The FBI’s File on Antiwar.com

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As I reported yesterday, the FBI conducted a threat assessment into Antiwar.com in April 2004 in conjunction (apparently) with a terrorist watch list posted on the site. I briefly reviewed what they found, but I wanted to look in more detail at what the report on them (see pages 62-71) shows.

As I explain below, what I believe happened is that an Agent in the Newark office investigating one or two people with ties to Pakistan for terrorism did an investigation into Antiwar.com because it posted watch lists with the investigation subject’s name on them. That Agent recommended that the Electronic Communications Analysis Unit (a part of the Counterterrorism Division) continue monitoring Antiwar.com (someone is being paid to surf Antiwar.com!), and that the San Francisco office (which would have been local to Raimondo and Garris) do a Preliminary Investigation, presumably to figure out if they were posting such documents to help Islamic terrorists.

But in the course of explaining the Israeli Movers story that Raimondo had written on, that Agent referenced an investigation of the Movers that may not be an FBI investigation. Either in the course of the document circulating within the Newark office, or because it came up on a later search, someone noticed the reference to this investigation, and forwarded the document to those conducting the newly-reopened Israeli Movers investigation.

The April 2004 Threat Assessment

First, remember what this is: it’s a search in April 2004 of the FBI’s files and public databases on Justin Raimondo, Eric Garris, and Antiwar.com as those files existed in 2004. The report recommends that the San Francisco office conduct a preliminary investigation. Raimondo and Garris were stopped by DHS in 2005 on their return from a trip to Malaysia; the contents of every piece of paper that Garris had on him were copied. So it seems safe to assume that the FBI continued to investigate them after this report.

In other words, a FOIA of what the FBI currently has on them would likely have more material in it, particularly if the FBI did do that preliminary investigation on them.

Also, the report is labeled as a Threat Assessment, which the FBI’s Domestic Investigation and Operation’s Guide describes requires the following predication:

Although “no particular factual predication” is required, the basis of an assessment cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation, nor can an assessment be based solely on the exercise of First Amendment protected activities or on the race, ethnicity, national origin or religion of the subject. Although difficult to define, “no particular factual predication” is less than “information or allegation” as required for the initiation of a preliminary investigation.

The relevant reason to conduct a preliminary investigation would be (given the suggestion in the threat assessment that Antiwar.com might working on behalf of a foreign power) the Agent’s conclusion that there was enough reason–information–indicating a threat to national security may be occurring.

“information or an allegation” indicating the existence of

[snip]

An activity constituting a federal crime or a threat to the national security has or may have occurred, is or may be occurring, or will or may occur and the investigation may obtain information relating to the activity or the involvement or role of an individual, group, or organization in such activity.

All that suggests that this document may have been the first step toward conducting a more detailed investigation of Antiwar.com.

The Antiwar.Com Material

The first thing noted in the report is results of a search of the FBI’s Universal Index, which would show,

… people who are the subjects of an FBI investigation (main file) or are associated with the subject of an investigation.

Obviously, that search returned some results, all of which have been redacted under privacy exceptions to FOIA. One of either Garris or Raimondo has a significantly longer file than the other. (Note, the first reference of them by name, which is redacted, appears to list Garris first based on the redaction; unredacted mentions of them on pages 2 and 8 maintain that order. If that order was sustained throughout, it suggests the FBI has significantly more information on Garris than Raimondo.) Interestingly, Antiwar.com didn’t return any results in the UNI.

The FBI then searched the Electronic Case Files and found either 12 or 13 documents (or 15 or 16, counting the FISA files individually). The report describes each one of these (save 4 FISA-generated documents that are just referenced by serial number). Here are descriptions of each of the documents:

The first document is completely redacted with no FOIA exemption noted.

The second document is also completely redacted, but has a b7A (Law enforcement proceeding) exemption. If the exemption is to be believed (they often aren’t), the file has been withheld because the FBI though releasing it would hurt a trial or some similar reason.

The third document is named 65T-HQ-1427774 serial 26 and is dated April 14, 2004. Its clearly a counterintelligence document, and has been exempted for national defense/foreign policy information. There’s also a “referral/consult” notation on it, which may suggest the FBI needed to consult someone else–maybe another agency–about redaction (given that this was the period when CIFA was rampant, I’m wondering if it’s a DOD generated report). The code in the document name also indicates this was a counterintelligence investigation.

The fourth and fifth documents appear from their serial numbers–315M-SL-188252 serial 152 and 315N-SL-188252 serial 176–to come from the same international terrorism (indicated by the 315) investigation. They are dated, respectively, November 17, 2003 and December 27, 2003, and the second appears to be a Letterhead Memo incorporating the first for communication outside of that FBI office. The description of the documents appear to indicate the Saint Louis office noting that Raimondo had the threat lists, reflecting particular concern about one or more people listed on the lists. Given that this document is described as pertaining to Pakistan and al Qaeda, I’m guessing these documents explain that an Islamic terrorist suspect might learn he was under investigation from the threat list. The exemptions here are national defense/foreign policy.

The sixth document, dated May 21, 2002, describes someone who wrote on US military assistance to Israel and cited Antiwar.com. In addition to law enforcement proceedings exemption, redactions cite privacy exemptions.

The seventh document, dated November 13, 2002, describes a peaceful protest at an Air Force base in the UK held four days before the report was filed. An article from Antiwar.com was passed out at the rally. The file serial number was redacted using law enforcement proceedings exemption, which seems bizarre to me, unless the FBI is trying to hide the lame reasons they’re using to investigate peaceful antiwar protests.

The eighth document, 100A-PG-67450-302 serial 970 and dated October 3, 2002 describes what appears to be the FBI infiltration of a National Alliance meeting at which one member advocated reading Antiwar.com for information on the Middle East conflict.

