All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Next up is Steve Horn.
He's a research fellow for Dismog Blog and freelance investigative journalist based out of Madison, Wisconsin.
He's got a piece at the Anti-War Blog, antiwar.com/blog.
Here's another one for Truthout.
He's covering the story of the NATO 3, now the NATO 6.
The NATO 6, yeah.
All right.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So how laughable is this whole thing?
I don't know.
Where should we start here?
Six people have been arrested on terrorism charges, right?
State terrorism charges or federal ones?
State, right?
State terrorism charges.
Although five of them have been charged with these terrorism charges.
One of them was charged with aggravated battery of a Chicago police officer.
Although they were state terrorism charges, it was obvious from reading the court reports that it was part of a federal plot, or at least a federal investigation of some sort corroborated by the United States Secret Service and the FBI, so although it's at a state level right now, there's no saying where this will wind up down the road, especially since the FBI was involved in the plot for sure.
So in other words, the informants were FBI informants rather than state police informants?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And then, um, so now we've covered entrapment on terrorism charges, uh, on this show for a long, long time.
Of course, usually it's, uh, Muslims entrapped, but they get to a certain point where the cop says, now you sure you don't want to back out or something?
And they cross the line from entrapment into they're really guilty of something.
I guess, you know, um, and has that happened here or is this just straight ridiculousness or what?
Cause I just have trouble going in.
I just have trouble believing that a bunch of hippies protesting a NATO meeting mean to harm anyone at all.
I mean, come on.
Yeah.
I had, I had heard that, uh, but at least the original three that were referred to as the NATO three.
Those three, uh, were pretty suspicious in some ways of a lot of the police.
I mean, they had been approached by police before asked what they were up to.
And, uh, you know, they were actually stopped in their car at one point earlier in the week or a week before or something like that, they, they weren't willing to give over much information.
So I think that the police and, you know, the federal, the FBI have also involved were feeling them out to see what would be necessary to stop them.
They had, I mean, they, it's very clear, like you said, I mean, you refer to them as hippies.
So they were, they were just, uh, young kids generally in between the ages of 20 and 27, uh, you know, one of them still in college who, I mean, you know, they were like, I guess they, some of them may have referred some of them.
I don't even think any of them refer to themselves as anarchists, but all I really meant is that a lot of them have, at least in Chicago, they lived in this collective house where they ate vegan food and, and they were, some of them were part of Occupy Chicago.
And some of the other people came in to visit them for a place to stay because none of these kids have a lot of money, but they had, it's very obvious that this wasn't looking at the evidence with objectively that it was, it seems like such a farce and it reminds me a lot of, uh, in a lot of ways, like some of the evidence they're using in terms of saying that they had swords and shields and brass knuckles and stars, it reminds me a lot of the 2010, uh, Flotilla event that happened, uh, you know, when the, these activists were trying to bring materials to, uh, people in Gaza.
It's the evidence that the IDF was making up.
That was just such a farce.
It reminds me of that a lot.
Yeah.
They were trying to invade Israel and attack with sticks.
I remember.
Right.
In league with Hezbollah and Al Qaeda at the same time.
How do you keep them apart?
I don't know.
Exactly.
So, I mean, that was one of the first things that came to mind a lot.
Like, I mean, now, wait a minute.
Now, somebody said here, the cops assert that, well, but there was a Molotov cocktails were being made.
And at least one report I read, I forget if it was the Chicago Tribune or something, I think had the defense lawyers saying that may be true, but it was the cops who brought them.
It wasn't.
And, and apparently they didn't, you know, convince anybody else to help them do anything with this stuff.
Is that your understanding?
Do I have that?
Right.
Yeah.
I asked the most, uh, sort of, I mean, if you want to say that the best evidence that the, uh, prosecutors have is that, that that evidence was there at some point in time, but I mean, the facts are clear that there were two informants, uh, there are nine people arrested.
There were 11 people originally in the house.
The two of them were informant.
There's a picture of one of them as public now that the national lawyers go to Chicago to make public.
That's in the story.
I just wrote for truth out, uh, that one of the, so, you know, at best, that evidence was planted by, by these informants at the worst.
It wasn't even ever there because what happened was, uh, you know, the next day or that night, the police or whatever agents were there, destroyed all the evidence in the apartment.
There's pictures of it.
They were taken by the national lawyers.
Go to Chicago is ransacked.
So there's no way to even, all it is is in the court records.
It says that they found this stuff, but they don't have any actual hard evidence of these materials that they say that were being used to create volatile cocktails.
What they do have is a picture that I don't remember who gave this picture to home and how it was made public, but there's a picture of a beer making canister of some sort that could be, that was used to make beer that, that I guess was being said that they're used, being used to make Molotov cocktails, but there's no evidence of that.
