FBI Says the FBI Wasn’t Surveilling the Tsarnaevs

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After years of questions about certain oddities in the Federal government’s treatment of Anwar al-Awlaki, Robert Mueller said this in one of his last public comments as Directof the FBI.

“I am not personally familiar with any effort to recruit Anwar al-Awlaki as an asset  — that does not mean to say there was not an effort at some level of the Bureau (FBI) or another agency to do so,”  Mueller said.

Which is why I find the specific wording of this statement, issued in response to questions Chuck Grassley is raising, to be so interesting.

Previously, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have responded to similar questions relating to whether or not the FBI, Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police or other members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force knew the identities of the bombers before the shootout. Members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force did not know their identities until shortly after Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death when they fingerprinted his corpse. Nor did the Joint Terrorism Task Force have the Tsarnaevs under surveillance at any time after the Assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was closed in 2011. The Joint Terrorism Task Force was at M.I.T., located in Cambridge, MA, on April 18, 2013, on a matter unrelated to the Tsarnaev brothers. Additionally, the Tsarnaev brothers were never sources for the FBI nor did the FBI attempt to recruit them as sources.

There has been recent reporting relating to whether or not the FBI, Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police or other members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force knew the identities of the bombers before the shootout with the alleged marathon bombing suspects, and were conducting physical surveillance of them on April 18, 2013. These claims have been repeatedly refuted by the FBI, Boston Police, and Massachusetts State Police.

To be absolutely clear: No one was surveilling the Tsarnaevs and they were not identified until after the shootout. Any claims to the contrary are false. [my emphasis]

I mean, sure, “No one” ought to include “not any agency or private entity, including those not listed here,” but maybe it doesn’t.

NSA’s Section 702 Success: 150 Gigs of Defense Contractor Data Protected

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Screen shot 2013-10-21 at 9.59.11 AMOver four months ago, I noted that the most impressive success touted in James Clapper’s fact sheet on Section 702 pertained to cybersecurity, not terrorism.

Communications collected under Section 702 have provided significant and unique intelligence regarding potential cyber threats to the United States, including specific potential network computer attacks. This insight has led to successful efforts to mitigate these threats.

Le Monde, as part of its package on US spying on France, published yet another version of the PRISM slide presentation, including this slide (and 2 others that haven’t been published before; h/t Koen Rouwhorst).

While I’m not sure we’re yet looking at the complete PRISM slideset, at least as it stands, this slide tells the sole success story in the presentation. It describes how, on December 14, 2012, the NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center alerted the FBI to an implant on a Defense contractor’s network. The FBI and the contractor managed to take action that same day to prevent the exfiltration of 150G of data.

And thus using upstream collection (the slide cites Stormbrew), the NSA managed to do something equivalent to stopping China from getting yet another module of data on the F-35 development to go along with all the other data it has stolen.

While I’m glad the NSA prevented yet more tax dollars to be wasted on secrets China (or someone like them) was going to steal anyway, I am rather interested that this gets touted internally as Section 702’s big success story.

After all, Keith Alexander has been chanting terror terror terror terror for the last four months. It turns out — as I’ve been saying all along — it’s not about the 54 mostly overseas plots Section 702 has helped to thwart, it’s about cybersecurity.

Moreover, it doesn’t involve someone’s personal communications access via PRISM. It involves upstream collection (this also suggests when NSA describes searching for “selectors” in upstream collection, it searches on more than just emails and phone numbers, as it has previously suggested).

Again, this success is in no way a bad thing–kudos to the NSA for catching this.

It just highlights how we’re being sold a dragnet to protect against hackers based on fear of terrorists.

Update: In a Guardian post today, I argue Obama should use the replacement of Keith Alexander as an opportunity to break up NSA.

Metaphorically, the NSA has pursued its search for intelligence by partly disabling the locks to all our front doors. Having thus left us exposed, it demands the authority to be able to enter our homes to look around and see if those disabled locks have allowed any nasty types to get in.