The ninth document, 174A-LA-234485 serial 55 and dated November 10, 2003, describes hard drives seized during an investigation (the code indicates it’s an explosives investigation) that showed the hard drives’ user visited Antiwar.com between July 25, 2002 and June 15, 2003.  A description of the investigation is redacted using privacy exemptions.

All but the date of the tenth document, February 5, 2003, is redacted using privacy and law enforcement proceedings exemptions.

The entire eleventh document is redacted using a law enforcement proceedings exemption.

As noted, there are four FISA references. All share a serial number–315B-NK-102595-EL6–that is also one of four serial numbers given to the report itself. So it appears there are 4 FISA references to Antiwar.com that may have been picked up in an investigation of Pakistani terrorists.

I’m not going to look at the results for the various database searches. Note, however, that the exemption b7E used on many of these refers to information redacted to prevent people from circumventing investigation or law enforcement. Which is another way of them saying they don’t want us to know all the public databases they can search to find information in a very low level FBI investigation.

The Israeli Movers Investigation

One more note on the content of this. Page 8 describes webpages that either discuss Antiwar.com documents or things Raimondo wrote. The fourth unredacted paragraph describes an article (later, a book) he wrote. The entire paragraph is bracketed and there are Xes in the margin, suggesting that the copy of the report in the file was handmarked by someone. What’s most interesting, however, is the last sentence.

(S) On www.chroniclesmagazine.org, an article by Justin Raimondo, “Chronicles Intelligence Assessment–the Terror Enigma: Israel and the September 11 Connection,” outlined the activities of the Mossad. It also included information obtained from a story in the Bergen Record dated 09/12/2002 regarding a group of Israelis detained by FBI, Newark, for possible involvement in the events of 9/11. [handwritten bracket] (An active investigation was conducted on the five Israeli Nationals. For a detailed report of this investigation, see [redacted]) [close handwritten bracket]

That is, the reason the recipient of this report found this paragraph interesting is because of that bracketed comment identifying “an active investigation.” But the report’s name remains redacted using the national defense/foreign policy exemption.

Now, the redaction is interesting not least because the FOIA request that resulted in this document release pertained to the Israelis, not to Antiwar.com. Yet the report redacts the instructions on where to find another report on precisely that topic.

It’s possible that the redacted report is among the case files listed on the front page of this report; one of the case IDs is redacted, and given that the Israelis were first investigated in the context of 9/11, it might not be a stretch to think it’d be included. But there’s also a circled handwritten note next to the case ID numbers written in a pen that might be the same as the one used to bracket this entire paragraph. It appears to say:

See pag 8 for real link

 Given that paragraph appears on page 8 and the only other redaction pertains to articles about Antiwar.com, it seems likely that the reference to this “active investigation” is the reason the report on Antiwar.com ended up in the Israeli Movers file in the first place. This suggests it’s likely that the redacted report is not an FBI file (because otherwise they wouldn’t need to stick an unrelated file into just to reference it).

Two more marks on the first page is worth noting here. In the lower left corner there’s a word or phrase redacted, using a national defense/foreign policy exemption. If I had to guess (and it’s just a wildarsed guess), I’d say it looks like the kind of mark people use to label a document to indicate where to file it. In addition, there’s a national defense/foreign policy exempted mark just next to the file names.

The Circulation

Another detail of interest on the first page is the circulation list:

  • Three recipients in the Counterterrorism office
  • ECAU–basically the group that would continue monitoring Antiwar.com online–which is also in Counterterrorism
  • One named Counterterrorism Agent
  • Two named Agents in the NY Office
  • One named Agent in Philadelphia
  • St. Louis’ Pakistan Squad
  • San Francisco’s Pakistan Agent

In addition, the document is titled, “IT-Pakistan; IT UBL/Al Qaeda.”

All that (plus the Case ID numbers all referencing international terrorism investigations) suggest the document was originally generated by someone investigating an alleged Pakistani terrorist, not the Israeli Movers. Thus, it appears that what I’ve referred to as documents four and five–describing the watch lists–were a key source of interest to the Agent writing the report, not the Israeli Movers (note, too, that those documents were generated in the Saint Louis office, which is likely why they received this report).

The Classifications

Finally, there’s something interesting about the classification history of not just this document, but all the documents in this FOIA pack.

When this document was initially generated in April 2004, each paragraph and the document itself was marked with a classification mark. But it didn’t get a classifying stamp right away. That’s probably just FBI sloppiness.

But then, 16 months after the document was first generated, on August 3, 2005 (or August 2 for other parts of the packet), someone did go in and add a classification stamp (see the bottom left corner) to this and all the other documents in the file. The reason given for classification is intelligence activities. The person who added that stamp may be the person who marked individual classification marks (such as the Secret mark to the notation on the bottom right corner of the document) in fairly thick pen. Those marks are generally either marking public information as unclassified (those paragraphs were wrongly classified in the first place), or marking that front page notation and that reference to the other Israeli Movers investigation secret. If so, that same person may have written the Xes and the bracket in the paragraph about the Israeli Movers on page 8.

Then, at some point, someone declassified the document. (See the stamp, at a 90 degree angle, which is crossed out, in the left hand margin.)

Then, in September 2010, someone went back in and classified the whole set of documents again (see the notation at the top left of the page). In addition to the intelligence activities cited in the 2005 classification, this one cites foreign government information (reason b) and foreign activities of the US (reason d). This suggests someone got squeamish in 2010 about what the investigation on the Israeli Movers might do to our relations with Israel.

And then, presumably in response to this FOIA, the entire packet was declassified again. I suspect the mechanical notations–both the redactions and the printed new classification marks–were done for this declassification.

Update: Made a bunch of syntactical fixes.

Is this Why DOJ Is Sheltering Colombian Terrorists?

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Karen DeYoung has an important article reporting that the Colombian intelligence agency implicated in political crimes, Department of Administrative Security, had support from the CIA.