It may, like I was saying before, these are people who ate organic food and, you know, vegan types.
And that's just kind of what they do.
They make their own beer.
It's not that bizarre of a thing to imagine that they would do that.
So that's the only evidence that's the quote evidence that they say they have beyond the other stuff that was destroyed.
And no, who knows where it is right now?
Well now, so what was the big development that made them go out and arrest three more?
Cause they had already let a bunch of guys go, right?
Was it, they went and re-arrested some people or they went and found three more they wanted to go after?
So it's a little complex, the situation.
So they originally, from the original, so what was referred to as the NATO theory was originally nine that were taken preemptively on a Wednesday evening at 11 45 PM central time.
Of those nine, there are three who actually were, who received terrorism charges on Saturday.
Um, so then thereafter, yesterday on Sunday, there was a news report, probably one of the Chicago local papers reported at first, uh, that there were two more, uh, quote terrorist charges that had even, I mean, even less evidence than what I just discussed before.
One of them, the police say, and it's what if, what I've heard from the national lawyers guild, Chicago attorneys, is that it's the same to informants that have, uh, that were used, that they've corroborated from talking to various sources.
But so one of these guys was, uh, all the only evidence they have is that when I say evidence, I say that with quotes is that this guy was talking to friends in a forest preserve in or around Chicago, and he said, he, at some point he said that he wanted to get materials for, uh, the PVC materials to create for pipes.
And they're saying that those were going to be used to make a pipe bomb.
So that's one of them.
The other guy is also, these two are both Chicago based, uh, activists.
The other guy, uh, a little younger.
So the first one's 28, the other one's 24.
Uh, they say that he wanted to, he was getting explosives to be packed into, get this, a Harry Potter book, uh, that would be used to, I didn't say how he was going to use it, uh, but apparently to make a bomb to use at the NATO summit.
But the crazy thing about these two guys, the first one I just mentioned, they never even searched his home.
They picked him up out of a restaurant.
The second guy that they searched his home and didn't find anything.
So this was, they didn't even have, they didn't even find what they said that even if they said those things, it's legal to say those things under the first amendment.
Well, I just have to hold it right here.
We've got a heartbreak.
Uh, we'll be right back.
Everybody was Steve Horn.
He's right now.
Anti-war.com/blogging at truth out about the NATO three.
It's now the NATO six.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
So, uh, we're on the phone with Steve Horn from, uh, truth out.org.
The smog blog is really where he calls home home.
Here he is also writing at truth out.org at anti-war.com.
It's a three Chicago NATO summit activists charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.
And then, uh, here more NATO summit activists.
And then, uh, here more NATO summit activists charge five linked by two informants at truth out and the truth comes out and it's just as you could have predicted the whole thing was drummed up by a bunch of job holders calling themselves our security force.
And I guess this picture here that you have, Steve is of a cop goose stepping another cop, a pretended hippie, the guy who set up the other hippies.
Is that right?
Yep.
And that I was, I just wonder what the heck was going through that cops, the real cops mind, uh, who was taking him and walking him to the car.
I just wonder, I wonder if she knew, I wonder the depth to which the Chicago police department knew of what the heck was happening versus I'm sure there was really close collaboration.
Yeah.
They must've told them.
Cause yeah, you send in local cops, this situation, they might be scared of a guy like that and shoot him to death.
You know how cops are.
They gotta be warned that, Hey, don't shoot everybody to death.
Some of them work for us.
Exactly.
And the, uh, it looks pretty sketchy.
If you look at the picture of, uh, yeah, informant, uh, you can see he's being walked away in a separate direction.
That's sort of in the background of the pictures, all the other nine who are being jam packed into squad car too.
So yeah, I'm sure she knew, but it's a pretty, I mean, in some ways it shouldn't be, but it's some other, you know, I'm using picture to take a look at.
Well, you know, even if they're idiots or something, usually when the FBI, you know, successfully entrapped somebody into some kind of terrorist plot, you gotta give the feds some credit that at least they ought to convict these people of complete stupidity, you know, as criminal stupidity, you know, like these, uh, kids that supposedly all gave thumbs up to the plan to blow up the bridge and whatever, obviously they were set up, but they let themselves be set up this way.
In this case though, it sounds like some of these people were just wrong place, wrong time, the one guy hitchhiked in or something.
And so he was in the car with somebody else who knew somebody who something like that.
Is that really, he's one of the six charged.
It's pretty crazy.
Um, it sounds like, it sounds like the, there's a pretty big difference.
There are important similarities.
There's pretty big differences between the Cleveland six.
