IT WAS A SWELTERING DAY in the summer of 2004, and Eric McDavid, then 26 years old, was in Des Moines, Iowa, for an annual gathering of self-described anarchists.
McDavid had come from his parents’ home outside Sacramento, train-hopping the 1,700-mile journey and scavenging for food where he could, including in dumpsters. An idealistic young man with a shaved head and a thick red beard, McDavid had been drawn to activism following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when his parents gave him a copy of Michael Moore’s book Dude, Where’s My Country? McDavid began to attend protests in the San Francisco area, eventually gravitating toward anti-government views.
In Iowa, McDavid was staying with other activists in a farm house with a large porch. They were attending CrimethInc, which was described, in the gathering’s literature, as an event for anarchists “in pursuit of a freer and more joyous world.” Activists would come and go from the house, talking and smoking cigarettes or pot on the porch.
“Hey, anybody want to go for a ride?” someone shouted. “I’ve got to pick up somebody out on [Interstate] 80 at a truck stop.”
McDavid, in an interview with The Intercept, recalled hopping into the car with another activist. A few minutes later, McDavid spotted her, short and petite, no more than 120 pounds, with pink hair and a camouflage miniskirt. She said her name was Anna. He was quiet on the ride back, impressed and slightly intimidated by the story she told of hitchhiking from Florida with truckers.
McDavid recalled that Anna sidled up to him on the porch.
“So when are we going to bed?” she asked.
McDavid looked at his friend, whose eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“As soon as I get done with this cigarette?” he responded.
McDavid went upstairs and unfurled his sleep sack, offering to share it with Anna. She demurred, which confused McDavid, but she was flirtatious for the rest of the CrimethInc gathering and McDavid became enamored. She told him that she was 24 years old and had spent time in Iraq in the National Guard, which turned her against the government.
“If you’re asking if it made me angry and wanna, you know, destroy it,” she’d say later to one of McDavid’s friends, “then the answer would be yes.”
None of it was true. Anna wasn’t an activist. That wasn’t even her real name, which at the time was Zoe Elizabeth Voss. She was a paid FBI informant.
At trial, McDavid’s lawyer, Mark Reichel, argued that the FBI had used Anna to lure McDavid into a terrorism conspiracy through the promise of a sexual relationship once the mission was complete. “That’s inducement,” Reichel told the federal jury. “That’s entrapment.” The jurors weren’t persuaded, however. In 2007, McDavid was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property, and he was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, one of the longest sentences given to an alleged eco-terrorist in the United States. At the time of his conviction, the FBI had built a network of more than 15,000 informants like Anna and the government had classified eco-terrorism as the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat — even though so-called eco-terrorism crimes in the United States were rare and never fatal.
Seven years after his conviction, the government’s deceit was finally revealed. Last November, federal prosecutors admitted they had potentially violated rules of evidence by withholding approximately 2,500 pages of documents from McDavid. Among the belatedly disclosed documents were love letters between Anna and McDavid and evidence that Anna’s handler, Special Agent Ricardo Torres, had quashed the FBI’s request to put Anna through a polygraph test, commonly used by the FBI to ensure informants aren’t lying to agents as they collect evidence. The new documents also revealed which of the letters and emails the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had reviewed before offering instructions on how to manipulate McDavid and guide him toward a terrorist conspiracy.
Eric McDavid, 37, walks out of the federal courthouse with his attorneys, Jan. 8, 2015, Sacramento, Calif.
Photo: Jose Luis Villegas/Sacramento Bee/AP
“The United States is currently reviewing its potential remedies for McDavid’s breach and whether to pursue those remedies,” federal prosecutors warned in their formal response.
The extent to which the crime was manufactured by the government can be fully measured now, thanks to the release of the hidden documents that became public earlier this year and hours of undercover recordings that were obtained exclusively by The Intercept and Field of Vision, which are releasing a documentary about the case, Eric & “Anna,” directed by one of the authors of this story, Katie Galloway, along with Kelly Duane de la Vega.
“To me, there are big American themes here,” said Ben Rosenfeld, a lawyer who was among those representing McDavid after his conviction. “Man entrapped by FBI and their informant — and railroaded by prosecutors who withhold and distort evidence at trial — is released after serving nine years of an outrageous 20-year sentence. He then dares to ask for an explanation, and the U.S. attorney’s office threatens him with re-prosecution just for asking. The court then runs cover for all of them and refuses even to probe who was responsible. That’s the opposite of accountability.”
IN THE FALL of 2003, Anna was 17 years old and a sophomore at a South Florida community college. Eager to impress her professor, she proposed an extra credit assignment: infiltrating protests at the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas summit in Miami.
“I wanted to figure out what they were doing and why they were interested in doing what they were doing,” Anna said at McDavid’s trial. “So I went to Goodwill, and I got some ratty clothes, because I knew the protestors were more into a grunge lifestyle than your average Old Navy or Gap lifestyle.”
She wasn’t a natural spy. Protest organizers suspected a plant and shut her out of their meetings. The next day, she showed up again, this time in a mask, and managed to attend a meeting where organizers discussed their plans.
After Anna presented the report to her class, a classmate who was a state law enforcement agent asked if he could share the paper with his bosses. Anna agreed. She soon received a call from the Miami Police Department, the lead agency during the protest.
“We have some questions about what you did, what you saw,” Anna recalled them saying. “Would you mind coming in this afternoon?”
When Anna arrived, she was greeted by two police officers and an FBI agent who asked if she’d be willing to monitor protestors at the upcoming G8 forum in Sea Island, Georgia, as well as the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions. She’d be undercover, they made clear. She signed up immediately.
For the FBI, Anna was a great find — an informant young enough to look the part of the environmental and animal-rights activists she would be infiltrating. As in Muslim communities after 9/11, the FBI created undercover stings that provided the means and opportunity for left-wing activists to cross the line into violent action. While far fewer in number than the stings against Muslims, the stings on left-wing activists have been just as egregious. For example, an FBI informant led five members of the Occupy movement — at least one of whom had been treated for mental health issues — in a plot to bomb a bridge in Ohio. The FBI came up with the plot and financed it. An undercover informant provided the purported bomb.
The government’s interest in McDavid appears to have begun in February 2005, when the FBI arrested a man named Ryan Lewis for his role in planting five incendiary devices in Auburn, California, near Sacramento. Lewis, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years in prison, was a friend of McDavid’s. After Lewis’ arrest, FBI agents went to McDavid’s parents’ house — but McDavid, something of a drifter at the time, wasn’t there.
Anna provided the FBI with a way to gather information about him. Anna and McDavid exchanged emails after meeting at CrimethInc in Iowa. In one email Anna sent — which was among the newly released documents — Anna explicitly suggests the promise of a relationship. “I think you and I could be great,” she wrote on June 27, 2005, weeks before the next CrimethInc in Indiana. “But we have a LOTS of little kinks to work out … I hope in Indiana we can spend more quality time together, and really chat about life and our things.”
In his reply, McDavid didn’t miss the “our things” cue:
hey cheeka, so far as us B’n great, that i think is an understatement … along w/the ‘LOTS of little kinks 2 wk out’ … but if u aint learning, u aint live’n … & I do think we could learn a lot from eachother … ido think that indiana will B a good space 2 start some of that but i’d like 2 look N2 do’n some independently from the scene N the future 2, i think that it’d throw a different light on the subject wich could B helpful … but that’s 4 a future discussion : ) … now so far as plans, u know I don’t have those things anymore, only ideas …
In another email leading up to their Indiana meeting, McDavid made his feelings clear: “Totally miss you. You’re never far from my thoughts or heart. Guess I’ve been fighting that last part a bit. Okay, a lot.” He signed it, “Much love, me.”