American cash, equipment and training, supplied to elite units of the Colombian intelligence service over the past decade to help smash cocaine-trafficking rings, were used to carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices, Uribe’s political opponents and civil society groups, according to law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with prosecutors and former Colombian intelligence officials.

[snip]

Some of those charged or under investigation have described the importance of U.S. intelligence resources and guidance, and say they regularly briefed embassy “liaison” officials on their intelligence-gathering activities. “We were organized through the American Embassy,” said William Romero, who ran the DAS’s network of informants and oversaw infiltration of the Supreme Court. Like many of the top DAS officials in jail or facing charges, he received CIA training. Some were given scholarships to complete coursework on intelligence-gathering at American universities.

Romero, who has accepted a plea agreement from prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation, said in an interview that DAS units depended on U.S.-supplied computers, wiretapping devices, cameras and mobile phone interception systems, as well as rent for safe houses and petty cash for gasoline. “We could have operated” without U.S. assistance, he said, “but not with the same effectiveness.”

One unit dependent on CIA aid, according to the testimony of former DAS officials in depositions, was the National and International Observations Group.

Set up to root out ties between foreign operatives and Colombian guerrillas, it turned its attention to the Supreme Court after magistrates began investigating the president’s cousin, then-Sen. Mario Uribe, said a former director, German Ospina, in a deposition to prosecutors. The orders came “from the presidency; they wanted immediate results,” Ospina told prosecutors.

Of particular note–given the impending trade deal with Colombia–these CIA-supported spies also infiltrated union activists.

Another unit that operated for eight months in 2005, the Group to Analyze Terrorist Organization Media, assembled dossiers on labor leaders, broke into their offices and videotaped union activists. The United States provided equipment and tens of thousands of dollars, according to an internal DAS report, and the unit’s members regularly met with an embassy official they remembered as “Chris Sullivan.”

The thoroughly unsurprising report that CIA was assisting DAS in its persecution of the political opposition is more troubling given that, in the same period, DAS had close ties to the right wing terrorist group, AUC. And DOJ actions taken since 2008 have effectively made key AUC terrorists from Colombia unavailable to testify about government officials who worked with the AUC as laid out in this report (I posted on it here; ProPublica wrote an important story as well). The US extradited a bunch of top AUC figures on drug charges (but not terrorism charges, in spite of the fact that their actions took place while on the State Department’s terrorist list). In spite of promises that these figures would continue to cooperate with Colombian investigations, such cooperation was for the most part ceased.

However, since their extraditions, the paramilitary leaders’ cooperation with Colombian investigators effectively has ceased. Logistical difficulties have been compounded by the absence of a written agreement between the U.S. and Colombia to coordinate judicial cooperation. Colombian prosecutors and judges face limited access to Defendants in U.S. custody. U.S. prosecutors also have rejected the efforts of Colombian victims to intervene in U.S. prosecutions to compel AUC Defendants to divulge information about their crimes.40

Among key AUC leaders extradited to the US on drug–but not terrorism–charges is Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (AKA Jorge 40), who commanded AUC’s Bloque Norte until he accepted amnesty in 2006.

The head of DAS from 2002 to 2005, Jorge Noguera Cotes, had ties to Tovar going back to the period when Noguera managed Álvaro Uribe’s campaign in a department largely controlled by Tovar. There are allegations that AUC carried out assassinations for DAS (including of trade union leaders).

Tovar was extradited to the US on May 13, 2008. Roughly a month later, Noguera was released from prison on a technicality (though he was rearrested in December of that year). Since that time, Tovar has avoided testifying about his ties with Noguera and other Colombian officials, most recently citing threats to his family members in Colombia.

Extradited paramilitary Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40,” refuses to testify in the parapolitics trials against former Magdalena Governor Jose Domingo Davila, and former director of government security agency DAS, Jorge Noguera Cotes.

Jorge 40 claims that there is a letter threatening to kill the families of ex-paramilitaries who testify before the Supreme Court.

Now, given US efforts to avoid treating the AUC like the terrorists they are, given the way the US relies on Colombia to counteract populist politics in Latin America, it is unsurprising that it used drug cases to remove top AUC figures from Colombia, thereby protecting the ruling party.

But the whole thing makes a lot more sense if the CIA was involved in Noguera’s collaboration with the AUC to target opposition in Colombia.

The UndieBomber Trial Gets Interesting

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I used to have a bit of a party trick last year before I moved out of SE Michigan. At some opportune time, I’d surprise folks by telling them the UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was in a prison just 20 miles from where we were in Ann Arbor, one you’d pass on the way down to Ohio.

Every time I did this, people were surprised to learn he was at that prison.

I raise this because of one of four developments (reported by Josh Gerstein) in the Abdulmutallab case that might make the trial something beyond the routine trial in October I had been expecting. These are:

  • Abdulmutallab is asking to have the trial moved out of Michigan
  • Abdulmutallab is asking to have statements he made while under sedation suppressed
  • Abdulmutallab is asking to have statements he made while at the Milan Correctional Facility suppressed
  • The government is asking for a protective order to withhold information from Abdulmutallab that appears to include exculpatory information

Now, from the standpoint of the defense, I think the request for a change of venue is a big mistake (remember Abdulmutallab is defending himself, although he is being assisted by a lawyer who seems to have been very involved in these filings). Given that this is a counterterrorism case, I presume it would only be moved to NY, DC, or VA. I suspect the jury pool would be demographically better for Abdulmutallab in MI than (at least) in VA. And, as my little party trick suggests, even people from among the jury pool who are exposed to counterterrorism issues on a regular basis (because they hear me talk about torture and wiretapping and such things) had pretty much forgotten Abdulmutallab was there just months after the attack. Finally, while I don’t know the entire manifest of the plane that Abdulmutallab allegedly attacked, Detroit is a hub, which means a lot of the passengers on the plane presumably connected on to somewhere else.