Given the way the NSA’s data retention procedures have gone beyond the letter of the law to allow them to keep Americans’ data if it presents a threat to property (rather than just a threat of bodily harm), while the NSA is looking for nasty types, they might also make sure you don’t have any music or movies for which you don’t have a receipt. Thus it has happened that, in the name of preventing invaders, the NSA has itself invaded

US Isn’t Collecting Only Electronic Data On You — Huge Biometric Database Under Construction, Too

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Edward Snowden’s revelations have shed much light on how secret government programs are collecting huge amounts of telephone, email and other electronic data generated by every US citizen even though, as Marcy has shown repeatedly, claims that collecting all of this data have enabled the capture of terrorists turn out to be significantly overblown. Sadly, it’s not just records of our communications that the government is collecting. The FBI is taking the lead in putting together what it calls Next Generation Identification. This program will expand the conventional FBI fingerprint database to include significant amounts of biological, or biometric data. From the FBI’s own description:

The future of identification systems is currently progressing beyond the dependency of a unimodal (e.g., fingerprint) biometric identifier towards multimodal biometrics (i.e., voice, iris, facial, etc.). The NGI Program will advance the integration strategies and indexing of additional biometric data that will provide the framework for a future multimodal system that will facilitate biometric fusion identification techniques. The framework will be expandable, scalable, and flexible to accommodate new technologies and biometric standards, and will be interoperable with existing systems. Once developed and implemented, the NGI initiatives and multimodal functionality will promote a high level of information sharing, support interoperability, and provide a foundation for using multiple biometrics for positive identification.

Wait. See that “etc.” in the “voice, iris, facial, etc”? Given the government’s behavior on electronic data, throwing in an “etc.” on biometric data is pretty unnerving. Impressive work is being done by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to shed light on just what the government is up to with Next Generation Identification. Here is their description of the program:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is developing a biometric identification database program called “Next Generation Identification” (NGI). When completed, the NGI system will be the largest biometric database in the world. The vast majority of records contained in the NGI database will be of US citizens. The NGI biometric identifiers will include fingerprints, iris scans, DNA profiles, voice identification profiles, palm prints, and photographs. The system will include facial recognition capabilities to analyze collected images. Millions of individuals who are neither criminals nor suspects will be included in the database. Many of these individuals will be unaware that their images and other biometric identifiers are being captured. Drivers license photos and other biometric records collected by civil service agencies could be added to the system. The NGI system could be integrated with other surveillance technology, such as Trapwire, that would enable real-time image-matching of live feeds from CCTV surveillance cameras. The Department of Homeland Security has expended hundreds of millions of dollars to establish state and local surveillance systems, including CCTV cameras that record the routine activities of millions of individuals. There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States. The NGI system will be integrated with CCTV cameras operated by public agencies and private entities.

So just as the government has moved far beyond tapping communications only with a warrant to include the communications of innocent civilians, biometric identifiers of innocent civilians will be included in NGI alongside identifiers of known criminals. And what could possibly go wrong with our information being assembled in this way? Here’s how EPIC says the database will be built and maintained: Read more →

Dianne Feinstein Didn’t Mean to Mislead the Senate into Extending FAA, Promise!

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Charlie Savage has a story describing how, after Solicitor General Don Verrilli got caught lying to SCOTUS about whether defendants busted using FISA Amendments Act would have the opportunity to challenge it in court, DOJ has now decided to adopt a different standard for disclosure of such information.

National security lawyers and a policy advisory committee of senior United States attorneys focused on operational worries: Disclosure risked alerting foreign targets that their communications were being monitored, so intelligence agencies might become reluctant to share information with law enforcement officials that could become a problem in a later trial.

But Mr. Verrilli argued that withholding disclosure from defendants could not be justified legally, officials said. Lawyers with several agencies — including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the N.S.A. and the office of the director of national intelligence — concurred, officials said, and the division changed the practice going forward.

I’ll return to the import of this debate later.

As part of the story, Savage describes why Adel Daoud, who had been named by Dianne Feinstein last year during the FAA reauthorization debate, won’t get access to any wiretapping information, at least not from her. He links to court documents in which the Senate’s lawyer, Morgan Frankel, claims they don’t have to turn over anything under Speech and Debate, but that in any case, DiFi never meant to suggest FAA had identified the terrorists whose cases she invoked to scare the Senate into reauthorizing FAA.

Here’s what she said (the underlined comments were cited by Frankel):

There is a view by some that this country no longer needs to fear attack. I don’t share that view, and I have asked the intelligence committee staff to compile arrests that have been made in the last 4 years in America that have been made between 2009 and 2012. There are 100 arrests that have been made between 2009 and 2012. There have been 16 individuals arrested just this year alone. Let me quickly review some of these plots. Some of these may arrests [sic] come about as a result of this program. Again, if Members want to see the specific cases where FISA Amendments Act authorities were used, they can go and look at the classified background of these cases.

