Tag: fbi

The FBI raided a notable journalist’s home. Rolling Stone didn’t tell readers why

Last Oct. 18, Rolling Stone served up a foreboding scoop: The FBI had raided the home of a renowned journalist at the top of his game months earlier, and he had disappeared from public view.

It should have been a coup. Instead, acrimony inside the newsroom over how that scoop was edited led to accusations that the magazine’s brash leader pulled punches in overseeing coverage of someone he knew. The reporter who wrote the story, enraged, accepted a position at a sister publication two months later. And her complaints prompted a senior attorney for the magazine’s parent company to review what happened.

FBI raids on journalists are rare. News organizations often respond with formal protests and legal challenges. Under a 2021 Justice Department policy, raids, subpoenas and other compulsory means of obtaining materials from reporters are banned for any investigation of matters related to their journalism. The policy became the basis for a significant shift in the stance of the Justice Department toward the press.

The Rolling Stone story created a stir. Reporter Tatiana Siegel stated that the April 22 raid was “quite possibly, the first” carried out by the Biden administration on a journalist.

In this case, the journalist was ABC News national security producer James Gordon Meek. A former investigator for the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Meek had been with ABC News since 2013. He also was a producer of 3212 Un-Redacted, an investigative documentary that streamed on Hulu.

As published, the Rolling Stone article’s first two paragraphs lionized Meek’s record and swashbuckling style.

“Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus,” it stated.

As the story noted, Siegel’s sources told her “federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid.” Siegel reported that Meek left his job at ABC after the raid; a publishing contract with Simon & Schuster evaporated.

As edited by Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman, however, the article omitted a key fact that Siegel initially intended to include: Siegel had learned from her sources that Meek had been raided as part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse, something not publicly revealed until last month.

Why did Rolling Stone suggest Meek was targeted for his coverage of national security, rather than something unrelated to his journalism?

Neither Siegel nor Shachtman would comment for this story. This article is based on a review of some contemporaneous communications and also interviews with 10 people with knowledge of incidents described here, including several individuals at Rolling Stone, as well as people at ABC and federal law enforcement agencies.

Each asked not to be named because they were not authorized to disclose these matters publicly.

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FBI to exhume body of woman featured on Netflix series ‘The Keepers’

The FBI will exhume the body of a woman whose mysterious death was detailed in Netflix’s true-crime series “The Keepers,” as law enforcement officials explore a potential link with the cold case murder of a Baltimore nun. 

“The Keepers” investigated the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and Baltimore high school teacher, and allegations of sexual abuse by an influential Baltimore priest named Father Joseph Maskell in the 1960s. 

In November 1969, before Cesnik seemingly vanished, Joyce Malecki was strangled, stabbed and found submerged in a body of water at Fort Meade.

Malecki’s body will be exhumed from Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore with her family’s permission as the FBI explores an unspecified lead possibly connecting the two cases, Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, confirmed to news outlets. 

“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say the purpose of the exhumation is to collect evidence,” Wolfgang told WBAL-TV. “Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it up with a potential suspect they may already have.”

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N.C. Proud Boys had a liability — a member who was a sex offender, white supremacist and fed

Michael Alan Jones, a white supremacist, convicted sex offender and FBI informant, was a vetted member of the Charlotte, N.C., Proud Boys chapter, Raw Story has learned.

The revelation means that the Proud Boys — an extremist group that has loudly positioned itself as a guardian of public morality by protesting drag shows and other LGBTQ events — failed to properly vet a former member who had been convicted of a sex offense for having sex with a minor.

As Raw Story has previously reported, Jones recruited for the white supremacist terror network the Base, attended rallies with the more public facing white supremacist group Patriot Front, and fought with the police alongside the Proud Boys at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Following a traffic stop in upstate New York, Jones pleaded guilty in December to being a felon in possession of a gun. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

While Jones’ involvement by the Proud Boys has been previously reported, his one-time membership in the Charlotte chapter was confirmed last month during an acrimonious public spat on the social media app Telegram as a mutinous faction pushed aside the chapter’s one-time president.

Joshua Ballinger, the one-time president of the Charlotte Proud Boys chapter, referenced Jones by his nickname “Strategian” during a marathon exchange of video chats, audio chats and texts that ran up to 250 comments on June 13.

“Oh, are you talking about Strategian — the dude that was in f—ing Charlotte while you were in Charlotte and went through the same vetting that you went through, I guess?” Ballinger said. “Are you talking about that guy? That guy that was 19 and was sleeping with a 17-year-old? Even though, yeah, it is illegal and he shouldn’t have been doing it and that’s f—ing, to me, gross, but come on, man, you’re pulling a stretch.”

As previously reported by Raw Story, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police responded to a call for service at a house in Charlotte where Jones was staying in an attempt to locate a 17-year-old girl who was listed as a missing person. During the visit to the house, the police determined that the girl, described in the incident report as “mentally handicapped,” had been assaulted, while classifying the offense as “forcible rape.” The case was cleared because the victim chose not to prosecute.

While downplaying the alleged rape, Ballinger also misstated Jones’ age. He was 24 at the time of the incident.

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Not just public schools: Ohio PRIVATE school reports mothers to FBI for questioning leftist curriculum

Amy Gonzalez and Andrea Gross are suing Columbus Academy in Ohio for launching a retaliation campaign against them following complaints they made about the private school’s leftist curriculum.

According to reports, Columbus Academy reported Gonzalez and Gross to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), calling them “dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the entire Academy community. Administrators also allegedly attempted to destroy the two mothers’ reputation out of spite.

