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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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Okay, now, where is my Truthout link?
Here's my Truthout link.
Hacked intel email.
NYPD involved in, quote, damn right, felonious activity.
So, Jason Leopold at Truthout.org.
Welcome back, Jason.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Great to be back with you.
And before we start, I just want to make a note, if I can, of saying that you are one of the most important voices on the airwaves, the Internet.
And I really do hope that people get that and, you know, continue to fund your show's existence because it's very important.
It's much needed.
Well, cool.
Thanks very much for saying so.
Sure.
All right.
This thing, I don't know, it starts out really, I think, it's a story of cops don't like each other.
And so they talk bad about each other in a way that years later you get to end up overhearing it in print form.
Is that basically what happened here?
Well, basically, that kind of.
I mean, this came as a result of these hacked e-mails, these e-mails that the group Anonymous hacked from Stratfor, the private intelligence firm.
And there's five million e-mails.
And, you know, Truthout was given, you know, we have access to it, you know, to these e-mails.
And I literally spent like two months going through some of these e-mails to try to find some try to find anything that was.
And there's a lot of things that are newsworthy, but I wanted to keep it more, you know, within intelligence, domestic law enforcement.
And, you know, I came across this particular e-mail, which was to me just stunning.
It was supposedly written by a senior FBI official.
And the context of the e-mail was Fred Burton, vice president for intelligence over at Stratfor.
He used to work in a senior position at the State Department on counterterrorism measures.
He had reached out to someone at the FBI to find out why the FBI decided to pass on an investigation involving a lone wolf alleged terrorist in New York that was arrested last year.
And, you know, the NYPD had a press conference along with Mayor Bloomberg, you know, talking about how they arrested this person trying to build three pipe bombs and, you know, to detonate New York.
And this FBI senior official writes to Fred and said this is the reason we decided to, you know, lay off on this.
In the body of that e-mail, he then goes on to say one day, you know, we're going to hold up a beer together and laugh about, you know, all the crimes that the NYPD intelligence division has been involved in.
And when that comes out, what they've been involved in over the past 10 years, it's going to make COINTELPRO and Hoover and Red Squads look like, you know, they're going to look like rank amateurs compared to the damn right felonious activity that NYPD has been involved in.
Wow.
So, just to make sure I understand, there was this one case, as far as I know, that really stuck out where the NYPD were the ones who entrapped the guy and rather than go along with it, the FBI said, whoa, this one's too dirty to even get in on, so you guys go ahead.
And they were pretty actually open about leaking to the press that, yeah, we don't really believe in this one either.
Exactly.
I mean...
So that was the context, was this one case where the NYPD had just gone way too far off the deep end in entrapping some idiot who obviously was not really a terrorist, but for their efforts.
Exactly.
And that's more or less what he was alluding to.
You know, the fact is that the FBI official says, look, you know, the informant that the NYPD relied upon, he got high with the suspect.
You know, everything that the suspect was doing that rose to the level of criminal behavior was as a result of this informant more or less entrapping him at the direction of NYPD.
So the FBI was basically saying, you know, we don't want to have anything to do with that.
And, you know, as I point out here, for the FBI to say that the NYPD has been involved in these serious abuses is quite stunning because the FBI itself has been involved in serious abuses as well, as you know, Scott.
Dozens and dozens, literally dozens and dozens of entrapment cases since 9-11.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So here you have the FBI saying they're worse.
It's just incredible.
And obviously...
Is it in the context of the emails why exactly the FBI chose not to get in on this one?
When you're right, this one isn't really any more ridiculous than the case of the Miami 7, you know?
Come on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a link to the actual email which I posted up there.
And the context does basically say, or, you know, he points up this so-called senior FBI official does point out, you know, what the two problems are, you know, or what he saw, you know, the problems with this case.
And one, it was the informant, he says, was a nightmare.
You know, the informant was driving the whole case.
And this informant clearly seems to be a person who just could not be trusted.
And he was more or less making the case for, you know, NYPD.
And, you know, the announcement that happened or the press conference that took place, it was late on a Sunday night last year when this was announced.
