Eric Holder, Indefinitely Detained by DOD?

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The most shocking phrase in the Senate’s Defense Authorization detainee provisions to me was not the language affirming indefinite detention. That language simply affirms and possibly narrows the status quo. Rather, it was this language purporting to strike a “balance” between military and civilian detention for alleged terrorists by offering the Secretary of Defense the option of waiving military custody for terrorist detainees.

The Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) [mandating military custody of terrorism detainees] if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.

The presumption of military detention is bad enough. But to codify that the Defense Secretary would not even consult with DOJ on this front was shocking. After all, there is no reason any of these people–Defense Secretary, DNI, or Secretary of State–would know about a terrorist suspect captured in the US. They certainly wouldn’t know the investigation and prosecution strategies. Yet, the language passed last Thursday would not only allow the Defense Secretary to bypass DOJ as a default, but wouldn’t even require the Defense Secretary to ask whether it’s a good idea to move a suspect into DOD custody.

It effectively makes civilian prosecutors supplicants to the military bureaucracy to be allowed to do their work. And it’s particularly troubling given all the Bush-era instances in which FBI’s experts on al Qaeda were prevented from using that expertise to question detainees so Cheney’s torturers could torture them instead.

And the language in the Senate bill is actually more restrictive than the equivalent language in the House equivalent, which simply gives the Secretary of Defense input on civilian prosecution decisions.

SEC. 1042. REQUIREMENT FOR DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CONSULTATION REGARDING PROSECUTION OF TERRORISTS.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Before any officer or employee of the Department of Justice institutes any prosecution of an alien in a United States district court for a terrorist offense, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, or Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, shall consult with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense about—

(1) whether the prosecution should take place in a United States district court or before a military commission under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code; and

(2) whether the individual should be transferred into military custody for purposes of intelligence interviews.

Whereas in May, crazy House Republicans wanted to give the Secretary of Defense veto power over civilian prosecutions, on Thursday the Senate voted to take the Attorney General out of discussions over whether civilian prosecutions are better than military detention altogether.

And yet, of all the Administration complaints about these provisions–John Brennan, David Petraeus, James Clapper, Leon Panetta–Robert Mueller is the only one who spoke from DOJ [Update: National Security Division head Lisa Monaco spoke at the ABA National Security conference]. Unless I missed it, Eric Holder didn’t issue a statement. And it was only after the bill passed the Senate that some anonymous DOJ official released a comprehensive explanation of why this is such a bad idea Read more →

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Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt Advocates Extending PATRIOT Act to Domestic Terrorists

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I watched last night’s Huckabee Presidential forum between thrilling plays in the Big 10.2 Championship game. Since each candidate appeared by him or herself, it lacked the entertaining in-fighting of other episodes of this reality show. But it was fascinating because some rising stars in the Republican Party–three far right Attorneys General, OK’s Scott Pruitt, VA’s Ken Cuccinelli, and FL’s Pam Bondi–served as co-moderators. As such, I think the forum provided some indication of where the leading edge of Republican crazy is.

Which is troubling, because in a question directed to Congressman Ron Paul, Pruitt endorsed applying the PATRIOT Act to purely domestic terrorists. [Update: bob johnson, who is from OK, says this wasn’t an endorsement. A pity, then, that Pruitt not only extended the discussion of PATRIOT to domestic grounds but also set up Bondi for more fearmongering.] After raising the specter of Tim McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah Federal Building, Pruitt asked,

Pruitt: What thoughtful alternative do you have to the PATRIOT Act to prevent acts of domestic terrorism in the future?

Paul provided the same kind of answer he has provided when he has gotten asked similar questions in the context of foreign terrorism in other debates, noting that the PATRIOT Act should have been called the repeal of the Fourth Amendment. To which Priutt doubled down:

So Congressman, you don’t believe that there needs to be a comprehensive law at the federal level equipping law enforcement to prevent domestic terrorism in this country?

Now, as I said, Paul gets asked a similar question at just about every debate. The authoritarian streak of today’s GOP party likes to call out Paul’s libertarianism so as to mock it as outside acceptable bounds of GOP ideology (usually just before everyone applauds torture).

Which is why I find it so troubling that Pruitt did so with regards to domestic terrorism.

