When you’re introduced to Saeed Torres in the new documentary (T)ERROR, you hear him bickering with the filmmaker, Lyric Cabral. The screen is black.
“I told you I didn’t want my face in that shit,” he says.
“Even if your face is shown, how would somebody come after you?” Cabral asks.
“You’d be surprised who knows me,” Torres insists.
The blackness lifts. Torres is dressed in a chef’s apron and a white headscarf, making hot dogs at an amateur basketball game, as if he were an all-American guy.
“I might not even make no fucking independent film,” he says, irritated.
Torres isn’t an all-American guy. He’s an FBI informant, one of more than 15,000 domestic spies who make up the largest surveillance network ever created in the United States. During J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO operations, the bureau had just 1,500 informants. The drug war brought that number up to about 6,000. After 9/11, the bureau recruited so many new informants — many of them crooks and convicts, desperate for money or leniency on previous crimes — that the government had to develop software to help agents track their spies.
Torres agreed to participate in that independent film, of course. In (T)ERROR, which has its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 16, he offers the rest of us an unprecedented look inside an FBI counterterrorism sting as it unfolds. The documentary is compelling for its intimate portrayal of a single informant who has played a key role in several major terrorism cases.
Video clip from (T)ERROR
Informants represent the manpower behind the FBI’s controversial stings, which are intended to find would-be terrorists before they attack. In the decade after 9/11, 158 defendants were prosecuted following these undercover operations, which are usually led by an informant and provide the means and opportunity for someone to attempt to commit an act of terrorism. A Human Rights Watch report in 2014 criticized the FBI for targeting “particularly vulnerable people, including those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent.” Late last week, for example, the FBI arrested a mentally troubled 20-year-old in Topeka, Kansas, after he allegedly attempted to bomb Fort Riley with the help of two undercover FBI informants.
While there are more than 15,000 FBI informants, most are low-level operatives who provide scraps of information or tips about people in their community. Only a few of them at any time are high-level operators like Torres — professional liars who travel the country as agents provocateur in elaborate stings. They can make $100,000 or more for every case they work. Torres, a former Black Panther and convict who robbed New York City transit booths, is one of these operators, a freelance agent who portrays himself as a “radicalized Muslim,” as the government’s terminology puts it.
“I don’t like the word informant,” Torres says in (T)ERROR. “I consider myself a civilian operative.”
Torres was the informant behind FBI stings that targeted Tarik Shah, a Bronx jazz bassist who was convicted of providing material support for terrorists in 2007, after he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in front of an undercover agent, and Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a Yemeni cleric in Brooklyn who bragged about his connections to Osama bin Laden. Al-Moayad pleaded guilty to conspiring to raise money for Hamas, and after he served six years behind bars, an appeals court overturned his conviction, ruling that he did not receive a fair trial. He then was deported to Yemen, where he received a hero’s welcome. Shah is in federal prison, serving a 15-year sentence.
(T)ERROR picks up Torres’s story after these stings (warning to readers: spoilers ahead). Living in a rundown apartment somewhere in the Northeast, he gets a call from the FBI. They want him to go to Pittsburgh to get to know a terrorism suspect — a 34-year-old white Muslim convert named Khalifah al-Akili.
“I need the money,” Torres tells Cabral and her filmmaking partner, David Felix Sutcliffe.
He packs up his car and his dog and moves into an FBI safe house around the corner from al-Akili’s apartment building. The cameras follow Torres for months as he struggles to gather any evidence that al-Akili poses a threat to national security. One of the remarkable aspects of this documentary — and of the way the FBI conducts its stings — is that Torres flatly admits that the target of his FBI operation isn’t dangerous. He isn’t on his way to becoming a terrorist.
“That dude ain’t going to bust a grape,” Torres tells his FBI handler in a phone conversation. “He ain’t going to throw rice at a wedding, believe me.”
The agents, apparently frustrated that Torres couldn’t build a case on al-Akili, bring in a second informant, Shahed Hussain, and tell Torres to make the introduction. Hussain is a con artist from Albany, New York, who was convicted of participating in a scam to give driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. He came to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1994, after being arrested in Karachi on a murder charge. Hussain had been used by the FBI before — he was the bureau’s undercover informant in an Albany terrorism case as well as in a sting that targeted the so-called Newburgh Four — four poor black men who plotted with Hussain to bomb synagogues in the Bronx and to fire Stinger missiles at airplanes, though only after Hussain had offered the lead defendant, a mentally troubled man named James Cromitie, $250,000 if he participated in the plot. (The four suspects received lengthy prison sentences.)