[lists 9 of the 16 arrests, including Daoud’s]

So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important and these cases show the program has worked. As the years go on, I believe good intelligence is the most important way to prevent future attacks.

Information gained through programs such as this one — and through other sources as well — is able to be used to prevent future attacks. So, in the past 4 years, there have been 100 arrests to prevent something from happening in the United States, some of these plots have been thwarted because of this program.

And here’s how the Senate Legal Counsel Morgan Frankel dismissed these claims.

Notwithstanding that she was speaking in support of reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Senator Feinstein did not state, and she did not mean to state, that FAA surveillance was used in any or all of the nine cases she enumerated,

Read more →

Why We Can’t Save Mohamed Osman Mohamud

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Remember how Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s father, Osman Barre, called the FBI in hopes they might help him turn his son away from extremism? Instead of helping, they sent informant after informant after him, to catch him in a terrorist sting.

FBI success story and human and societal failure!

Will McCants has the story of a new, laudable effort to pool funds and invest in countering extremism rather than killing it, largely by getting funds to NGOs in affected countries.

But it won’t help someone like Osman Barre, who worries that his son is getting enthralled with violence. Because donors are worried that if they help a Mohamed Mohamud and he does attack something, they’ll be charged with material support for terror.

Although it represents perhaps the most important part of CVE, most governments and NGOs have been leery of trying to turn around young men and women who have expressed support for terrorist organizations — and are thus in prime positions to be recruited — but have not broken any laws. This is because they worry about violating laws against support for designated terrorist organizations. For example, a government development agency or an NGO will not want to put an al-Shabab fanboy — even a law-abiding one — in their programs for fear of being seen as aiding a terrorist group. And, even they decide it’s acceptable to try and reform the al-Shabab fanboy, they risk huge political backlash if he later engages in terrorism.

A cynic might suggest the material support laws — and the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision that held even well-designed support might merit criminal penalties — is set this way to generate a continued supply of FBI success stories.

US Deports Ibragim Todashev’s Girlfriend

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The Guardian and Boston Magazine report that Tatiana Gruzdeva, the woman whom FBI had apparently detained to pressure Ibragim Todashev to cooperate, is now back in Moldova after being deported to Russia. Gruzdeva had claimed she was deported for granting an interview to Boston Magazine, and that outlet quotes a lawyer explaining how that might be the case.

[I]mmigration lawyers Susan Church and Jeremiah Freedman told me Gruzdeva was most likely given something called an order of supervision—and yes, they said, under an order of supervision, the feds can deport her for speaking to the media.

Church says this proviso matches Gruzdeva’s account that she was given a one-year extension to stay in America and that she was allowed to file for work papers. Orders of supervision are usually given under another legal provision called deferred action. Church says it’s common for people to file for work under these circumstances.

According to Freedman, orders of supervision can include certain requirements like not speaking to the press. “If you violate the conditions of your order of supervision,” he said, “they pick you up and put you in jail again.” And Church says these requirements don’t have to be explicit. “A person who has an overstay really doesn’t have any legal rights,” said Church. “They could be picked up at any time.”

“That is really a privilege that is not extended to many people,” said Church,

I’m as interested in this account for what it says about Gruzdeva’s likely status — deferred action — as the explanation for how speaking to Boston Magazine could get her deported. Because, from what I’ve seen, such an extension along with work privileges is virtually unheard of in the immigration context, even for people who are far more cooperative with law enforcement than we at least understand Gruzdeva to have been.

So Gruzdeva gets that privilege, and while released spends a lot of time with Todashev’s father, Abdulbaki, who is a government official in Grozny. When her roommate, Ashurmamad Miraliev. who had been close friends with Todashev and also spent time with Abdulbaki, was arrested, she went public, which led not only to accusations the FBI was recruiting members of this community as informants, but also ultimately to Gruzdeva’s loss of that privilege and her deportation. While in the US, Abdulbaki was interviewed by the FBI and other law enforcement. And according to the Guardian, Gruzdeva was debriefed in Moscow before she traveled onto Moldova.

So what is the FBI (and another unnamed federal agency, on whose request Miraliev is being detained) really after here?

