Welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and the guys who hired Robert Hanson to be the head of their Let's Find the Soviet Spy in Our Mists committee, they're persecuting Antiwar.com.
On the phone is Eric Gares, he's the founder and the webmaster of Antiwar.com as well as the webmaster of LewRockwell.com.
Welcome to the show, Eric, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine, how are you?
I'm doing great, thanks for joining us today.
The issue is this brand new piece by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com/Justin, the FBI versus Antiwar.com.
What the heck?
Well, a supporter sent me a document on Saturday that was a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the urban movers aspect of the Israel 9-1-1 story.
And much of it was very old, but the second half of the report was all about Antiwar.com.
Unfortunately, most of it is redacted, so we can only extrapolate what they actually are investigating, but it's clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
About 80-90% of the portion about us is redacted, and it looks like they are doing investigations of us.
And now, okay, so this all started because, as you said, the Israeli movers story, this is one that, along with the art students, is something that Justin picked up on right after September 11th and wrote a lot about.
And then, y'all had posted a terrorist suspect list that had been produced by the FBI, correct?
Yes.
And yet, this had also been posted all over the place, right?
Well, a number of places, yes.
It was a document that had been leaked and posted all over the internet.
And by the by, it had Dominic Souter, the guy that owned Urban Moving Systems, name on it right there with Mohammed Atta and the rest.
Correct.
But, as I said, the Urban Mover 9-1-1 part of this report is pretty old, but what's interesting about the report is that it indicates that the FBI is very interested in Antiwar.com.
They want to know who's funding us.
Well, starting with this document, that's what I was getting at, is that this is what brought Antiwar.com to their attention, was this formerly secret document got posted up at this website, and then they started looking into you and Justin after that.
I'm not clear that they didn't already have something going on.
It's so much redacted that it's hard to tell whether this was the initiation of it or whether it actually started prior to that.
We've had indications before, leaks, that we were under investigation by the FBI and other branches of the government.
In fact, in 2000, the anti-hacking section of the Pentagon crashed our site, and they actually admitted that they had been scanning it, that they said they didn't intend to crash it, but that they were testing it, essentially.
When was this?
This was in 2000.
There was a story on Wired about it back then.
Wow, I didn't even know that.
Yeah.
Well, Antiwar.com history for you there.
It's clear here that what we need to do is we need to ask for more Freedom of Information Act documents and see what else they have been investigating us about, because most of this information is pretty old, and it's very possible that there's a lot more that's been done since this report was originally compiled, because the report recommends that they do extensive investigation of us.
Right, this is like a preliminary, preliminary investigation, recommending a preliminary investigation, right?
Right, right.
And as I said, they want to find out who's financing us, what we spend our money on, what ties to foreign governments we might have, that sort of thing.
They even question, who is this Justin Raimondo?
What is his real name?
You know, what's amazing is that many of these things that they're asking are available public information if they just would learn how to use Google.
Yeah, I think Justin even says, when it comes to the authenticity of the documents, he says the lunkheaded cluelessness, which dominates the FBI's corporate culture and the bureaucraties in which it's all written, combine to verify the authenticity of the documents.
And that's what I thought too when I was first reading them, was this seems like it was written by an FBI agent.
I mean, these guys, it must be the kind of thing where if your IQ breaks a hundred, you're not allowed in over there.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, I can't, I pick on them over the Robert Hansen thing because it's their most embarrassing failure to them.
You know, not only was he a Soviet spy, they put him as the head investigator into who's the Soviet spy for years, you know, these people.
And now they're after us.
As you say, it does seem like, you know, for example, the Justin thing, his first name is Dennis, but you can read that a hundred places online, right?
All I got to do is look up David Horowitz's, anything he ever wrote about Justin will explain how nefarious it is that he goes by his middle name.
Right.
It's just, it's ridiculous.
He's been going by that name since he was 16.
Yeah.
Well, all right.
And then, so now here's what I thought is the most important part of this.
And I'm not exactly sure what it means, Eric.
This document quote, this document contains information obtained under the authority of the foreign intelligence surveillance act, 50 USC section 1801, such FISA derived information shall not be used in any criminal proceeding, including grand jury proceedings.
So this is not a criminal investigation.
This is a counter counterintelligence counterterrorism investigation, not by the criminal division of the FBI, but by the other side of the FBI, the guys whose job it is to, you know, prevent attacks like September 11th and stuff like that.
Right.
There's nothing in here indicating that they're interested in us from a domestic, in a domestic criminal sense.
They are looking at us for our ties to foreign governments, to foreign operatives, that sort of thing, which of course we don't have any.