More importantly, if Judge Nancy Edmunds does consent to Abdulmutallab’s request, it will likely reignite the debate about what kind of trials alleged terrorists should have, and where. I assume at least some Republicans would use the event of a venue move to argue Abdulmutallab should be tried in Gitmo.

Particularly given the other filings in the case.

As a reminder, Abdulmutallab was detained in Detroit and taken to University of Michigan hospital for treatment. Throughout this period, Abdulmutallab was talking–under a public safety exception, the government has said. Then, 10 hours later, he was read his Miranda rights, and he stopped talking until such time as–weeks later–his family convinced him to talk.

But according to Abdulmutallab, in addition to the Miranda issue during the early period when he was talking (which I don’t expect to get much traction because it seems to fall squarely under a public safety exception), for part of it he was also under sedation, and hospital staff told federal agents he was not fit to be interrogated.

That hospital staff advised federal agents that the Defendant was in no position to conduct a legal interview because he had just been administered 300 mg of fentanyl. [sic–as Jim points out this seems to be the wrong dose]

That hospital staff were direct and clear when advising federal agents that the Defendant would not be able to conduct a legal interview for four to six hours.

In addition to challenging the admission of these statements (note, I think Abdulmutallab did speak to agents even before this), he is also trying to suppress statements made while at the prison they held him. He claims statements he made there–he seems to claim, all of them, which I find dubious–were made in the course of discussions about a plea agreement.

Defendant ABDULMUTALLAB met with government agents on numerous occasions at the Milan Correctional Facility. The government intended to obtain incriminating statements from Defendant regarding the alleged incident on December 25, 2009. In addition, the government engaged in plea negotiations with the Defendant during the meetings.
Before the meetings began, the government agents verbally agreed that they would not use any statements Defendant made, against him. Defendant relied on the government’s representation – as officers of the court – and made incriminating statements. See United States v. Dudden, 65 F.3d 1461, 1467 (9th Cir. 1995) (the government can grant the defendant varying degrees of immunity in an informal agreement). Allowing the government to use these statements at trial will violate the government’s agreement with Defendant.

Now, as I said, I find this much more dubious. There were several stages of interrogation at Milan (pronounced “My-lan,” btw). And I don’t believe all of these would have been in the context of plea negotiations.

Finally, there’s the government’s motion requesting a protective order,

…precluding discovery of certain classified information and precluding the defendant from inquiring of certain subjects during the cross-examination of government witnesses, because cross-examination of these subjects may result in the disclosure of classified information. The classified information the government seeks to protect is either not exculpatory, is privileged, or otherwise not discoverable.

Now part of this seems to stem from the fact that Abdulmutallab is defending himself (and so would get access to all this material himself–with many of the other alleged terrorists in civilian proceedings, their lawyers get such information, but they are forbidden from disclosing the information to their client). But note that last compound statement: this is information that is either not exculpatory or is privileged or is “otherwise not discoverable.”

This filing seems to suggest that some of this information is exculpatory, but is privileged (If it were really “otherwise not discoverable,” then why would it be included in this filing?). And they don’t even bother to say what kind of privilege. Is this a back-door state secrets declaration? The part of the filing that discusses this information is entirely classified.

And think of what kind of information this might possibly be. Just guessing here, but I think it might include,

  • Details about interrogation methods used with Abdulmutallab
  • Details about any pressure they used to convinced Abdulmutallab’s family to help get him to cooperate (remember Abdulmutallab’s father is a prominent Nigerian banker)
  • Information about Anwar al-Awlaki, including (potentially) information that shows AQAP didn’t consider Abdulmutallab a serious member; note this might include SIGINT
  • Information about how the government had information about Abdulmutallab, but didn’t act on it

I have no idea which of these they’re trying to hide, or even if I’ve thought of everything. But given how some of these issues–interrogation techniques, pressure on the family–go to behaviors that might otherwise be illegal, but seem to be increasingly used with alleged terrorists tried in civilian courts (both, I believe, were factors in Faisal Shahzad’s treatment), I find it interesting that the government refuses to share it with Abdulmutallab.

What I find interesting about all this, taken together, is what it suggests about our treatment of counterterrorism. This should be an open-and-shut case. There are tens of witnesses that saw Abdulmutallab try to blow up a plane, and at least some of his own statements must be admissible. But because of the way we’ve treated it, it seems to have introduced issues entirely of the government’s own making that will make it harder to try in civilian court. The government seems to be unable or unwilling to cleanly bracket off intelligence gathering. And–if the suggestion they’re hiding exonerating evidence under some kind of privilege is right–they continue to be unwilling to give alleged terrorists access to the exonerating information learned in intelligence collection, either.

I don’t think this makes the case for military commissions, which after all are mostly an attempt to pretend such actions don’t affect the legitimacy of the trial. But they seem to have unnecessarily introduced all the challenges they complain about when they try to justify military commissions.

FBI Doesn’t Consider Amerithrax among Its WMD “Highlights”

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The FBI’s WMD Center turned 5 on Tuesday and to celebrate, DOJ has released an interview with Dr. Vahid Majidi. (Part One, Part Two)

The interview is not all that interesting. I’m much more interested in the list of WMD cases Majidi offers as the successes the Directorate has had in the last five years. They are:

