Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access pipeline.
On a freezing night in November, as police sprayed nonviolent Dakota Access Pipeline opponents with water hoses and rubber bullets, representatives of the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, North Dakota’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, and local law enforcement agencies frantically exchanged emails as they monitored the action in real time.
“Everyone watch a different live feed,” Bismarck police officer Lynn Wanner wrote less than 90 minutes after the protest began on the North Dakota Highway 1806 Backwater Bridge. By 4 a.m. on November 21, approximately 300 water protectors had been injured, some severely. Among them was 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky, who nearly lost her arm after being hit by what multiple sworn witnesses say was a police munition.
The emails exchanged that night highlight law enforcement efforts to control the narrative around the violent incident by spreading propaganda refuting Wilansky’s story, demonstrate the agencies’ heavy reliance on protesters’ social media feeds to monitor activities, and reveal for the first time the involvement of an FBI informant in defining the story police would promote.
The exchange is included in documents obtained by The Intercept that reveal the efforts of law enforcement and private security contractors to surveil Dakota Access Pipeline opponents between October and December 2016, as law enforcement’s outsized response to the demonstrators garnered growing nationwide attention and the number of water protectors living in anti-pipeline camps grew to roughly 10,000. Although the surveillance of anti-DAPL protesters was visible at the time — with helicopters circling overhead, contingents of security officials watching from the hills above camp, and a row of blinding lights illuminating the horizon along the pipeline’s right of way — intelligence collection largely took place in darkness.
In addition to the email communications, The Intercept is publishing 15 internal situation reports prepared by the private security firm TigerSwan for its client, Dakota Access parent company Energy Transfer Partners, as well as three PowerPoint presentations that TigerSwan shared with law enforcement. The documents are part of a larger set that includes more than 100 internal TigerSwan situation reports that were leaked to The Intercept by one of the company’s contractors and more than 1,000 Dakota Access-related law enforcement records obtained via public records request.
Last week, The Intercept published an exclusive report detailing TigerSwan’s sweeping enterprise, over nine months and across five states, which included surveillance of activists through aerial technology, social media monitoring, and direct infiltration, as well as attempts to shift public opinion through a counterinformation campaign. The company, made up largely of special operations military veterans, was formed during the war in Iraq and incorporated its counterinsurgency tactics into its effort to suppress an indigenous-led movement centered around protection of water.
An image of a gorilla overseeing the Standing Rock camp appears in an October 18, 2016, daily intelligence update the private security firm TigerSwan circulated to law enforcement.
Photo: Daily Intelligence Updates
Federal Agencies Circulate Dubious Theories
Roughly eight hours prior to Sophia Wilansky’s injury, Bismarck police officer Lynn Wanner — who, records indicate, acted as a liaison between intelligence agencies and field officers throughout the anti-DAPL protests — alerted local, state, and federal law enforcement partners that an “FBI inside source” was “reporting propane tanks inside the camp rigged to explode.” Wanner’s email about the FBI informant echoes the story the Morton County Sheriff’s Department would later tell journalists about Wilansky’s injury.
“We probably should be ready for a massive media backlash tomorrow although we are in the right. 244 angry voicemails received so far,” wrote Ben Leingang, a North Dakota state official, at about 10 p.m. on November 20. By morning, images of Wilansky’s severely injured arm were circulating online.
TigerSwan fretted about the backlash, too. “Protesters are claiming over 100 injuries associated with the demonstration and will surely contort video of the event into anti-DAPL propaganda,” the security firm noted in its internal report that next morning.
As another day passed, U.S. Attorney’s Office National Security Intelligence Specialist Terry Van Horn sent an email to members of various federal agencies noting the FBI’s claim that “a source from the camp reported people were making IED’s from small Coleman type propane canisters.” Van Horn added that Wilansky “was witnessed throwing an IED while on the bridge, it detonated early and caused the below injuries (see graphic photos).”
Less than an hour later, Van Horn emailed to the thread the text of a Facebook post from the page Netizens for Progress and Justice. “This wasn’t caused by law enforcement, it was caused by dumbass ‘direct action’ protesters that think they are doing the right thing without any consideration for the safety and welfare of honest protesters nearby that are caught up in things,” the post read, going on to describe a theory of the injury that conflicted even with law enforcement’s propane tank theory.
“How can we get this story out?” replied Maj. Amber Balken, a public information officer for the National Guard, which was also involved in policing the protests. “This is a must report,” Balken added, suggesting the name of a local conservative blogger. Cecily Fong, a public information officer with the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services, replied by promising to “get with” the blogger to circulate the article.
As The Intercept reported last week, Netizens for Progress and Justice also frequently published content produced on behalf of TigerSwan, including videos critical of pipeline opponents. Fong declined to comment on the exchange. Neither Van Horn nor Balken replied to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment on any involvement it had in the protests, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
Ultimately, police promoted a story about the incident that echoed the claims of the FBI informant. On November 22, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department distributed press releases implying that Wilansky’s injury had been caused by a protester’s IED.
The Intercept reached Lauren Regan, an attorney representing Sophia Wilansky, and read the text of Van Horn’s email to her over the phone. “So much of it is totally factually incorrect,” Regan said.
“There has never been any evidence I have seen or heard of that gave any credibility to the allegation that propane tanks were being rigged as explosive devices,” continued Regan, who is a staff attorney at the Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center. “To me, the timing of that revelation, in light of their having just basically blown a white woman’s arm off, always seemed extremely dubious.”
Sophia Wilansky’s father, Wayne Wilansky, agreed that “there’s not a shred of truth” to Van Horn’s account of Wilansky’s injury. “Obviously, disinformation is a major component of how they dealt with the protests,” he told The Intercept.
Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Surveillance Reports Paint Protesters as Desperate and Deviant
The internal situation reports from around the time of Wilansky’s injury contain their own examples of disinformation, invasive intelligence-gathering practices, and a fixation on the purported violence of DAPL’s opponents. At times, TigerSwan refers explicitly to informants and infiltrators. A document from October 3, for example, explains the ways the company monitored members of the American Indian Movement “mostly through social media” and “informant collection” in order to gauge the effectiveness of their security practices and “develop possible counter-measures moving forward.”
The documents, four of which were first published by Grist, include the names of dozens of pipeline opponents, labeling some as “persons of interest.” They describe meetings with law enforcement, including campus police at the University of Illinois and Lincoln Land College, as well as TigerSwan’s attempts to pressure officers into more aggressive action against protesters.
In the reports, TigerSwan declares success in accessing hard-to-find Facebook content, noting in an October 10 document, “The social media cell has harnessed a URL coding technique to discover hidden profiles and groups associated with the protesters.”
But TigerSwan’s intelligence was far from perfect and its interpretation of events was frequently off. For example, one document referenced a shell necklace that, TigerSwan speculated, marked members of the Mississippi Stand group who “have been arrested for the cause.” Mississippi Stand member Alex Cohen told the Intercept that the necklaces had nothing to do with arrests and were merely gifts given to a number of members by people indigenous to the area of one of their camps.
Overall, TigerSwan depicted the situation on the ground as volatile, at times painting the anti-pipeline camps as rife with drug use and “sexual deviance,” its inhabitants likely to stir violence. The security company found ways to interpret even the most benign social gatherings as potentially dangerous. One document previewed a casino concert featuring Jackson Browne and Bonnie Rait, fretting that it would draw “numerous outside influencers.” The document predicted, “Depending on the progress of drilling by then, the project could be adversely affected if not counter measured.”
After November 8, TigerSwan noted that “the election of President-elect Trump is likely to have a positive effect for the project overall and cooperation from the Federal level will likely improve after 20 JAN.” At the same time, TigerSwan commented on protesters’ post-election “despair,” writing on November 12 that “the DAPL protesters are inherently desperate and are not looking for a peaceful solution regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in turn we can expect this situation to become more volatile than it has ever become before.”
On November 13, TigerSwan again insisted on the likelihood of violence erupting. “Most locals are now carrying weapons to protect themselves, their families and their property,” that report notes. “They have also expressed frustration with what they see as a lack of action by law enforcement.” Around the same time, TigerSwan and law enforcement expressed concerns about the impact the death of a protester might have on the pipeline project. “The use of force or death of a protester or rioter will result in the immediate halt to DAPL operations, which will likely permanently halt the entire project,” the PowerPoint presentations TigerSwan shared with law enforcement warned.
Weeks later, the Obama administration would deny the pipeline company a key federal permit, putting construction on hold. In January, President Donald Trump revived the project. The pipeline began service to customers last Thursday.
A fusion center in Maryland.
Photo: Robert A. Reeder/Washington Post/Getty Images
Fusion Centers and the “Surveillance-Industrial Complex”
The email chain from the night of the Backwater Bridge incident and other documents represent detailed illustrations of the work of a so-called fusion center. In 2007, President George W. Bush signed the 9/11 Commission Act, which allocated $300 million to the Department of Homeland Security for the establishment of fusion centers, originally intended to facilitate sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence among different state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies. According to the DHS website, there are currently 77 fusion centers nationwide, with every state home to at least one.
Brendan McQuade, an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Cortland, who is working on a book on fusion centers, said the records pertaining to the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center’s monitoring and repression of Standing Rock demonstrations offer unique insight into how fusion centers are used for political repression. “We’ve seen hints of this monitoring of the online presence of Black Lives Matter and Occupy protests, but never such explicit evidence of it as in the documents you’ve collected,” he told The Intercept after reviewing a selection of the documents.
According to former FBI Special Agent Michael German, who is now with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, fusion centers have become part of a broader “surveillance-industrial complex” in which security agencies and the corporate sector merge together in a frenzy of mass information gathering, tracking, and surveillance. Federal support for fusion centers is predicated on increased government access to “non-traditional information sources,” he notes. And one of the goals of fusion centers is to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, 85 percent of which is owned by private interests.
“The insidious thing is that the role of private-sector entities in fusion centers has grown up without any specific legislation authorizing it,” said German, who co-authored a 2007 report on behalf of the ACLU called “What’s Wrong with Fusion Centers?” “Instead, the development of these techniques and relationships, such as the one involving TigerSwan and North Dakota law enforcement, has occurred within the closed-off world of law enforcement.”
Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Legal Ambiguity
TigerSwan’s status as a private company has enabled it to operate with virtually no transparency or oversight. The North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board confirmed in an email to The Intercept this week that TigerSwan still has not obtained a license to work as a private security firm in the state despite nine months on the ground. The company’s close collaboration with law enforcement, to which it has regularly fed intelligence, raises serious questions.
“The line between private security and law enforcement at DAPL has been nonexistent,” Bruce Ellison of the National Lawyers Guild, who also works with the Water Protector Legal Collective, told The Intercept. “They have been one in the same.”
Still, it’s not clear that either TigerSwan or law enforcement crossed a legal line with their surveillance activities. Private companies have few obligations to protect constitutional rights to free speech, association, or privacy. And while public agencies, including law enforcement, do have that obligation, they also have ample leeway to operate in invasive and unethical ways that are nonetheless legal. As The Intercept reported in January, detailed guidelines govern the FBI’s activities involving confidential informants and covert online work. But the guidelines are filled with loopholes that ultimately allow FBI agents to spy on just about anybody if they get the right approvals.
If TigerSwan were meeting regularly enough with the FBI, acting at the bureau’s behest, or even simply feeding agents information, it could represent an end-run around FBI rules. However, as Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York School of Law who directs the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, put it, “The guidelines are one thing, but the legal baseline for what’s constitutional and what’s not constitutional is another.”
To a large degree, unless they were found to be acting at the direction of government, TigerSwan’s agents would likely be held to similar standards as regular citizens, their most likely violations being things like trespassing.