This was announced right after NYPD had been criticized and the subject of numerous negative news accounts, not only related to revelations about surveillance in Muslim communities, but also because of their brutal crackdown on Occupy Wall Street.
So, you know, what do they do to address that?
Look what we did.
We stopped a potential terrorist attack, which just really didn't look like it was going to amount to anything.
I mean, it's, in a way, it's almost you could compare it to Jose Padilla, which we've spoken about before.
You know, he was getting ready to set off a dirty bomb.
Well, actually, no, he wasn't.
Yeah.
Well, and worse than that, actually, that lie was made up by a guy who was having his genitals sliced by a CIA agent with a razor blade saying, tell me something interesting or I'm going to keep cutting you.
Yeah.
That was where the story of Jose Padilla came from.
Poor Binyam Mohamed.
Jeez, what that guy went through.
Now, so here's the thing, too.
And you point this out in your article that it's the FBI's job to prosecute the NYPD when they violate people's civil rights under the color of law, because in the 20th century, we let the courts turn the Bill of Rights inside out into a mandate to the national government instead of a list of restrictions against them.
So now, instead of people in New York insisting from the bottom up that their rights are protected, the only person they have to go to anymore is Eric Holder, the guy that wronged him in the first place, or at least the guy who his men are in the same Joint Terrorism Task Force with these guys.
And so at the very least, they're going to look the other way if they're not going to get right in on the prosecution themselves.
Oh, there's no doubt.
Look, I mean, you know, Eric Holder, his Justice Department, this administration has demonstrated, let's say over the past couple of weeks alone, the little disregard that they have for civil liberties and particularly in prosecuting or even investigating serious civil liberties violations.
On voting rights issues, you know, they're tackling that.
But we're talking about this, you know, real alleged criminal behavior.
I mean, the problem is, I don't know exactly, you know, from this email, what this FBI official is talking about.
I don't know what other crimes the NYPD has been involved in.
I can certainly guess and sort of imagine it, but he doesn't go into any detail.
But the fact that he would actually say, you know, it's worse than, you know, COINTELPRO and Red Squads, and also the fact that the FBI itself has been involved in these widespread abuses is stunning.
But why didn't they investigate?
You know, of course, I mean, they're literally running their own shop over, you know, in New York City.
And it's, you know, the federal government just seems to have nothing to do, not only nothing to do with it, but just, you know, they're turning a blind eye to it.
And, you know, this Justice Department that Eric Holder heads, they have no credibility.
They just, you know, ended the investigation with no criminal charges of, you know, CIA officers and others, you know, who were involved with torture, or actually the deaths of two detainees.
You know, they let off Wall Street banks.
They've pretty much, you know, dropped the civil rights case against Joe Arrupeo in Arizona.
You know, clearing out the closet, so to speak, right before the election.
Right.
And then they're the end of the chain.
What are you going to do, go to the UN?
That's it.
You asked your boss's boss to protect you from him.
It doesn't work out.
Now what?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's, now what is actually a great question, by the way.
It's one that I know many people have been asking, because there's no answer.
But, you know, so when I started looking through these emails, and I came across this, and again, you know, this email, again, to put it in context, it was written last November, November of 2011.
Right after this arrest took place in New York City, and after the press conference, and after news accounts started to appear, you know, in which there were questions about why the FBI decided to, you know, pass on getting involved in this investigation.
And then the, you know, this, this senior FBI official, he goes into further detail about, you know, NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, and NYPD Intelligence Counterterrorism Division, the, you know, what the difference between the two, the bad blood that may exist between the two divisions, how some in the Joint Terrorism Task Force may actually be leaking.
Information about intelligence activities to reporters, including reporters at the Associated Press.
That's what another email says, which I'll be working on a follow up on, just to sort of, you know, undercut intelligence and counterterrorism.
So it's, it's amazing.
I think what's, what's really, you know, funny is that in this email, he says, you know, all of this will eventually come out.
It always does, you know, then he goes on to quote Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, saying, don't doubt me on this.
It'll all come out eventually.
And, you know, who knows exactly what kind of hyperbole that is, but why not take it seriously?
If he's saying here that what's been going on makes Jagger over look like a rank amateur.