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Why the Iraq AUMF Still Matters

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The big headline that came out of yesterday’s American Bar Association National Security panels is that DOD General Counsel Jeh Johnson and CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston warned that US citizens could be targeted as military targets if the Executive Branch deemed them to be enemies.

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

[snip]

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

We knew that. Still, it’s useful to have the Constitutional Lawyer President’s top aides reconfirm that’s how they function.

But I want to point to a few other data points from yesterday’s panels (thanks to Daphne Eviatar for her great live-tweeting).

First, Johnson also said (in the context of discussions on cyberspace, I think),

Jeh Johnson: interrupting the enemy’s ability to communicate is a traditionally military activity.

Sure, it is not news that the government (or its British allies) have hacked terrorist “communications,” as when they replaced the AQAP propaganda website, “Insight,” with a cupcake recipe (never mind whether it’s effective to delay the publication of something like this for just one week).

But note what formula Johnson is using: they’ve justified blocking speech by calling it the communication of the enemy. And then apparently using Jack Goldsmith’s formulation, they have said the AUMF gives them war powers that trump existing domestic law, interrupting enemy communications is a traditional war power, and therefore the government can block the communications of anyone under one of our active AUMFs.

Johnson also scoffed at the distinction between the battlefield and the non-battlefield.

Jeh Johnson: the limits of “battlefield v. Non battlefield is a distinction that is growing stale.” But then, it’s not a global war. ?

Again, this kind of argument gets used in OLC opinions to authorize the government targeting “enemies” in our own country. On the question of “interrupting enemy communication,” for example, it would seem to rationalize shutting down US based servers.

Then, later in the day Marty Lederman (who of course has written OLC opinions broadly interpreting AUMF authorities based on the earlier Jack Goldsmith ones) acknowledged that Americans aren’t even allowed to know everyone the US considers an enemy.

Lederman: b/c of classification, “we’re in armed conflicts with some groups the American public doesn’t know we’re in armed conflict with.”

Now, as I’ve noted, one of the innovations with the Defense Authorization passed yesterday is a requirement that the Executive Branch actually brief Congress on who we’re at war with, which I take to suggest that Congress doesn’t yet necessarily know everyone who we’re in “armed conflict” with.

Which brings us to how Jack Goldsmith defined the “terrorists” whom the government could wiretap without a warrant.

the authority to intercept the content of international communications “for which, based on the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent persons act, there are reasonable grounds to believe … [that] a party to such communication is a group engaged in international terrorism, or activities in preparation therefor, or any agent of such a group,” as long as that group is al Qaeda, an affiliate of al Qaeda or another international terrorist group that the President has determined both (a) is in armed conflict with the United States and (b) poses a threat of hostile actions within the United States;

It’s possible the definition of our enemy has expanded still further since the time Goldsmith wrote this in 2004. Note Mark Udall’s ominous invocation of “Any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force” that the Administration might use to authorize detaining someone. But we know that, at a minimum, the Executive Branch used the invocations of terrorists in the Iraq AUMF–which are much more generalized than the already vague definition of terrorist in the 9/11 AUMF–to say the President could use war powers against people he calls terrorists who have nothing to do with 9/11 or al Qaeda.

So consider what this legal house of cards is built on. Largely because the Bush Administration sent Ibn Sheikh al-Libi to our Egyptian allies to torture, it got to include terrorism language in an AUMF against a country that had no tie to terrorism. It then used that language on terrorism to justify ignoring domestic laws like FISA. Given Lederman’s language, we can assume the Administration is still using the Iraq AUMF in the same way Goldsmith did. And yet, in spite of the fact that the war is ending, we refuse to repeal the AUMF used to authorize this big power grab.

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Bachmann Was Almost Right: The ACLU Is in Cahoots with the CIA

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As I have puzzled over the civil liberties and human rights communities’ stance on the NDAA Detainee Provisions, I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that Michelle Bachmann was not far off when she claimed, “Barack Obama … has essentially handed over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU. He has outsourced it to them.”

After all, in the guise of “fixing” some of what I agree are problems with the Detainee Provisions–the laws regarding detention and interrogation of detainees–the ACLU is telling its members to lobby for the Udall Amendment to the NDAA.

But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.

As a threshold matter, the ACLU’s  support of the Udall Amendment appears to put them on the same side of the debate as–among others–former CIA exec John Brennan and the former Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta. (Current CIA Director and outspoken detention authority while still at DOD, General David Petraeus, has been eerily quiet over the last several weeks.)