  • Jirair Avanessian, Farhoud Masoumian, and Amirhossein Sairafi, conspired to ship certain prohibited technologies–notably, vacuum pumps and pump-related equipment–to Iran.
  • Jeffrey Don Detrixhe, for possessing 62 pounds of sodium cyanide he intended to sell to “Fat Bob,” a member of the Aryan brotherhood; Detrixhe was captured using an informant, though he did obtain the sodium cyanide on his own.
  • Bechtel Jacobs employee Ron Lynn Oakley, for trying to sell uranium enrichment fuel rods to a person he thought was a foreign agent.
  • Roger Von Bergendorff, for possessing ricin (and an Anarchist Cookbook to learn to make it).
  • The “Newburgh Four,” for plotting to attack synogogues in NY; the plot was hatched by a notorious FBI informant who offered $250,000 for their involvement in the plot.
  • Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, for obtaining materials to make explosives to use against American targets.
  • Michael Finton (aka Talid Islam), for attempting to bomb an Illinois Courthouse; the plot was a sting set up by an FBI informant, and the bomb was never live.
  • Hosam Smadi, for attempting to bomb a Dallas skyscraper; the plot was a sting set up by FBI undercover agents, and the bomb was never live.
  • Michael Crooker, for possessing ricin and threatening a Federal prosecutor (including by invoking Tim Mcveigh); an earlier prosecution on firearms possession was overturned.
  • Najibullah Zazi, for attempting to use TATP to attack the NYC subway.
  • The Hutaree, for attempting to use explosives to attack the government.

Just about all these cases were plead. And, as the list makes clear, a number of the cases (with the exception of the Zazi and Aldawsari, those involving Islamic terrorists) were stings built by informants and/or undercover agents. The “real” plots were just as likely to be launched by right wing terrorists as by Islamic terrorists.

Notice what’s not on this list, though. In addition to Mohammed Osman Mohamud (another plot created by an FBI sting)  and Kevin William Harpham (the alleged MLK bomber) and a number of others, these WMD successes don’t include Amerithrax, by far the biggest investigation into WMD in the last five years.

The interview makes just one reference to a potential anthrax attack:

Q. What about all those white powder letters?

Dr. Majidi: Most turn out to be hoaxes, and they require a lot of investigative resources, but we have to investigate each and every incident. You never know when one of them will be real.

In a different inteview, Majidi points to the FBI’s investigation of hoax letters–but not the real ones–among the Directorates’ work.

If you remember, after 9/11 there was a rash of hoax letters that contained white powder sent to various recipients including to U.S. legislators. People were worried about the spread of anthrax and other disastrous outcomes. Because of our work at the WMD Directorate, we realized a high rate of success in prosecuting those who sent the letters.

These threats were insidious because they terrorized people, closed down businesses, and essentially stopped the business of governing the United States until the FBI could investigate. It involved a tremendous amount of local and federal resources, and at the same time took those resources away from other critical law enforcement and investigative needs. It cost taxpayers money, harmed businesses, essentially slowed down our society, and created measurable panic and insecurity.

No mention–in this interview or the earlier one–of the letters that didn’t end up being a hoax.

And it’s not that the WMD Directorate wasn’t involved in Amerithrax. Indeed, when Majidi, then the WMD Directorate’s Assistant Director, conducted the briefings to explain why FBI believed Ivins was the anthrax culprit, he attributed part of the “success” to the WMD Directorate.

The creation of the Weapon of Mass Destruction Directorate is another example of FBI’s progressive approach focusing on prevention as well as investigations on all issues involving chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials.

In terms of time, cost, and attack severity, the anthrax attack has been the most important thing the WMD Directorate has worked on since its inception. So why is Majidi so reluctant to talk about it?

Four Mobs: Yet More Bizarre Thinking Behind Administration’s Transnational Crime Program

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Robert Chesney took a look at the Executive Order associated with the Administration’s roll-out of its Transnational Crime Organization program yesterday, which basically blocks the property of a group considered to be a TCO (note, in some places the Admin uses the acronym TOC; I agree with Chesney that TCO makes more sense and so will use that instead now).

As I guessed yesterday, the EO basically institutes a “material support for TCO” concept, directly parallel to the terrorist one.

Section 1.  (a)  All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any overseas branch, of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:

(i)   the persons listed in the Annex to this order and

(ii)  any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State:

(A)  to be a foreign person that constitutes a significant transnational criminal organization;

(B)  to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(C)  to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b)  I hereby determine that the making of donations of the types of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in this order, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by subsection (a) of this section.

(c)  The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to:

(i)   the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; and

(ii)  the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

(d)  The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section apply except to the extent provided by statutes, or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date of this order.

The EO also clarifies something that was not clear from yesterday’s dog and pony show rolling this out: the Administration has listed four organizations that will, at this point, be considered TCOs:

1. THE BROTHERS’ CIRCLE (f.k.a. FAMILY OF ELEVEN; f.k.a. THE TWENTY)
2. CAMORRA
3. YAKUZA (a.k.a. BORYOKUDAN; a.k.a. GOKUDO)
4. LOS ZETAS

Now, like Chesney, I have a few questions about this list. Like Chesney, I want to know why only Los Zetas is listed. Are we really playing favorites among Mexico’s drug cartels? Chesney thinks it might be a reaction to Los Zetas’ murder of an ICE agent earlier this year. But the choice also has curious implications for the Operation Fast and Furious program, in which ATF agents dealt guns used by Los Zetas members. Is this just a way to give ATF a way to validate the concept behind that failed program?

But there may be another reason. I suggested yesterday that Wells Fargo, which last year entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement for the money laundering it did for Mexican cartels in 2005, ought to be on the list of TCOs, too. The one cartel I know of that is definitely tied to that money laundering, however, is Sinaloa. So by leaving Sinaloa off the list, you leave of the necessity of freezing the funds of TBTF banks.

I’m even more mystified by the inclusion of the Yakuza–Japan’s mob–on the list. Japan has long tolerated the Yakuza even while making claims they’d crack down. Did we consult with them before we put the Yakuza on the list?

