Tag: fbi

FBI probing death on private plane of 9/11 commission lawyer

Former Clinton and Obama administration lawyer Dana Hyde was injured aboard a private plane and died in a Hartford, Connecticut hospital following an emergency landing on Friday, state police told the media on Monday. Hyde’s identity had not previously been made public.

Hyde died of blunt force injuries, according to the state chief medical examiner. Her family has not issued a statement, though her husband, Jonathan Chambers, the couple’s two children, and the aircraft’s two crew members were reportedly not injured during the flight.

The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating Hyde’s death, according to the Daily Mail. Specialists have reportedly taken possession of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier Challenger 300, which belongs to Chambers’ employer, high-speed internet provider Conexon. 

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FBI worked secretly with hospitals to strip US citizens’ gun rights, documents show

The FBI coordinated secretly with hospitals and medical centers to strip U.S. citizens of their rights to own, buy, or even use firearms , according to a trove of internal documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Behind closed doors and without congressional approval, the FBI has worked hand in hand with the Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to strip over two dozen people of their gun rights with internal forms, records show. On the heels of this revelation by the Washington Examiner in December 2022, newly obtained documents and emails shed light on how the bureau apparently received a helping hand from medical facilities to waive gun rights from at least five people.

“Any time you have evidence of private entities coordinating with federal agents to strip Americans of their rights, the public should be alarmed and demanding answers and action,” said Aidan Johnston, federal affairs director for Gun Owners of America, a firearms rights group. “This is just the latest terrifying new instance of the illegal NICS self-submission form being used in nefarious ways, and those who used it to violate the public’s trust must be held to account.”

Between 2016 and 2019, the FBI presented forms to U.S. citizens at their homes and in other undisclosed locations that registered them with the bureau’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Washington Examiner previously reported . Newly obtained records, however, date the FBI’s usage of the form back to 2011.

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FBI Agent Accused of Shooting Dog After Altercation With Owner

According to Philadelphia Police, Jacqueline Maguire, who has been head of the Philadelphia FBI Field Office since 2021, shot another women’s dog outside the Touraine luxury apartment building in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Philadelphia Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said, “When she [Jacqueline Maguire]tried to get her dog back, I think the dog attacked her.” Police say Jacqeline Maguire shot the dog shortly after. However, witnesses to the incident have taken to Instagram and Twitter to tell a different story.

One witness to the incident wrote on Instagram, “I saw the whole thing. I saw the lady pulled out the gun yelling at the owner, ‘I just shot your dog because your dog was trying to kill my dog’ I was walking my dog right across the street I did not hear any dog fighting or growing.”

Federal Whistleblower Kyle Seraphin wrote on Twitter, “Had an @fbi employee from the @FBIPhiladelphia office share this from Instagram. There is no love for this executive manager Special Agent in Charge. This excited utterance about the reason for shooting the dog is admissible and indicates a complete violation of DOJ Deadly Force Policy.”

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Pentagon, FBI Collaborated On AI, Facial Recognition Tech For Federal Agencies, Documents Show

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the FBI collaborated on an artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition technology program provided to at least six federal agencies and a Pentagon agency that supports civilian police forces, The Washington Post reported.

The facial recognition software could be used to identify individuals whose features were captured by drones and CCTV cameras, the Post reported, citing documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request as part of an ongoing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed against the FBI. The documents reveal federal authorities were more deeply involved in development of the technology than was previously known, sparking concerns over Americans’ privacy rights.

“Americans’ ability to navigate our communities without constant tracking and surveillance is being chipped away at an alarming pace,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts told the Post. “We cannot stand by as the tentacles of the surveillance state dig deeper into our private lives, treating every one of us like suspects in an unbridled investigation that undermines our rights and freedom.”

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How Social Networks Became a “Subsidiary” of the FBI and CIA

The US Congress last tried to grapple with what the country’s ballooning security services were up to nearly half a century ago.

In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from complete, snapshot of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA) operate.

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the congressional committee and other related investigations found that the country’s intelligence services had sweeping surveillance powers and were involved in a raft of illegal or unconstitutional acts.

They were covertly subverting and assassinating foreign leaders. They had co-opted hundreds of journalists and many media outlets around the world to promote false narratives. They spied on and infiltrated political and civil rights groups. And they manipulated the public discourse to protect and expand their powers.

Senator Frank Church himself warned that the might of the intelligence community could at any moment “be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything… There would be no place to hide.”

Since then, the technological possibilities to invade privacy have dramatically increased, and the reach of the intelligence agencies, especially after 9/11, has moved on in ways Church could never have foreseen.