Eric McDavid’s handwritten note to “Anna,” the FBI informant.
Photo: FBI
“They said if he makes another advance at you, what you need to say to him to calm him, to mollify him,” Anna testified. She was instructed not to “shoot him down outright.” Instead, she was advised to tell him, “We need to put the mission first. There’s time for romance later.”
Anna and McDavid saw each other again in 2005 at the next CrimethInc. Anna told her FBI handler, and later said on the witness stand, that McDavid expressed his interest in violence then. “He said that he had gotten a bomb recipe for C4 from an individual in West Virginia. And his plan was to make little C4 bombs,” Anna testified.
But this alleged conversation was not recorded. Anna was the only source. McDavid has denied he said it.
Could Anna be trusted?
Among the documents released years after McDavid’s conviction were FBI reports that requested a polygraph examination for Anna, to make sure she was telling the truth. It’s unclear why the FBI scuttled Anna’s polygraph. The bureau declined to comment for this story. Anna also told her handler that McDavid had two co-conspirators in his supposed bomb plot. Anna claimed that Lauren Weiner, a Philadelphia art student who was 20 years old and went by the nickname Ren, told her that McDavid invited her and Zach Jenson, a 20-year-old sometime travel companion of McDavid’s who went by the nickname Ollie, to join the plot.
Yet the plot, or whatever it really was, was going nowhere by the time Anna told the FBI about it. McDavid had returned to the West Coast and dropped out of contact with her. The FBI decided to jumpstart the plot. “We formulated a plan to get me out to the West Coast under the guise of a sick aunt that I was visiting,” Anna recounted at trial.
USING FBI MONEY, Anna bought a plane ticket for Weiner to fly to Sacramento in the fall of 2005. They met up with Jenson and drove to McDavid’s parents’ house outside Sacramento. It was November 18, 2005. As they arrived, McDavid told them: “Just so everybody’s on the same page, you’re walking into a house of a known anarchist.” He was joking about his friendship with Ryan Lewis and how FBI agents had come to his parents’ house after Lewis’ arrest. They hung around McDavid’s house, smoking marijuana, talking and eating dinner, before finally moving into the backyard to sit around a fire pit, where they discussed the alleged plot. Anna led the conversation, pressuring the group to come up with a concrete plan.
“We could practice shooting, we could do reconnaissance, we could even test something tomorrow and Sunday,” Anna said.
“Hm-hm,” McDavid mumbled, not committing to any ideas.
If McDavid had told Anna that he was planning a C4 bomb attack, as she reported to the FBI, his conversation at the fire pit suggested that his dedication had been momentary at best.
“What do we need to do over winter? What do we need to improve? What do we need to train more on?” Anna badgered.
They spoke vaguely about targets. McDavid talked about pouring sugar into the underground tanks at gas stations. They wondered aloud if dropping a lit cigarette into those tanks would cause an explosion. McDavid described how he met a guy in West Virginia who told him how to make homemade explosives.
Nothing was specific. It was all talk, most of it encouraged by Anna.
McDavid maintains that everything he said was part of an effort to impress Anna, because he wanted a sexual relationship with her. The next morning, as Anna and McDavid drove in the Chevy wired by the FBI with cameras, McDavid made clear that he wanted more out of their relationship. The undercover video of their conversation was among those obtained by The Intercept and Field of Vision.
“So did you want to keep our relationship just professional through this?” he asked.
Anna sighed.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “We have not talked about this.”
“And we haven’t talked about this, and it’s just been something that’s—” McDavid started, before being interrupted.
“Um, I honestly don’t know how I feel right now,” Anna said, then added a few minutes later: “I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that just yet.”
Photo: Douglas Adesko
“We ended up sitting down with some bomb technicians from the Philadelphia FBI office, and we put together a recipe that could be sent to him that was basically a safe bomb,” Anna said at the trial. “It wasn’t a bomb. It wasn’t an explosive. But it was the initial initiator part of an explosive.”
In January 2006, the FBI rented a two-bedroom cabin in Dutch Flat, a wooded area between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada. The bureau also leased a maroon Chevy for Anna. Both the cabin and the car were wired with recording devices. Weiner and Jenson were both back on the East Coast as well. Anna had arranged to pick them up and drive straight through to California. Anna told them that she’d rented the car and cabin using money she’d made from being a stripper in Florida.
During the ride out West on January 7, 2006, Jenson told Anna, in one of the undercover recordings, that he was suspicious of her.
“I had a really silly paranoid thought last night while I was really stoned,” Jenson said.
“Oh, what?” Anna asked.
“That you were still, like, mentally fucked up from being in the National Guard — ” Jenson started.
Anna laughed. “No,” she said.
“And you were, like, going crazy and, like, leading us all into this,” Jenson finished.
“Oh, no,” Anna said. “Are you kidding? I’m fucking not your leader.”
She told him that McDavid was the leader.
“If you want to look for someone who’s been leading or coaxing, you gotta look at D,” Anna told Jenson, referring to McDavid. “It was his idea. He’s the one that brought it up to me.”
“No shit?” Jenson responded.
“Oh, yeah,” Anna said. “Driving out from CrimethInc — ”
“Wow,” Jenson interrupted.
Anna continued: “He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this. Wanna join?’ ”
“D’s also a bit crazy,” Jenson added.
“Um, yeah, you kinda need to be crazy,” Anna said, then followed a few minutes later: “So if D’s crazy, is it OK that he’s kind of our leader?”
“He’s not our leader,” Jenson responded.
Of course, the government’s case revolved around the idea that McDavid was the leader, not Anna. She had told the FBI that McDavid had invited Weiner and Jenson into the plot. Yet Jenson was expressing surprise at the idea that the plot was led by McDavid. (Jenson would later testify against McDavid, but following the trial, he stated in a sworn affidavit that the government had bullied him into supporting its narrative.)
Anna, Weiner and Jenson picked up McDavid the next day, on January 8. Having driven 3,000 miles, the trio already had developed a sort of common language. Anna, a Stars Wars fan, had been calling Weiner a “jawa” for how she appeared when she wore a hoodie.
This was the government’s supposed eco-terrorist cell on the make, and they were arguing not about bombs and attacks, but about Star Wars characters. For Anna and the government, it was difficult to get the group beyond meaningless conversation like this. At every attempt, McDavid, Weiner and Jenson rebuffed Anna’s encouragement to come up with a timeline, a plan, anything that required a commitment. On January 10, 2006, after two days of hanging around the cabin together and smoking marijuana, Anna expressed frustration that they weren’t moving forward or translating their talk into action. “I would like to one day stick to a plan,” Anna said.
Anna encouraged the group to drive with her to potential targets in Northern California. They visited the Nimbus Dam, an enormous hydroelectric facility on the American River, as well as the Institute of Forest Genetics. They also shopped at Wal-Mart for supplies for the bomb recipe Anna provided — canning jars, a car battery, coffee filters, bleach, ammonia, mixing bowls, a single-burner hotplate.
The Nimbus Dam
Photo: Wikipedia
AT THE CABIN, McDavid began mixing the bomb recipe — the fake one the FBI had written. He combined bleach and ammonia and boiled the liquid on the hotplate, as instructed. He turned off the burner to let the chemical mix cool, also as instructed. What no one accounted for was the weather. It was January 12, cold outside, and the Pyrex bowl cooled too quickly on the metal burner. It cracked, spilling the chemicals onto the ground.
The tension began to grow. Anna was having trouble getting the group to commit to more than playing around with the bomb recipe and talking big about things they might do one day.