Despite the legal ambiguity, TigerSwan’s actions raise questions. “You have these privatized actors that are performing what are commonly understood to be government functions — whether or not we’ve agreed that these are acceptable government functions,” said Kassem. “Private corporations are taking these actions on a scale that is unheard of before — this isn’t your local private eye investigative service, we’re talking about tactics that the military uses overseas.”
“We need to be looking at whether our laws are sufficient to protect political groups from disruption, interference, and attacks by people who are infiltrating or surveilling their activities,” said Kris Hermes, an author and activist who has worked for years providing legal support at protests as a member of the National Lawyers Guild. “What it has done is thrown a chilling blanket over political organizing today whereby everybody feels that they should be engaging in some kind of security culture to avoid the snooping of law enforcement or private security firms. That has a far-reaching effect that I don’t think is appreciated enough. It prevents people from engaging effectively in First Amendment activity.”
Modern-Day Pinkertons
The privatization of law enforcement and its subjugation to corporate interests are hardly a novelty, though the increased militarism of the domestic policing of dissent has taken on sinister overtones in the wake of the so-called global war on terror.
In the late 19th century, Allan Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency offered private detective and security services to public and corporate clients. The “Pinkertons,” as they were known, relied heavily on undercover agents and often acted as agents provocateur, triggering violence as much as they engaged in surveillance and propaganda.
Through their involvement as armed guards during labor conflicts, the Pinkertons “became a shorthand for the abusive power of unchecked capitalism,” Paul O’Hara, a history professor at Xavier University who wrote a book about them, told The Intercept. To workers, the Pinkertons were “hired thugs for capital” and “a symbol of corporate power,” he wrote. Their activities led to two congressional investigations and the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893, which barred the federal government from contracting with the Pinkertons and similar groups. But the act largely failed in its intent, and the Pinkertons set the stage for public partnerships with mercenary groups continuing to this day.
TigerSwan never responded to The Intercept’s repeated requests for comment, oscillating instead between following and blocking these reporters on Twitter. The company did, however, retweet a comment by a reader of The Intercept. He had called TigerSwan “modern day Pinkertons.”
Documents published with this story:
- Law Enforcement Email Thread 2016-11-22
- Intel Group Email Thread 2016-11-20
- Shared Daily Intelligence Update 2016-10-20
- Shared Daily Intelligence Update 2016-10-19
- Shared Daily Intelligence Update 2016-10-18
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-12-21
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-21
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-19
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-18
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-17
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-13
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-12
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-11
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-10
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-09
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-08
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-07
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-11-06
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-10-10
- Internal TigerSwan Situation Report 2016-10-03
The Intercept has redacted the names of persons identified in internal TigerSwan and public documents unless those persons have directly communicated their willingness to be included. The names of senior TigerSwan and law enforcement personnel have not been redacted. To search all TigerSwan documents published by The Intercept, go to the TigerSwan project page on DocumentCloud.
Correction: June 3, 2017
This story has been updated to correct Brendan McQuade’s title and the spelling of his name.
Top photo: Military veterans confront police guarding a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on Dec. 1, 2016, outside Cannon Ball, N.D.
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Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access pipeline.
In other words, we, the people, are in another fight with THE UNITED STATES COMPANY -Leadership, ie, the (selected) Politician’s making a darn good living there in Washington DC, working for, the Banker King, over there in England? So, what else is new? Read some of the stories about England in the old days, everything belonged to the King and Queen, the Private Prisons and Debtors Prisons, the land and water, every animal, the sticks that fell from the trees. All the King and Queen needed was for the Judges and Police to work for them, for peanuts, so they could own everything, just like it is here in THE UNITED STATES COMPANY today. Today the Queen owns one sixth of the land in the world, the (American) peoples Social Security, worth trillions of dollars, etc.; the King owns our productivity and our bodies, his wealth exceeds that of the Queen and by hundreds of trillions of dollars (using dollars as a sign of wealth). Yes, this is true, to think we actually thought we had some value. They, will get their pipeline and they will get whatever else they want, always have always will, we are just pawns in the game(s) played by them. You, know the story, tell it.
Congress is woefully behind the curve on this issue as well as online security and counter espionage. Even ignoring the questions of the consequences of wide scale privatization and congressional shirking of duties I would like to see this taken as seriously as it deserves as it has “inevitable crisis/trainwreck” written all over it
More fake news!
As a journalist, who also was arrested at Standing Rock, I can assure you that The Intercept is not fake news. You can’t just say that without any evidence to back it up.
fake comment!
http://circa.com/politics/accountability/former-fbi-director-james-comey-refuses-to-answer-senate-judiciary-committee-questions
The questions Comey refused to answer as a “private citizen”
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017-05-26%20CG%20DF%20LG%20SW%20to%20Comey%20(Comey%20Memos)_Redacted.pdf
“The company, made up largely of special operations military veterans, was formed during the war in Iraq and incorporated its counterinsurgency tactics into its effort to suppress an indigenous-led movement centered around protection of water.”
This is what happens when you unleash this kind of thing abroad. It will eventually come home. This happened during the Occupy. I know it did. I was stalked through two states and various cities.
Resist this crap.
What makes the left believe that obomo regime would rein in the surveillance state on them? They are spying on everyone! The deep state is out of control weather spying on the president or liberals at standing rock. Just from the standpoint of pollution, the leftist extremists should be brought to justice and be made to pay for the big clean up of trash and all they’re disgusting personal items…
The “left” believes no such thing. It’s been apparent for some time that you are clueless as to where you are commenting, and what the views generally are here — both above and below the line.
Your fundamental error is ignorantly ranting about “liberals.” Most here are not that — I, for example, am a social democrat, as are many. This is what many or most here think of liberals.
Anytime someone purposefully misspells Obama’s name, trying to be funny or witty and failing, miserably, I already know what’s next. Especially the horrible grammar. “rein”? “Weather”? Dude, “Hillery”?
