Tag: fbi

Boulder Shooting Suspect Ahmad Al-Issa Was On FBI’s Radar Prior To Shooting Spree

Today the FBI revealed that, as seems to happen in virtually every terrorist attack or mass shooting, the FBI was aware of Boulder, Colorado shooting suspect Ahmad Al-Issa prior to yesterday’s deadly shooting.

According to The New York Times, “The suspect’s identity was known to the F.B.I. because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.”

National File has confirmed that Al-Issa is  a devout Muslim who believes in conspiracies, including that “racist Islamophobic people” are hacking into his phone, and that there was more than one shooter involved in the tragic Christchurch Mosque Shooting in New Zealand. On his now-scrubbed Facebook page, Al-Issa also frequently read and shared negative news about President Donald Trump, written by mainstream publications including The Washington Post, The Intercept, and PBS.

Keep reading

Capitol Investigation Seeks to Criminalize Political Dissent

In the early hours of March 12, FBI agents in southwestern Florida barricaded a neighborhood to prepare to raid the home of one resident. Christopher Worrell of Cape Coral was arrested and charged with several counts related to the January 6 Capitol melee. Even though Worrell had been cooperating with the FBI for two months, the agency nonetheless unleashed a massive, and no doubt costly, display of force to take him into custody.

Law enforcement agents, according to one neighbor who spoke with a reporter, wore “whole outfits . . . like military and it was crazy. There was like six or seven . . . big black vehicles. They busted down the front door.” The raid included “armed men with helmets and a tanker truck” and was partially executed by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Worrell never entered the Capitol building on January 6; he isn’t accused of committing a violent crime. But a D.C. judge overturned a Florida judge’s ruling to release Worrell pending further review of his case. He remains in jail.

Keep reading

Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents

“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.

Keep reading

Treasure Hunters Press FBI for Answers on Suspicious Pennsylvania Dig

In the latest twist in a rather contentious legal battle between a father-and-son treasure hunting team and the federal government, emails obtained by the duo seemingly strengthen their argument that the FBI secretly recovered a long-lost horde of Civil War gold and are hiding the discovery from the public. The strange saga began back in March of 2018 when federal agents unexpectedly descended upon a Pennsylvania state forest to excavate a spot where Dennis and Kem Parada believe that a legendary bevy of gold bars had been buried after they went missing in the summer of 1863.

Given the specificity of where the FBI was digging, it was widely assumed that they were looking for the lost treasure, but the federal government only said at the time that they were investigating a “cultural heritage site.” Claiming to have been promised access to the site as the excavation unfolded, the Paradas later expressed misgivings about the whole affair because authorities kept them from observing the project and, once it was completed, told them that nothing was found at the spot. Since that time, the treasure hunters have been on a different kind of quest: a litigious search for proof that the federal government is not being honest about the dig and that, in fact, they had recovered the lost gold.

Keep reading

FBI Director Wray won’t share Officer Brian Sicknick’s cause of death with senators

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday refused to tell senators the cause of death for Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, whose death heavily influenced coverage of the Capitol riot.

Reports after Jan. 6 originally said Sicknick died after being bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher while fighting off then-President Donald Trump’s supporters, which authorities didn’t deny at the time. The claim became part of the impeachment trial case against Trump for allegedly inciting the riot — though his family now says it’s untrue.

Wray cited an “ongoing” investigation into Sicknick’s death.

“I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him — after all, he was here protecting all of you. And as soon as there is information that we can appropriately share, we want to be able to do that. But at the moment, the investigation is still ongoing,” Wray said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Keep reading

NYPD Cop’s Deathbed Confession Implicates FBI and NYPD in the Assassination of Malcom X

Last month marked the 56th anniversary of the assassination of Malcom X. Since that fateful day back in 1965, controversy has swarmed the case with conspiracy theories abounding. The official story happens to be one of the most flawed versions.

According to the official story, Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in 1925, was assassinated by rival Black Muslims on February 21, 1965 while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights.

Three members of the Nation of Islam (NOI) — Talmadge Hayer or Thomas Hagan (a.k.a Mujahid Abdul Halim), Norman Butler (a.k.a Muhammad Abdul Aziz) and Thomas Johnson (a.k.a Khalil Islam) — were convicted of his murder in 1966 — despite glaring inconsistencies in the case.

Officials at the time of his murder claimed Malcolm’s assassination was the result of an ongoing dispute between him and the NOI. Though Malcolm had left the group in 1964 on bad terms, Butler (Aziz) and Johnson (Islam) have consistently professed their innocence, and scholars who have studied the case have raised doubts about the killing’s circumstances.

What’s more, there was no evidence linking Butler or Johnson to the crime. Butler even had an alibi for the time of the murder: He was at home resting after injuring his leg. This was backed up by a doctor who had treated him and who took the stand during the trial. Nonetheless, all three men were found guilty in 1966 and sentenced to life in prison. Case closed.

Following the release of a Netflix documentary series last year, that delved into these doubts, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced that his office was going to review the case. Little has come from this investigation and it looked like more lip service from officials.

Then, last week, a letter was released, reportedly written by Ray Wood who was an undercover police officer at the time. Wood’s attorney and family claim Wood wrote the letter on his deathbed confessing the NYPD and the FBI conspired to kill Malcolm X.

Keep reading

Corporate Media Parrot FBI Talking Points as More Americans Turn to Encrypted Communication Online

Before he became a household name as the accused spoiler of the 2016 election, James Comey, FBI director under President Barack Obama, was already well-known in tech circles as a crusader against strong encryption. Still smarting from Edward Snowden’s exposure of the US government’s massive and illegal domestic spying operations, Comey grabbed any microphone he could during the waning years of Obama’s tenure to warn Americans that encryption technology was putting us all at grave risk by causing law enforcement to “go dark.”

Cryptography is the art of encoding text or other data such that only those who have the secret key can read it. This data can include anything from messages and records to digital currency—but these days encryption most commonly protects account passwords and other sensitive information as it traverses the internet.

Encryption has been around for millennia and, in modern times, it is used on a daily basis by nearly every person living in a technologized society. But like any technology, it can frighten those in power when wielded by the relatively powerless. In the summer of 2015, Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption had suddenly inspired the FBI “to consider how criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their advantage.”

Sensitive to the public’s lingering outrage at the Snowden revelations, Comey turned to the usual parade of horribles in his attempts to convince Congress that encryption isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: “Malicious actors can take advantage of the internet to covertly plot violent robberies, murders and kidnappings,” he warned. “Sex offenders can establish virtual communities to buy, sell and encourage the creation of new depictions of horrific sexual abuse of children.”

Comey preferred to use “horrific sexual abuse of children” and the specter of terrorism to disparage encryption technology—recall the showdown between the FBI and Apple after the perpetrators of a late-2015 massacre in San Bernardino left behind an encrypted iPhone. But the ACLU (4/1/16) quickly exposed his fraud: Researchers uncovered 63 court orders for access to encrypted devices and reported, “To the extent we know about the underlying facts, these cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes”—rather than terrorists and pedophiles.

In the wake of the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol Building, this pattern is repeating itself again…only now corporate media are taking up the FBI’s mantle on their own behalf.

Keep reading