There’s no shortage of embarrassing moments for the FBI in its dozens of counterterrorism stings since 9/11. In Boston, an FBI informant who was working a counterterrorism case was caught on an FBI camera purchasing heroin, which wasn’t part of his assignment. In case after case, the FBI experiences so-called “recorder malfunctions” — usually at the most unfortunate time for the defendant, such as at the very beginning of the sting or, as in an operation involving a Baltimore teenager, when the target was attempting to back out of the plot. More recently, FBI agents accidentally recorded themselves calling the subject of their undercover investigation a “retarded fool” whose terrorist ambitions were “wishy-washy.”
As soon as Hussain is introduced into the al-Akili case, the FBI’s work is revealed as similarly ham-handed. Hussain blows the introduction by being overeager, giving al-Akili reason to suspect Torres and Hussain are government agents. Hussain hands al-Akili his business card, and a suspicious al-Akili subsequently Googles the phone number. His search brings up an FBI document from the Newburgh Four case — one that I had obtained and posted online as part of a story for Mother Jones. The FBI had never bothered to change Hussain’s cell phone number. Al-Akili discovers the story I wrote about Hussain — “The Making of an FBI Superinformant” — and realizes he’s the target of an FBI investigation.
Instead of cowering, al-Akili emails dozens of lawyers and journalists, including me.
“I would like to pursue a legal action against the FBI due to their continuous harassment, and attempts to set me up,” al-Akili wrote in the March 9, 2012 email.
“I felt I was almost obligated to expose these guys,” al-Akili told the filmmakers.
(T)ERROR becomes an intense spy game that plays out on screen, with each person double-crossing someone: Torres lying to and attempting to set up al-Akili for the FBI, and Cabral and Sutcliffe, in turn, turning the tables on the very subject of their film by approaching the subject of his investigation.
Cabral and Sutcliffe were even there when the FBI arrested al-Akili — not for terrorism but for having posed for a picture, in 2010, holding a rifle at a gun range. Since al-Akili had two previous felony drug convictions, he’d committed a crime by holding that gun. At his bond hearing, an FBI agent said Al-Akili had told informants that he wanted to join the Taliban in Pakistan. Al-Akili is now serving eight years in prison.
Near the end of (T)ERROR, Torres looks back on his work with the FBI agents in Pittsburgh.
“I told ’em,” Torres recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not here to entrap nobody.’ They’re trying to make me force this dude into saying something to support terrorism. I said, ‘This dude is not a fucking terrorist, man. He’s not even a pseudo-terrorist. He’s nothing but an oxymoron.’”
(T)ERROR would be disturbing enough if the case it followed were an isolated one. But it’s not. The announcement of a FBI sting like the one that targeted Khalifah al-Akili happens almost weekly now.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Tarik Shah as a pianist; this story has been updated to reflect that he is a bassist.
Disclosure: Laura Poitras, a founding editor of The Intercept, was a creative consultant to the makers of (T)ERROR.
Photos and Video: Stories Seldom Seen
Did you see these pieces about the Oklahoma City Bombing and the FBI’s use of informants and operatives?
part 1: http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/04/22/exclusive-oklahoma-city-bombing-breakthrough-part-1-of-2/
part 2: whowhatwhy.org/2015/04/23/exclusive-oklahoma-city-bombing-breakthrough-part-2-of-2/
This would not be the first FBI Sting – After growing suspicious during the uncover operation, an FBI operative secretly taped conversations about the WTC bombing. Emad Salem went public with the tapes: https://youtu.be/_2vpcABWJiY?t=98
Democracy Now did a lengthy segment about this this morning, April 20th.
“We spend the hour with an explosive new film that shines a bright light on the FBI’s shadowy use of informants in its counterterrorism sting operations. These undercover operatives are meant to root out would-be terrorists before they attack. Since 9/11, they have been used to prosecute at least 158 people. But critics argue they often target the wrong people, “including those with intellectual and mental disabilities, and the indigent.” “(T)ERROR” goes inside the world of a particular informant who has played a key role in several major terrorism cases. It does so while he is in the middle of carrying out his latest sting operation. It came together when two independent filmmakers gained unprecedented access to follow Saeed Torres, whose undercover name is “Shariff,” a 63-year-old former black revolutionary turned FBI informant, as he monitors a white Muslim convert named Khalifah al-Akili.”