I think the Cleveland five that you referred to who were extremely susceptible towards something like this happening, uh, seemingly extremely clueless about how this stuff works and just so easily do, but it's almost just a tragedy to, to hear how it happened.
But in the case of the Chicago people, it seems like they were so that they were a little smarter, like I said, and that's why the evidence just had to be planted in the home as opposed to bringing those people to a bridge.
Uh, it didn't work quite as well with them, but going back to wrong place, wrong time, like you said, one of the guys who was arrested of the nine, might've been two, one or two of them.
What was like, like you said, he hitchhiked in from the East coast, I think, New York, or no, I'm not sure, but he, he was actually arrested at a CVS.
So he wasn't even in the house.
He was going to a CVS to buy some beer, I guess, for, you know, for his friends, but for the people that were letting him, they're housing him while he was there.
And I spoke with him and I mean, they, it sounds like they, I mean, he, he didn't even know any, he didn't really know anything that was happening there.
He didn't even know how he was being, how and why he was being arrested at a CVS.
So it's pretty crazy.
I mean, and he was held for, from a Wednesday at 1145 or on midnight, all the way through a Friday, and then he was released without ever being told Friday evening, late, what his charges were.
So almost two full days, almost 48 full hours without even being told why he was being detained at this police station.
And I guess at the police station, they were all nine of them were held in solitary confinement with their legs shackled and one of their arms chained or cuffed to a bench, so they got two meals in the 48 hours.
So it was pretty, pretty heinous.
I mean, you could even go so far to say that it was under, if, if, if there was a country that followed the rule of law, it would be torture, solitary confinement, but you know, the police don't follow the law.
Yeah.
Well, certainly they don't in Chicago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's the, that's the long and short of it.
Yeah.
Well, um, yeah, no, I mean, Hey, that's a big deal.
It's, uh, back to, we had this discussion with Greenwald earlier, Glenn Greenwald about how, just how used to all this we are now, um, where like, Hey, come on.
That sounds like pretty mild torture to say compared to what they're doing to the Somalis and the dungeon beneath Mogadishu right now.
You know what I mean?
Right.
But actually, no, that's actually a really big deal.
Take somebody, arrest them, hold them without charge.
Don't they're not even calling them a material witness or anything.
They're just basically locking them in solitary for a few days for trumped up charges at worst.
And maybe they're people that end up being turned loose and released anyway.
Right.
Exactly.
And then, you know, beyond that, there's been just tons of cases of the police in Chicago, um, over just abusing their power in terms of, I know there's one really good example of these three.
So while I'll kind of send it, the sixth guy who we haven't talked about that much, he was a guy who did a lot of live casts of action that occupy Pittsburgh.
He came into Chicago and he, I think he, he, I know he had his own live cast going here because I looked on his Twitter account.
Uh, he, you know, he was, I think that his charges were completely bogus.
There's no evidence of it.
That's MLG.
So there's no evidence of it.
The police, the police officer didn't have to show any signs of being abused, you know, in terms of actual bruises or anything.
So there's no evidence, but beyond him, there were three other live cast types of guys who, whose home was, you know, the police came to their home and said, what are you doing here?
What are your intentions here?
And interrogated so far.
And this was just insane interrogated at gunpoint, then let them go.
But that, I mean, it's out of control.
And I mean, if that's, if it's become normalized, then it's a scary sign.
But I essentially agree with you because this is not even the story that's being told and any, anything other than the independent media that what the, what you're hearing in the mainstream media is that, well, exactly what the police are saying is just, they have a complete deference to power.
So it's that these people were terrorists who had a plot to bomb Romney Manuel's house, the mayor of Chicago, the Barack Obama headquarters, the NATO summit, it's just completely different made up story compared to what's really going on in Chicago.
When I think another one of the stories here, and this goes for the Ohio thing too, is just how scared they are.
And I saw actually had a piece here where they're bringing in the Pinkerton cops to watch the Occupy Wall Street people in New York, which is hilarious in a certain ironical kind of way.
But boy, are they taking the Occupy movement seriously?
And I'm sorry, cause I just don't, I just I'd like to, and I do see it as, you know, mostly liberals and, and principled leftists and progressives who refuse to love the damn democratic party because why should they?
And they shouldn't.
And that's great.
I mean, that just goes to show that they've got some principle and whatever, but as far as what are they ever going to actually do about it?
Nothing.
And I'm not criticizing cause I don't know what to do either.
I can't do anything, but I'm just saying if I was, you know, inside the state, I sure as hell wouldn't be afraid of them.
They're just hippies with signs, you know, standing out there doing their chanting and their little chants.
So who cares?
And yet their conscience is so guilty.
They are so just, they're terrified because they can imagine what the American people ought to be doing to them.
