist From The Entire “New 9/11” MAGA Insurrection based on…

…the suspect’s “gait, body language and mannerisms”?

Yes, “gait, body language or mannerisms.” The FBI press release further stresses they are “asking the public to come forward” with “any odd or out-of-character behavior you noticed in a family member, friend, or coworker” similar to the mannerisms of the person in the video. 

Got that? Look upon your friends, your partners, and loved ones. Squint in their souls and ask yourself: “Do they loiter and perambulate like the grainy ghost in that sequence of four consecutive 360p SD videos the FBI just posted? Is my next door neighbor secretly the MAGA Mystery Unabomber?”

These MAGA terrorists are everywhere!

I Spy, With My Little Eye, A Few Easy Questions For The FBI

Let’s break down this half-baked, assault-on-common sense video in surgical detail.

First, the FBI has access to every single video camera in every residence, business, and public property on Capitol Hill. The sum total of what they released is so grainy and so useless that in 131 seconds of footage, you can’t even conclusively make out the suspect’s race. More on that below.

Hundreds of replies to the FBI are either unable to conclusively make out a gender or are confident it’s actually a woman:

Despite the FBI knowing the precise date, times and locations of the suspect in question, evidently they have no cell phone tracking data from pings in the area that night. Nearly all of the 300+ prosecutions for 1/6 have been of out-of-towners, so unless this MAGA Mystery Unabomber traveled back to 1996 and printed out, then dutifully followed Mapquest instructions, he probably navigated his multi-hour jaunt around key sites of the nation’s capital by cell phone.

If he/she/zir wasn’t a “Unabomber” and was making cell phone calls to co-conspirators on this multi-hour jaunt, the FBI should be able to trace all calls made from and around the areas of the exact locations and times they identified on video. FBI, has that been done? 

We evidently have no fingerprint evidence gleaned from component parts of the homemade pipe bombs. We know these components included 1×8 inch galvanized pipes, a kitchen timer and homemade black powder. 

Was the MAGA Mystery Unabomber’s OpSec so tight that he was wearing gloves at home the whole time he/she/zir was cooking up these pipe bombs, so no trace was left anywhere on the equipment? Remember, thin gloves still leave fingerprints. So this guy/girl/zir would have to be wearing thick gloves, at home, the entire time he/she/zir was manipulating extremely thin one-inch wide pipes, packing fine powder, and precisely programming the tiny kitchen timer.

Good criminals recommend thick gloves all the way up to the elbow just to make sure no DNA residue from any part of the body ever gets on any materials you’re working with. What’s the likelihood of such strict OpSec procedures being followed by a total amateur for a “pipe bomb” built so poorly it never went off?

Anyway, what were the results of the forensics? Full fingerprint matching to the entire US database of criminals can be done from start to finish in just 10 minutes. FBI, when you ran the forensics on the pipe bomb and the component parts, did it match with any of the 70 million individuals in the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) criminal master file, or the additional 30 million individuals in the IAFIS civil master file?

And what is the likelihood that the act of building and planting a full-on homemade pipe bomb to blow up the entire GOP and DNC is the suspect’s very first crime, in a country where more people have criminal records than college diplomas?

FBI, do you think that before you told 330 million Americans to scan our spouses, siblings, sons, daughter, friends and co-workers for whether their “gait, body language and mannerisms” match The Most Wanted Terrorist In The Country, you could have also told us whether to limit our search for people who either do or do not have already have a criminal record?

Not to beat a dead horse, but you can glean gender and race from the forensics, so you could narrow your search pool by at least 200 million people if you ran those basic every-investigation tests on the most important one in the country.

See the rest here

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