ROFL at the reused phone number turning up on Google – it’s clear that by delegating the work to amateurs, the FBI created some trouble for itself. Except… well, how often does that happen with the real terrorists? If the FBI can’t even check over their informant’s business card and defeat Google, what are the odds that they can fool someone who is actually in a big-name terror group, makes regular reports, has a headquarters to find out information from the sort of financial/medical/etc. databases on any new recruit that private investigators might access?
The term the FBI now gives these targets are aspirational terrorists. It goes beyond what critics have observed in the past. Beyond not having access to materials for weapons or explosives. the technical knowledge to assemble the materials, the money to acquire the materials, and detailed knowledge about potential targets for attacks, these people don’t even an idea of who or what they want to attack before the FBI informant hands them the plot.
The sad thing about the current situation in this country is that the mainstream often won’t divulge that the plots are FBI sting operations and the large extent to which FBI is responsible for these ‘plots’.
Thank you Trevor for this story. There is a sub-population that is too familiar with these tactics, whether practiced by the FBI or some other agency that finds value in them. These are thousands of targeted individuals across the country.
Often the objective of the stings is not to harm the individual when the set-up is implemented by the likes of this former Black Panther, because the process of harming him and destroying his or her rights is almost always already in progress. The sting is merely a wild hunt for the justification the agency(-ies) does not have for violating the person’s rights and harming the person physically, emotionally and economically. I should know…
Please read : “http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture
A former Black Panther who works for the FBI. Now there’s an oxymoron. They really scrape the cream of the top when choosing these guys don’t they.
The usually superior US is falling behind the record of that other great democratic Republik of the German variation. Its population of 16 million, was blessed with ca, 500,000 “informal assistants “.
Now these journalists just need to follow POTUS Obama and Clinton and have all kinds of incriminating footage regarding how they really feel and view the public and the citizens they “server”. I went to a conference one time with some FBI agents giving presentations. I asked some questions regarding why these agents just didn’t talk to the “marks” to let them know they have been monitoring them and what their intentions are. Basically, be brutally honest and say if they plan on doing x,y,z or are even thinking a bout it, the must immediately stop IF they wanted to avoid ending up in jail. The agent mentioned, well hey, how do you know that we don’t do that. I don’t know. I suspect that you continue on with the charades. Afterall, law enforcement needs a steady stream of legitimate and artificial criminal activity to justify their budgets and keep the money train rolling and promotion of fear.
The saddest of all of this is the FBI seems to be able to entrap these poor addled people …and yet can’t seem to do anything about the people who go and shoot up our kids in schools and our young people killing each other. Why not spend time doing that and just keep an eye out for them dastardly terrorists who the right seem to think are invading out homes..
but hey always looks good on the ol resume to have convictions right???
Any news on when/if this might get an online or dvd release once the festival ends?
The sad thing is that al-Akili is now serving 8 years for posing for a picture. All those lawyers couldn’t help him there.
Wow, what a hot mess. Thanks for the inside scoop, Trevor. Please keep on researching and writing.
Considering “the FBI currently has 77.7 million individuals on file in its master criminal database – or nearly one out of every three American adults” (that’s between 10,000 and 12,000 new names added each day) – I’m guessing the figure of 15,000 FBI “citizen operatives” is indeed a low-ball figure.
But even if the 15,000 FBI informants is close-to-accurate, what the hell are they all doing? If Hoover only had 1,500 for the first incarnation of COINTELPRO and if a separate computer program needed to be designed to keep track of these 15,000 informants, then we have a lot of informants with no real work or no real oversight.
Huh.
Even more troubling is the almost 2,000 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence across the U.S. receive 70 percent of America’s intelligence budget (going by 2013’s estimated budget of about $80 billion, that’s $56 billion a year).
Again, that’s $56 BILLION to almost 2,000 private companies that have virtually no oversight or accountability.
Makes you wonder…
Analogously, the chief cause of racism in America today is efforts and programs to either discourage or reverse the historical effects of, racism.
And the greatest cause of anti-Semitism is things done, by Jews and non-Jews alike, to “combat anti-Semitism.”
Of course, in aggravating the problems they’re supposed to be solving, people doing these things are just creating a greater (apparent) need for their programs. Wars fought for peace, justice, and liberty work very much this way.
Fascinating, I’m sure!
In this article linked, law professor John Baker mentions that the average American now commits three felonies a day and doesn’t even know it!:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41564.htm
In a perfect world, the FBI would foil real terrorists plots. But real terrorist plots are quite rare, so most of the time the FBI wouldn’t be foiling anything. So it would come under heavy criticism for lack of action and being insufficiently pro-active.