More curiously, the Yakuza played a key role in the response to this spring’s Japanese earthquakes (this is akin to the role that some terrorist organizations had in Pakistan’s flood and earthquake response, as well as Hezbollah’s general role in Shiite Lebanese welfare). This post provides a good description of the Yakuza’s role and their reasons for providing such humanitarian aide. Some highlights:

In truth, the measure of a yakuza boss is not how honourable he is, it’s how much cash he brings in, a fact that might help explain the mobsters’ motives for providing aid. A senior member of one organised crime group in eastern Japan acknowledges this. He says: “It’s usually about money. Earthquakes and disasters are one of the few times that yakuza can do what they’re supposed to do: help other people. We can do it because we’re not bound by red tape. It’s as simple as putting up the money, ordering the soldiers to buy supplies, put them on trucks, and carry them to areas where they’re needed. Certainly some members are looking at this as a chance to gain goodwill and local support when the reconstruction begins. In my case, I just want to give back to the community where I was born. That’s the spirit of the yakuza. That’s the ideal. Other people have other motives.”

Whatever their mixed motives, right now the yakuza are apparently helping the weak and the suffering, bringing warm blankets to those who are cold, feeding the hungry and getting water to the thirsty. The Sumiyoshi-kai and the Inagawa-kai in total have sent over 200 tons of supplies to devastated areas according to police sources and raised several million dollars from their own members to facilitate the aid. The Matsuba-kai, the Kyokuto-kai (both in Tokyo), and even smaller groups like the Aizukotestu-kai (in Kyoto) are all chipping in.

[snip]

One member of the Sumiyoshi-kai group I spoke to, a full-time gangster in the Saitama prefecture specialising in extortion, explains the efforts simply:

“In times like this, the usual societal divisions are meaningless. There aren’t yakuza and civilians or foreigners and Japanese. We’re all Japanese now. We all live here. Down the road, there is money to be made, for sure.

“Right now, it’s about saving lives and helping each other out. Ninety-five per cent of all yakuza are human garbage. Maybe 5 per cent uphold the rules. Right now we’re all doing our best. It’s one of the few times we can be better than we normally are.”

Even a senior police officer from Ibaraki agrees, speaking under conditions of anonymity. “I have to hand it to the yakuza. They have been on the ground from day one providing aid where others don’t or cannot do it. Laws can be like a two-edged sword and sometimes they hamper relief efforts. Sometimes, outlaws are faster than the law. This is one of those times.”

Now, it doesn’t appear that the Yakuza used foreign aid to pay for this humanitarian support. That is, it doesn’t seem like western money effectively went to the Yakuza, meaning it could be contrived as material support for a TCO.

Nevertheless, there are sure to be a whole host of ways in which American businesses might end up funding the Yakuza.  We’ll quickly find those businesses to be in the position that Chiquita got in, though without the cover story that they paid terrorists to protect their employees.

And then, ultimately, there’s the process by which mobs get picked as TCOs. The current list almost seems like a test of concept–an attempt to throw several different kinds of mobs on the list, to see how the new legal toy works in practice.

But remember it’s the Secretary of Treasury deciding, with no transparency, who is and who is not on the list. You know–the same guy insisting that banks never be held to account for their crime, even while he enables them to become more powerful.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Transnational gangs are a big problem. But this is a gigantic slippery slope that none of us really get to see even as we’re already sliding down it.

And it still doesn’t protect us from the banksters looting our own economy.

The Blinds Spots of the Administration’s New Transnational Organized Crime Program

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John Brennan, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and some other Administration bigwigs just rolled out the Administration’s new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime (TOC). Here’s how they define TOC:

Transnational organized crime refers to those self-perpetuating associations of individuals who operate transnationally for the purpose of obtaining power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or in part by illegal means, while protecting their activities through a pattern of corruption and/or violence, or while protecting their illegal activities through a transnational organizational structure and the exploitation of transnational commerce or communication mechanisms. There is no single structure under which transnational organized criminals operate; they vary from hierarchies to clans, networks, and cells, and may evolve to other structures. The crimes they commit also vary. Transnational organized criminals act conspiratorially in their criminal activities and possess certain characteristics which may include, but are not limited to:

It all sounds like they could be talking about Goldman Sachs or News Corp. But the specific crimes they mentioned are:

  • Drug trafficking
  • Human trafficking
  • Russian, Italian, Japanese mafia (in addition to Mexican drug cartels)
  • Counterfeiting

In other words, this initiative will look at very serious TOCs. But they won’t look at the TOCs that have done the most damage to the US in the last several years: the banksters that, through fraud, intimidation, and political influence managed to loot and then crash the economy. The same banksters that are now–frankly with DOJ enabling them–using their corporate structures to avoid any accountability for having crashed the economy.

That’s a problem. Because imagine what we could do to the banksters if we used any of the several following tools against them:

A new Executive Order will establish a sanctions program to block the property of and prohibit transactions
with significant transnational criminal networks that threaten national security, foreign policy, or economic interests.
A proposed legislative package will enhance the authorities available to investigate, interdict, and prosecute the activities of top transnational criminal networks.
A new Presidential Proclamation under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) will deny entry to transnational criminal aliens and others who have been targeted for financial sanctions.
A new rewards program will replicate the success of narcotics rewards programs in obtaining information
that leads to the arrest and conviction of the leaders of transnational criminal organizations that pose the greatest threats to national security.
An interagency Threat Mitigation Working Group will identify those TOC networks that present a sufficiently
high national security risk and will ensure the coordination of all elements of national power to combat them.

We could freeze Goldman and its executives from using their ill-gotten goods. We could recruit new whistleblowers, rather than jailing them. We could throw “all elements of national power” to combat Goldman.

Instead, we’ve been funneling trillions to them.

Now I don’t mean to be glib with this observation. The Administration is about to roll out a law enforcement regime that applies terrorist-like authorities to combat the TOCs it believes are illegitimate. While I haven’t seen the bill the Administration is proposing, it seems that the taint of illegality in one part of the TOC will qualify that TOC for such terrorist-like treatment across the network.