US Grabs Pakistan Taliban Representative From Afghan Authorities, Preventing Peace Talks

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently lashed out at the United States, stating that US insistence on being able to conduct autonomous counterterrorism actions within Afghanistan was a major obstacle to signing a new Status of Forces Agreement (okay, they call it the Bilateral Security Agreement now, but SOFA just has a much better ring to it). A report from the Washington Post yesterday evening provides a perfect example of how the hypocrisy of US forces in Afghanistan is killing any chance of an agreement being signed, as the US consistently brags about Afghans being “in the lead” on virtually all actions and yet when the US wants, it takes arbitrary and brutal action with complete disregard for the Afghan chain of command.

The hubris of this latest insult to Afghanistan is staggering. After months of carefully recruiting a senior figure from inside Pakistan’s Taliban, Afghan intelligence officials were in the process of bringing him into Afghanistan where he was to begin discussions with the security service that could lead to peace talks. It appears that the US stopped the convoy transporting him, grabbed him, and took him to the portion of the prison at Bagram that the US still refuses to turn over to Afghan control:

The United States recently seized a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, snatching him from the custody of Afghan intelligence operatives who had spent months trying to recruit him as an interlocutor for peace talks, Afghan government officials charged Thursday.

Latif Mehsud, an influential commander in the Pakistani Taliban, was taken into custody by U.S. personnel, who intercepted an Afghan government convoy in Logar province, Afghan officials said.

As might be expected, Karzai is furious. Karzai’s spokesman talked to the Post:

Afghan officials described their contact with Mehsud, thought to be about 30, as one of the most significant operations conducted by their country’s security forces. After months of conversations, the Taliban leader had agreed to meet with operatives of Afghanistan’s main spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai, who declined to identify Mehsud by name, referring to him only as a top Taliban commander.

/snip/

“The Americans forcibly removed him and took him to Bagram,” said the spokesman, referring to the military base that includes a detention facility where the United States continues to hold more than 60 non-
Afghan combatants.

There is simply no way that the US could have thought that Mehsud was in Afghanistan to carry out a terrorist attack. He was in a convoy of NDS personnel and word has been spreading that the Pakistan Taliban is interested in peace talks with Pakistan, so the concept of peace talks with Afghanistan also would make a lot of sense.

Keep in mind as well that, even though the drone strike on Wali Ur Rehman was seen by most as revenge for his role in the Khost bombing, Rehman was seen as one of the more moderate voices within the Pakistani Taliban who would have favored peace talks. The Taliban quickly called off the prospect of peace talks after Rehman’s death. Recall that his death came just as Nawaz Sharif, who had campaigned on a platform including peace negotiations with the Taliban, was preparing to take office.

It goes without saying that Pakistan’s Taliban is one of the most violent and disgusting organizations in existence. Continued attacks on polio vaccine workers and threats to attack Malala Yousufzai again if she returns to Pakistan and continues her activism for young girls to have equal access to educational opportunities show them to be the worst kind of terrorists. And yet, somehow, the US has seen fit twice now to intervene and remove from the playing field the voices within this group who seemed in the best position to help lead it out of its most extreme actions and closer to a peaceful position within society.

Somehow, US actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to indicate that the US does not feel that peace talks in the region are in its best interests. What harm would come to the US from peace talks?

What Kind of Intelligence Does the HIG Expect to Get from Anas al-Libi?

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There has been all manner of commentary about the rendition and detention on a poorly functioning ship of Abu Anas al Libi. There are credulous claims about the humanity of the High Value Interrogation Group’s tactics that nevertheless remain officially classified. There’s the growing awareness that al-Libi’s case differs from Ahmed Warsame’s in several key ways. And then there’s John Bellinger, trolling the Obama Administration for violating rules the Bush Administration did not in superb fashion.

These are important questions. But they distract from another important question.

What kind of intelligence do they really expect to get from al-Libi?

The explanation for his capture has focused on his alleged role in the 1998 Embassy Bombings. While there are no statutes of limitation for murder, that’s nevertheless an event that took place over 15 years ago. Even some of the analysts we often rely on — not to mention his family — suggest he hasn’t had an active role in al Qaeda for over a decade, or at least since he returned home to Libya 2 years ago. Lisa Monaco offered weak claims about the importance of al-Libi.

During an appearance on PBS Newshour, Deputy National Security Adviser Lisa Monaco repeatedly referred to Abu Anas Al-Libi as a “member” of Al Qaeda. However, she stopped short of calling the Libyan-born Al-Libi a “senior operational leader”—a phrase which seemed to have special significance when the Justice Department evaluated the legality of lethal force against U.S. citizens and is also believed to apply to targeting of foreign nationals outside combat zones.