This is why establishing a new Church Committee is long overdue. And finally, in the most controversial of circumstances and for the most partisan of reasons, some sort of revival may finally be about to happen.

A protracted battle last month within the Republican Party to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker of the House of Representatives forced him to cave to the demands of his party’s right wing. Not least, he agreed to set up a committee on what is being called the “weaponization” of the federal government.

It held its first meeting last week. The panel said its task would be to look at “the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties”.

Earlier, in a speech to the House on the new committee, Republican Representative Dan Bishop said it was time to cut out the “rot” in the federal government: “We’re putting the deep state on notice. We’re coming for you.”

Democrats are already decrying the committee as a tool that will be wielded in the interests of Donald Trump and his supporters, saying the Republican right wants to discredit the security services and suggest malfeasance in the treatment of the former president.

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Is Religious Freedom And Freedom Of Speech And Worship Dead In Biden’s America?

On February 10, 2023, Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General of Virginia, along with 19 other Attorneys General, issued their own response. 

The attorneys general seven-page letter was addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. 

“This country was founded on the right of all people to worship in the church, mosque, or synagogue of their choice, free from government. Countless millions were drawn to our country because of that very right. Indeed, some of our first States were founded as safe havens for religious dissenters. There is no right more sacred to American democracy than the right to worship freely,” reads the letter. 

In further response, Bishop Knestouts of the Richmond, Virginia  Catholic diocese issued a statement on Feb. 13, 2023. 

“I was alarmed to read the reports written late last week about the contents of the internal memo created by the Richmond Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was also surprised to learn of the mention of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), a religious order, which celebrates the traditional form of the Catholic Mass. FSSP has served with devotion for many years the parishes within our Catholic community and to the faithful of our diocese who appreciate this form of the Catholic Mass in our diocese,” wrote Bishop Knestouts. 

“The leaked document should be troubling and offensive to all communities of faith, as well as all Americans. I am grateful for the Virginia Attorney General and 19 attorneys general who have called upon the government to publicly release all materials related to the production of this memo. If evidence of extremism exists, it should be rooted out, but not at the expense of religious freedom. A preference for traditional forms of worship and holding closely to the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person does not equate with extremism, the Bishop added. 

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FBI Gone Wild: Internal memos chronicle years of drunk driving, lost weapons and other misconduct

Scores of FBI employees have been caught over the last five years engaging in unethical and illegal conduct such as driving drunk, stealing property, assaulting a child, mishandling classified documents, and losing their service weapons — but they often escaped being fired, according to internal disciplinary files provided to Just The News. 

One agent left a highly lethal M4 carbine unsecured in his government car during a Starbucks run and had the weapon stolen, but even he received only a two-week suspension despite violating the bureau’s protocols for weapons storage, the records show.

“Although there was a lockbox in the trunk for storage of weapons and sensitive items,” the agent chose to store the rifle bag behind the car’s front passenger seat, one report shows. “While Employee was in the Starbucks, the Bucar was burglarized. The rear passenger, rear driver, and tailgate windows were broken, and the rifle bag containing the M4 was stolen.” 

Sexual misconduct was also rampant in the reports dating to 2017, including inappropriate affairs with felons in prison, confidential sources and subordinate employees. The sexual transgressions, however, often resulted in firings, unlike the drunk driving and lost weapons offenses.

Typically emailed to all Bureau employees each calendar quarter, the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) reports provided to Just the News by a whistleblower afford an unprecedented look into the breadth of misconduct among the FBI’s workforce of 35,000, including agents, intel analysts, lab scientists and crime scene technicians.

You can read all of the reports here.

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Who Corrupted a Top FBI Spyhunter?

IN THE FINAL days of the Cold War, a young diplomat arrived at the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. Agents in the FBI’s San Francisco field office kept a close eye on the personnel coming and going from the consulate. The six-story building in one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods long served as a hub of espionage activity. The newly-arrived Soviet diplomat in his twenties, Evgeny Fokin, soon raised suspicions that he was a KGB officer operating under diplomatic cover on his first overseas posting. “I do remember he was an intelligence officer. He was KGB at the time,” says Rick Smith, a retired veteran of the FBI’s counterintelligence squad in San Francisco.

Three decades later, that young diplomat is now at the center of another spy story. This one involves Charles McGonigal, a former senior FBI counterintelligence officer who was indicted last month for taking money illegally from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services. Fokin was the mysterious “Agent-1” described in court papers, an executive working for Deripaska who slowly corrupted the veteran FBI agent over a three-year period, according to sources and documents reviewed by Rolling Stone.