This is a bipartisan failure (or success, if you’re on that side of things).
I love how “conservatives” try whitewashing eight years of Cheney/Bush.
And the velvet glove comes off.
Are we just going to pretend like a meme of Harambe wasn’t just included in a serious piece of reporting?
i found it heartwarming
I knew these protesters had no chance when I discovered the huge contributor to Democrat causes, Warren Buffett was behind this pipeline.
Sources, please?
This reminds me of some poem I was read to during High School about the Shoah. The poem went along the lines of ‘First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Socialist.’ The poem went on through various groups until whatever perp group it was went after the poem narrator. Everyone is now indexed, filed, and monitored. That means genocide (or genocides) is (are) not far behind. It’s coming. This is only a test. Some here will say, ‘Oh, that’s silly.’ We have a history of genocide, so it will be practiced again before long. Mark Twain said, ‘history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’
I love that quote. Although I’m not sure if Twain coined it. That too is up for debate. But love it nonetheless.
Human beings learn from their previous atrocities. As time goes by, they get better at it. Better at concealing it. Better at executing it. But the truth will always get out. Especially in the age of twenty four hour public media access.
Ironic, the same thing they (government) use to spy on us is the same thing that exposes their evil little machinations.
They just slapped an Armani suit and makeup on that pig… but it’s still the same old disgusting pig.
Enemy of the State starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight is currently playing on Netflix. It was made in 1998, three years before the Patriot Act was passed. Next year will mark its 20th anniversary. Seems prophetic these days.
Can’t say we weren’t warned.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
I recently watched this flick, the first time, on Netflix and amazing how prescient it was. Many things ware fairly accurate though I suspect satellites aren’t quit as good as portrayed, I could also be wrong. For a good diversion I recommend watching.
Hackman’s character, Brill, in ‘Enemy of the State’ is based on Harry Caul from ‘The Conversation’, which is a far more superior film. But in Enemy of the State, my favorite lines are:
Robert Clayton Dean: What the hell is happening?
Brill: I blew up the building.
Robert Clayton Dean: Why?
Brill: Because you made a phone call.
Just watched that again too, quiet prophetic, go figure.
As far as the fascist American government is concerned, ALL left leaning people are terrorists.
MOST ‘ PATRIOT’ groups are just fine, even though they are fucking terrorists.
If you work for these companies, these mercenary organizations, fucking grow a conscience or off yourself, as you are a waste of oxygen and resources. If you work for this you are evil, ESPECIALLY if you are an American.
This private dick law thing we have here needs to be wholesale made illegal. This is a violation of First Amendment rights. The company should be siezed and closed, the FBI program audited and stopped, the agents particpating reviewed, disciplined or fired, and the people who ordered the action put in prison FOR DECADES.
Until we shun this type of thing as a society, it can happen to ANY OF US.
Agree 100%.
Try being stalked by these bastards. First off, they outsource their work. I know this for the ineptitude of their tactics. Ham-handed, in fact. Easy to spot.
I wrote about SMS Holdings. They’re a holding company out of Nashville, Tennessee with ties to the former Bush administration and the Department of Homeland Security. One of their holding companies is “Block By Block.” They are a “janitorial service” out of Louisville, Kentucky.
But they’re ANYTHING BUT janitors. Sure, they run around the downtown areas of our nation cleaning up garbage, but they also spy on American citizens in the process. Mostly homeless folks, in fact. Trying to get them removed from public space.
The cities who get in bed with these Bastards should be held accountable. Those who made the decision to allow an out of state, union busting corporation with ties to high ranking Evangelical senators and governors need to be held accountable.
They’re siphoning local tax dollars to an outside political agency… how is that not illegal? And then spying on folks. Then stalking folks who expose that truth? We know what all out privatization will look like. We’re getting a glimpse of it. Science Fiction writers have been warning us for years now.
We’re finally here.
This is all so unnecessary as transportation of oil or gas through pipelines is the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly means of getting oil from point A to point B. But when projects like these get political , the science gets lost and Nobody wants to see the overall picture anymore.
The overall view is about what (secretive) tactics people are up against when they protest or involve themselves in civil disobedience, regardless of the subject. Law enforment should protect property and peaceful demonstrators.
So, it is not true that “Nobody wants to see the overall picture anymore” and the big picture is not about the statistics of oil spills.
If I am right in thinking that you know all that already, the question remains what the purpose of your comment is.
Pipelines *should* be a good idea, but the devil is in the details. I’ve seen gas pipelines that are marked by no more (and no less) than a long mowed strip through game lands where they would have or later did put power lines anyway. I’ve read stories about leaky old pipelines hanging in midair in Louisiana and apparently noisy elevated pipelines crossing vast distances in the far north. Now DAPL is under ground, beneath farmers’ drainage tiles, on private land without eminent domain, so it avoids some of the obvious complaints. But consider what trouble comes with that pipeline — an obscure Indian reservation is now suddenly hit with restrictions on what roads people are allowed to drive on, their people get hit with fire hoses in subzero temperatures, and private spies are all over it. What kinds of restrictions will the people on that reservation face permanently due to the presence of this unwanted guest, whether planned now or imposed after some incident? The pro-pipeline crowd would blame that on the demonstrators, or more accurately on a few rioters among them, but if a cop is telling a random person he can’t drive down a public road or make the same use of public land as he could before, I don’t see the rioter standing anywhere in that picture frame. The Indians would know better than anybody in this country how a harmless-seeming concession can end up twisted into a reason to uproot their lives.
As long as oil and gas is part of the energymix of a country. , it should do it’s best to have a well regulated, well built and maintained transportation system preferably thrpugh pipelines. Not if you ask the protesters…..Not if you ask the companies involved because they want to maximise profit. So it becomes a political issue where the worst behaviour usually wins.