“I don’t like this amorphous crap,” Anna said. “I wish one day we could keep the damned plan. I wish one day you guys could stick to a list. I don’t like how I always have to bend to fit your schedules.”
“We’re all bending,” Weiner said.
Anna, frustrated, walked out of the cabin, and down to where the FBI agents were monitoring what was happening. Torres, her handler, met her on the road, a short walk from the cabin. At McDavid’s trial, he recalled what she told him.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m going back to Philadelphia. I’m done.”
Torres then made the call: They’d arrest the group the next day.
Anna returned to the cabin.
“All right, tomorrow, we’re just going to go into town, get another Pyrex bowl, come back up here,” Anna said, setting the agenda.
The next morning, the four went to K-Mart to purchase more supplies. They split into two groups: Weiner and Jenson, McDavid and Anna. Weiner and Jenson were still in the store by the time McDavid and Anna returned to the car. McDavid hopped onto the trunk and lit a cigarette. Anna sat down in the driver’s seat. As Weiner and Jenson were walking back, McDavid heard the car’s automatic locks engage. A swarm of black vehicles surrounded them. It was the FBI.
Weiner and Jenson agreed to testify against McDavid in exchange for plea deals and reduced sentences. McDavid did not testify but his lawyer stated that Anna was the driving force of the plot and had entrapped him by suggesting that they would have a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, McDavid’s lawyer did not have any written evidence to back up his romantic assertion — because the FBI and federal prosecutors failed to disclose the evidence and specifically denied that it existed.
McDavid’s trial attorney, Mark Reichel, questioned Anna about whether McDavid had written letters.
“You believe he had written you love letters?” Reichel asked.
“A few, yes,” Anna conceded.
“Okay. And we don’t have those anymore, correct?”
“No,” Anna answered. “Correct.”
“And you were still working for the FBI when those disappeared, though.”
“Correct.”
Anna conceded only that the letters contained a “slight indication that he might have been interested in me.”
In closing arguments, one of the federal prosecutors, Ellen Endrizzi, even poked fun at McDavid’s claims of budding romance and missing love letters.
“Romance? A bit of a red herring,” she told the jury. “There are supposedly love letters. We’ve got evidence of one. Supposedly Mr. McDavid is falling all over himself for Anna. But you have testimony that Anna rebuffed him.”
McDavid was convicted and sentenced to 19.5 years in federal prison. The missing evidence — and the extent of the government’s misconduct in not producing it for trial — would not be revealed until earlier this year.
McDavid’s lawyers, friends and family continued to fight for him, filing multiple FOIA requests with the federal government in what seemed a futile effort. Until one day, in late 2014, the records that the government had said didn’t exist were provided to his lawyers. They included the emails McDavid had sent to Anna professing his desire for her and a paper trail of the FBI referring those private messages to behavioral psychologists.
When McDavid and his lawyers discovered that the FBI and federal prosecutors had withheld approximately 2,500 pages of discovery, they negotiated a settlement that allowed for McDavid’s release with time served in exchange for changing his conviction to a lesser charge of general conspiracy. In January, during a hearing to approve the plea deal to release McDavid, U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr., who presided over the trial, asked the government to explain its failure to produce key evidence.
“This is something that needs to be dealt with, and I want to know what happened,” England said. “I mean, this is something I never thought I would have to ask the question ‘how did this happen?’ This is something that I don’t expect to have happen in my courtroom.”
“Your Honor, unfortunately, we’re not, the government is not in a position to offer clarity to the court at this point,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andre Espinosa said. “Disappointingly for all of the parties, Your Honor, I can’t provide an accurate explanation for that other than to say that these documents were in the FBI file.”
McDavid’s lawyer in July filed a motion asking the court to force the government to explain how the evidence was withheld and to compel the government to produce new documents, such as the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s report on McDavid’s letters, the instructions Anna was given on how to handle McDavid’s romantic advances, and any memos and correspondence related to the FBI’s decision to schedule, and later cancel, a polygraph examination of Anna.
In a surprising turn that has not been reported previously, the government responded by making what seemed to be a threat to throw McDavid back in prison. In a reply to the lawyer’s motion, federal prosecutors alleged that McDavid’s request “is likely a breach of the terms of his plea agreement.” The prosecutors added that the government would review “potential remedies” for the breach.
There was yet another twist to come: Judge England, who was outraged in January about the missing evidence, backed down in September, denying McDavid’s request to force the government to explain how it withheld evidence. England wrote in his order that he conducted his “own inquiry into that precise question” and concluded that “the failure to turn over documents in this case was inadvertent, an anomaly, and an incident not likely to be repeated.” According to the order, England’s inquiry consisted only of questioning prosecutors during the January hearing when they said they couldn’t “provide an accurate explanation” for what happened.
In a written statement to The Intercept, Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip A. Ferrari said that of the 2,500 pages of documents not provided to McDavid before his trial, only 11 documents were required to be turned over under the federal rules of evidence. “We don’t know why these documents were not produced, but we have no information indicating that the failure to do so was anything more than a mistake,” Ferrari said. He also maintained that prosecutors’ language, in the motion opposing McDavid’s request for the government to explain why evidence went missing, “contained no threats, veiled or otherwise.”
The informant, “Anna,” in 2008.
Photo: Douglas Adesko
ANNA TESTIFIED THAT SHE was paid about $65,000 for her undercover work with the FBI. Since McDavid’s arrest, she has changed her given name and surname multiple times and moved around the country, public records show. She now lives in a Texas suburb, where she purchased a home this year with her new husband, a software engineer. She did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.
On her Facebook page, Anna recently posted a photograph commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as pictures of herself dressed as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars, the movie series that a decade earlier she had discussed with the targets of the FBI sting.
In what appears to be a honeymoon picture, Anna and her husband are standing on the beach. He’s wearing a blue, tropical-themed buttoned-down shirt and khaki pants. She’s in a white wedding gown. They’re embracing each other, and both are donning Stormtrooper helmets. Behind them, in the cloudy blue sky, is not the moon but the Death Star.
McDavid, now 38, is resettling in northern California, where he lives with family, attends community college and is attempting to rebuild a life after nearly a decade in prison for a crime that Anna helped the government create. McDavid is adjusting to the newness of telling his life story in front of cameras and crowds. If he holds any anger toward Anna, he doesn’t express it, even when invited during the recent interview with The Intercept.
Last month in San Francisco, McDavid addressed a crowd of activists interested in assisting political prisoners in the United States. Dressed in a tight-fitting T-shirt and baggy blue jeans, he talked about the mounds of mail he received while in prison and how those letters helped him get through nine long years.
“All it takes is a little card,” McDavid told the audience. “That’s all it takes — a smiley face, a heart, 25-cent stamp. That’s it.”
He paused.
“Or is [a stamp] more than that now?” he asked, to laughter.
Research: Sheelagh McNeill
Additional reporting: Kelly Duane de la Vega
Women believe that guys are lots of things when they want to just get laid
do not underestimate the power of the boobs
Ah, itemizing. I wonder where you got that from
This is how we got where we are, with astonishing levels of inequality, violation of civil rights, suppression of protests and unions…. I can only guess that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes coercion (and entrapment) going on at all levels. That’s a guess – I don’t have any inside information.* Our country is not the free country we thought it was. This is a very disturbing story. *My only data point: my mother advocated for tree preservation and against development in a city that was almost like a suburb of a bigger city. She was an avid bike rider and someone said to her after a public meeting: “It would be a shame if something happened to you while you were riding your bike out there.” A threat over a very mild tree protection ordinance!