Are you kidding?
Yeah, I mean, that guy was the guy who, well, as everybody knows, right, the COINTELPRO papers, he, he infiltrated, had his guys infiltrate every group, split every group, you know, blackmailed people.
Yeah.
And, you know, I just want to point out that, you know, when I came across this email, I mean, it was sort of a challenge.
First of all, do I report it?
Should I report this?
What's the story?
I mean, part of the problem was, or is, is that I did not have any further information.
I certainly couldn't get anything from Stratfor because they made it a point of saying, we're not commenting on our, you know, stolen property.
You know, so we reached out to Mike German, who's with the ACLU now, and, you know, is a former, you know, excuse me, former FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups.
And, you know, he weighed in on this to sort of give a little bit of an analysis with regard to, you know, what these emails said.
But it was a challenge in making a decision as to, you know, should I report this or should I just sort of, you know, toss it aside.
But with what we know, what we've, what we've seen transpire, you know, over the course of the past, certainly over the past year with NYPD as a result of those Associated Press investigative stories and the Occupy Wall Street, I felt that it was, you know, perhaps the timing was right to actually put it out there.
I mean, of course, I would have loved to have had more information.
Yeah.
Well, no, I mean, even without German's comment there, just more information about the FBI's refusal to go along with the NYPD's entrapment in this one case is huge, right?
Yeah.
It's huge if you're the entrapped or care about him, you know?
You know, that's actually a good point.
I would imagine that, you know, perhaps the person's attorneys would, you know, take note of it.
And, you know, maybe they would address that, you know, in court.
But, you know, we're seeing, to me, this is just more evidence of, you know, how we really are becoming that police state.
You know, when, if you would mention that, people would, certain members of the public would just sort of dismiss it as being paranoid.
But, you know, it seems every day now, Scott, as you know, where, you know, we're seeing stories about additional types of surveillance, you know, civil liberties that are rights that are just being trampled upon.
In fact, it's truly disturbing that the Democrats, in their platform, you know, pay little attention to civil liberties, and more or less just, again, you know, spew some rhetoric, which, to me, just underscores the point where, you know, Republicans, Democrats, they pretty much all look the same.
I mean, it's, who are you, what are you voting for at this point?
Well, they don't even feel the heat that they have to pretend to care, even.
You know?
Well, that's the thing.
In fact, I think the Democrats got to pretend that they're just as fascist as the Republicans, because they're afraid of looking weak, even though, of course, that makes them look weak, too.
But, anyway.
Right.
Well, but they have the evidence, because they're the ones who have passed, you know, all of these laws, you know, that the President ended up signing.
You know, I made a point during a conversation with someone the other day by saying that, look, you know, the National Defense Authorization Act is really, that was the first true piece of bipartisan legislation that, you know, that this Congress passed.
So, you know, civil, the erosion of civil liberties is just, you know, it's continuing.
Well, I'm sure you saw this thing here about some hackers.
Somebody found, I don't know, an FBI agent lost a laptop or something, and they got into it, and they found more than a million Apple IDs in there.
It was actually 12 million.
12 million.
12 million.
On just a random FBI agent's lost laptop.
Yeah.
I'm not even sure if it was lost or if it was just, you know, they gained access.
They hacked into it.
But, again, what are they doing with that info?
And it's really obviously very concerning in which, you know, they've got to provide some sort of explanation, which their explanation at this point is that, you know, it's not true, and, you know, nothing was compromised.
But, you know, all the information, you know, the group Anonymous, I believe, was responsible for that.
You know, they started posting some of it.
12 million, you know, IDs.
And that's, wow, that's incredibly troubling.
But we're seeing that.
That's becoming, you know, that's normal now.
You know, I think that what's so fascinating to me is having watched over the past three and a half years all of this unfold in real time and watched the public, how little, you know, the mainstream public, if you will, how little they care about it.
They, in real time, watching, you know, how they were shaking their fists during the Bush administration to when Obama becomes president and the same abuses, if not worse ones, taking place.
And, you know, the same members of the public just sort of shrugging their shoulders saying, you know, they're okay with it.
You know, it's not that bad.
So, yeah.