So they engage in security theatre. They know the general public isn’t interested in the details of the plot, but does enjoy watching the press conference where the FBI takes a bow and receives its well deserved applause. To the cynical this seems to be an elaborate hoax. However, they are missing the point. These are the values inculcated in a school system where everyone in the race is given a first place ribbon. What’s important isn’t the achievement, but the celebration, whether earned or not. Everyone – even the FBI – is a winner.
I salute the FBI for successfully foiling their own plots and would like to express my appreciation for the hard work they do.
Careful there Benny… you’re coming perilously close to blowing your cover as a critic. ;)
The real terrorists are the journalists who insist on “informing” us of which plots are real and which false. This could undermine Homeland Security actors (in the thespian sense) and their ongoing “serial drama”—at least if anyone starts noticing their reporting. Counter-terrorism requires careful staging, Did John le Carre teach us nothing?
It’s simply not the job of reporters to make those decisions of guilt or innocence. Like it or not, in the American system of justice, determination of guilt is the role of prosecutors. Stop interfering, Hollywood, and let it do its job.
So it would be better to report on the best color for Katie Perry’s dress and the latest cat video. Got it!
Her hair. Her hair is so much more important than your liberty.
Man you people. ;)
Although Perry’s cleavage and other revelations are indeed a critical component of the back-and-forth of the Freddy’s Feather Cat Toy approach to maximizing engagement with the media, my point was not that any event should be eliminated from coverage. Indeed, nothing should not be reported on. Everything should be reported on, to the point where a global surfeit of information exists. With plenty of news to chew on, American citizens will be far better situated than anyone in history to analyze and predict events. I promise, a paradise of electoral effectiveness is about to be ushered in, and the proof will be the efficiency and uniformity of opinion production.
My point was that reporters should not take it upon themselves to determine the success or failure of FBI plots. Only the FBI is in a position to know whether an FBI-sponsored plot is successful, and it advises prosecutors accordingly. As I wrote, it is the job of prosecutors to determine the guilt or innocence of those unfortunates caught up in FBI dragnets with only minimal awareness of their own plans to engage in terrorist plots. That is in fact the hallmark of a functioning, above all productive judicial system: The crimes are so flawlessly curated that appropriately harsh sentencing follows like applause at the opera.
The opera itself is indeed a handy metaphor. We know from this dramatic form, as earthy as it is lofty, that many bad things happen to good characters. Following cases of mistaken identity, for example, they might be imprisoned for decades in secret, only to be hanged or beheaded just as the king or prince learns of or cares about their innocence—the fact that they were loyal to the prince all along. But this is a pleasant story to entertain us with a simulation of feeling while outside the storms of genocide howl, seizing their victims with as little regard for “desert” as cancer, or bus bombings, or US drone strikes controlled from Ramstein, or Mars, or the Empyrean.
The universe has no regard for morality, or karma, or ethics. It merely eats and shits like any antediluvian devourer of corpses. Let us strive to broaden the maw so that the great dismembering work of our age can begin.
While your idea on the face of it may make sense on principle, the problem is this is not how the human brain works. There have been studies, over and over again, proving that the brain can only handle so many instances (choices, as it were) of things to focus on. Your approach would actually in effect make people tune out more. The brain tends to need something more like a simplified Chinese fast food menu. Too many options and it shuts down and wants the easier narrative, and the easier narrative is precisely what billions are spent on every year to make the populace akin to livestock. That’s for those of even and especially above average intelligence who do not (more studies) have bigger problems such as “how can I even afford to buy my kids ramen? I can’t keep doing these two minimum wage jobs and still not make my rent.” Stress is exhausting and causes people to need fewer stressful choices in and of itself. And (not coincidentally) stoking fear of terror and things that go bump in the night is stressful too. More studies have shown the contagion of emotions.
I’m sorry I keep saying studies studies studies. I would be more than glad to elaborate with precise references if search engines aren’t cooperative. Long posts on here are difficult for me so I rely on a sort of shorthand a lot of the time. And that in a way, too, goes toward my point. Frustration exhausts too.
I like how you think though. I have a question: do you believe in good and bad/black and white? Or do you believe there are just opposing sides?
I neglected to include the actual rebuttal, sorry:
My point was people can only focus on so many cases. After a certain amount of flooding they simply shut down. And that will change nothing.