You know what I mean?
Pitchforks and torches and run them out of town on the rail, maybe some hot tar and feathers for them.
Uh, an arson fire here or there.
That's what they think is coming.
And so they act like it.
That's what, that's why there's 10,000 cops in a line out there in Chicago during this summit, this NATO summit.
Exactly.
That's why, I mean, you took the words I was going to use essentially is that although the Occupy movement itself is, you know, if you look at the actual numbers, it's pretty small in each city, even in the biggest ones, like Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Chicago.
But the fact is that they are voicing some things that actually the mainstream agrees with, it's just that the bulk of Americans aren't actually doing anything about it yet.
And it's these people in power who are actually scared of what could be to come.
So yeah, you're right.
Exactly.
I mean, all I'm saying is so far, TV ignoring them is working just fine.
You know what I mean?
It's not like, uh, well, for example, the election in 2012 isn't totally different because the Occupy movement exists or something like that.
Just, I don't know.
But, uh, I think the point is they know they're scum, the people who run the empire, including, you know, Rahm Emanuel and his little empire up there in Chicago and the rest of them.
Oh, they know the best.
Exactly.
They, they know that's, I mean, exactly.
They, they're the ones who are signing contracts with the Pinkertons of the world and these private security firms.
And that's so amazing.
You know what?
We're already going over time for just a second.
Let me keep you just a second.
Tell us about the Pinkertons and your new piece that's at, hang on.
I have it right here.
A nation of change.org.
The Pinkertons head to occupy wall street.
No joke, huh?
No joke.
The Pinkertons were, although they're not referred to as the Pinkertons today, they actually do have a subsidiary called Pinkerton government services, Inc.with their, the larger umbrella corporation that owns Pinkerton today is called Securitas AB, which is actually based out of Sweden, although it's an international security firm.
What happened with them is Bloomberg news reported at the end of April in the run-up to the May day action, the May 1st action plan by occupy wall street and the NATO summit, which I've been covering in Chicago, uh, Securitas AB slash what formerly was known as Pinkerton was employed to track, uh, these activists and watch them like quote wolves.
And they were the elk kind of, that was the language that this guy, I think that Pinkerton government services, they were the elk standing off the wall.
This, I mean, it's really hard to say what they've actually done here because it's an unaccountable private security firm that no one has any clue what they're up to.
But I did, I will say I did see one Securitas agent when I got lunch in Chicago, I saw him standing on a corner.
So they're here.
They're definitely here, but you don't know exactly where they are and what they're doing, but they've definitely been watching and their slogan back, you know, dating back to the 1850s is they are the quote private eye.
So they, I mean, that's just, that's what they do.
They're there, uh, survey, they do surveillance, they do, uh, frontline security.
They, they kind of do it all.
And it seems like they're one of their major clients is the, the big banks.
So that's why the story on Bloomberg popped up because it was the big banks contracting them for these two activist enclaves, Chicago and New York in May.
Well, you know, if there's a silver lining in there, maybe it's that the banks don't trust the cops to be able to protect them and that's good.
Yeah.
I mean, that is, I agree with you there.
And that, that who knows, I mean, that could be why both internationally and nationally that everything's become much more privatized in terms of security because they, they know they have to pay them more to protect, to cover their asses.
And then push comes to shove, you know, maybe police will say, Oh, I identify more with these people that have these grievances kind of, I mean, not to push this too far because the United States is nowhere close to there, but to, to what happened in Egypt where, you know, these security forces, domestic ones put down the, or the military put down the gun and that's when Mubarak was ousted.
So, I mean, for sure, that's the security.
That's the, it shows what you just said, that they are increasingly desperate.
So they realize they have to pay more.
More sad thing is, I think that kind of thing is more likely to happen in Egypt than here.
Now, again, back to their guilty conscience though, what they think might happen to them, what could happen to them?
Right.
Right.
So that's, yeah, it was an interesting case and it's, I mean, that was just a stroke of, in some ways, maybe a stroke of luck by Bloomberg to get that story, but I'm sure that it's a lot more widespread than just this, the Pinkerton government services.
I'm sure there's lots of companies.
I even saw a couple of company people with shirts on, had different names, some of them in Chicago.
So that's a, I mean, that's a trend to watch for as the domestic privatization of these security services.
All right.
Well, we're already over time.
I better let you go, but I really appreciate your time on the show.
It's been good, Steve.
Yeah, sure.
Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Everybody, that's Steve Horn.
He writes for Nation of Change, DeSmog blog, truthout.org.
And he's got one at the blog at antiwar.com too, about the Chicago three, now the Chicago six, this ridiculous government generated terrorism plot of anti-NATO protesters.