Look, if it is that bad, then we got to, like, change our life in order to work toward doing something about it.
And especially if you already have a slight idea of how rigged the game is, you might conclude, why bother and just tune out?
Because, man, if even Obama is as much of a fascist or worse than Bush, then what are we supposed to do?
You know, what choice do we have?
Nothing.
So why even bother?
So the worse it gets, the more people just kind of opt out and hope to keep their head down, you know, and hope it happens to somebody else, not them, for now.
It's true.
I mean, look, you know, people are saying, well, what choice do I have?
Vote for Romney?
It's, you know, which is such a bizarre statement for people to make.
It's like, no, you should pay attention to, you know, some of these issues and stop making it about, you know, it's not necessarily partisan in that regard.
These are important issues that need to be addressed, and people just look at it, you know, through a partisan lens, which makes it so difficult, you know, to get the point across.
It doesn't matter who is in office.
These are, you know, these are still issues that I believe, you know, they're worse now than they were under Bush, and it happens to be a fact.
They'll probably, you know, maybe be worse or the same if there was a President Romney, but they'll continue to further erode under Obama.
It's just the direction that we're headed.
Right.
You know, but people are just, you know, caught up with having their guy, you know, win an election, as opposed to really, you know, taking a good hard look at some of these abuses that have taken place, which affect their lives.
And, you know, even with the September 11th attack, if they tried to do all this stuff at once, at the time of the Patriot Act, and just include all of this stuff in that one bill, something like that, I think that would have crossed the line.
Yeah.
But a decade of this, and maybe not, I don't know, but a decade of this, where people have just, you know, they spent, you know, hours arguing for torture with their family members and saying, George Bush can torture people if he knows it's best to do it, and you shut up.
And how are they going to ever care about freedom again after they've been so polluted by buying into this stuff and even arguing for it?
Inoculating themselves against any argument for the rights of a human to not be tortured to death.
I mean, that's the fate worse than death.
You know, that's the ultimate, you know, the definition of the wrong thing to do to somebody.
You know what I mean?
And after everybody, after half the societies argued for that, and then the other half tries to ignore it when it's their guy, you know, at least if they're not arguing for it like it is right now, then, you know, who in the population even cares about freedom anymore?
You know what I mean?
After living through this and rationalizing it all, we become the kind of people who might as well be a bunch of Europeans at this point, never even did want to be free in the first place.
Yeah.
I think you're absolutely right.
You know, you mentioned George Bush and, you know, torture.
I mean, the same can be said in a different conversation with, you know, Barack Obama and drone strikes and people saying, well, you know, he can do whatever he wants.
He knows where the terrorists are.
No, he actually doesn't.
And there's, you know, been plenty, many of, you know, civilian casualties.
I shouldn't say no, he doesn't.
Obviously, they, you know, they have been successful, but at what cost?
So it's the same with torture.
You know, they may have gained intelligence, but at what cost?
So now we have impunity as, you know, being the law of the land.
And now we have, you know, what President says, you know, it's okay to, you know, execute, assassinate American citizens without any due process.
You know, whether you think that, you know, they deserve it or not, that decision has been made.
There's actually a great new clip of a local reporter, Ben Swan, from Reality Check, from somewhere in the northeast, I think, confronting Obama about it.
And Obama just says, well, I've never confirmed that any of that's true.
Right.
It's a secret, so screw you.
Amazing.
Amazing.
You know, but to just circle back around to this, you know, to this email, I think that it's, you know, it's very interesting.
It certainly confirms a lot of what, you know, has already been reported.
It will be, if we ever get the opportunity to see what those undisclosed abuses, worst crimes actually are, wow, what will happen at that point.
You know.
Right, especially after we've already seen, as you mentioned, that AP investigative series on the NYPD abuses and all their work with the CIA and everything else.
Right.
All right, well, we're over time.
We've got to go, or we're almost over time.
It's the great Jason Leopold from Truthout.org.
The piece is hacked intel email.
NYPD involved in damn right felonious activity.
That's the FBI describing the NYPD to their buddies at Stratfor.
And Leopold's got the document for you there at Truthout.org.
Thanks very much, Jason.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