This article in Elle is worth a read–http://www.foodnotbombs.net/elle_anna.pdf. Although the article starts out sounding like a story about a brave young woman who went under cover to fight crime, you sort of get the impression towards the end that the writer has serious misgivings about Anna and the case against Eric McDavid.
Anna talks about the tattoo that she got in order to help her look the part of an environmental warrior. At the time of the interview, she was saving money to have the tattoo removed, so I guess the FBI isn’t helping her out with that. She also talks about how she didn’t feel like the FBI had her back during the operation. (Either they didn’t think she was in danger or they didn’t care.)
So let this be a lesson to any secret-agent-man-wannabes–the FBI will use you like a whore, then toss you some cash and leave you to deal with the longterm consequences all by yourself.
The McDavid interview starts at about 9:20, but the whole video is pretty entertaining:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t3mEOv6uVc
What a great story. Sounds to me like they all deserve and found each other in this crazy world. Although McD-bag got the worst of the deal, but come on?! “Anna” made money as a stripper!? enough for a cabin and nice truck!? wow dude you are a moron. Let’s not forget he at least had the intent to commit acts of violence against the state, he did follow her, buy the materials, mix the recipe. He is not innocent in all this. To me it is such a waste of time and effort by the feds to achieve nothing but putting a loser in jail. Why not just arrest him for weed and be done with it? Find some real criminals!
Having bomb materials doesn’t make you guilty of bombing an innocent target
If you missed what McD-bag was convicted of, see quotes below directly from the article. In my comment “…intent to commit acts…” is equivalent to “conspiracy too”, “conspiring”, etc. I didn’t, nor did the article state what you are claiming. I honestly think everyone in this story has wasted their time and effort.
“In 2007, McDavid was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property, and he was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, one of the longest sentences given to an alleged eco-terrorist in the United States.”
“When McDavid and his lawyers discovered that the FBI and federal prosecutors had withheld approximately 2,500 pages of discovery, they negotiated a settlement that allowed for McDavid’s release with time served in exchange for changing his conviction to a lesser charge of general conspiracy.”
“Why not just arrest him for weed and be done with it? Find some real criminals!”
Well, quite. But you miss the purpose and objective of the manufactured terrorism agenda – it has virtually nothing to do with arresting actual criminal conspirators, nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the public or property. Rather, it’s a propaganda effort, a mediatic campaign to manipulate public opinion – to undermine and denigrate non-establishment political thought and activity. The beneficiaries are the corporate vested interests and, in fact, they frequently are in on planning meetings with the spooks. Military manufacturers, petrochemical, mining corporations etc – they are all active participants in a long-standing program of using police and spooks to infiltrate, manipulate, destabilise and publicly discredit any and all protest groups from anti-war to Occupy to environmentalists, they are all targets. that’s what the FBI were doing in this case and dozens of other entrapment operations recently revealed. It’s all about controlling and directing public opinion and crushing dissent from the corporate oligarchic agenda.
Seems like these judges get a phone call from someone over the weekend and change their opinions a bit much. Is it NSA monitoring results they are being blackmailed with? Or just political pressure?
I must say she is a bit homely to do 9 years for.
Judge rules there is evidence the RCMP acted illegally in undercover probe of Surrey couple convicted in B.C. legislature bomb plot – By Keith Fraser, The Province, November 18, 2015.
“VANCOUVER — A judge has ruled there is evidence the RCMP acted illegally during an undercover operation that resulted in a Surrey couple being convicted in the Victoria legislature bombing plot.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce made the finding during an application by John Nuttall and Amanda Korody that seeks a stay of proceedings on the basis that police engaged in an abuse of process and entrapped them.
In making the finding that there was evidence the RCMP’s actions constituted the facilitation of a terrorist activity, the judge ordered that legal opinions provided to the RCMP to assist them during the operation be disclosed to the defence.
“In my view, the defence have raised at least a prima facie case that the RCMP officers involved in Project Souvenir were engaged in unlawful acts during the undercover operation,” said the judge …”
http://www.theprovince.com/news/judge+rules+there+evidence+rcmp+acted+illegally+undercover+probe/11526925/story.html
Lisa Jones, girlfriend of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy: ‘I thought I knew him better than anyone’
” … They established that he was Mark Kennedy, an undercover policeman who had been sent to spy on her circle of activist friends. For seven years, he had adopted a fake persona to infiltrate environmental groups. Their unmasking of him five years ago kickstarted a chain of events that has exposed one of the state’s most deeply concealed secrets.
Back then, the public knew little about a covert operation that had been running since 1968. Only a limited number of senior police officers knew about it. Kennedy was one of more than 100 undercover officers who, over the previous four decades, had transformed themselves into fake campaigners for years at a time, assimilating themselves into political groups and hoovering up information about protests that they had helped to organise.
More than 10 women have discovered that they had relationships with undercover policemen, some lasting years, without being told their true identity. …”
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/20/lisa-jones-girlfriend-of-undercover-police-office-mark-kennedy-interview
We spend trillions of dollars fighting terrorism, but there aren’t that many actual terrorists in the US so the government has to do s%#$ like this to invent them so they can give themselves medals saying they stopped a terrorist attack, even though if she hadn’t ostensibly promised sexual favors to a young horny teenager he probably would have never gone along with the FBI invented terrorism incident.
Meanwhile there are actual terrorists in Syria and Iraq (now that Obama pulled the troops out) and the government isn’t sending any troops in to stop the REAL terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
How do you fix this problem? For who do you vote? The only people who ever talk about reigning in the massive abuses in the federal government are Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. For whatever reason, they’re hated by the left. I don’t see a solution to the massive abuses taking place in federal agencies.
The solution is to vote third party. It doesn’t matter which third party since none of them has a snowballs chance in hell of winning. The point is to take your vote AWAY from the two reigning parties.
If you don’t vote at all, they dismiss you as too lazy and ignorant to bone up on the issues and fill out a ballot.
Imagine if our next president “won” with only 25% or 30% of the vote. That would be the lowest in history. That would send a message: “We don’t support you. Time to make some real changes.”
Want your vote to count? Vote third party.
good point mike
the solution is to do away with immunity for govt employees and leave them open to liability, both personal and professional, for their acts.
until that happens the abuses will continue.
end sovereign immunity and watch the dishonesty and pure lies die a painful death
NSA: “Sniff It All, Collect It All, Know It All, Process It All, Exploit It All”
Already in the pilot stage:
“What if the Government Hid Bugs and Video Cameras in Every American Home?”
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project
July 9, 2013 | 11:11 AM
https://www.aclu.org/blog/what-if-government-hid-bugs-and-video-cameras-every-american-home
And you will never know, unless someone wants you to know.
Furthermore, working hand in glove with current technology are the ubiquitous “human intelligence” assets, employed by law enforcement and our many “intelligence” agencies.
There are too many “Annas”, not enough whistleblowers, and at least one whopper of a secret.
It’s time for a major correction. Edward Snowden, and others, have given us a jump-start, but it’s time for another whistleblower to join the ranks.
Thanks to The Intercept for doing its part. And thanks for this excellent article, as well.
Check out the film (T)error
“Saeed “Shariff” Torres, a counterterrorism informant for more than two decades, takes on what he swears is his last job for the FBI and invites filmmakers to follow his covert efforts to befriend a suspected jihadist – without informing his superiors. As surprising revelations emerge, not only about Torres’ past, but also about the increasingly murky ethical grounds of his present mission, (T)ERROR explores just how far we are going to prevent terror and exactly what liberties we are sacrificing to get there.”
http://terrordocumentary.org/
They hate our guts so much. They will do anything, to ANYone just to advance their careers. We are not going to get anywhere with changing our country until we have as much contempt for them as they have for us. Remember, our government needs violence to accomplish their crimes, but the people need peace to correct it.