Newshour reporter Jeffrey Brown asked Monaco about whether Al-Libi posed an “imminent” threat to Americans, but Monaco wouldn’t say that and also seemed to avoid declaring that he was an Al-Qaeda operative or even a leader of the group.

“Al-Libi did pose a threat to the United States as a senior al-Qaida member and somebody who is also charged in an indictment for his role as part of the Al Qaeda worldwide conspiracy,” Monaco declared.

This is, at the least, a significant difference from Ahmed Ghailani (who was seized with an active cell in Pakistan and interrogated for years about that active cell before being tried for his role in the Embassy Bombings) and Ahmed Warsame (who was seized for his active role in working with AQAP and al-Shabaab), though it perhaps resembles Suleiman Abu Ghaith.

I’m not saying al-Libi had no active role in terrorism. The timing — the raid took place at the same time as the strike on Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, who allegedly helped plan attacks in Kenya — might suggest al-Libi played some role in the Westgate Mall attack and other operations in Africa.

Perhaps the most complete explanation for why al-Libi is a current threat is this description.

An unclassified report published in August 2012 highlighted al Qaeda’s strategy for building a fully operational network in Libya. The report (“Al Qaeda in Libya: A Profile”) was prepared by the federal research division of the Library of Congress (LOC) under an agreement with the Defense Department’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO). [See LWJ report, Al Qaeda’s plan for Libya highlighted in congressional report.]

Abu Anas al Libi has played a key role in al Qaeda’s plan for Libya, according to the report’s authors. He was described as the “builder of al Qaeda’s network in Libya.”

Al Qaeda’s senior leadership (AQSL) has “issued strategic guidance to followers in Libya and elsewhere to take advantage of the Libyan rebellion,” the report reads. AQSL ordered its followers to “gather weapons,” “establish training camps,” “build a network in secret,” “establish an Islamic state,” and “institute sharia” law in Libya.

Abu Anas al Libi was identified as the key liaison between AQSL and others inside Libya who were working for al Qaeda. “Reporting indicates that intense communications from AQSL are conducted through Abu Anas al Libi, who is believed to be an intermediary between [Ayman al] Zawahiri and jihadists in Libya,” the report notes.

Al Libi is “most likely involved in al Qaeda strategic planning and coordination between AQSL and Libyan Islamist militias who adhere to al Qaeda’s ideology,” the report continues.

Al Libi and his fellow al Qaeda operatives “have been conducting consultations with AQSL in Afghanistan and Pakistan about announcing the presence of a branch of the organization that will be led by returnees from Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, and by leading figures from the former LIFG.” The LIFG refers to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al Qaeda-linked jihadist group formed in Libya in the 1990s.

The suggestion that al-Libi might be the liaison between Ayman al-Zawahiri and extremists in Libya (extremists we helped to overthrow Qaddafi) is more interesting, particularly given Libya’s public objections to al-Libi’s rendition. Perhaps the ultimate plan is to hold al-Libi responsible for Benghazi (though interrogating him in a floating prison might endanger any charges if he was involved, which would be a big problem given the need for some finality on Benghazi). But it might raise interesting questions about whether the extremists we helped in Libya really constitute al Qaeda, or instead constitute a legitimate force within that country.

As of now, however, the US public story is that we captured this guy who has been living in the open for two years for a crime he committed 15 years ago. And that instead of whisking him immediately to NY to stand trial for that crime, we are instead pissing off the Libyan government and nudging up against a slew of domestic and international laws by conducting a floating interrogation from which we might learn only decades old facts. If that’s the story (and again, I suspect the government at least claims there is more), it makes all the legal and ethical issues surrounding his detention all the more problematic.

The FBI’s Official “CAIR Has Cooties Guidance Directive [Redacted]”

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I had just about come to the conclusion that Michael Horowitz, DOJ’s Inspector General who took over after Glenn Fine retired in 2010, was a worthy successor. In recent weeks, Horowitz has released reports critical of DOJ’s handling of classified information, its refusal to account for drones’ unique risks to privacy, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ use of “churning” (money-making) operations.

But then I read this report — on the FBI’s Interactions with the Council on American-Islamic Relations — and I got literally sick to my stomach.