And I do agree with the ACLU that the Udall Amendment sets up an orderly review of detention power.

But, as I’ve noted, there’s one aspect of the Detainee Provisions that Udall doesn’t leave for orderly review: the scope of the language describing a “covered person.” Instead, Udall’s Amendment says covered people should be those “whose detention … is consistent with the laws of war and based on authority provided by” the 9/11 and Iraq AUMFs, as well as “any other statutory or constitutional authority.”

(b) Covered Persons.–A covered person under this section is any person, other than a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, whose detention or prosecution by the Armed Forces of the United States is consistent with the laws of war and based on authority provided by any of the following:

(1) The Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40).

(2) The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution 2002 (Public Law 107-243).

(3) Any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force.

Udall pretty much unilaterally reasserts the application of the AUMFs (plural) and other vaguely defined legal bases to detention (and, because that’s how OLC has built up Executive Power over the last decade, a bunch of other things), in an effort to defeat SASC’s language that limits such detention authority to those tied directly to 9/11 or “who [were] part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.” Udall’s Amendment may give SSCI and SJC another shot at this law, but it dictates that detention authority apply to a far broader group of people than the SASC language describes.

Hey, Mark. See that calendar? We’re not going to pass and sign this bill before December 1. We’re due to pull our troops out of Iraq by the end of that month. Are you telling me we need to include that language for less than 31 days? Or just to provide a bubble during which the Administration can do whatever it wants with Ali Mussa Daqduq, the alleged Hezbollah agent in US custody presenting so many legal dilemmas for us in Iraq? Or are you instead applying the AUMF for a war that is effectively over to grant the President authority to hold a much broader category of “terrorist” than the 9/11 AUMF authorized? Why, at this late date, are you including the Iraq AUMF?

Given your “based on authority provided” language, I assume it is the latter, meaning this attempt to do an orderly review of detention authority also mandates that that detention authority be applied as if the Iraq war were not ending.

And all that’s before you consider the “any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force,” which seems to say that in any circumstance in which Congress has authorized some use of military force, Udall’s Amendment also piggybacks detention authority … and whatever else (like assassination and wiretap authority) gets built off of detention authority in secret by the OLC.

The Udall Amendment, while giving the Senate Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committees an opportunity to weigh in on what the President must and can do with detainees, goes far beyond the language in the SASC version of 1031, which reaffirmed the war on terrorists, but only on terrorists who have anything directly to do with, or are associated with, 9/11.

I may be badly misreading this. But as I understand it, the ACLU is basically lobbying to codify a vastly-expanded AUMF that will serve to legitimize many of the intelligence community’s most egregious civil liberties abuses, not just on detention, but on a range of other “war powers,” like wiretapping and assassination.

And while that may not be the same as outsourcing interrogation to the ACLU–as Bachmann described it–it does amount to using the ACLU to give sanction to a broad expansion of Executive war and surveillance powers the likes of which the CIA loves to exploit.

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It’s the Zenith-Limiting War Declaration, Not the Detainee Restrictions, Obama Wants to Veto

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A bit of a parlor game has broken out over whether Obama really means his veto threat over the detainee provisions of the Defense Authorization. Josh Gerstein weighed in here, including a quote from John McCain accusing the Administration of ratcheting up the stakes.

It’s also clear that, whether for political reasons or due to some complex internal dynamics, the administration seems at this point willing to put up more of a public fight over detainee-related strictures than it has in the past. However, whether that will ultimately translate to a willingness to blow up the defense bill with a veto is unclear. At least some lawmakers seem to view the threats as bluster, in light of the president’s track record.

As McCain said Thursday: “The administration ratcheted up the stakes…with a threat of a veto. I hope they are not serious about it. There is too much in this bill that is important to this Nation’s defense.”

The veto threat is probably tied to the new AUMF language

But I think Gerstein has the dynamic wrong–and his claim that this veto threat represents more public fight than he has shown in the past is flat out wrong. You see, Gerstein’s making the claim based on the assertion that the fight is over the Administration’s authority to move and try detainees as it sees necessary.

In the past three years, President Barack Obama’s administration has been in numerous public skirmishes with Congressional Republicans over legislation intended to limit Obama’s power to release Al Qaeda prisoners, move them to the U.S. and decide where they should face trial.