So protesters, the environment , the general public loses in short and long term. Bad strategy !
oil and gas need to not be part of the “energymix” of any country. we need to keep it in the ground.
So what’s the alternative? Do nothing? Allow them to proceed?
The BIGGEST slap in the face concerning this story is the fact that DAPL was going to run their pipeline through Bismark, but since Bismark is almost 100% white, they had it moved once those white folks complained. Immediately, in fact. So what do they do next? Put it on the brown people’s land instead?
Hey, why is it those white folks from Bismark aren’t agitators for complaining? And why did DAPL listen to them? But with those Native Americans, they treat them as a hostile organism?
If folks DON’T stand up to this shit, what’s next? It needs exposure. That’s key here. Even if that side of things loses. That can be temporary. But they won in getting the message out to others in our nation and planet. That’s a victory. So, not doing anything, that’s not even an option.
We need to get off fossil fuels, obviously. And this story highlights why.
I usually just skip by most of these comments, but I am so tired of this lie that Bismarck had the pipeline moved. A simple Snopes search would reveal that this was completely false. Bismarck never had a say in the matter. In the planning process multiple routes were required to be submitted and the Army Corps of Engineers concluded that the best route was the south route. The “Bismarck” route was never even submitted to North Dakota for approval or public comment.
Second, this pipeline never crosses the “brown people’s land” as you put it. Even the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation website states where their reservation ends. The pipeline is on private property off of the reservation until the small (approximately one mile section) where it crosses the Missouri River/Lake Oahe on Army Corps of Engineer land.
The protesters were successful at getting out their message, the problem often was that it wasn’t factual. I am all for alternative energy and had my home designed to take advantage of it when the prices make it feasible. At this time, that is still not the case. Hopefully soon.
The “overall picture” is that oil extraction, transportation, and burning is doing major harm to the Earth. Which method of transportation is used is a minor detail.
In 1917, protesting Bisbee Copper Mine workers in Arizona were rounded up by local police and hired thugs and forced into boxcars and driven out of town and dumped in the nearby desert. (The Bisbee Deportation) In the 1920s, the Bonus Marchers (ex-WWI vets,) in DC were fire-hosed, beaten, and their encampments burned to the ground by the U.S. military; in the 1930s it was common practice for companies to hire local police and others as goons to beat, shoot, and harass protesters during autoworker strikes. It was common practice for these companies to stockpile weapons and ammunition for their security. These are only a few examples of America’s long, tortured history of using constabulary tactics of hired goons to quash protest against corporate or government interests. The Standing Rock oppression is only the most recent example. U.S. history’s records are overflowing with them.
thanks Alex, important reminders.
Often, these showdowns involved attempts to negotiate the right to bargain collectively.
See:Matewan
Chris Cooper plays a labor union organizer who comes to an embattled mining community that is brutally and violently dominated and harassed by the mining company and its hired goons.
The coolest people by far in Matewan were the mountain people. Fuck anyone involved in mining, owners or workers.
It seems “1984” really has arrived. Homeland Security. Fusion centers. Surveillance state and private corporations hand in glove. Ex-military working security. Classic “we vrs them”, manufactured outa thin air. Owners vrs We the People. Sounds like, looks like, smells like – unbridled greed. I feel certain that His Holiness Pope Francis sees a problem here. Cruelty.
The leaked emails themselves are interesting – they are not really that unflattering to these private spooks, though of course, they don’t hang out a sign pointing out where they overreach. The rest of the world goes the other way, but I usually find myself more sympathetic to those whose emails are leaked after I see how they think, and even this is not an exception. I won’t claim to have examined everything carefully, but one that I think is particularly interesting is attributed to Ben Leingang [email protected] at 8:57 PM November 20 – he says that “watching the FLIR there is a truck driving which is throwing things out the window causing explosions/fires”. Van Horn, amusingly, asks “what is a FLIR” and asks about two explosions he heard and Leingang explains “it is HP airplane 226 using his FLIR (forward looking infrared).” Now what’s clear from the interchange is that they REALLY WERE looking at explosions, and there ought to be video to look at, and there’s someone who we can ask about it, though I don’t guarantee an answer. So it’s not all just a post facto hoax to explain blowing the lady’s hand off six hours later.
That is, provided the whole thing wasn’t a planned leak with emails made up retroactively, which IS certainly possible to do. With all our fixation on leaked emails some people forget how insecure such evidence really is. But in this case, any fabricator would have to be a master storyteller, getting a lot of stuff to look convincing.
why do we believe them? it’s clear what they say, it isn’t clear what they say is true.
“Belief” is a vague term, ranging from “Jesus Saves” to “I think there must be a mouse in the basement because it smells down there.” In this case, as I say, it could be fudged up. But it’s a lead. Somebody *really said* there was a plane showing them those images, which means there’s a video. And knowing who was out there blowing stuff up is important. I don’t care if you’re investigating shady private contractors or shady rioters mixed in with the protesters … you never know, sometimes they have turned out to be the same anyway. Even if they’re not, well, let’s put it this way. If I see an argument between a neighbor who lets his dog off the leash and a neighbor who left out gopher poison that got it sick, the guy I’ll side with is the one who didn’t pull out a gun and start shooting! Some stuff is beyond finer points of ideology. When the government is firing “less lethal” rubber coated steel bullets and people get badly hurt, you know where that puts me. When the “protesters” are throwing bombs, you know where that puts me.
why do we consider the report that protestors were violent, from an anonymous source to a person working for a private company that gets paid to consider protestors violent as a credible report? let’s put it this way, if there is no after the fact evidence that anybody actually rigged a propane tank to explode, and a protestor nearly gets her arm blown off, i’ll side with the protestor.