Fantastic article Trevor. As engrossing as it is terrifying.
Thank God there is still filmmakers and journalists who hold true to the values that brought Watergate and Vietnam to the front rooms of the nations.
A very timely documentary release. The stories are coming thick and fast of “terrorists” who had neither the knowledge nor the intent to blow up anything until FBI informants encouraged them, concocted plans, provided the equipment, and taught them how to use it. I especially liked the story about the guy who thought about going to Syria but was foiled by his mother, who confiscated his passport. That guy is a real threat to America, you betcha, one of the multiple incompetents being paraded as “terrorists” to keep us worried, defensive, and hostile to all peace initiatives. What a terrible thing it would be if peace broke out, eh? But promotion-hungry FBI agents and federal prosecutors will make sure that “terrorist” arrests continue to receive prominent coverage in the media.
I do not know when American are going to wake up. 100 year ago If Black man did not know he was a slave, slavery would have never ended. It is nothing but a True Man Show where we are the stars. Yes the sun is not fake in this movie but we have people who are trying to make us understand the reality just like the movie. You don’t have to be Neo to fight these Agents Smiths, just open your eyes.
Completely right. However, isn’t it telling that it is easier to make your points by referring to Hollywood movies (Truman Show, Matrix) than to history (Stasi, Cold War) or literature (Orwell, Huxley)? Education is key to the citizens of a free country. By making the people stupid, the system enslaves them. Hollywood is part of that system.
Agreed. And by extension fooling people into believing information is knowledge and thinking is like saying guns kill people, not people. People clearly think just because everything can be looked up on the ‘net that they are smarter when in fact they have been taught how to forget how to think to even the extent they could before, or do the most rudimental of research. A recent study showed that just using a search engine made people think they were more competent. Reminds me how few people can do basic math without a calculator. It isn’t just about not learning how to think – it is also about being taught you think better than anyone ever has, before. Scary.
Kudos to all involved in this tables-turning project. Thank you for your service.
Columnist Paul Krugman says he finds nothing untoward in the government recording his every conversation and every transaction, saying no one cares about his little vices. Wrong Paul – they can be used to blackmail you into entrapping others, publicly advocating for positions you otherwise would refuse. Perhaps that has already occurred. And if you refused, or complained, you would find those “minor vices” would land you in plenty of legal trouble. Paul would never risk the perch of fame and privilege he pontificates from.
re: “damaged people”
In much criticism of the FBI’s bogus interdiction, there is a tacit assumption the FBI is acting in lieu of proper mental health care. And often, implicitly, the larger political point is that insufficient abundance or quality of ‘mental health service’ allows this exploitation to happen in the first place. This presumes the Therapeutic State is inherently apolitical- it presumes a benign, uncoercive force in society. This is the flip side to the FBI’s false pretense toward law enforcement. I have my problems with Szasz libertarian reductionism, but he is correct to call ours a pharmacracy. The violent anomie our neoliberal system creates in the world is not pathologized, so the feedback loop is compartmentalized. Only the individual remains in sickness. Only the individual remains. Her internal authority, “involved in mankind”, deauthorized. The “damaged people” are a political reality that shall remain nameless. Per MLK, the “creative forces of maladjustment” are medically leveled toward political homeostasis. ie “Security”.
link for the blockquote
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mood-swings/201201/martin-luther-king-depressed-and-creatively-maladjusted
Transformed Nonconformist
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol6/Nov1954TransformedNonconformist.pdf
“Getting help” doesn’t necessarily imply psychiatry, drugs, or even in some cases a psychologist. If he was bipolar or schizophrenic there may be an argument for the former but that doesn’t at the same time obliterate the need for the assistance of someone to soothe your soul and provide direction when you have legitimate grievances and peg your identity and sense of self at least in part on religion. Szasz was actually a critic of labels, diagnoses and pathologicisation of everything non-norm but he was also a humanist who believed that people need help sometimes too.
The thing about that King quote is, society falls apart if we lack any norms. I am not suggesting people be drones, and I certainly believe they have a moral and social duty to stand up for what they believe in and be loyal and true. But those are norms too. Some people are more abnormal than others and society thrives on doses of that but too much of it would be a schizophrenic nightmare. The dividing line is empathy. I know of very few truly successful activists who have notbfallen into serious depression at least once. It is easy to do so because you’re up against forces so much bigger than you and at times it seems like just too much. There are of course feedback loops between biochemistry and causality but in general I would say you step into the area where you probably need a doctor when the causality doesn’t match the symptomatology in scope or in context and you probably need someone you can trust and who will call your bullshit or be willing to argue fine points with you AND provide emotional support when grievances, experiences, and mental states either line up or can be aligned.