[snip]

A couple of thoughts on the dust-up: Obama has already signed legislation putting limits on releases of detainees. While officials said at the time that the White House would oppose similar proposals in the future, it is clear that as a practical matter those limits have now become the baseline for those in Congress. [my emphasis]

Gerstein’s right that Obama stopped short of vetoing the Defense Authorization last year, which had those limits, instead issuing a signing statement.

Despite my strong objection to these provisions, which my Administration has consistently opposed, I have signed this Act because of the importance of authorizing appropriations for, among other things, our military activities in 2011.

Nevertheless, my Administration will work with the Congress to seek repeal of these restrictions, will seek to mitigate their effects, and will oppose any attempt to extend or expand them in the future.

And Obama didn’t issue a veto threat on similar restrictions place on DHS funding.

But Obama has issued a veto threat on “detainee and related issues” before–on Buck McKeon’s version of the Defense Authorization in May. That version added a couple of things to last year’s Defense Authorization: More limits on when the government can use civilian courts to try terrorists, limits on the detainee review system beyond what Obama laid out in an Executive Order last year.

And this language:

Congress affirms that—

(1) the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad;

(2) the President has the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 15 1541 note);

(3) the current armed conflict includes nations, organization, and persons who—

(A) are part of, or are substantially supporting, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or

(B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A); and

(4) the President’s authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 3 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority to detain belligerents, including persons described in paragraph (3), until the termination of hostilities.

The current bill is less harsh on several counts than McKeon’s language: it includes a series of waivers to bypass military detention and lets the Administration write procedures for determining who qualifies as a terrorist. While these loopholes require the Administration to do more paperwork, they still allow it to achieve the status quo if it does use those loopholes.

But it still includes very similar to McKeon’s defining this war.

Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

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The Bloomie and Kelly Show … with Fake Video Props!

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Just three days after NYPD’s cops overreacted to First Amendment protests, and two days after NY’s Muslim community protested NYPD’s heavy handed spying, Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly decided to roll out a big press conference to announce …

A pipe bomb.

The person who intended to use the pipe bomb is a “lone wolf” al Qaeda sympathizer  named Jose Pimental who lives with his mother.

Authorities have been tracking Pimental since May 2009 and reports are an informant was involved, which might explain why he moved from strictly talking about violence to actually going to Home Depot to buy a few pipes and (as bmaz describes it) some Christmas lights to make his bomb.

Now, Bloomie and Kelly tried to make this look spectacular. They went to the effort of blowing up a car and videotaping it to show what the bomb could have done–though there’s no indication that his pipe bombs were ever operational. (No, no journalists asked who paid for the car the NYPD destroyed so they could have a nice video prop.)

They also made a nice model of Pimental’s Christmas lights bomb.

Kelly tried to suggest that Pimental aspired to hit the same targets that Occupy Wall Street protestors were targeting. “We remain the nation’s financial capital,” he said, suggesting that’s why Pimental targeted NY. Except that Pimental’s planned targets–like the post office in Washington Heights or soldiers returning from deployments–have nothing to do with the finance industry or even anything unique to NY.

None of Bloomie and Kelly’s efforts to put on a good show prevented the journalists present from asking, repeatedly, “Did the FBI decline to take this case?” Given the way Bloomie refused to look at the camera the third time a variant of the question was asked, I’m guessing the answer is “yes.” {Update: Ryan Reilly confirms that is in fact the case.]

The lesson to take from this terrorism porn is actually that the NYPD counterterrorism effort is useless in hunting down threats like this. Pimental was first identified in Schenectady. The Albany PD referred him to the NYPD. The NYPD didn’t find this guy, they just … nurtured him.

And Pimental was, as Bloomie repeated, a “lone wolf.” Which means no amount of infiltrating mosques and Moroccan restaurants would have found him, because he had no associations that would have revealed him (unlike Najibullah Zazi, whom the NYPD missed, even though his Imam was one of their informants).

The big questions coming out of this presser–aside from who paid to blow up a car and why Bloomie wore an ugly orange sweater to a press conference–has to do with the timing. Kelly seemed to suggest the NYPD was orchestrating this somewhat when he said, “We had always intended to take him in custody before he detonated a bomb.” In addition, he said Pimental had decided to make a bomb back in August.