Filed on June 12, the lawsuit claims Columbus Academy overreacted to questions the two women had about critical race theory (CRT) concepts being embedded into their children’s curriculum, which they believe is “indoctrination.”

“And so, when I say an overreaction, I mean an overreaction of calling the police on us, alerting almost 900 faculty members that they had alerted the FBI that we were dangerous,” Gross told Fox News Digital.

“Just things that were so far beyond the pale that it would lead one to ask why? Why is the reaction so extreme?”

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FBI Make-Work Entrapment Schemes: Creating Criminals in Order to Arrest Them

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

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.

Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of 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.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

Clearly, this is not a government agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

Indeed, this same government agency 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.

Basically, it works like this: in order to justify their crime-fighting superpowers, the FBI manufactures criminals by targeting vulnerable individuals and feeding them anti-government propaganda; then, undercover agents and informants equip the targeted individuals with the training and resources to challenge what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing is government corruption; and finally, the FBI arrests the targeted individuals for engaging in anti-government, terrorist activities.

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The FBI Declassifies Data on a Famous Cryptozoologist / Ufologist


If you’re interested in UFOs, aliens and mysterious creatures, you’ll definitely want to see this: in just a couple of days ago, the FBI declassified its file on Ivan Sanderson (monster-hunter, author and Flying Saucer chaser). There are some intriguing stories in the file. And, one or two characters provide intriguing material. As I said, the man in person was the late Ivan Sanderson. If you’re not acquainted with him, here’s a bit of material on the man and his work. The American Philosophical Society said: “In the 1950s Sanderson became increasingly interested in the study of the unexplained, including cryptozoology and ufology. Sanderson founded the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) to look into such topics as UFOs, the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, the abominable snowman, and the Bermuda Triangle among others.” Indeed, throughout his life, Sanderson traveled everywhere and had wild encounters of the monstrous nature. There was, however, something else: namely, the interest of Sanderson by the FBI. With that said, let’s see what J. Edgar Hoover’s agents have in their website. Don’t miss it. You’ll want to read it for yourself.

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THE FBI GROOMED A 16-YEAR-OLD WITH “BRAIN DEVELOPMENT ISSUES” TO BECOME A TERRORIST

LAST WEEK, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of a teenager in Massachusetts on allegations of providing financial support to the Islamic State group.

A flurry of reports picked up on the arrest of Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old resident of the sleepy town of Wakefield, echoing government claims that an international terrorist financier and ISIS supporter had just been busted in the United States. The Department of Justice’s own press release on the case likewise trumpeted Ventura’s arrest for “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization.”

The only problem with the case and how it has been described, however, is that according to the government’s own criminal complaint, Ventura had never actually funded any terrorist group. The only “terrorist” he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old, solicited small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and directed him not to tell anyone else about their intimate online relationship, including his family.

The arrest has shaken his family, who denied allegations that their son was a terrorist and said that he had been manipulated by the FBI. Ventura’s father, Paul Ventura, told The Intercept that Mateo suffered from childhood developmental issues and had been forced to leave his school due to bullying from other students.

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Federal Agencies Routinely Spy On Phone Calls, Texts, Emails Of American Citizens, Experts Say

Despite the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits warrantless government searches, U.S. agencies are proving to be ever more intrusive in their routine surveillance of Americans’ speech and activities.

Often working in collaboration with private companies and banks, agencies like the FBI have been misusing laws against foreign terrorism to vacuum up and sift through the private data of millions of Americans without a warrant or any evidence of a crime.

As Congress now debates reauthorizing relevant sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that are set to expire this year, the libertarian Cato Institute held a four-day conference last week, which featured calls for major legal reforms by conservative and liberal speakers alike.

“The violations that we’ve seen have not just been epic in scale, but they’ve also been persistent, over and over again,” Jake Laperruque, a deputy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told attendees.

“To put a human scale on this, what we’re talking about is not just random typos or wrong clicks; we’re looking at things like pulling up batches of thousands of political donors in one go, without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” Laperruque said. “We’ve had reports of journalists, political commentators, a domestic political party; these compliance violations are the most worrisome type of politically focused surveillance.”

In 2001, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act as a means to combat foreign terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2008, Congress added an amendment to FISA, Section 702, which authorized warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. persons located outside the country. This amendment, which critics say is the source of much of the abuse, is scheduled to “sunset” on Dec. 31.

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The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal

High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens. They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool. The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.

Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators’ access to intelligence. The officials danced around advocates’ concerns of civil liberty violations and instead chose to focus on a wide array of purported national security threats they say could become reality without the “model piece of legislation.” Multiple intelligence agents speaking Tuesday invoked the specter of September 11th and warned lawmakers new safeguards limiting agents’ ability to rapidly access and share intelligence on Americans could risk a repeat scenario.

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FBI helps Ukraine censor Twitter users and obtain their info, including journalists

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to censor social media users and obtain their personal information, leaked emails reveal.

In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.

The Ukrainian government’s FBI-enabled targets extend to members of the media. The SBU list that the FBI provided to Twitter included my name and Twitter profile. In its response to the FBI, Twitter agreed to review the accounts for “inauthenticity” but raised concerns about the inclusion of myself and other “American and Canadian journalists.”

The FBI’s attempt to ban Twitter accounts at the request of Ukrainian intelligence is among the most overt requests for censorship revealed to date in the Twitter Files, a cache of leaked communications from the social media giant.

The FBI’s censorship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twitter executives. Four FBI colleagues were copied on the exchange.

“Thank you very much for your time to discuss the assistance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am including a list of accounts I received over a couple of weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation. For your review and consideration.”

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