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Why Is the FBI Trying to Bury a Special Forces War Hero?

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AAdS5m0Lieutenant Colonel Jason Amerine was one of the first U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan. He landed there with an Army Special Forces A-Team in late October 2001, when everyone agreed the war would be brief and the objectives were clear: Avenge the terror of the 9/11 attacks, depose the Taliban and leave. Nearly 14 years later, he went to Capitol Hill to explain why he’s still fighting his way out.

Until this past January, Amerine worked at the Pentagon, where he led an Army team ordered to bring home Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a mission that was expanded to include several civilian hostages held by Taliban-aligned militants in Pakistan. Bergdahl had been captive for nearly four years by the time Amerine got involved, making him the longest-held prisoner of war since Vietnam and a key to any end-of-war negotiations. In 2013, Amerine lured the Taliban to a series of secret talks that identified a solution, but then hit a wall in Washington’s bureaucratic maze. As he wrangled more with federal agencies in D.C. than with the Quetta Shura in Pakistan, Amerine reached out to Representative Duncan Hunter, a Marine veteran and Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Hunter wrote letters to then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and President Barack Obama pleading that someone cut through the interagency squabbling between the Army, the State Department, the FBI, the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. When Bergdahl was finally released last year in a trade for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Hunter complained that a far better deal brokered by Amerine was ignored. Worse still, six Western civilians, including two Canadians and a newborn child, were left behind, held by terrorist groups protected by the Pakistani government, a pivotal U.S. ally in the global war on terror.

This January, the day after an errant CIA drone missile killed one of those hostages, international aid worker Warren Weinstein, Amerine was abruptly escorted out of the Pentagon. The Army informed him that its Criminal Investigation Command (CID) had opened a case against him. His pay was halted, and his retirement was put on hold. Hunter says this was a hit job by the FBI, payback for infringing on the bureau’s hostage-recovery turf. The CID would not comment on the case for Newsweek, and the FBI redirected questions back to the Defense Department. Meanwhile, the hostages remain in Pakistan, the investigation of Amerine drags on, and an internal Pentagon investigation is investigating the CID’s investigation.

Testifying in June at a Senate hearing with the contorted title, “Blowing the Whistle on Retaliation: Accounts of Current and Former Federal Agency Whistleblowers,” Amerine did not relish his rebel status. “I am labeled a whistleblower, a term both radioactive and derogatory,” he said. “I am before you because I did my duty, and you need to ensure all in uniform can go on doing their duty without fear of reprisal.” (Read more from “Why Is the FBI Trying to Bury a Special Forces War Hero?” HERE)

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Fourth of July Terror Warning Issued by FBI, Homeland Security

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Federal authorities have warned local law enforcement officials across the country about a heightened concern involving possible terror attacks targeting the July 4th holiday, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

While there was no specific or credible threat of attack, the official said the intelligence bulletin prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI alerted local colleagues to the ongoing threats posed by the Islamic State and other homegrown extremists. The official was not authorized to comment publicly.

The bulletins are frequently issued in advance of major U.S. holidays out of an abundance of caution and concern that operatives may exploit the timing to generate greater attention.

The warning comes as federal investigators have worked to disrupt a number of Islamic State-inspired plots, including a planned assault earlier this month on police officers in Boston. In that case, authorities fatally shot Usaamah Rahim as he allegedly planned to attack police with military-style knives . . .

In a statement Friday following attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said local law enforcement was being encouraged to be “vigilant and prepared” in preparation for July 4th celebrations. (Read more from “Fourth of July Terror Warning Issued by FBI, Homeland Security” HERE)

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FBI Rounding up Islamic State Suspects

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The FBI has been rounding up more potential “lone wolf” terrorists, Congressional leaders and the Justice Department say, in response to the perception of a mounting threat of domestic attacks inspired by the Islamic State.

Since the thwarted attack on a “Draw Muhammad” conference in Garland, Texas, on May 3, the Justice Department has announced the arrests of 10 individuals it says were inspired by and supporting the Islamic State. The lawmakers say there have been more arrests that have not yet been announced.

They say the FBI has shifted its approach toward arrests rather than keeping suspects under surveillance, and is also targeting individuals thought to be planning attacks in the U.S., unlike the bureau’s past focus on volunteers preparing to join ISIS’s fight abroad.

“Lately, we have seen an uptick in the number of arrests of ISIL followers who were planning violent acts in our homeland,” said John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security. “ISIL, differing from some other foreign terrorist organizations, has demonstrated that they see value in mobilizing sympathizers anywhere in the world.”

The spate of arrests comes in response to what Congressional leaders and the Justice Department say is a mounting threat that radicalized Americans will attempt low-tech, lone wolf attacks in the near future. Lawmakers see the changes as necessary because the Islamic State uses social media so effectively to radicalize Americans and because the group is getting better at using encryption to shield its communications with new recruits. (Read more from “FBI Rounding up Islamic State Suspects” HERE)

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FBI Admits No Major Cases Cracked With Patriot Act Snooping Powers

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen FBI agents can’t point to any major terrorism cases they’ve cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations.