Either way manipulating someone via one’s own religion (often manipulation itself) will just piss off people more who want to practice their religion and at the same time must feel like a deep betrayal.
Trevor, why don’t you have a gpg key/fingerprint on your byline/author page? You make it difficult to contact you except via intermediaries, which introduces obvious issues. Might I suggest you remedy this by either posting it or uploading it to key servers (posting probably better)? Thank you.
Separately but as or more important: to the editors, making such keys inline on the page or even in html comments (messier that way though) is a better policy; by having it as a separate link anyone who clicks on it probably winds up appearing as showing intent (just the author’s page directly obfuscates the intent of the click).
Link to Trevor Timm’s Freedom of the Press Foundation page has the contact information for him that you are requesting.
Freedom of the Press Foundation — Trevor Timm
Sorry, my mistake. I’m not familiar with Trevor Aaronson so mixed him up with Trevor Timm.
You should check out his book. He was one of the first people to call mainstream attention to what’s been happening in an accessible manner. I wouldn’t call it deep (and a lot has come out since it hit the presses, even) but it is a good primer.
My key: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5DDCE2318233792B
I called the santa rosa fbi in regards too an audio recording of my perps who talked about have puting three people to the pole, and me being but in a situation to be driven into suicide.
It also later has a conversation with eliza giacoma and her russian children of god freind who talk about infecting a freind of therse with hiv aids.
Fbi will not help.
This, today, in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/nyregion/fbi-says-it-has-identified-persons-of-interest-in-2008-times-square-bombing.html
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Wednesday morning that it had identified “several persons of interest” in the 2008 bombing of a military recruitment station in Times Square, an attack that did not injure anyone but was similar to two other attacks on high-profile Manhattan locations in recent years.
“Investigators said they now believed the three bombings were linked, but did not provide details. In all three cases, the assailant was seen pedaling away from the scene on a bicycle with a sweatshirt hiding his face. And in all three cases, there was little damage and no injuries.
“Still, the lack of progress in finding the assailant for more than seven years has been a source of frustration for law enforcement officials.”
Here’s a suggestion for them: Redirect the resources spent dogging, stalking and harassing law-abiding citizens.
nahhhh why would they..how bout just railroad some poor ass..see again as Geraldo Rivera said “bad people wear hoodies” maybe they ride bikes too..hmmm lots of kids ride bikes..hmmm..maybe just maybe..
I am surprised the FBI didn’t somehow classify the investigation to prevent these people from exposing how inept the FBI has become.
Knowing the FBI they will use this to charge people with interfering in ongoing investigations or pull national security clauses out of its ass. Either way I am quite sure everyone involved will wind up subject to harrassment, surveillance, and Poitras level conciege service during their comings and goings. You know. Because they provided comfort to the enemy. Cough. Cough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XmSBtDLgBSQ#t=5361
‘Doesn’t it bother you, the things you do at Information Retrieval?’
‘Whoa…..I suppose you’d rather have terrorists!’
‘How many terrorists have you met Sam, actual terrorists?’
‘Actual terrorists?’
‘Yeah’
‘….Well……it’s only my first day’
Your link is blocked “in your country on copyright grounds’ which is telling in itself.
Should read “contains truth which makes us look like shit.”
Not truth but *fiction: ‘Brazil’ by Terry Gilliam – words above transcribed therefrom.
Released in 1985, it just seems more and more satirically relevant as the years go by.
[*truth]
I would say it seems less and less satirical every year and more and more like our objective reality.
The transcribed words then must say it all as I have never seen the movie.
How to manufacture false “terror” and “terrorists” by targeting certain populations which fit the “False-Flag” propaganda narratives of the Federal Government.
Courtesy of American tax dollars.
Excellent article Mr. Aaronson, one of many I hope.
With the FBI busy creating boogeymen where none exist, what are the chances that any real, viable threat is being ignored because of the thousands of man-hours spent on these self-perpetuating charades? If these practices aren’t illegal, they should be.
Manny Urdiales is the name of another operative.
Too many “civilian operatives” running the streets and doing pretty much whatever is asked of them. The numbers are well in excess of 15,000. And god-only-knows at what cost.
Thank you, Trevor. I’m sharing this at fake-progressive pages such as Bill Moyers’ FB page (facebook.com/moyersandcompany)