Arrested last month, McGonigal faces federal charges in New York of violating federal sanctions laws that prohibited him from taking money from Deripaska and laundering those ill-gotten gains. He is also accused in a separate case filed in Washington, D.C., of accepting nearly a quarter of a million dollars in secret payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, including $80,000 that was handed over gangland-style in a car parked outside a New York City restaurant. “His arrest is a sorry day for the FBI,” a retired senior FBI official tells Rolling Stone. “The bureau has taken a beating the last few years with Trump and others attacking it. His arrest is all we need.” 

The damage to the bureau may go deeper than previously understood. In 2020, McGonigal took part in an Atlantic Council panel discussion titled “How Did Russia’s Security Services Capture the Kremlin?” A better question might be: Did Russia’s security services compromise a top FBI counterintelligence agent, here in America? How was one of the FBI’s top spyhunters so easily ensnared? “And how exposed is the FBI, given that it was Fokin, a suspected Russian spy, who snared him?”

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FBI whistleblower resigns from bureau, warns Congress about dangers of case ‘quota system’

An FBI whistleblower has divulged to Congress that the bureau has created a case quota system that can incentivize agents to pursue frivolous cases or delay action on real crimes to attain statistical goals.

Steve Friend, a special agent and former SWAT team member who blew the whistle on alleged civil liberties violations in the Jan. 6 investigation, told Just the News on Thursday that he resigned from the bureau this week and gave the House Judiciary Committee an extensive interview detailing his concerns about the politicization of criminal cases and the growing manipulation of investigations to attain statistical and budget goals.

Friend said he made the decision to leave the bureau after he had been denied a paycheck for 150 straight days as his security clearance was placed under review after he made protected whistleblower disclosures. The denial of pay, he said, came even though he was never accused formally of any wrongdoing or subjected to any formal disciplinary action.

“The FBI had weaponized the security clearance revocation process in order to essentially try to wait me out financially,” he said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “You know, I was in a position where I had some personal savings and was able to survive. But at the end of the day, you know, I’m a married father of two small children. I have to support my family.”

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The FBI’s Most Controversial Surveillance Tool Is Under Threat

AN EXISTENTIAL FIGHT over the US government’s ability to spy on its own citizens is brewing in Congress. And as this fight unfolds, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s biggest foes on Capitol Hill are no longer reformers merely interested in reining in its authority. Many lawmakers, elevated to new heights of power by the recent election, are working to dramatically curtail the methods by which the FBI investigates crime.

New details about the FBI’s failures to comply with restrictions on the use of foreign intelligence for domestic crimes have emerged at a perilous time for the US intelligence community. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the so-called crown jewel of US intelligence, grants the government the ability to intercept the electronic communications of overseas targets who are unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.

That authority is set to expire at the end of the year. But errors in the FBI’s secondary use of the data—the investigation of crimes on US soil—are likely to inflame an already fierce debate over whether law enforcement agents can be trusted with such an invasive tool. 

Central to this tension has been a routine audit by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) national security division and the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI)—America’s “top spy”—which unearthed new examples of the FBI failing to comply with rules limiting access to intelligence ostensibly gathered to protect US national security. Such “errors,” they said, have occurred on a “large number” of occasions.

A report on the audit, only recently declassified, found that in the first half of 2020, FBI personnel unlawfully searched raw FISA data on numerous occasions. In one incident, agents reportedly sought evidence of foreign influence linked to a US lawmaker. In another, an inappropriate search pertained to a local political party. In both cases, these “errors” attributed to a “misunderstanding” of the law, the report says.

At some point between December 2019 and May 2020, FBI personnel conducted searches of FISA data using “only the name of a US congressman,” the report says, a query that investigators later found was “noncompliant” with legal procedures. While some searches were “reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information,” investigators said, they were also “overly broad as constructed.”

In another incident, the FBI ran searches using the “names of a local political party,” even though a connection to foreign intelligence was “not reasonably likely.” The DOJ explained the errors away by saying FBI personnel “misunderstood” the search procedures, adding they were “subsequently reminded of how to correctly apply the query rules.” These are the mistakes that will ultimately serve as ammunition in the coming fight to diminish the FBI’s power.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s national security program at New York University School of Law, says that while troubling, the misuse was entirely predictable. “When the government is allowed to access Americans’ private communications without a warrant, that opens the door to surveillance based on race, religion, politics, or other impermissible factors,” she says.

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