I mean, we, we do get some, some small contributions from people outside of the country, but most of our readership, most of the people who support us are Americans and all the, and the entire staff is made up of American citizens, of course.
And now, so here's my thing about that is that this is 2004, this is before the FISA amendments act that Obama helped pass as a Senator legalizing Bush's illegal wiretapping.
So this is when, as far as I understand, and I'm not the lawyer, Scott Orton, that's the other guy, but as far as I understand, they would have to go to the FISA court and say, we have an objective, reasonable belief that this nonprofit in this case is tied to a foreign power.
They would have to show the judge something.
It's a lower threshold than a probable cause.
But I think that's what we really need to sue on is what excuse did they use to the FISA court to get any FISA authority to investigate us?
That's right.
Well, it's premature to decide that we're going to sue because we have to find out exactly what they did and what the results of it were and what they used as justification for investigating us.
And that's going to take a while.
Well, you know, they certainly, whoever wrote this thing is really wants his boss to understand that this antiwar.com site is opposed to American foreign policy.
And they say terrible things like that humanitarianism and democracy is just cover for imperialism.
Right.
And one of the scary things is that's the problem with us that they really have is the point of view.
Exactly.
And one of the scary things is that this more and more, not just with the FBI, but with all sorts of government agencies, the motivation, the political views are being considered a lot, a lot more, you know, where these things were irrelevant in the past.
I mean, I was just listening.
This is kind of unrelated, but it's kind of interesting.
Well, hold it.
Hold it till we get back from the break.
OK, that's fine.
All right, everybody.
It's Eric Gares.
He's the founder and webmaster of antiwar.com and we're talking about the FBI's investigation of us.
All right, Shel, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
On the lines, Eric Gares, my boss, founder and webmaster and director, news director of antiwar.com.
And we're talking about this incredible story that broke over the weekend, a blogger sued under the Freedom of Information Act for FBI records on the Israeli movers.
And got a document from the FBI or a series of documents from the FBI, which includes at the end a whole thing about the FBI's investigation of antiwar.com, specifically Eric and our head writer, Justin Raimondo.
And now, Eric, before we went out to the break there, you were about to tell a story about something.
No, that's all right.
That's too irrelevant at this point.
Let's move on.
All right.
You say so.
So here's the thing.
Part of what's revealed in here, we talked about the lunkheadedness, as Justin calls it, of the FBI here.
They're basically, it's almost, well, it is laughable, their so-called investigation of us here.
We busted a guy one time and he apparently had been to antiwar.com before.
We had an undercover informant at a political rally somewhere.
And he heard someone say, go to antiwar.com to read stuff.
And this is the indictment of us.
Everything else is blacked out.
But this is what shows.
And it really makes me wonder, you know, what the hell they're doing up there if this is really their priority.
And this is how they construct their truths in their minds, you know?
Well, yes.
And, you know, it does worry me in the sense that, you know, we get, our contributions come from our readers.
And our average contribution is $50.
But we do get contributions from time to time for $1,000 or more.
And when they come in, you know, we don't investigate everybody that gives us money.
You know, I'm worried that the FBI is going to have somebody send us some money as a contribution.
And then use that from another country and use that as an excuse to investigate further.
Yeah.
Well, and who knows?
You know, there's all sorts of things.
You know, the FBI is famous for this sort of interference that could, you know, you go back to the COINTELPRO days.
Sure.
Well, and this document, all of these documents, because I guess it's just the one document concerning antiwar.com.
It's from 2004, right?
So we don't really know how long this went on at all.
Could still be going on.
Well, that's right.
And the, and the date of the release of this, the total report is actually September 2010.
And it does not indicate what was done after 2004.
So you would think that if something had concluded that they might mention that.
But I'm assuming that this is still going on and perhaps has escalated.
And you know, what's interesting about this report, the full unredacted report is scheduled to be released unclassified in 2035.
Well, I wonder whether there's anything we can do about that.
Well, you know, I'm hoping that if we make Freedom of Information Act requests specifically under our names and under the organization name, that we'll be able to get at least some of this other information since this, this was released just as a general document on a particular subject.
Right?
Yeah.
Justin has a link in the article here.
Again, it's the FBI versus antiwar.com by Justin Raimondo today at antiwar.com/Justin.
And you know, he's talking about the overpaid analysts sitting around coming up with this stuff about us.
And then he's got a link to the hijackers making it through security on September 11th.
You know, this is the kind of thing that happens on the FBI's watch while they're goofing around using their foreign intelligence surveillance powers against domestic antiwar websites.
I mean, we're not even like out organizing hippies to march in the street or anything like that.
We're news and commentary on the web.