The report purports to determine whether the FBI complies with Agency guidance — the title and issuing authority for which are redacted in the report, which is why I am referring to it as the “Cooties Guidance Directive [Redacted]” throughout, even where it is redacted in direct quotes — that FBI personnel are not to engage in any community outreach with people from CAIR. For results, it shows that in three of five cases where FBI personnel did engage (or almost engage!) with people from CAIR, the personnel either didn’t consult with the FBI entity the IG deems to be in charge of this policy (which is probably the Counterterrorism Division, but the IG Report redacts that too), or consulted instead with the Office of Public Affairs, which is in charge of community outreach.

In response to these shocking (!!) results, Congressman Frank Wolf has already called for heads to roll.

But what the report actually shows is, first of all, how in response to two non-criminal pieces of evidence — a meeting between men who would go on to found CAIR and Hamas, which was not yet a designated a terrorist organization, and CAIR’s designation as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case (the publication of which was subsequently deemed a violation of the group’s Fifth Amendment rights) — the FBI formulated a formal policy to treat that organization as if it has cooties.

And yet, even the language the IG repeats about this policy makes it clear that the FBI was operating on a policy of “guilty until proven innocent.”

The guidance specifically stated that, until the FBI could determine whether there continued to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner” for non-investigative activities.

That is, for the entire 5 year period versions of this policy have been in place, FBI has maintained that so long as it doesn’t develop evidence that CAIR has no ties to Hamas, then FBI will treat the organization and its officials as if they do have such ties by refusing to let them on FBI property or attend any CAIR-affiliated events. And we’re supposed to believe, I guess, that the FBI has used not a single one of their intrusive investigative methods to try to prove or disprove this allegation in the interim 5 years, and so it just will never know whether the allegation is correct or not, and so must operate on the playground Cooties standard.

Heck, in one of the “incidents” the report investigates, the local FBI office actually vetted an event participant to make sure his service on CAIR’s local board didn’t taint all his other community ties so badly that he should not participate in the event.

Yet whether or not a particular CAIR representative [redacted] is irrelevant to the Cooties Guidance Directive  [Redacted] to deny the organization access to the FBI in such non-investigative community-outreach activities.

And the IG Report — Michael Horowitz’ report — judges that vetting that found this gentleman to be innocent was not sufficient reason to ignore the Cooties Guidance Directive [Redacted]. The Report seems to endorse the view that vetting notwithstanding, this guy had a formal role in CAIR that made all his other roles in the Muslim community suspect and that’s the way things work in America.

Then there’s the underlying logic. The entire policy is premised on a bizarre belief that it is exploitative for a Muslim organization to advertise its willingness to work with the FBI.

The June 2011 EC also reiterated that CAIR was not prohibited from “maintaining a relationship with the FBI regarding civil rights or criminal violations; however, civil rights and criminal squads should be cognizant CAIR has exploited these relationships in the past.”

[snip]

The end result of this incident- CAIR posting on its website of a photograph showing the SAC speaking at the event and a description of CAIR’s Civil Rights Director moderating his speech is the sort of exploitation of contact with the FBI that the Cooties Guidance
Directive [Redacted] was intended to avoid.

I don’t get it. If CAIR really were a terrorist sleeper cell, wouldn’t advertising their willingness to associate with the FBI completely ruin all their terrorist Cred, and therefore neutralize whatever threat they presented?

In any case, on the one hand, the report chronicles how the federal agency in charge of investigating civil rights abuses basically treated an entire constitutionally protected civil rights organization as guilty without charging it with any crime.

But then there’s the fact that, after responding to a request to fear-mongers in Congress, this report saw the light of day in the fashion it appears.

As noted above, the IG Report seems to accept this premise of guilty until proven innocent without noting the problem underlying it. Like, you know, the Constitution. In places, the language of the report even echos that of a presumption of guilt, as in this passage where it berates OPA for actually treating an individual with multiple formal ties to the Muslim community as such, rather than as someone branded solely by his affiliation with CAIR.

It appears that OPA provided guidance that effectively reversed the presumption against CAIR participation in non-investigatory FBI activities in this instance. OPA indicated that it wanted to ensure that there was sufficient justification for excluding the CAIR participant apart from his role in CAIR.