The U.S. government is disgusting.
And those responible for voting and promoting this USG filth… Are they any less disgusting?
quote”After Anna presented the report to her class, a classmate who was a state law enforcement agent asked if he could share the paper with his bosses. “unquote
umm.. something is terribly weird about this story. First off… a SEVENTEEN year old girl should still be in high school. Second, even if she managed to go to college, what kind of class would interest a teenage girl, that also had LAW ENFORCEMENT people attending? Third, what kind of professor would allow a teenage student to infiltrate a perfectly legal protest organization to spy on them, just to earn ..ahem…extra credit? Forth..exactly what did she do to arouse suspicions that she was a “plant”. and, what were these protesters afraid of?
Something important is missing in this story. Something very weird. Notwithstanding this pathetic cunt’s inner need to spy on people on her own volition for academic credit, and then, conspire with FBI to entrap people into a plot fabricated by scumbag FBI agents, to read how the entire “justice” system supports this abomination of conspiracy perpetrated by Federal law enforcement to entrap people who were previously guilty of nothing, gives credence to the rumor that “rule of law” is a fucking myth.
If anything, every single one of these FBI agents involved should be the ones who were prosecuted for conspiracy to “provide material support of terrorism”. In reality, while the DOJ has turned justice into a laughing stock, the FBI has redefined law enforcement into a hideous, world wide cartel of lying thugs who commit egregious crimes under the “color of law”, including murder, who then “investigates” ITSELF… only to justify each and every one as… ahem…lawful . right.
The Gestapo had nothing up on these scumsucking Federal criminals.
Excepting the victim, all parties involved would make the Cheka and its child, the DDR’s Stasi, very proud. God’s country honors their tried and true traditions.
Stalin’s ghost is jealous too.
This is such a clear case of entrapment; these kids would never have even considered taking these actions if they hadn’t been egged on by the FBI’s agent provocateur.
This case has some similarities to that of the Camden 28, a group of antiwar activists who were arrested after breaking into a draft board in Camden, NJ in 1971 to destroy files. It turned out that an FBI informant in their midst had cooked up the entire plan, with the encouragement of his handlers. The FBI paid for all the tools, and their informant is the one who broke into the federal building. This came out during the trial, and the jury voted to acquit all defendants. See this site for more info:
http://www.camden28.org/
So why is the FBI permitted to continue these dirty tricks? Is it to scare people away from any form of political activism? Or to sow seeds of distrust among groups of activists, so that they’re paranoid about being infiltrated?
They continue COINTEL PRO because they are filthy servants of power. These people worship money and power. They are ideologically fanatical monsters. They don’t care about people or they have no integrity to their values. The FBI/CIA/NSA/CSS work for the corporations and the pseudo-democratic government. The catching serial killers thing and stopping real crime is a minor component of what they do. They also rarely will go after rich people. All this was revealed in the 1971 Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI.
To those who have made snide comments about Anna’s looks, well, chalk one up for Eric McDavid. He didn’t go for pretty. He went for a woman (or the illusion of a woman) who was smart, independent, brave, dedicated to her ideals, a leader. In other words, he’s attracted to strong women. This is the kind of guy you want, ladies, someone more attracted to substance than looks.
While Anna may have to undergo plastic surgery for reasons other than aesthetics, I have a feeling Eric will have no trouble finding a great partner just the way he is.
He went for vommit, but it was a mistake I can forgive, and he did pay dearly.
During his tenure as a special agent, FBI whistleblower Mike German was assigned to infiltrate militia groups. His assessment of some of these groups was that they were small, disorganized, more talk than action, and not much of a threat.
That’s an FBI agent, Mr. Torres—watch, assess, and be honest about the threat level. Exaggerating a threat level and manipulating and entrapping young people for your own professional advancement while you hide behind a giant agency that you know will stand by you no matter what is just…well… who has the small penis now?
The full force of our anger should be focused on our “justice system”—the judge who refused to pursue this travesty of justice (have they got something on you, Judge England?); the prosecutors who withheld evidence; and in particular the FBI. They manipulated a (very) young person to prey on other naive young people. They entrapped. They withheld evidence. They broke the law. They trampled the Constitution. And nothing will ever happened to them! That’s where our anger should be focused. Anna was just a teenage pawn.
Until you, “Anna”, and the chickenshit, despicable American people are take responsibility for their own acts the so called justice system will carry on as usual.
If you mean ME and Anna and the chickenshit….
What are the despicable acts I am supposed to take responsibility for? I’ve been on the receiving end of organized stalking. One of the frustrations is no one has the spinal cord to tell me what it is that I’m supposed to have done to deserve this no-touch torture. So if you can enlighten me, I’m all ears.
But if you’re just angry at my speaking up for Anna, well too bad. I worked with young people for many years and I was sickened by what I read in this article; how young people were manipulated by people who should have known better.
Anna was a dupe. Do I hope that she will one day clue in to her role in nearly destroying innocent people? Yes. Do I think she deserves to be stalked for the rest of her life? No.
*If* you really have been on the receiving end of organized stalking then you know what a chickenshit American is, and how common they are.
Speaking up for ” Anna” is truly despicable.
And the only reason any goon has given me for their behavior is “certain reasons”, thrrefore I cannot enlighten you.
You defend a vile goon and say you are stalked and “no-touch” tortured in the same post. Hmm… Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
And I did not say she should be stalked and tortured for the rest of her worthless life. I just asked the question. I have not responded to violence with violence. Others have. And “Anna” was never provoked in even the mildest ways, yet she stole years from another’s life. Do speak up for her. Show us what you are.
Don’t you think it’s possible that, as Eric was seduced by Anna, Anna was seduced by the FBI?
I think it is probable.
Do you think it impossible to resist these seduction tactics? They have been used on me and I have resisted each and every pathetic attempt. Why couldn’t they? Why couldn’t you?
The infiltrators are also worried about having been infiltrated. :-)
Check this new item:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-says-racist-organizations-have-been-infiltrating-police-departments-for-years/205796/
To be clear, I don’t advocate vigilantism in any form. We have a justice system that is supposed to ensure that the guilty get punished and that the punishment fits the crime. To hound someone for years, particularly someone whose offense occurred at a young age, is not justice, it’s abuse.
Anna could perhaps ameliorate her situation by speaking openly about what she did and why, and expressing regret that she got roped in. But she is likely under a gag order.
I want to hate Anna. I really do. But she was 17 years old when approached by the FBI. She had wanted to impress her professor and got the attention of the FBI! What 17 year-old would not be in awe?
Though $65,000 is a very large payoff for a teenager, it seems Anna’s assignment didn’t end with McDavid’s conviction. Since then, she has had to change her name and move around the country numerous times. With the publication of this article, I don’t see her situation improving any time soon.
I’d like to ask Anna, was it worth it?
This is a tale of caution. Warn your children and grandchildren: Once you’re a snitch, you are never a free person again.
Awwww… such a cute, innocent american babe. Just following orders.
Every high school American history teacher should use the situation reflected in this article to teach America’s youth a new vocabulary.
Words like, “entrapment”, “eco-terrorism”, “justice”, “The (truthful) history of the FBI, “handler” “stupid” “antennae/up” and on and on.
Basically all these kids need to learn how to get their collective heads out of their asses and figure out how to be good citizens and to live an honorable, honest, respectful life. How if you don’t like the way, say, livestock animals are treated, you join PETA, become a lawyer and work for PETA, run for Congress or City Council, form an organization.