Except if you’re a bankster. Because if you’re a bankster, the government will use all its resources to ignore or settle the crimes that lay at the heart of your TOC, just so it doesn’t have to face the illegitimacy of the TOC as a whole.

But I guess that’s what the Administration expects to drive our economy.

Naming Terrorism

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As you probably heard, two weeks ago, a guy named Rodrick Dantzler went on a killing spree here in Grand Rapids, shooting his wife and her family, and an ex-girlfriend and her family. He was reportedly bipolar and had a history of violence; four women–none of them among his victims–had gotten protection orders against him. He might fit the profile of a “family annihilator.” But even in spite of his criminal record, no one intervened to prevent the murders.

He terrorized this city. But he was not a terrorist.

I raise Dantzler not because the murders he committed–reportedly the worst attack ever in this city–equate with those committed in Norway, but because of the crazy talk about terrorism in response to the Norway attack–first, the rush to label the attack Islamic terrorism, and now the escalating ignorance in an effort to excuse such bigotry (this beaut is from Erick Erickson)…

First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream.

With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing.

But then why is the left so gleeful that the Norwegian is a “conservative Christian” and why do they feel it so necessary to rub it in when they’re downright apathetic and hostile to the notion of radical Islam being rather mainstream within Islam when terrorist Christianity is largely nonexistent except among a few crazies?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Bible is quite on point about this.

Secular leftists and Islamists are both of this world. Christians may be traveling through, but we are most definitely not of the world. In fact, Christ commands us to throw off our ties to this world. But the things of this world love this world and hate the things of God. That’s why secular leftism can embrace both activist homosexuals and activist muslims when the latter would, when true to their faith, be happy to kill the former.

And frankly, the urge to dig up analysis of a rising right wing terrorist threat–particularly analysis that sees terrorism as a big process of action and reaction–in Europe is not much better.

A report by European police agency Europol on security in 2010 said that there was no right-wing terrorism on the continent in that period.

But it added the far right was becoming very professional at producing online propaganda of an anti-Semitic and xenophobic nature and was increasingly active in online social networking.

“Although the overall threat from right-wing extremism appears to be on the wane and the numbers of right-wing extremist criminal offences are relatively low, the professionalism in their propaganda and organization shows that right-wing extremist groups have the will to enlarge and spread their ideology and still pose a threat in EU member states,” it said.

If the unrest in the Arab world, especially in North Africa, leads to a major influx of immigrants into Europe, “right-wing extremism and terrorism might gain a new lease of life by articulating more widespread public apprehension about immigration from Muslim countries into Europe,” it added.

Public manifestations of right-wing extremism can often provoke counter-activity by extreme left-wing groups. Such confrontations invariably result in physical violence.

That’s not to say we should ignore the networks of people organizing to commit violence, whether they’re Muslim, Christian, or something else (though we’re less likely to be surprised if we don’t always try to classify it according to the ideology feeding it). It’s to say that you don’t need terrorism per se to kill a lot of people. You need a gun, or some fertilizer, or some beauty products.

When our first reaction after a person commits such atrocity is to try to label the ideology of it, we seem to miss the underlying commonality that people often respond to threats to their own dignity with violence, and that in this world, it’s fairly easy for that violence to turn massive.

Famine in Somalia Ought to Lead Us to Rethink War on Terror

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In the US, most of the news on Somalia in recent days has focused on the war on terror. First, there was the arrest of alleged al-Shabaab figure Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame. Then there was Jeremy Scahill’s important piece on the CIA’s black site in Somalia. And then the push to conflate al-Shabaab with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with al Qaeda.

Somalia, you see, is all about the war on terror.

Except that it’s also the focal point of what the UN has now declared is a growing famine in the Horn of Africa.

Which really ought to make us question our priorities globally.

Check out the list of factors behind the famine.

The current crisis in southern Somalia is driven by a combination of factors:-

  • The total failure of the October‐December Deyr rains (secondary season) and the poor performance of the April‐June Gu rains (primary season) have resulted in crop failure, reduced labor demand, poor livestock body conditions, and excess animal mortality
  • Local cereal prices across the south are far above average, more than 2 to 3 times 2010 prices in some areas, and continue to rise. As a result, both livestock to cereal and wage to cereal terms of trade have deteriorated substantially. Across all livelihoods, poor households (~30 percent of the population) are unable to meet basic food needs and have limited ability to cope with these food deficits
  • During July, FSNAU conducted 17 representative nutrition and mortality surveys across southern Somalia; results are available for 11 surveys. The prevalence of acute malnutrition exceeds 20 percent in all areas and is higher than 38 percent (with severe acute malnutrition higher than 14 percent) in 9 of the 11 survey areas. The highest recorded levels of acute malnutrition are in Bay, Bakool, and Gedo (agropastoral) where the GAM prevalence exceeds 50 percent. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has verified these findings
  • Population‐wide death rates are above the famine threshold (2/10,000/day) in two areas (Bakool agropastoral, and all areas of Lower Shabelle) and are elevated across the south. Under‐5 death rates are higher than 4/10,000/day in all areas of the south where data is available, peaking at 13‐20/10,000/day in riverine and agropastoral areas of Lower Shabelle. Tens of thousands of people have died in the past three months.l

 

One of these issues–the 2-300% increase in cereal prices–can be tied at least partly to commodity speculation, the gambling over foodstuffs that helps companies like Goldman Sachs get richer.

And the part of that price increase that doesn’t come from commodity speculation–that is, the part of that price increase tied to real market issues–derives largely from catastrophic weather. The failed rains in East Africa are just one part of that. More important to the world market are the drought and fires in Russia and the floods in Australia. And while we can’t prove that the last year’s freakish weather is a very tangible sign that climate change has started to affect our day-to-day life, there’s little doubt that climate change is a big part of it.

Now, you can’t actually separate al-Shabaab’s presence in Somalia from its famine; the absence of a functioning government, after all, is what leads to famine. And al-Shabaab’s presence makes it more difficult for aid organizations to work.