The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215.

Backers say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it’s used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the National Security Agency’s phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden.

The new report adds ammunition to those opponents, with the inspector general concluding that no major cases have been broken by use of the Patriot Act’s records-snooping provisions. (Read more from “FBI Admits No Major Cases Cracked With Patriot Act Snooping Powers” HERE)

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The Amtrak Crash: Why the FBI Lied and Why It Is No Freak Accident Lending the Possibility of a Terror Attack [+video]

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Photo Credit: Shoebat When the tragic Amtrak crash happened, initially, the media and the FBI reported that foul play or terrorism was ruled out. When this misinformation came out on the 13th of this month, Shoebat.com reported [that]:

. . .Two trains, separate incidents within three minutes from each other and both incidents caused damage on the engineer’s window (one confirmed due to a projectile) which now some photos surfaced of the Amtrak crash also showing signs of engineer’s window shatter. Whether this is another projectile or was caused by the crash is unknown, but what is known is that both incidents were either coordinated around the same time with damage to the engineer’s window. Were these simply due to accidents? One is not. But this new revelation begins to lessen the possibility that chance was involved and that foul play becomes a possibility. . .

Such concentrated shatter holes are not easily formed by flying debris. Train driver windows are 223 Type 1 standard windows which have “minimum requirements for glazing materials in order to protect railroad employees and railroad passengers from injury as a result of objects striking the windows of locomotives”.

The driver’s window are not the same as the side windows of passenger trains which must meet Type II standards. According to federal standards, the driver windows need to have glazing that will withstand a 40 grain .22 caliber bullet travelling at 960 feet per second, or a 24 lb cinderblock travelling at 44 feet per second. . .

Karl Edler, a retired engineer who drove the line hundreds of times, said an impact could help explain the wreck. When a train pulls out of the North Philadelphia station, the engineer usually twists the throttle “up to notch eight, which is engineer-speak for wide open,” he said. . .

“Usually, you just leave the throttle open until you get up to 80 miles per hour, then put on the brake for the curve,” he said. “Seems reasonable that something happened right about that time he would have started slowing down that kept him from taking the throttle off. He was startled by the impact or whatever. And by the time he realized it, it was too late.” (Please read more from “The Amtrak Crash: Why the FBI Lied and Why It Is No Freak Accident Lending the Possibility of a Terror Attack” HERE)

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Judge Throws out Lawsuit From Redditor Who Found an FBI Tracking Device on His Car

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Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

Back in 2010, Redditor Yasir Afifi found an unusual device on his car while taking it in for an oil change.

Other Redditors surmised it was some sort of tracking device — something that was confirmed a few days later when two SUVs full of cops and FBI agents showed up to reclaim it. While doing so, the FBI agent also asked the sort of probing questions that make the agency an indispensable part of our nation’s counterterrorism efforts . . .

They also said other, more unsettling things:

After returning the GPS device, defendant Kanaan made several comments to the plaintiff [Redditor Yasir Afifi] that indicated to the plaintiff that the FBI had knowledge of the plaintiff’s movements, including commenting on certain restaurants at which the plaintiff ate, a friend with whom he associated, and a new job at which he worked. At the end of the encounter, the plaintiff alleges that defendant Kanaan suggested to him that he was not a national security threat and that he was no longer of use to the FBI.

Apparently, part of the justification for deploying this tracking device was a comment one of Afifi’s friends had left at Reddit — a comment that skewers a lot of unproductive terrorism hysteria (and the agencies that thrive in this atmosphere). . . End result? A tracking device on Afifi’s car, and for something he didn’t even write. So, he sued the FBI and the DOJ for violating his First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. (Read more from “Judge Throws out Lawsuit From Redditor Who Found an FBI Tracking Device on His Car” HERE)

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Flashback on Stupid: FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ the Lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing the Copyright Office Must Have Them [+video]

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download (10)Last week, as you may or may not have heard, a guy named Jack Ely passed away at the age of 71. The name may not be that familiar, but the voice almost certainly is. Jack Ely was — fairly briefly — the lead singer of the Kingsmen, and happened to do a cover song in a single take under poor conditions, that created one of the most memorable songs in rock and roll history, also known as Louie Louie:

You know the song. You also know the lyrics are completely indecipherable. However, with Ely’s death, there’s been renewed attention to the fact that the FBI spent nearly two years investigating the song. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds, but the FBI has released the file on its investigation and it’s a rather hilarious read. It turns out it wasn’t just the FBI, but involved the FCC and the Post Office:

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Apparently, the government was being inundated with claims from people (some of which you can see in the file) insisting that they had heard the indecipherable lyrics were actually “obscene.” If you want to see the supposedly “obscene” interpretation of the lyrics, there’s one set on page 14 [pdf] of the document, though I warn you, even the falsely heard “obscene” lyrics are not particularly obscene by today’s standards (and I’m at a loss as to how they’re that obscene by the standards of 1963, frankly). On page 22, there’s another, mostly different set of falsely heard “obscene” lyrics that at least includes the word “f***.” On page 35, yet another version with both “f***” and “b****.”

Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

(Read more from “FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ the Lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing the Copyright Office Must Have Them” HERE)

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FBI Director Says Islamic State Influence Growing in U.S.

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635665991337927129-AP-FBI-Director-BostonBy Kevin Johnson. In a dramatic assessment of the domestic threat posed by the Islamic State, FBI Director James Comey said Thursday there are “hundreds, maybe thousands” of people across the country who are receiving recruitment overtures from the terrorist group or directives to attack the U.S.

Comey said the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, is leveraging social media in unprecedented ways through Twitter and other platforms, directing messages to the smartphones of “disturbed people” who could be pushed to launch assaults on U.S. targets.

“It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill,”’ Comey said in a meeting with reporters.

The FBI director’s comments come in the midst of a federal investigation into a foiled attack in Garland, Texas, involving two ISIL sympathizers, one of whom, Elton Simpson, was long known to federal authorities.

Comey said Thursday that hours before the attempted Garland attack, FBI agents sent a bulletin to local authorities indicating that Simpson may have been interested in traveling there from Phoenix to attend the conference featuring controversial cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed. At the time, Comey said, agents did not have specific information that Simpson had targeted the meeting. (Read more from “FBI Director Says Islamic State Influence Growing in U.S.” HERE)

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Concerns of Muslim Immigration Surge Into Western World Come Into Focus

By Alex Swoyer. The Muslim immigration warnings offered by Dutch politician Geert Wilders—who was in the facility in Garland, Texas, that was attacked by terrorists last weekend—seem to be coming true.

Wilders, who has asked his own parliament to hold an exhibition on the Muhammed cartoons from the Garland, Texas event, has warned frequently that high levels of Muslim immigration without assimilation to the Western world—Europe and the United States of America—are dangerous to the culture and values of the West.

Wilders, a featured speaker at the Garland event, has been on a terror hit list since 2010 for proposing to place a tax on the Hijab worn by Muslim women in the Netherlands. He has also been vocal about stopping all Muslim immigration into the Netherlands.

“Take a walk down the street and see where this is going,” Wilders, referring to growing Muslim immigration into his country, previously said. “You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!”

Wilders’ warning rings true not just in the Netherlands, but in the United States as well. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Security Expert Pulled off Flight by FBI After Exposing Airline Tech Vulnerabilities

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robertsinternal5515One of the world’s foremost experts on counter-threat intelligence within the cybersecurity industry, who blew the whistle on vulnerabilities in airplane technology systems in a series of recent Fox News reports, has become the target of an FBI investigation himself.

Chris Roberts of the Colorado-based One World Labs, a security intelligence firm that identifies risks before they’re exploited, said two FBI agents and two uniformed police officers pulled him off a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 commercial flight Wednesday night just after it landed in Syracuse, and spent the next four hours questioning him about cyberhacking of planes.

The FBI interrogation came just hours after Fox News published a report on Roberts’ research, in which he said: “We can still take planes out of the sky thanks to the flaws in the in-flight entertainment systems. Quite simply put, we can theorize on how to turn the engines off at 35,000 feet and not have any of those damn flashing lights go off in the cockpit.”

His findings, along with those of another security expert quoted in the Fox News reports, were backed up a GAO report released Tuesday.

“If you don’t have people like me researching and blowing the whistle on system vulnerabilities, we will find out the hard way what those vulnerabilities are when an attack happens,” Roberts said. (Read more from “Security Expert Pulled off Flight by FBI After Exposing Airline Tech Vulnerabilities” HERE)

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Senator Investigates Why So Many Veterans Are Being Placed On FBI ‘Mental Defective’ Gun Ban List

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chuck-grassley-e1429195947640Nearly all of the individuals included on the Justice Department’s gun ban list in the “mental defective” category are referred by the Department of Veterans Affairs. This has Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley investigating a possible infringement on veterans’ Second Amendment rights.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday seeking information on how the Justice Department manages its National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS).

Federal agencies are required to report individuals that fit into the “mental defective” category to NICS, which is managed by the FBI. Doing so blocks them from being able to purchase firearms.

According to data from Congressional Research, in 2012 the VA was responsible for 99.3 percent of all “mental defective” referrals to NICS. That’s ironic given that it is veterans who are charged with protecting Americans’ constitutional rights, according to Grassley.

“It’s disturbing to think that the men and women who dedicated themselves to defending our freedom and values face undue threats to their fundamental Second Amendment rights from the very agency established to serve them,” Grassley said in a statement. (Read more from “Senator Investigates Why So Many Veterans Are Being Placed On FBI ‘Mental Defective’ Gun Ban List” HERE)

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