I seriously doubt there are many high school kids right now who have ever thought of the possibility of spending 10-20 years in federal prison just for being stupid. Better they should learn how to be smart and fight a system that is unjust and corrupt than to be duped into doing something just plain stupid.
But of course that would entail intelligent American adults teaching them.
Thank you, Charlene!
Does Anna deserve to be stalked and tortured for the rest of her life too?
I am not going to answer my own question but it needs to be asked a thousand times.
The government will destroy lives in order to achieve their evil goals. Shame!!!
The use of violence and terror by politicians in the manipulation of the public psyche has clearly become institutionalized within the US. The 1993 WTC bombing was clearly orchestrated by the FBI via Emad A. Salem, an FBI informant. The siege of Waco was clearly orchestrated by the government to condition the public in regard to believing that religious “cults” were a form of “domestic terror.” The ATF’s failed attempt to blackmail Randy Weaver into becoming their operative in a campaign against white separatists resulted in the wrongful death of two Weaver family members. When the dust finally settled, the Federal government had to pay out over three million dollars to the Weaver in civil litigation. This didn’t stop the Feds from prosecuting Weaver on trumped up charges however. The 911 WTC attacks, Oklahoma City bombing, Kennedy assassination, People’s temple murders, the murder of MLK, and even Altimont have all been used to great effect in radically manipulating public opinion to predetermined political ends. It has been my observation over the decades that the political left has been very slow to scrutinize such manipulations when the intended outcomes comport with their own ideology or reinforce their own bias. For instance, how many of you are familiar with the work that John Judge did on unraveling the official narrative surrounding the alleged mass suicides at Jonestown:
The Black Hole of Guyana
The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html
I loved John Judge. His life story reads like a spy novel. He was raised as a child going to The Pentagon with his mom frequently and asked lots of interesting questions from a young age and it never stopped until he passed.
I would recommend all his YouTube videos. Top researcher.
“I loved John Judge. ”
Then you obviously are an astute observer of the political scene. Mae Brussell was another researcher who was not afraid to ask the “interesting” question that reality imposed upon her. Both of these researchers dared to look the devil straight in the eye with out flinching. Their untimely deaths were a tragic loss to those who seek the truth solely for its own sake.
Sarah Jane Moore was also an FBI informant. Come to think of it, so was Oswald. I see a pattern here.
I don’t know why people fall for this line. Sure as anything, nine months later, the result is a brand new bomb.
It’s a good article. My only comment is that nobody seems to feel much empathy for the FBI informants. We should acknowledge they’d be at real risk if they were interacting with actual terrorists. I think these staged sting operations are safer and amply fulfill their required function – demonstrating that the FBI is doing something and discouraging the general public from embracing environmental causes.
This is the sort of peculiarly American story where everyone has a happy ending – the mark is freed from jail, the FBI handlers get a promotion, the defense attorneys are vindicated, the prosecutor wins the governorship and the judge gets appointed to the supreme court.
….they are doing something”(?)…..humm…is what they are doing the “something” they should be doing?…
….humm…..
We here in Canada, British Columbia on the west coast of the country to be exact, have a similar situation to that detailed above, presently having gone through prosecution and now waiting a Decision. The judge however appears much more curious than her U.S. counterpart noted in this article. She presently appears to be reviewing, with a microscope, the role that our police played in conceiving and moving along an effort to blow up the Provincial legislature by a laughingly inept, drug addicted couple living on welfare, with a view of the world about the size of a shoebox and jihadi fantasies straight out of a video game.
(Our provincial legislature is on Vancouver Island. The police had to drive them across and back on the ferry, pay their fare and expenses, drive them to the legislature, wait while they planted the fake bombs in the shrubbery, and take them home!).
The backstory to all this is that at that time and until a month ago, we had a war mongering Conservative government. They had contentious ‘security’ legislation that they were formulating at the time of the above noted bomb plot, with the intent to bring it forward in Parliament. The arrest of this couple occurred prior to the appearance of the Bill, and ever so fortuitously, just as these people were going to court, the Bill was successfully moved through the parliamentary process.
Funny how things work, isn’t it!
http://www.theprovince.com/news/judge+rules+there+evidence+rcmp+acted+illegally+undercover+probe/11526925/story.html
Advice to all young men of america:
Anybody come to you talking about committing violence.
SAY NOTHING AND RUN!!!
It might just save your life!
Who is this Zoe Voss informant?. Why would any 17 yr old volunteer to infiltrate an organization? Does no one else find this highly unusual?
1) who was her professor (did he have political/religious/militiatry associations or motivations?)
2) who is Zoe Voss? What were her polictical/religious associations?
3) who are the parents of Zoe Voss (political/religous assosications)
I was also a little confused about why a 17 year old would think infiltrating a protest would be a chance to earn extra credit and what kind of professor would go along with that. But in saying that, it was the only part I would’ve liked to know more about and it’s not very often there’s only one thing. It’s a good article for the Intercept to have put online now. Government behaviour like this is what we should have in the front of our minds whenever attacks like those in Paris happen, not the back.
Check out FightGangStalking dot com. It’s written off as a crazy conspiracy theory, when it’s anything but. The site’s author tells it like it is.
By all means, check it out. It contains some accurate information corroborating some of my own experiences.
However, it is a suspicious site because it omits information about physical torture activities implemented with low-tech tools inside and outside of the US while dedicating many column inches to some rather incredible and exotic gadgetry. American goon squads do gleefully indulge themselves in some very nasty behavior going far beyond “touching” US citizens they simply do not like and the author(s) of the site has vehemently denied my experience to me, personally.
That site and many of its readers claim it is the encyclopedia of “no-touch” torture, but this is a lie. I am living proof of the lie, but since US torture regimens are so highly customized, thanks to the APA(?), neither I nor anyone else (excepting all the perps together) can claim to be the bible on this ugly bit of americana. Unfortunately — for the hundreds or possibly thousands of other US torture subjects — this nasty cat remains stuffed in its bag due to the deeply embedded ignorance and cowardice of the US population. As they themselves would say, they are simply too busy to bother themselves with That™.
Funny… Every native born American I have attempted to inform has cringed and fled. My courageous Brazilian/Chinese family, and many other friends here in Brazil are not so easily frightened and deluded. They help keep me going. And after giving a former colleague a three hour earful of how it works, he — yes, someone not born in the usa — said he would offer me a job as soon as the opportunity arose. True to his word, he did just that. I am an atheist, but God Bless The !USA anyway.
FightGangStalking.com gives good descriptions of how organized stalking works and links to related stories found in the MSM, but leaves out too much to avoid legitimate suspicions it is yet another decoy site covering up even more sinister crimes being committed by salaried American torture squads working right under your noses, on your nickel.
Expose the garden-variety Cointelpro-stalking and harassment and whatever else is going on will likely be revealed, as well. (And it’s a form of torture, no matter how one cuts it. ) Most Americans can’t wrap their heads around the basics of the program: surreptitious home-entries, vandalism, theft, 24/7 surveillance, stalking, harassment, defamation, mail-tampering, job-interference, and more.
The mentally ill, troublemakers, and those who are outspoken are among those being selected. And most important? Those who will not be taken seriously and quickly dismissed as crazy. And so it continues. Look how long it took for the general public to understand that priests really were abusing children. Many people just turned a blind eye.
I was also a little confused about why a 17 year old would think infiltrating a protest would be a chance to earn extra credit and what kind of professor would go along with that.
Ask her parents and teachers.
Seriously does make one wonder about “family life” in the United States.
