11/07/13 – Eric Garris – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott.
This is my show.
Next up is Eric Garris, aka Bossman.
He is the founder and everything of AntiWar.com, and of course, all the big headlines are that the FBI, Eric, has been investigating you for years because they misunderstood a simple email sent by a local official.
Well, yes, it is.
It sounds kind of like a funny story, but it isn't.
It's not funny when it's about you, right?
And it's not the only reason that they are investigating us.
It was just one of the reasons given for targeting us.
Right.
I'll let you tell the whole thing, but underlying it all was, yeah, and one time this Garris guy threatened us, is basically the story of the entire investigation, right?
Well, I mean, the investigation revolved around revelations that Justin Raimondo made several years ago about possible Israeli knowledge of 9-1-1, but that was all analyzing documents that were on the Internet and were accessible to anyone.
But the other, actually the most alarming part, which came out in the latest documents, is the fact that one of the reasons they're targeting us is for statements that were made in mainstream media by our spokespeople.
And that's really dangerous, but the incident that everybody's focusing on is quite amazing.
The day after 9-1-1, we received a threatening email saying that they were going to take down our site, and I mistakenly thought that the best thing to do would be to report that to the FBI in case that developed into something.
The FBI took the report, asked me to forward the email, and four months later an analyst was reading the report in the email, didn't understand how to read a forwarded email, and wrote that I had threatened to take down the FBI website.
And the concluding statement was that I was a known threat to national security and that I should be watched.
And that particular statement is now in several other government documents without the reference to what actually happened.
That's really scary.
A threat to take down their website with a threat to take down their entire system, right?
It's as if I had called the local police and said I've been robbed, and instead of putting my name down under victim, they put my name down under perpetrator.
So what's the deal with these documents?
Now, it was FBI documents of original initial suspect lists from the FBI that surfaced.
They'd been leaked, I think, by Italian banks, right?
The FBI had been passing them around European banks, and that was how they got into the public domain, and then Justin just linked to it and said, aha, Mossad agents are on this list.
Yes, and they made it sound as if Justin was disseminating classified information when in fact the information was available on the internet and was being referred to by Carl Cameron in a four-part Fox News report prior to Justin even writing about it.
Right.
And so then what did this investigation amount to?
Because I think, well, I hope it's okay to say, when you sued them, you asked them, well, turn over information that you have on Scott Horton, too, and they said, who the hell is he?
Right.
We listed all of the, we had all of the Antiwar.com staff fill out requests, and they said, we don't have anything on Scott Horton, we don't have anything on Jason Ditz, etc., but in the case of Justin and I, they were mum.
Oh, great.
Now I'm on the list, too.
Thanks a lot.
So we made three FOIA requests and got nothing, and then when we sued, the first thing they said was, we don't have to give you anything because it's all protected, exempted documents that can't be released because of national security.
And even the latest documents we got, which are close to 100 pages, 90% of it is redacted, so we still don't know what is in most of them and what they're saying about us.
Well the good news is, the story broke all over again, and everybody cares this time.
Yes, they care because it made it into an interesting story, the FBI making a mistake.
The unfortunate thing is that many people see this as a conclusion, and in fact, this is just opening the case wide open.
Because the really important part is that they saw Justin writing anti-government essays, and they saw our spokespeople appearing on MSNBC saying things that were not appreciated by the powers that be, as a national security threat.
That basically they have inflated First Amendment activities into suspicious, if not criminal, activities.
Right, and see, that's the criminal part of what they did, is they've used their national security powers, which is a much lower threshold of evidence, a so-called reasonable belief, as opposed to probable cause, to even continue investigating you, too, right?
That's correct.
And you know, one point is that as far as we know, the investigation, although we have evidence that went on for six years, we don't know that it's ended.
And number two, much more is being done today than was done five, six years ago in terms of surveillance of people, and in terms of targeting people who say things against the government.
Right.
Well, and this does fit in with what we had found out already about even the military being used to watch some anti-war groups, right?
That's right.
These agencies work together, and they share information, and they assign the duties of who's going to target, harass, and interfere with people in different ways.
So you have the FBI doing one thing, the IRS doing another, the military doing another, the NSA doing another, all targeting everyone.
Right.
All right, everybody, that's Eric Gares.
He's the founder and the webmaster and the everything running anti-war.com over there.
Thanks, Eric.
Thanks, Scott.
All right.
So listen, go to anti-war.com right now, guys, and the top headline is FBI monitored anti-war.com for six years.
That's Spencer Ackerman.
And then there's the ACLU press release.
And then Marcy Wheeler, of course, has a brilliant write-up.
And there's another one at techdirt.com that's really worth looking at.
This is a very important story.
It just happens to be about our guys.
So check it out, anti-war.com today.
Hey, y'all.
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Fact.
The new NSA data center in Utah requires 1.7 million gallons of water every single day to operate.
Billions of Fourth Amendment violations need massive computers and the water to cool them.
That water is being supplied by the state of Utah.
Fact.
There's absolutely nothing in the Constitution which requires your state to help the feds violate your rights.
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Turn.
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Off.
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