So why is it that their closely watched terrorist decided to actually build a bomb at the precise moment when Bloomie’s and Kelly’s heavy handed policing, including their abusive counterterrorism spying, have lost all credibility?

Update: Here’s the complaint. You’ll like how the Officer doesn’t mention they’ve been tracking this guy since May 2010, and instead says it all started in October 2010. You’ll also enjoy how Pimental handed the informant every bit of his bomb, as if he were playing a role.

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Robert Mueller Once Again Claims Anna Chapman a Bigger Threat to US than Lloyd Blankfein

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Robert Mueller addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco today. He repeated a familiar theme: the biggest threats to the United States are terrorists (even aspirational ones), spies, and cyber attacks.

Terrorism, espionage, and cyber attacks are the FBI’s top priorities. Terrorists, spies, and hackers are always thinking of new ways to harm us.

As he tends to do when spreading this propaganda, Mueller once again focused on Anna Chapman and her band of suburban spies.

Consider the arrest last year of 10 agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Many of you may have seen TV news stories and videos covering the techniques we used in our investigation, code-named Ghost Stories. It featured the stuff of a John Le Carré novel—dead-drops in train tunnels, brush passes at night, and clandestine meetings in cafés.

Though he did add the example of Kexue Huang, who sent information on organic pesticides and food to Germany and China, to his list of scary spies who threaten our country.

Last month, Kexue Huang, a former scientist for two of America’s largest agricultural companies, pled guilty to charges that he sent trade secrets to his native China.

While working at Dow AgriSciences and later at Cargill, Huang became a research leader in biotechnology and the development of organic pesticides. Although he had signed non-disclosure agreements, he transferred stolen trade secrets from both companies to persons in Germany and China. His criminal conduct cost Dow and Cargill millions of dollars.

Finally, Mueller added a neat new twist to his list of people who pose a big threat to this country. The hackers who hacked into the BART website after BART cops killed the unarmed Oscar Grant and later Charles Blair Hill, and after BART shut down cell service to interrupt free speech will bring anarchy!

And “hacktivist” groups are pioneering their own forms of digital anarchy. Here in the Bay Area, you witnessed their work firsthand when individuals hacked the BART website and released personal data of BART customers.

Because it’s not anarchy when cops shoot unarmed or drunk men. It’s not anarchy when transit companies unilaterally shut down your phone. It’s only anarchy when the hackers get involved.

You’ll note what’s missing, as it always is, from Mueller’s list of scary threats to the country? Not a peep about the banksters whose systematic fraud has done–and continues to do–far more financial damage than 9/11.

It’s anarchy, apparently, when bunch of kids break into a website. But it’s not anarchy when banksters rewrite property law to steal the homes of millions of Americans.

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The More You Look for Terrorists, the Fewer Banksters You Have to Prosecute

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This report–or rather the HuffPo piece on it–has gotten a lot of attention. It shows the government as a whole has prosecuted 57.7% fewer financial fraud crimes than they did 10 years ago, when 9/11 changed everything.

The report on our government’s growing disinterest in prosecuting banksters should be paired with this FBI report which I reported on some weeks ago (since that time, FBI has removed the link to the report). The FBI report makes it clear that the FBI, at least, has shifted its approach over the last decade from a “case driven” focus to a “threat driven” focus–meaning that it decides what it’s going to look for and then goes to find criminals committing that crime rather than finds crimes and responds to them. Depending on whether you believe this report or Director Mueller’s June reconfirmation hearing, financial fraud is either the 7th or 5th highest priority for the FBI, behind terrorism, counterintelligence, and cyberattacks.

Those priorities show. As part of its focus on terrorism, the FBI has increased surveillance capacity by 48%. And over that time, the report boasts, the FBI has written 85,500 raw intelligence reports. It has set up 10,200 SCI workstations.

All of which costs money. The FBI reports that its budget authority–which it notes is driven by the strategy–has more than doubled over the period in which it has found half as many banksters.

Most telling, though, is a stat you get by putting the two reports together. TRAC notes that FBI referred 37.6% of the fraud cases for prosecution so far this year–working out to be roughly 470 cases. But if you work out how many financial cases they say they were tracking last year (they say “more than 2,800” equates to 57% of the cases), you see they were tracking roughly 4,912 financial fraud cases. If these numbers are correct, it means fewer than 10% of the banksters and other fraudsters they’re tracking ever get charged.