Well, the way I read this email, it seems like this Leingang, who ( http://www.lawcitations.com/case/n/ben-leingang ) is in the “North Dakota Bureau of Investigation” (?? who knew ??) was commenting on video he was seeing. So this isn’t an anonymous source, nor a private company, and I *do* wish The Intercept would run it down and try to get some answers. The “HP airplane 226″ is more mysterious – there are various snippets online about a helicopter and a crop duster airplane – this one seems very informative ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/helicopter-allegedly-hire_b_12320482.html ) but if there’s any way to link the helicopter or the biplane with this I certainly don’t know what it is. Maybe a good reporter can shake something loose.
“Roughly eight hours prior to Sophia Wilansky’s injury, Bismarck police officer Lynn Wanner — who, records indicate, acted as a liaison between intelligence agencies and field officers throughout the anti-DAPL protests — alerted local, state, and federal law enforcement partners that an “FBI inside source” was “reporting propane tanks inside the camp rigged to explode.” Wanner’s email about the FBI informant echoes the story the Morton County Sheriff’s Department would later tell journalists about Wilansky’s injury.”
you’re right, the anonymous source, who may or may not exist, was purportedly an fbi snitch, and it was reported by a cop. of course, as the article states, the line between the company personnel and cops was at best very attenuated. why do you believe this cop? cops lie all the time. they see guns in the hands of unarmed people they shoot down. they see threats in walmart shoppers, and 12 year olds playing with toys. tiger swan looks at legitimate protestors and sees “insurgents”. i don’t trust the judement of these types, and i don’t trust their integrity. where are these “propane bombs?” where is the evidence?
Never mind all that, you’re arguing a sub point because you don’t like how the information was allayed. Get over that fact. It’s out. That’s all that matters at this point. It’s how we proceed from there that matters.
And there wouldn’t be need for any lobbing of anything if these clowns hadn’t descended onto reservation land to do what they’re doing. Hey, they were going to put this pipeline through Bismark, but a bunch of white folks complained and they (DAPL) moved the projected site to where it is now.
So why is it when white folks complain things are done almost immediately to alleviate those concerns. And why is it when Native Americans do that very same thing, they’re looked at as agitators?
Enough trying to hijack the main point here. And that point is, our government is in bed with corporations and they’re spying on Americans (illegally). It’s not ONLY this story where this goes on. I have first hand experience that it’s not.
A fascist government is nothing to shy away from. Once government marries corporate, we’re all in danger. ALL OF US.
Again, I have to point out the incorrect information you were given. This pipeline was never scheduled to go through Bismarck as you state. Please see Snopes for that information. Second, they never descended onto reservation land. The protesters were blocking highways and conducting civil disobedience on private property outside of the reservation (just north, but still off of the reservation). These are two very important details, particularly that protesters were entering private property to disrupt construction of a legal project. Law enforcement is required to respond when called for trespassing, vandalism, etc. If this was a bank, would it still be o.k. for protesters to enter and destroy property; shutting down operations?
Bear in mind that the pipeline passes DIRECTLY north of the river that flows through the Standing Rock reservation. Now I’ll admit that more than half of what I know about Indian life might be found in a crackerjack box, but still, I kind of guess that the river has some kind of importance to them, possibly practical (I assume they must have some livestock in there) and perhaps spiritual and so forth, and all of it would be at risk from a pipeline. It might be at risk directly by shoddy practices by the company, or by non-Indian protesters who might decide stopping global warming can include sacrificing quality of life at a reservation, or by some outside terrorists, ISIS, North Korea whatever, who think it would be fun to blow it up and watch everyone else point the finger and get violent with each other. And of course there also could be risk that security to prevent this will itself screw them over and limit what they can do. I mean, I think you could write QED-complexity formulas for all the different chains of events in which the tribe could suffer in the end because of this wretched pipeline.
All of those outcomes would be the same if the pipeline went through Bismarck as Bif Webster is claiming. In addition, the pipeline does cross upriver from Bismarck as well. Having grown up in between 2 reservations and now living near where the Standing Rock Reservation protests occurred I find it painful to see how much misinformation is out there. Knowing many Native Americans (including many who have came to my defense after I was called racist or ignorant of the native ways when I questioned / challenged protesters on social media) the river hasn’t been treated as sacred for decades. When it became convenient for environmental protesters to exploit to further their agenda, it became a “sacred” again. The same could be said of the traditions that were being exploited as well. For example, MSNBC ran a story about how the tribe uses the river to float buffalo that have been hunted back to the villages to eat. It’s a great story, but that hasn’t been the case for probably over 100 years. The same stories were told about how the pipeline went right through their cemetery. The problem is, the cemetery had been moved in the 60’s with the approval of the tribe and participation to make sure that the proper traditions were followed. There are countless examples of this occurring during the protests and can be verified through local historians and the State Historical Society. The irony of the whole thing to me is that just a few years ago there were people who died on the reservation because they couldn’t get enough propane. The propane shortage was caused by a pipeline capacity issue when the main propane line was converted into an oil pipeline. The alternative for this pipeline is rail and truck transportation (which both use fossil fuels) and cross just upstream from the pipeline and also right by their new water intake in South Dakota.
I’m actually for reducing our fossil fuel usage and look forward to when the market will bear it. As we transition, it is important to me to that we use the safest, most economical method of transporting them which from everything I’ve read is pipelines. I also do not believe that we should be allowed to break laws and call it civil disobedience and then complain about the response. That makes people vigilantes. The same logic that it is o.k. to break the laws and damage pipelines because you don’t agree with them would make it legal to rob banks because they foreclosed on your home or to attack hospitals because they misdiagnosed someone.
I just get frustrated with half truths and sometimes complete lies that are told about this protest. Not only some, but the majority of people I know on the Standing Rock Reservation really didn’t care about the pipeline and did not want all of the environmental protesters there. I was initially supportive of the early protest camps until they started breaking the laws. When the gofundme accounts started popping up, the cause lost all credibility to me.
Of course, much of the way things are interpreted are based on our own views and what we’ve seen. That’s how I see it, and I respect your non-combative approach to the discussion.
private property freak!