Then there’s the way in which this was released. While the actual Cooties Guidance  Directive [Redacted] is classified, nothing else in the report seems like it should be (though the FBI has removed the classification marks from the paragraphs to hide the basis for their claims that this is classified). In particular, FBI or DOJ or OIG has chosen to redact anything that would make it clear whether this is an actual policy, or just guidance on which CTD and OPA disagree (in their complaint about the report, the ACLU notes that it doesn’t appear to have gone through the formal policy-making process). And yet, having hidden that information, the IG presents it as if the failure to implement the Cooties Guidance Directive [Redacted] is a graver problem than the upending of presumption of innocence.

Finally, there are a few tonal issues. For example, the report presents this view — from a Chicago SAC who twice blew off the Cootie Guidance Directive [Redacted] — as if his basic civility presents a problem.

He stated that if DHS considered CAIR officials to be part of the community and invited them to the Roundtable, the FBI was not going to deny them entry at the door.

In another instance, it quotes another violating SAC as using the term “Islamophobia” (PDF 22), but presents the term in scare quotes. This is borderline McCarthyist shit, treating the language of people fighting terrorists by treating Muslims as human beings as some kind of brand against them.

Finally, there’s the timing of this. The fear-mongers requested this report in March 2012 — over 20 months after after the Section 215 IG Report that we’ve been waiting for for 1,224 days got started. Three of four of what are probably interviews with those deemed in violation of this guidance took place over the course of 8 days in August and September of 2012 (the last took place in July, which makes me wonder whether that was added to beef up an otherwise thin report.)

But then the report didn’t get released until a second state CAIR affiliate starts challenging the FBI’s killing of a Muslim person. And the IG Report got released on the very same day that CAIR released a major report on Islamophobia (or, as the IG appears to treat it, “Islamophobia.”)

The whole thing seems designed not to make the FBI a more orderly place (if that were the purpose, then it might be better to focus on how the Cooties Guidance Directive
[Redacted] became formal policy — if it did — without going through formal policy channels). Rather, it seems designed to foment a kind of McCarthyism within FBI targeted at those counterterrorism investigators who believe the best way to fight Islamic extremists is to treat Muslims as partners in rooting out violence.

US Embarrasses Self Again on Symbolism of Newest Floating Prison

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The USS San Antonio entering New York Harbor during Fleet Week, 2006. When I first saw this photo, I thought that the image created the illusion that the ship was holding the Statue of Liberty, but it turns out that is part of the ship's structure and not Liberty's torch that we see. I still can't quite shake that metaphor, however.

The USS San Antonio entering New York Harbor during Fleet Week, 2006. When I first saw this photo, I thought that the image created the illusion that the ship was holding the Statue of Liberty, but it turns out that is part of the ship’s structure and not Liberty’s torch that we see. I still can’t quite shake that metaphor, however.

I fought what seemed to be a one-person battle over what appeared to me to be efforts by the United States to rehabilitate the image of the USS Bataan. In 2010, I pointed out the depravity of using a ship that once was a floating torture chamber as a hospital ship during Katrina and then after the earthquake in Haiti. And then I completely went ballistic when the Bataan Rehabilitation March came even closer to home with the disgusting spectacle of the torture ship being used to stage a college basketball game. At least Mother Nature won that particular round, as the game had to be cancelled at halftime when the surface of the court became unplayable due to moisture as the ship cooled in evening air.

The whole concept of the floating “interrogation” ship is being used again by the US and the naturally arising question is that if no less than Charlie Savage is being used on the preemptive “nothing to see here, move along” gov-splaining of the use of the ship is needed, is the US reverting to the torture practices that were carried out on the Bataan? But this time, instead of the USS Bataan, the interrogation of Abu Anas al-Libi is being carried out on the USS San Antonio. The San Antonio can be considered the poster child for all that is wrong with military procurement systems today:

Five years ago, the USS San Antonio (the first LPD 17 class ship) entered service. Or at least tried to. The builders had done a very shoddy job, and it took the better part of a year to get the ship in shape.

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Although the San Antonio did get into service, it was then brought in for more inspections and sea trials, and failed miserably. It cost $36 million and three months to get everything fixed. The workmanship and quality control was so poor that it’s believed that the San Antonio will always be a flawed ship and will end up being retired early.

Just as the San Antonio was “commissioned” and then towed back for repairs because it couldn’t move on its own, the “interrogation” that is currently underway for al-Libi is a false start and a “clean team” will have to be brought in for any interrogations that will be used should al-Libi ever be brought to trial. From the gov-splanation: Read more →