Well, and on the other hand, they're spending their time on this while there was information about warning us about the 9-1-1 attacks that were ignored or untranslated because they felt that they might be translated by homosexuals or something.
You know, what are they doing?
I mean, what, what do we spend all of this money for stuff like this, not actually protecting Americans?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Americans are the enemy from the point of view on the other side of that, not very thin blue line, you know?
Well, that's true for the FBI.
That is their number one enemy is the American people.
Yeah.
And their number one priority.
And I know this just from the books I've read and the few FBI agents I've talked to on the show in the past and that kind of thing.
Their only priority is the FBI itself.
It's like their church or something.
Oh, yes.
And that's another problem is that you have all these little fiefdoms in the government who have their own agendas.
They don't even necessarily talk to each other.
Yeah.
So listen, man, do you have lawyers?
Are you talking with them about what more we could try to find out?
That kind of thing?
We are.
I mean, our lawyers are not necessarily experts at this sort of thing.
So we're reaching out to try and find people who have experience that can help us out with this.
We're reaching out to our lawyers for referrals.
But if anybody has any suggestions, you know, anything to offer, you know, we can use your help.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, this is probably going to cost money.
And here we are in the middle of our fund drives.
So I encourage everyone to give what they can.
It's all tax deductible.
Yeah.
Well, I hope this I think this is such an important story.
I don't know of any, you know, exactly like it.
Of course, there's been the persecution of antiwar groups in the northwest and that kind of thing.
Right.
Well, in the northeast, too, I guess.
Well, and down in Austin, Texas, actually, now that I think about it anyway.
But this particular thing, you know, it's it ought to stand on its own.
And I sure hope that it gets out wider and gets us some publicity, because I'm worried, Eric, that maybe this is going to hurt our fund drive, that people, you know, who might be inclined to give us 20 or 50 bucks are going to be afraid now and think, you know, it's just one more thing on my FBI file now.
It is.
It is.
It's intimidating.
Although I should note that people who want to make contributions to us anonymously can do so and and they can contact us for the methodology to do that.
Oh, really?
Yes.
That's very good.
And I'll try to remember to mention that from now on when I talk about the fund drive.
I didn't realize that that was possible.
Yes, sir.
A number of ways.
Smaller contributions don't have to be identified.
Larger contributions can go through donors trust, which is a big anonymizer.
Oh, I see.
Donors trust.
Very interesting.
OK.
And that's antiwar.com/donate.
It is our fund drive this week and probably the next and the next.
And we do run a very tight ship and we do very good work.
Donors ask the FBI how concerned they are about us.
And, you know, we deserve a little help to get through.
And there's a thousand ways to donate.
I can hardly believe it.
But Angela said it's even worked in the past.
She came on the show.
She talked about how people can donate a car.
The other day, she said that we'll come and get it that day.
If you have an old junker, we'll take it.
And, you know, that's just one of, I don't know, 100 or so ways you can you can donate to antiwar dot com, help support our efforts here.
That's right.
And especially for those of you who ain't afraid, for those of you who think that, you know, oh, yeah, you're going to persecute antiwar dot com, you're going to look into their donors home.
Well, here's here's me.
How do you like that?
And sign your big John Hancock on there where they can see it.
Then we really need you guys this time, because I hate to say, but some people are going to be scared away from this.
Yeah.
You know, so we really could use that help from those of you who have the ability to provide it.
All right, Eric.
Well, is there any more about this story that I forgot to ask you about that we need to highlight here?
Well, not yet, but I'm sure there's going to be a lot more to come in the in the coming days and weeks and months.
OK, cool.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
Appreciate it.
I know you're busy.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
Bye bye.
Everybody.
That's Eric Garris, founder and news director and webmaster of antiwar dot com.
And on the subject of that fun drive, I want to read you this thing I got in the email from Angela Keaton this morning, our development director.
If you go to antiwar.com/donate, you can, you know, find a hundred different ways that you can donate to us.
But she sent me this.
Ever since I got out of the army in July 1970, I've given to the disabled American veterans.
I felt I was lucky to come back from Vietnam without a scratch.
And I wanted to help the guys out who got hurt.
The government should, but it doesn't.
Anyway, I stopped giving this year.
I feel in a way like I'm enabling.
I feel that there if there were no war, there'd be no disabled veterans.
So I'm giving the antiwar dot com instead.
And I tell all the charities that call the same thing.
Most of those solicitors understand and agree with me.
So good luck to you.
And thanks for all your hard work and trying to make this a better country.
You people are the real patriots.
Well, Vietnam War veteran whose name I don't know.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
It's antiwar radio and we'll be back after this.
