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amy31416
08-22-2011, 07:28 AM
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Entire article at link: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08/21/antiwar-com-vs-the-fbi/


The FBI vs. Antiwar.com
Secret documents reveal government spy-and-smear campaign

by Justin Raimondo, August 22, 2011


It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and it was my day off. Sitting in my rather neglected garden, as the late afternoon light sparkled golden on the tops of the plum trees, I put down my book – the 1995 edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois – with more than a little annoyance. I was smack dab in the middle of a short story, “Asylum,” by Katharine Kerr, a tale about a future military coup in the US, written from the point of view of a particularly earnest liberal with faintly radical leanings. The main character is a woman writer who is abroad when the generals take over, and is marked as an enemy of the state on account of her book, Christian Fascism: Its Roots and Rise. Her San Francisco office is raided and her files carted away. She gets a call from a friend before the coup plotters cut off all communications with the outside world: “It’s seven days in May – stay where you are!” She stays, but is tortured by the prospect of her daughter being in harm’s way: when communications with America are finally restored, she wrestles with the question of whether to pick up the phone and make a call that might endanger her daughter. After all, what if the Christian Fascists are listening?

The phone kept ringing. I picked it up with annoyance: it was our webmaster, Eric Garris, telling me about this – FBI documents recovered through the Freedom of Information Act that detail surveillance of Antiwar.com, the staff, and specifically yours truly.

A word about the authenticity of the documents and their provenance: they were posted on a public website, Scribd.com: their form, including the extensive redactions, the acronymic bureaucratese, and the lunk-headed cluelessness which dominates the FBI’s corporate culture, so to speak, combine to verify their authenticity.

As to the content of these documents, one word describes them: bizarre.

According to a memo stamped “Secret,” marked as “routine,” and dated April 30, 2004, we apparently drew the attention of the feds when we posted a copy of a “terrorist suspect list” [.pdf] which had been supplied by the US government to various corporate and governmental agencies, both here and abroad. These documents – including one posted on the web site of an Italian banking association – contained the names of those on a “watch list,” the product of an FBI operation dubbed “Operation Lookout.” The memo acknowledges the list “was posted on the internet” in “different versions,” but says the FBI “assessment was conducted on the findings discovered on www.antiwar.com.”

These guys are using us a resource – so why haven’t they contributed to our fund drive?

The April 30 memo – which was issued to FBI counterrorism offices in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco – is prefaced with the following rather ominous “administrative” note:

“This document contains information obtained under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 50 U.S.C., Section 1801. Such FISA derived information shall not be used in any criminal proceeding, including grand jury proceedings …”

FISA created a special secret court, to which the feds have to go to get approval from a judge to tap your phone, open your mail, and rifle through your garbage. This accounts for the large number of lengthy redactions that pepper the pages of this report. Sneaking around corners, and spying on Americans engaged in peaceful and legal activities, they don’t want anyone to know how closely they mimic the methods of totalitarian governments,

After a paragraph of précis detailing the basic facts about Antiwar.com – its mission, personnel, and nonprofit status – the details of several database searches are enumerated. A search of the Universal Index (UNI) for antiwar.com “was negative,” however “a scan of the Electronic Case File (ECF) revealed numerous documents for [redacted] and antiwar.com.” This is apparently an index of documents, “intelligence,” and random rumors picked up by various FBI snoops. The information revealed about Antiwar.com is, naturally, redacted, although we are given a hint as to the origins of some of the dirt they have on us: “File 65T-HQ-1427774 serial 26, dated 04/14/2004, from the Counterintelligence Unit CD-4E/11869 to the Washington Field Office furnished Washington Field Office with information received by [next four lines redacted].”

So who says we don’t have friends in Washington?

The redactions are extensive. The next entry refers to another file in the FBI database and starts out in mid sentence:

“…that he was in possession of a document which was written in Italian. This document specified that [redacted] was a suspect on an FBI list. The document contained[redacted] social security number, date of birth, and two previous addresses. [Redacted] was listed as [redacted] on a list dated 05/22/02. This document can be found at www.antiwar.com/justin/CI-08-02.pdf.”

This almost certainly refers to one of my columns about the mysterious “Urban Movers,” the Israeli employees of a New Jersey moving company who were arrested on 9/11/01 on suspicion they had some connection to the attacks. Five Israeli nationals were arrested that day, and held for over three months, subjected to lie detector tests, and later deported back to Israel. The owner of the company, one Dominick Suter, and his wife, fled to Israel the day before the police raided the company’s office and hauled away cartons of evidence: the Suters are among those listed on the “terrorist suspect list.” That was the angle I pursued in my columns, and it looks like the FBI also took an intense interest in the Suters.

The rest of the article is definitely worth a read.

Anti Federalist
08-22-2011, 10:54 AM
Bump...tl;dr is not an acceptable excuse.

This shit is serious.

amy31416
08-22-2011, 11:02 AM
It really is...and I didn't post most of the "meat" of the article above.

specsaregood
08-22-2011, 11:16 AM
From the implication that we’re engaged in illegal activities the memo segues easily into inquisitorial mode:

“There are several unanswered questions regarding www.antiwar.com. It describes itself as a nonprofit group that survives on generous contributions from its readers. Who are these contributors and what are the funds utilized for?”

I had a longtime JBS member tell me that is why they never sought tax-exempt status, so they would never have to turn over their membership roster or donor lists.

amy31416
08-22-2011, 11:25 AM
That some idiotic overpaid FBI “analyst” is sitting around “analyzing” material that appears on Antiwar.com and concluding that we are engaged in activities “on behalf of a foreign power” is straight out of Bizarro World. Instead of tracking down criminals, and listening in on the communications of terrorists plotting violence against this country, they are sitting around reading my old columns, intercepting my emails, and listening to my phone conversations. This is at once depressing and frightening: depressing because one wonders: don’t these incompetents have any adult supervision? Frightening because the idea of some government sneak having full knowledge of my internet hookups and my two-hour long conversations with my sister about the condition of her cats is the ultimate in creepiness.

Oh, but if he's doing nothing wrong, he's got nothing to fear--right? And the Patriot Act will never be used against innocent American citizens.

Brian4Liberty
08-22-2011, 11:39 AM
This part was pretty funny: "Libertopia".


I saved the best for last: the “action” recommendations contained in the memo. While directing the Washington FBI’s Electronic Communication Analysis Unit (ECAU) to “further monitor the postings of website www.antiwar.com,” the San Francisco office – where both Eric and I lived at the time – is tasked with the following:

“It is recommended that a PI be opened to determine if [redacted] are engaging in, or have engaged in, activities which constitute a threat to National Security on behalf of a foreign power.”

Reading that, I could hardly believe my eyes. Yielding to a sudden need for fresh air, I went out into my garden and just sat there for a few moments, warming myself in the last rays of the setting sun. It all seemed so unreal. Was this really happening, or had I imagined the whole thing? I returned to my computer and read it again, just to be certain, and – sure enough – there it was, plain as the pixels on my screen: I was accused of being “a threat to National Security” and working “on behalf of a foreign power.”

What “foreign power” would that be – Libertopia? Galt’s Gulch?