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
Unfortunately, so few people (at least in the U.S.) understand this. Most people think that “fascism” means racism, xenophobia, tyranny, or something like that. As Mussolini said, fascism is corporatism or, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put it, corporations running the government.
By using the correct definition of fascism, one can easily see that the U.S. has been fascist for a long time.
Obomo spied on everyone!
All one needs to understand the basis for the purported conspiracy theory known as organized stalking is to take the next logical step from Standing Rock and recognize that these same tactics and this same apparatus is directed at individuals on an extremely wide scale.
Gloria Naylor knew we are all “under the watchful eye of the government”:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5168026
I’ve been stalked. Through two states and various towns. And I’m not insane.
Well, not totally, anyway.
I know this happened. That’s what happens when you expose certain truths they want hushed up.
Translation: Kill all of the protestors.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a democracy if you have no public property or if the so-called public property is privately controlled.
also https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/standing-rock-documents-expose-inner-workings-of-surveillance-industrial-complex/?comments=1#comment-408393
WAKE UP AMERICANS and SMELL THE COFFEE, IT’S BURNING.
Modern Day Pinkertons indeed
Perhaps you thought living in EAST GERMANY under STASI RULE was bad. Or perhaps you figured living in Iraq or Libya or Egypt or Syria or Israel or Palestine was bad. Think harder.
America is a colony of Wallstreet. And these middle east trained thieves on wallstreet have centuries of practice at feeding upon populations.
1. Wilansky almost lost her arm after picking up a propane cannister rigged up as a bom by the “protesters.” She got what she came for.
2. I didn’t read all 33 Tiger Swan documents, but there was nothing objectionable in the Power Points or the summary.
3. The Intercept has uncritically accepted the “protester” version, including the utterly preposterous claim that this was ever about protecting water.
so you chewed your way out of collar and now YOU ARE “PROTESTING” what?
Why did they move the pipeline from Bismark to where it’s at right now?
Answer me that question. And why didn’t folks complain when white folks complained about it going through THEIR neighborhoods?
Folks like you will never see it because you don’t want to see it. Too painful? Or is it that you merely aren’t affected by it? Not directly, for now, anyway. And that IS the point here. Because, eventually, they’ll arrive at your doorstep. You will then scream to the mountaintops but nobody will hear you, as they will have already been rounded up and put into a “detention” or “adjustment” center.
That comment about Bismarck and the “white folks” is completely false. It is important because it changes the entire narrative you are trying to spin.
http://www.snopes.com/dapl-routed-through-standing-rock-after-bismarck-residents-said-no/
Good that these secretive tactics are in the open now. Thanks for the article.
Thank you for the brilliant peace of journalism which I didn’t read all the way through because I have ADD. ?
This is sinister. The level of oppression is overwhelming. The West is imploding.
The west is being unmasked. These vile scum police criminals have always been here.
Yes they have been, they are called Republicans & Democrats ! Wise up AMERICA ! !
Para-military right wing groups made up of ex-soldiers were one of the main sources of strength for the Nazi after WW1. They gained still more strength after combining themselves with the German industrialists. This is not an opinion, it is real history. History is repeating itself. It is repeating itself here. Now … look at how our people are voting.
> the purported violence of DAPL’s opponents
unfortunately, campus ‘leftists’ are constantly insisting that speech can be violent (‘we will not be silent in the face of your violence!). so, if you support those assholes, or you’re one of those assholes, you have no defense when the same insanity is used against you
droug: “campus ‘leftists’ are constantly insisting that speech can be violent (‘we will not be silent in the face of your violence!)”
So, ‘droug’ thinks “not being silent” is equivalent to violence and that ‘speech can BE violent”.
Earth to ‘droug': you have some faulty wiring in your bot circuits. You don’t see the actual violence being done AGAINST protesters.
‘we will not be silent (or silenced) in the face of your violence’ is a chant sometimes used by ‘leftist’ protesters to shut down a speaker. guess you didn’t know that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7cwWegXCU
That’s not violence. It may be wrong, but it isn’t violent.
Guess you didn’t know that.
the protesters aren’t being violent. they are claiming that the invited speaker (Kristian Williams) is violent. they will not be silent in the face of his violence. they are asserting that pure speech can be a form of violence. if that’s accepted, it follows that peaceful protesting can be a form of violence. one absurdity leads to the next
That is maybe the most orderly shouting match that you may ever see in a heated discussion. Your point is that they are ‘leftist’?
Speech can be prohibited as imminent incitement to violence. This is Constitutional law 101.
If the protesters believe the speaker is going to incite to violence, they may be wrong as a matter of law if it isn’t reasonably expected to be imminent, but they could be right as a practical matter that non-imminent violence is the result of the increase in quantity and virulence of what is called “hate speech.”
As a matter of law (with which I agree) speech that does not induce imminent violence is protected. But either way, the protesters are not asserting that “pure speech can be a form of violence.” The concern is the violence ensuing from the speker’s words. But, again, if the violence induced by the speaker’s words cannot reasonably be regarded as “imminent,” the protesters are wrong as a matter of law, but they are not themselves violent; they seek to prevent violence. (It is simply the case that free speech is chilled by prohibiting ugly speech that is not an incitement to imminent violence.)
if ugly speech that that does not incite imminent violence is protected under the constitution ..
where does that leave hate speech laws prohibiting speech that incites prejudicial action that is not violent?
The United States, virtually alone in the West, does not prohibit “hate speech.” It’s protected speech, absent incitement to “imminent lawless action.” Freedom of speech is one of the very few issues which the U.S. gets mostly right.