But it’s unclear that launching drone strikes on Somalia is the best way we can help them. It’s probably not even within the top 10. And whatever our counterterrorism presence in Somalia, focusing on that–but not on the financial and behavioral things the developed world does that exacerbates this crisis–ignores some of the most important underlying causes.

Our Unilateral Counterterrorism Operations in Somalia

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A detainee in what Jeremy Scahill describes as “a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held”–one with key US involvement–describes his internment this way.

I have been here for one year, seven months. I have been interrogated so many times. Interrogated by Somali men and white men. Every day. New faces show up. They have nothing on me. I have never seen a lawyer, never seen an outsider. Only other prisoners, interrogators, guards. Here there is no court or tribunal.

Scahill’s entire article, describing our counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, is of course a must read, particularly given questions raised by the Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame indictment.

But given my non-debate with Benjamin Wittes about drones and sovereignty (though these programs go far beyond drone strikes), I wanted to point to Scahill’s description of the arrangement the US has with Somalia in this.

According to well-connected Somali sources, the CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. “They support us in a big way financially,” says the senior Somali intelligence official. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”

[snip]

It is unclear how much control, if any, Somalia’s internationally recognized president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has over this counterterrorism force or if he is even fully briefed on its operations. The CIA personnel and other US intelligence agents “do not bother to be in touch with the political leadership of the country. And that says a lot about the intentions,” says Aynte. “Essentially, the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States. You should have had State Department people doing foreign policy, but the CIA seems to be doing it across the country.”

While the Somali officials interviewed for this story said the CIA is the lead US agency coordinating the Mogadishu counterterrorism program, they also indicated that US military intelligence agents are at times involved. When asked if they are from JSOC or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the senior Somali intelligence official responded, “We don’t know. They don’t tell us.”

Not only is the bulk of our relationship with Somalia going through these intelligence channels to intelligence channels. But it also relies on African Union forces.

The [defense bill authorizing increased counterterrorism support in Somalia], however, did not authorize additional funding for Somalia’s military, as the country’s leaders have repeatedly asked. Instead, the aid package would dramatically increase US arming and financing of AMISOM’s forces, particularly from Uganda and Burundi, as well as the militaries of Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia.

I understand that Somalia is one of the most challenging places to work, given the absence of any viable state (save, perhaps, al-Shabaab). But our direct–and secret–control of other territories is worth thinking seriously about.

Is “National Security” a Good Excuse to Pursue Policies that Undermine the Nation-State?

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Here I was steeling myself for a big rebuttal from Benjamin Wittes to my “Drone War on Westphalia” post on the implications of our use of drones. But all I got was a difference in emphasis.

In his response, Wittes generally agrees that our use of drones has implications for sovereignty. But he goes further–arguing it has implications for governance–and focuses particularly on the way technology–rather than the increasing importance of transnational entities I focused on–can undermine the nation-state by empowering non-state actors.

I agree emphatically with Wheeler’s focus on sovereignty here–although for reasons somewhat different from the ones she offers. Indeed, I think Wheeler doesn’t go quite far enough. For it isn’t just sovereignty at issue in the long run, it is governance itself. Robotics are one of several technological platforms that we can expect to  greatly enhance the power of individuals and small groups relative to states. The more advanced of these technological areas are networked computers and biotechnology, but robotics is not all that far behind–a point Ken Anderson alludes to at a post over at the Volokh Conspiracy. Right now, the United States is using robotics, as Wheeler points out, in situations that raises issues for other countries’ sovereignty and governance and has a dominant technological advantage in the field. But that’s not going to continue. Eventually, other countries–and other groups, and other individuals–will use robotics in a fashion that has implications for American sovereignty, and, more generally, for the ability of governments in general to protect security. [my emphasis]

Given DOD’s complete inability to protect our computer toys from intrusion, I’ll wager that time will come sooner rather than later. Iraqi insurgents already figured out how to compromise our drones once using off-the-shelf software.

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

It may not take long, then, for a country like Iran or an entity like a Mexican drug cartel to develop and disseminate a way to hack drones. And given the way other arms proliferate, it won’t be long before drones are available on the private market. (Incidentally, remember how some of the crap intelligence used to trump up a war against Saddam involved a balsa-wood drone? Great times those were!)

So Wittes and I are in pretty close agreement here; he even agrees that the larger issue “ought to be the subject of wider and more serious public debate.”

But shouldn’t it be, then, part of the question whether facilitating this process serves national security or not?

In the interest of fostering some disagreement here–er, um, in an interest in furthering this discussion–I wanted to unpack the thought process in this passage from Wittes’ response to Spencer with what appears to be Wittes’ and my agreement in mind:

The point with merit is the idea that drones enable the waging of war without many of the attendant public costs–including the sort of public accounting that necessarily happens when you deploy large numbers of troops. I have no argument with him on this score, save that he seems to be looking at only one side of a coin that, in fact, has two sides. Ackerman sees that drones make it easy to get involved in wars. But he ignores the fact that for exactly the same reason, they make it easier to limit involvement in wars. How one feels about drones is partly conditioned by what one believes the null hypothesis to be. If one imagines that absent drones, our involvement in certain countries where we now use them would look more like law enforcement operations, one will tend to feel differently, I suspect, that if one thinks our involvement would look more like what happened in Iraq. Drones enable an ongoing, serious, military and intelligence involvement in countries without significant troop commitments.

As I read it, the logic of the passage goes like this:

  1. Drones minimize the costs of involvement in wars
  2. We will either be involved in these countries in a war or a law enforcement fashion
  3. Therefore, we’re better off using drones than large scale military operations

Now, before I get to the implications of this logic, let me point out a few things.

First, note how Wittes uses “what happened in Iraq” as the alternative kind of military deployment? Read more →