In other words, it’s not that they’re not seeing the crime. They’re just not referring it for prosecution, choosing instead to look for young Muslim men to entrap.

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A Terrorist Goes to Prison for 33 Years

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On Wednesday, DOJ announced the sentencing of Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, one of the key leaders in Colombia’s AUC terrorist group, to 33 years in prison.

Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, aka “Macaco,” a paramilitary leader and one of Colombia’s most notorious drug traffickers, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard in Miami for leading an international drug trafficking conspiracy that supported a foreign terrorist organization, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer for the Southern District of Florida.

According to court documents, Jimenez-Naranjo was one of the top leaders of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a Colombian right-wing paramilitary and drug trafficking organization.   The AUC is a U.S. Department of State-designated foreign terrorist organization.   From the mid 1990s through 2007, Jimenez-Naranjo led the Bloque Central Bolivar (BCB), a group within the AUC, commanding an estimated 7,000 armed combatants.   Jimenez-Naranjo controlled large areas where cocaine was produced, and his organization was responsible for exporting thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Central America, Mexico and the United States using seaports and clandestine airstrips.   Jimenez-Naranjo was extradited from Colombia to the United States on May 7, 2008, based on a provisional arrest warrant from separate indictments in the District of Columbia and in the Southern District of Florida.

Mind you, Jimenez-Naranjo wasn’t actually sentenced on Wednesday. He was sentenced back in May, in a rather arbitrary, sealed hearing at which the defendant’s lawyer used actuarial data from the CIA to calculate a sentence that would not equate to a life sentence for a 45 year old man (when the US extradited men from Colombia, it promised not to impose life sentences). Since that hearing, his sentence has been sealed. Purportedly, that was done to allow him to cooperate with the government, to convince more of his former followers members to turn themselves in.

The transcript from a subsequent hearing has not yet been docketed, so it’s not clear whether the government represented that he continued to cooperate. Certainly, his sentence was not reduced from the original sentence in May.

Now I raise all this to point out the alternative approach used with Colombia (and the relative silence regarding the sentencing of a terrorist far more dangerous than the aspirational lone wolves the FBI has focused on of late). Read more →

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The Waffle House Terrorists “Citizens Who Threaten Our Safety and Security”

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When the Waffle House Plot broke last week, I joked that maybe the FBI will start profiling Waffle Houses rather than mosques; they’d probably have more luck finding terrorists there.

But I wanted to make a few points about the plot in addition to what Jim already said.

First, there are actually two sub-plots: one attempt to acquire silencers and explosives to attack federal buildings and employees; just Frederick Thomas and Dan Roberts are implicated in that plot. The other was a half-baked discussion to manufacture ricin. Ray Adams and Samuel Crump are primarily implicated in that plot, with Roberts and Thomas goading them on. That’s significant because while the weapons plot advanced steadily over time culminating in a purchase, the ricin “plot” consisted of some bragging in March, and some taped conversations in September and October, showing not only that the alleged attackers were largely ignorant about ricin, but also appearing to show them coaching the confidential informant in the case how to make ricin, not necessarily making it themselves.

If you’re gonna do this (unintelligible), it’s gotta be built, a hood. There can be no air, can’t be no disturbance.

[snip]

I can get ya seed (castor beans). I know where the seeds is at right now.

[snip]

You take a pound of that (unintelligible), get upwind, up around Washington, DC, get about 20,000 feet (in an airplane), and turn that shit loose, it’d cover the whole (unintelligible) of Washington.

That’s particularly significant because the last two conversations laying out the ricin plot–separate conversations October 29 with both Crump and Adams–were not recorded by the informant. And that informant? He’s a liar.

CHS1 is currently on bond for pending felony state charges. The FBI administered a polygraph test to CHS1 during the investigation of a militia group. The FBI polygrapher determined that CHS1 gave less than truthful responses concerning the activities of the militia group.

In short, the whole ricin plot seems like a bad advertisement for Red Devil lye, since Crump appeared to put off making the ricin because he couldn’t find that brand of lye; Adams, for his part, claimed he’d make lye himself by leaching wood ashes.

Given the lack of seriousness of the ricin plot, it appears to have been incited at the end in time for the bust in the other plot, to use guns and explosives to kill federal workers. That plot started back in March, included a surveillance trip in May, and discussions with an undercover FBI employee about buying weapons on June and July. On September 20, Thomas agreed to trade weapons 30 days later and also to pay $1000 for explosives. In late October, Thomas, Roberts, and the informant put together money to make the purchase. On November 1, Thomas and Roberts bought a silencer and what they believed to be explosives from an undercover FBI agent.