I raised four sons and none has ever been arrested (well, except for my oldest who was arrested as a teenager while on a weekend trip to Catalina on a fireworks violation).
We always had open discussions about politics and government and they suffered while I ran for Congress. I had open discussions with many of their teachers regarding issues of war and peace and U.S. foreign policy.
My kids (and all their friends) were raised to question authority but to never do stupid shit. So far, so good.
Well, except for the whole fireworks thing.
This article really does raise more questions than it answers.
Dear, invaluable Charlene,
It is difficult for me to take anything posted on the internet at face value but in your case I will and point to you as a fine example for others who have been denied even the most rudimentary instruction in civic values and courage. Of course, responsibility for teaching these lessons does lie with parents, but this bizzare article highlights the shittiness of the K – Ph.D. school systems in the US. It and its produce are rotten to the core.
Even when our western agencies are caught doing this digusting behaviour. They do not stop it! They just raise there shoulders & sigh…moving onto the next false-flag they create. 7/7 bombing in uk….the government were just by CHANCE doing a bomb drill.
Boston bombings….by luck again they were/they weren’t/they were (they initially denied it) that the government were by CHANCE doing a bombing drill at a marathon.
9-11 or September the 9th 2001; the shadow government had by CHANCE made a huge drill forcing the bulk of the FBI to be outside of new york. So the potentially goodish side of one of the SS-agencies couldn’t get first had views of the very special false-flag event created by a zionist bunch of scumbags. By the way 3-buildings were destroyed by 2 planes & 8.6 trillion has now been unaccounted for within the remit of losses due to that ‘terrorist’ event.
My gawd, uk_nazi’s have made the black arts a thing of heroism inside their circle of friends. Praising satanic acts is now the done thing for anyone wishing to create a NWO aka new-world-order.
Excellent article.
COINTELPRO didn’t end, it became banal.
COINTELPRO didn’t end, it became banal.
Banal? Not for its victims.
It must have been pretty exciting to get paid to be a FBI informant in your early 20s. But running over others to get ahead has more dire consequences than if you worked at CVS and ratted your coworker out for stealing a snickers. She is shameless and ruined other peoples lives to get a temporary payoff. It is a really sad story and shows how the system is broken. Government officials need to be held accountable for creating these false narratives and ruining peoples lives. Protesting is our fundamental right and it sounds like anyone of these guys would have stopped Anna if she went too far. I’m glad we have The Intercept to be our watchdog.
There are a lot of despicable people in this story. The judge who failed to follow through because he must have been paid off or threatened. The FBI agent who thinks small penis quips are professional. He’s a total ass. The prosecutors who lied, deceived, withheld evidence. But most of all, and that is saying a lot, given the previous line up, “Anna.” What a scum of a human being is “Anna.” I cannot imagine knowing the background of a person such as “Anna” and yet continuing to have any sort of relationship with her, at all: husband, friend, even relative. You can’t trust “Anna” as far as you can throw wind. The woman is a menace to mankind. Her actions and behavior, especially over such a long period of time, are that of a person who has no sense of what it is to be a part of The Family of Man.
“There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men.
There is only one women in the world and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world and the child’s name is All Children.”
“People! flung wide and far, born into toil, struggle, blood and dreams, among lovers, eaters, drinkers, workers, loafers, fighters, players, gamblers. Here are ironworkers, bridge men, musicians, sandhogs, miners, builders of huts and skyscrapers, jungle hunters, landlords, and the landless, the loved and the unloved, the lonely and abandoned, the brutal and the compassionate — one big family hugging close to the ball of Earth for its life and being. Everywhere is love and love-making, weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of Man alive and continuing.”
“If the human face is “the masterpiece of God” it is here then in a thousand fateful registrations. Often the faces speak that words can never say. Some tell of eternity and others only the latest tattings. Child faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger are followed by homely faces of majesty carved and worn by love, prayer and hope, along with others light and carefree as thistledown in a late summer wing. Faces have land and sea on them, faces honest as the morning sun flooding a clean kitchen with light, faces crooked and lost and wondering where to go this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Faces in crowds, laughing and windblown leaf faces, profiles in an instant of agony, mouths in a dumbshow mockery lacking speech, faces of music in gay song or a twist of pain, a hate ready to kill, or calm and ready-for-death faces. Some of them are worth a long look now and deep contemplation later.”
from Carl Sandberg, exhibition commentary.
The Family of Man: photography that united the planet – in pictures
I just see that ginger beard and think “serves you right, carrot face”.
Thanks for putting that together.
There’s a great song about this, by artist Tom Gabel on an album called Heart Burns. Listen to it!!!
You know, from the photos provided, Anna is not especially attractive. It’s amazing that she was able to string this guy along like she apparently did. She must have had a rather persuasive, seductive personality. In any case, when this sort of inducement to criminality takes place, it smacks of cops inventing crime when real crime can’t be found. Meh.
The man had a desire…what difference does it make what that desire looked like? He wouldn’t have been entrapped by that desire if it hadn’t existed.
IT WAS A SWELTERING DAY in the summer of 2004, and Eric McDavid, then 26 years old, was in Des Moines, Iowa, for an annual gathering of self-described anarchists.
an·ar·chist
?an?rk?st/
noun
1.
a person who believes in or tries to bring about anarchy.
synonyms: nihilist, insurgent, agitator, subversive, terrorist, revolutionary, revolutionist, insurrectionist
1.
relating to or supporting anarchy or anarchists.
“an anarchist newspaper”
And your point is?
On top of your head.
Well if you don’t get my point which is really simple…you wouldn’t get it otherwise.
Be careful for what you wish for and the seeds you sow to bring it about… for it will surely come home to roost…evil begets evil no matter how it looks. I don’t have to insult you because you simply don’t understand it. In a circle they keep on chasing but never have the understanding to escape it. So be it.
Thanks for providing us with the creepy bro perspective, Billy, do you carry a little scale with you for judging the attractiveness of the ladies?
Wait, are you “Billy” Maher by any chance?
Oh, there’s plenty of real crime out there, but it’s both more difficult to infiltrate and investigate real crime than to dangle pussy and stage manage some “criminal theater”. And way more dangerous. The real crime here is that out of cowardice and laziness these law enforcement types found it preferable and”viable” to defraud the govt with the invention of phony plots rather than to do the work they hired on for: genuine investigation of actual crime, actual terrorism especially.
The Epitome of = A NATION OF SNITCHES that are still koscher but worst than hitlerian. Disgusting is short. – Alejandro Grace Ararat.
It is interesting to see how the FBI allocates its resources, and how courageous its agents are. Those people who are actually intent on killing and creating mayhem are apparently too few in number, or too dangerous, to justify the FBI’s bloated numbers in the first case, or to elicit a response, in the second. Instead, they concentrate on the young and naive, subverting them into believing that violence is the correct course of action, and then arresting them. Certainly no FBI agent is going to be put in danger by this kind of anti-terrorism!
If you are thinking this is something new for the FBI, think again. While John O’Neill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O'Neill
was sounding the alarm about bin Laden, his boss, Louis Freeh, was intent on disbanding the counterterrorism unit entirely to concentrate on white collar crime. And of course, as subsequent events have clearly shown, even at that they have exhibited timidity that would be laughable were it not so serious.
In this household we often watch the Three Stooges for comic relief. My gal has renamed them FBI, CIA and NSA. That sums it up pretty well, don’t you think?