> the protesters are not asserting that “pure speech can be a form of violence.” The concern is the violence ensuing from the speaker’s words.
that’s true in many cases, but in many other cases the assertion is being made that speech itself is violent. the definition of violence has been expanded to include speech that causes emotional pain. just listen to the protesters in that video: ‘survivor shaming’, ‘you minimize trauma’. they are protesting on behalf of ‘people who have survived traumatic issues’. so, they are accusing the invited speaker of inflicting additional violence on these people who have previously been victims of violence (presumably real physical violence, but who knows)
There is a minority of left-wing people in the U.S. (and they have analogs on the right for other pet ideas or expressions conservatives seek to prohibit) who seek to prohibit “hate speech” — but they have never prevailed. Certainly none of the writers at this site (that I am aware of) advocate hate speech laws.
Indeed, one of the co-founders, Glenn Greenwald, has long and vigorously opposed bans on “hate speech,” and defended those committing what could reasonably be so described. He did so as a lawyer, and has continued this advocacy as a journalist.
In any event, I find it disturbing that you saw fit in your initial reply to a piece on state actors (including armed agents) — in active collusion with corporate partners — denying and chilling speech, that you throw out a non sequitur about a minority view on the U.S. left. Why do that?
Our nation was literally birthed through violence.
I love how folks forget this fact while slurping up their crappy domestic “beer” while cooking their steaks and hamburgers and hot dogs every fourth of July?
My point is this: all this minutia takes away from the main point of this article. That corporate and government has merged and they are enforcing illegal tactics onto American Citizens who have the stones to stand up to their illegalities.
If they had never brought that pipeline from Bismark (where mostly white folks complained and had their fears allayed with moving it TO where it’s at right now… I say move it back to Bismark, THEN SEE what happens next) to their reservation in the first place, there wouldn’t be any discussion of violence.
Again, propose moving it back to Bismark. See what happens next. Haha, yeah, then, all of the sudden, the “agitator” label would cede to “concerned citizen.” This racist ass nation is SO transparent.
People did not shout the Nazis down before millions died.
I guess you didn’t know that.
Either you are content that you are not James Rechter or you would have killed him yourself. Either you feel badly for the victims of Kent State or you would have killed them as well.
Just know that when you have your head up your ass, it is difficult to speak freely.
Yes, ‘droug’ gets ‘upset’ at a small minority of instances of PC idiots improperly shouting down people who aren’t truly (like the Nazis) advocating violence, but he ignores the overwhelming majority of times it is leftists/progressives, anti-war protesters, Trump protesters, Kent State protesters, etc etc getting beaten, tased, shot, murdered, massacred, by right-wing forces.
I doubt you’ll find any comments anywhere from him about that.
Just after James Rector was shot and killed by police, Reagan flunky Ed Meese said, “James Rector ‘deserved to die.'”
Bastard.
You’ve conflated your non-point to THIS story?
Why did they move the pipeline from the majority (by a LOT) white city of Bismark to where it sits right now? Oh, because those white folks complained. Nobody called them “agitators” when that happened. In fact, nobody much cared. Not until that pipeline then began moving toward Native land.
So why is it when white folks complain, it’s sacrosanct, but when Native Americans do the same thing, FOR THE SAME REASON, MIND YOU (concerns over leaks), it’s considered “domestic ‘terrorism'”? Or, at least, that’s the rhetoric from some circles. Mainly those with a profit motive and their ignorant useful idiots who carry their water because in ideology, they hate the same folks.
They didn’t move the pipeline from Bismarck. Snopes has a relatively accurate article on that.
Sophia Wilansky was not injured by a police flashbang grenade. She was injured–like the Weather Underground members in the 60’s–by their own IEDs. She was attempting to deploy 1 pound propane canisters as IEDs and was injured by her own ‘bomb’.
More fine work – thank you. I don’t think there is anyone out there at this point who fails to agree that TigerSwan needs not only to be held accountable for its actions but shutdown completely and permanently. Disgusting criminals, as are those law enforcement figures who collaborated with them.
Actually, that’s not something I’d be asking for. Much of what TigerSwan is described as doing in that article is stuff that free people in a free country ought to be able to do – to read social media, take notes, walk through protest camps and so on. As far as I know (and the article is a bit vague on this) the company is not actually blowing anybody’s hands off.
To be sure, there are things that private security often gets away with that I don’t want them being allowed to do — you can hear about some of this stuff in ordinary shoplifting cases. I don’t want private security with a license to kill, obviously.
But the biggest thing is, we can’t have police *relying* on third party companies with conflicts of interest and narrow perspective. That can be a subtle thing, but as here, not always so much. By and large we want cop work being directed to cops or people who work for the cops, in other words, by civil servants. That certainly is no guarantee of neutrality but it is surely better to have them more directly controlled by a democratic institution than to have those investigators answering to a private profit center. The effect of holding third-party privatization mania at bay is not really the same as banning companies like this, but it would certainly help to put them in their place.
blah, blah, bla…but…blah, blah, blah…but…
It seems that citizens are the enemy now. When the Army is deployed and PAOs deliberately spread propaganda among right wing media outlets, it’s only a matter of time until the public won’t take it any more.
The battle was over before you began to fight. The first thing you did was redact names. As you describe it, TigerSwan apparently doesn’t redact names — it tracks who is doing what on the other side. Play by these rules, expect to lose, ask for money and pity from your friends until it is worth your while to play again. If the people have no freedom to talk in detail and their opponents do, what do you think will happen? The ironic part is that the fossil fuel companies have the most to lose by a breakdown in old fashioned civilization. The ordinary people don’t have to lose — they merely have to redefine the idea of the pipeline breaking and the river being slicked with tons of oil from being the feared loss to being the hoped-for victory. And they inevitably will, given time and developments like these, whether we want them to or not.
Meanwhile, you say explicitly that the report about propane canisters was made eight hours before the injury. While the attempts to seize onto that and use it for spin were reprehensible, they seem predictable, and not requiring extraordinary private intelligence.
TyrantSwat and their collaborators in above-the-law enforcement tried to convince people that protesters were using IEDs to blow up themselves, to avoid the truth from blowing up in their face. How adorable.
Clearly you meant “ostensibly intended”. No terrorists in that bunch—well, among the non-uniformed anyway.