There’s just one weird thing about the evidence presented in the Thomas and Roberts affidavits. They describe planning for the final meeting–at which they’d pool their money to buy the silencers and explosives–to be held on October 29. The affidavits were signed on November 1. The indictment describes them buying a silencer and what they believed were explosives on November 1. But there’s no discussion about what happened at the October 29 meeting. Particularly given that the two ricin conversations on October 29 were not taped, I wonder whether the informant in this case got cold feet?

In any case, that’s what passes for a terrorist plot propagated by a bunch of senior citizen wingnuts.

Now, the plot is interesting for the way US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates used this FBI-abetted sting to warn about the risks posed by [senior] “citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security.”

While many are focused on the threat posed by international violent extremists, this case demonstrates that we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security.

I’m grateful that the FBI is finally focusing on domestic terrorists, even if they’re fluffing up the risk just as they do with aspirational Muslim terrorists. But note that, in spite of the involvement of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, it seems Yates can’t force herself to call these dudes terrorists.  Perhaps they should rename the JTTF the JCWOOBWTOSASTF?

And of course there’s another difference between this and the crimes those brown people called terrorists commit. As Manssor Arbabsiar was alleged to have done, these militia members allegedly discussed assassinations. As Arbabsiar was alleged to have done, these plotters allegedly discussed explosives. Whereas with Arbabsiar, there is zero public evidence he affirmatively sought to use explosives to commit assassination, there is here. Unlike Arbabsiar, these militia members actually bought what they believed to be explosives.

And yet, unlike Arbabsiar, these alleged terrorists did not get charged with a WMD charge–not even for their alleged attempt to make ricin. Once again, it seems almost impossible for white terrorists to be charged with the FBI’s favorite charge for brown terrorists.

Finally, one more difference between the treatment of these scary white terrorists and scary brown ones. As TP’s Lee Fang notes (piggybacking off this GAPolitico post), Thomas was a commenter at RedState, where Erick Erickson has called for violence in the past.

Thomas blogged on RedState.com, the website edited by CNN’s Erick Erickson. The Thomas blog post highlighted by Baker and AJC revealed that at one point, he did not “advocate a general rebellion against the U.S. Government for cause,” but seemed conflicted about the idea of violent revolution. Something apparently changed between that unpromoted post, published in July of 2008 and this year, when the alleged plot began taking shape.

A ThinkProgress examination of Thomas’s online writing in the following years shows that the alleged terrorist grew more and more upset, and expressed sympathy with the anti-Obama conspiracies posted on RedState. Last year, he posted a comment to a popular RedState post about the evils of health reform. Thomas claimed that the “ObummerCare Bill” not only “won’t be forgiven,” but will lead to “TYRANNY of the worst order” and “civil war.” (view a screenshot of the comment here)

And as the affidavits make clear, the plot was inspired by a Mike Vanderboegh novel; Fang notes that Thomas has also commented on Vanderboegh’s blog. Last year, Vanderboegh claimed credit for coordinated attacks in protest of the health insurance reform–one of them targeted at Gabby Giffords–in three states.

On Friday, former militia leader Mike Vanderboegh called for anti-Democratic vandalism across the country to protest the health care bill.

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

And, apparently in response, there were attacks in–at least–Wichita, KS, Tucson, AZ,  Rochester, NY, Niagara Falls, NY.  Vanderboegh has proudly claimed credit for the coordinated attacks.

Now maybe Vanderboegh and Erickson are just the FBI’s latest incarnation of Hal Turner, wingnut bloggers they pay to inspire other wingnuts whom they can arrest in Waffle House plots; maybe the FBI hasn’t tracked their calls for violence at all. But if Vanderboegh and Erickson were Muslim propagandists advocating violence–like Anwar al-Awlaki or Samir Khan–they’d probably be worried about a drone raining down from the sky. I’m definitely not advocating that for any propagandists, whether Muslim or wingnut, being killed for their protected, albeit vile, speech.

But maybe now that the government is using stings to warn of the danger of domestic terrorists, those inciting them ought to think more seriously about how our government combats terrorists.

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