John O’Neill was a serial adulterer who lost a classified briefcase (at the time containing the names of every counter terror investigation and program in the FBI) in a hotel in Florida during his last year at FBI. His profile is the epitome of someone who is vulnerable to hostile intelligence services through blackmail or a honey pot. You really should read his biography some time, it doesn’t paint a picture of an upstanding or truthful person. He’s probably more key to 9/11 than any single person, given that he was the WTC complex chief of security for the three weeks before the attacks. We can’t question him because he was last seen going INTO the tower which fell first, just as that tower began to fall.
Going into the tower because he, like anyone else who isn’t invested in lying or covering up what happened, was fully knowledgable that buildings don’t collapse from fire.
Read the WTC Task Force interviews conducted in late 2001 with 9/11 first responders, only released year later through lawsuit, The New York Times suing the WTC Task Force.
Specifically, read FDNY Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory (and Lieutenant Evangelista,) EMS Paramedic Daniel Rivera and EMS Paramedic Captain Karin DeShore.
I’ll post screen captures for you if you’d like.
Hint: FDNY & EMS, including senior FDNY and EMS, seeing and hearing numerous detonation flashes and explosions in BOTH towers before and immediately prior to their “collapses.”
With those FDNY and EMS describing it as “professional demolition,” “when they blow up a building,” “explosive charges on certain floors,” etc.
Enjoy.
* only released YEARS later through lawsuit
‘On her Facebook page, Anna recently posted a photograph commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as pictures of herself dressed as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars…’
This one sentence says so very much.
Makes me wonder how many more lives the FBI has ruined…
Now does ‘anyone’ have a clear understanding who ISIS is? Or/And who funds the national and global false flags? Looks like fantasy becomes reality when smoking that FBI marijuana and donning that Jedi dream.
Oh I totally get it now Sparrow. Nobody has ever been killed, ever. There are no accidents and nothing does not happen that has not been scripted. Everything is controlled by The Government.
Of course, occasionally stories like this get out – but since The Government controls and plans everything, this must be part of the plan. And of course various wise posters occasionally point out that Snowden works for the CIA and Greenwald suppresses all the smoking-gun-revelations of the 9/11 attacks. As it should be.
Because your comment is part of the plan too. We’re on to you, Sparrow.
Wow…you must be the leader… and every American leader will fall for a whore.
I’m disappointed.
I think this journalist being interviewed is on the right track:
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2015/11/share-this-viral-journalist-speaks-the-truth-about-paris-attack-much-more/
It’s an interesting story, although “peculiar” may be a better word for it. Entrapment, of course, though it’s more in the nature of a honey trap. And what’s this “general conspiracy”? Conspiracy, even in federal law, is a crime requiring proof of a fairly specific intent (see, e.g., 18 USC § 371).
Franz Kafka would have found this rich material for another novel.
Pardon my gaucherie, but is that really a Russian proverb? It’s pretty funny wherever it comes from.
The word “plotting” makes me think of novels, and in the first clip of the terrific video linked we hear Anna as an overeager bad novelist prone to sloppy exposition but blessed with a trusting, stoned audience, trying to keep the plot moving in the most hackneyed ways.
Listening to this recording I kept expecting the slasher film to start any time, but it wasn’t that kind of movie.
I imagine that Dutch Flat in midwinter — if there’s any snow — would be a good location shoot for a claustrophobic, noir movie based on this book. I-80 is close by if you want to throw in a gratuitous car chase.
I have long thought that most of the Platonic dialogues could use a car chase.
Snow would fall on very rare occasion in Dutch Flat because the elevation is just over 3,000 feet. Not too far from where I reside, and so I know that maybe two or three times during a “normal” year it will snow down to that low of an elevation.
Here’s funny and interesting note about Dutch Flat mentioned in literature:
Mark Twain derided Dutch Flat poetry as “smooth and blubbery” in a small piece for the 1864 Californian
I also found that odd.
The general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, creates an offense “[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose. (emphasis added). See Project, Tenth Annual Survey of White Collar Crime, 32 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 137, 379-406 (1995)(generally discussing § 371).
The operative language is the so-called “defraud clause,” that prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. This clause creates a separate offense from the “offense clause” in Section 371. Both offenses require the traditional elements of Section 371 conspiracy, including an illegal agreement, criminal intent, and proof of an overt act.
I’m not getting much of a read on how McDavid was trying to defraud the US. Perhaps he was a lousy bomb maker?
The statute talks about “defraud” or commit other crimes against the United States (“either to”). There is even a case that makes all members of the conspiracy liable for any crimes committed by the others (Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946)). It’s not clear, however, whether anyone else was convicted of anything substantive; most of the proposed crimes came from this government Mata Hari. He seems to have been convicted, at most, of an attempted crime, although the attempt seems to have been with harmless materials, so the “overt” is arguable.
As for the intent, it seems he was kind of unfocused. That’s the case with a lot of these terrorist convictions, where you have a bunch of losers with vague Call of Duty fantasies that can’t come up with anything till an informant shows them. Maybe they wanted to do something nasty to the Sears Tower. Maybe they wanted to date Justin Bieber or Jennifer Lawrence. Neither is plausible enough to form intent or capability of committing anything.
Also, at 15,000 informants (!), that doesn’t leave much room for actual eco-terrorists. Not even wannabe ones.
Ricardo Torres, Lauren Weiner, Zachary Jenson: of these three, who is the scholar, who is the athlete, and who is the virgin?
As more and more of these accounts come to public light, I am sooo waiting for a ballsy attorney to take legal action against the feds. Not for the entrapment scenarios per se, but for the planning and orchestrating of situations like the potential Ohio bridge bombing. If any of their framed setups go wrong and actually follow through lives would be violently lost. What rational mind would see that as a worthwhile gamble? Why not sue the FBI for conspiring to commit terroristic acts?
It could even be something comparatively trivial: mixing bleach and ammonia is not recommended by authorities because it produces toxic vapors. It’s not that dangerous, and I suppose the FBI knew who didn’t have asthma, but this fake bomb recipe seems like a completely unnecessary elaboration. It seems like there are enough ways that they can and have used to introduce a fake stolen/black market explosive that is less prone to inadvertent consequences.
It also tells us quite a bit about the so-called terrorists that they would be so gullible and ignorant to think that bleach and ammonia can be combined to make an explosive. It’s not that one cannot simply look it up on the internet, given no knowledge whatsoever of chemistry. But I suspect that the FBI screens their targets carefully to ensure that they are not found out. If the mark is too smart, that might make them dangerous.
To Richard Caldwell,
You took the words right out of my mouth ,as I was thinking exactly the same thing.
Basically happened with the first WTC bombing back in 1993 – FBI informant (Emad Salem) was going to give them inert materials for the device, but the handler’s superior nixed the plan.
the various government bodies and agencies operate under sovereign immunity. go ahead and try to sue.
you can’t, and until you can ascribe liability to government operative shtis stuff will persist
How many more stories are there just like this?
Wow! Great, great reporting. And of course, not that surprising, unfortunately.
I heard a great author /reporter speak about her book, The Burglary. Betty Medsger reported on something similar going on in the 1970’s.
Yes, there was something similar going on in the 60s and 70s, possibly even earlier–the FBIs COINTELPRO. This article illustrates how, although COINTELPRO was supposed to have ceased in the early 70s, it is alive and well today.
Such a pity that there is real crime out there that the FBI is not going after because they are too busy spying on and entrapping activists–enemies of the political and financial elite. When, oh, when will the chickens come home to roost?!
I’m declining to comment on this story because I’m not in a position to offer clarity and I would like for once to stick to a plan.
(seriously, wow. “entrapment” is inadequate to this sociopathic predation)
Yeah that’s a he’ll of a way to manufacture a case. Clarity would probably be wise. Especially if ur marks got a way to locate…
And what is your plan Vic?