Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts

Friday, September 9, 2011

o'keystone kop - "More On Government Gunrunners" by Chuck Baldwin, Th.8Sep11

From: "Chuck Baldwin" at http://ChuckBaldwinLive.com  Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2011 Subject: More On Government Gunrunners by Chuck Baldwin, September 8, 2011
article source:  http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?p=3925
"More On Government Gunrunners"
By Chuck Baldwin, September 8, 2011
     My column last week focused on the federal government's covert program to directly supply firearms to Mexican drug cartels.  The program was discovered by a congressional investigation after a Mexican gang using a firearm -- or firearms -- supplied to it by the ATF, murdered a US Border Patrol agent.
     See my column at: http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?p=3881
     A subsequent article written by Justin Raimondo sheds even more light on this disgusting debacle.  Raimondo writes, "While the US military is being sent overseas in search of monsters to destroy, ignoring the good advice of the Founders, closer to home another war is brewing -- right on the US-Mexican border."   Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry, killed on Dec. 21 near Rio Rico, Arizona, was murdered by drug cartel gunmen -- using weapons smuggled across the US-Mexican border under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).
     "While the cartels shoot up half of Mexico, and terrorize the other half, it seems they've been getting a helping hand from those 'geniuses' in Washington, whose 'law enforcement' agencies knowingly allowed sophisticated firearms to be smuggled across the border, into Mexico."   As BATF special agent John Dodson told the House Oversight Committee:
     "This is not a matter of some weapons that had gotten away from us or allowing a few to walk so that we could follow them to a much larger significant target.  Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals was the plan.  This was the mandate."
     "ATF is supposed to be the guardians -- the sheep dogs that protect against the wolves that prey upon us -- especially along our southern border.  But rather than meet the wolf head on, we sharpened his teeth, added number to his claws, all the while we sat idly by watching, tracking, and noting as he became a more efficient and effective predator."     "This goes way beyond mere 'blowback' -- the CIA's terminology for actions that produce unintended and unpleasant consequences.  Because it's hard to fathom exactly what was intended -- unless it was the desire to sow chaos in Mexico and create a new threat to US citizens in the border states."
     Raimondo goes on to write, "Governments don't allow such large weapons shipments to pass over their borders to foreign customers without having some foreign policy objective in mind -- and, when it comes to the empire-builders in Washington, what other purpose could it be than the expansion of the imperial frontiers?"
     "Brushing aside the official explanation and excuses, when you look at what Operation Fast and Furious actually accomplished -- the arming ad consolidation of a [para]military force currently fighting Mexico's armed forces -- the conclusion that we are actively involved in destabilizing the Mexican government is hard to avoid.  It is a simple statement of fact."     Raimondo continues, "The embattled Mexican government has barely been able to keep order, as the cartels rampage through the country, slaughtering thousands and dominating entire provinces: dead bodies keep turning up in droves, and it seems like a day hardly passes without some spectacular display of violence in a major Mexican city.  Whole police forces are deserting, not out of disloyalty but out of fear -- fear that the government is losing its grip and the drug cartels are about to take over."
     "In this context, to put thousands of weapons in the hands of highly-organized criminals is inconceivable - unless the plan is to bring the Mexican government down and create chaos."
     Then, Raimondo draws a particularly astute observation by saying, "For years, our elites have been trying to forge links among the three nations that make up North America: 'free trade' zones that aren't free, coordination of military and law enforcement agencies, etc.   Some are even proposing a somewhat loopy-sounding 'North American Union,' supposedly with its own currency -- the 'Amero' -- although officials (and the mainstream media) deny it, claiming it's a rumor started by the hated 'conspiracists.''   In the face of this criminal conspiracy carried out with the collaboration of several US government agencies, however, one has to wonder about the real purpose of Operation Fast and Furious."
     "With Mexico at the mercy of US-armed drug gangs, and the central government in Mexico City about to lose control, the introduction of US troops to 'keep order'  is entirely within the realm of possibility.   In that case, the North American Union will become a reality, in fact if not in the formal sense -- and the latter can be arranged quickly enough."
     "Call me a 'conspiracist,' if it makes you feel better, but when it comes to the crack-brained schemes of our wise rulers, it seems to me there's no limit to their ability to sow tragedy and terror wherever they tread.  They did it in Iraq, they're doing it in Afghanistan, and they've been doing it for decades throughout the world -- why should Mexico be immune?"
     See Raimondo's column at: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08/30/fast-and-furious/
     I ask readers, can the US government's foreign policy get any worse?   The answer is probably YES!   It's been getting worse for a long time, and absent a President in Washington, D.C., with the mental acumen and the internal fortitude to put a stop to it, it WILL get a lot worse!
     Globalist elitists have been extremely influential in America's foreign policy since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, and they have thoroughly dominated America's foreign policy since the administration of George Bush I.   Surprisingly, the last President to attempt to defy the globalists might have been John F. Kennedy.   And look what happened to him.
     I had a retired US Air Force Brigadier General -- who had experience in both the Pentagon and the White House -- tell me that Kennedy was murdered for three reasons:  1) He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve,  2)  He wanted to dismantle the CIA,  3)  He wanted to bring US forces home from Vietnam.   All three of those plans, if enacted, would have struck at the very heart of the globalists' evil machinations for America.   A phony, fiat money system, constant foreign entanglements and intervention, and perpetual foreign wars is the holy trifecta of the globalist agenda.
     When will voters, especially conservative and Christian voters, wake up to the reality that electing a "conservative" or "Christian" President is absolutely meaningless unless this President understands the globalist make-up of America's current foreign policy and would be willing to risk his life to undo it!    This is why Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who would make any difference in Washington, D.C. Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, Palin, Perry, Romney, and Santorum are either clueless in this regard, or in the case of Gingrich and Perry, are active fellow-travelers in the march toward a globalist New World Order.   Ron Paul is the only candidate who not only "gets it" but also is adamantly opposed to it.
     So, while Americans are focused on Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (and, yes, these wars fit in with the globalists' agenda as well), the US government is busy stirring up war and revolution a whole lot closer to home.   And if you think it doesn't matter whether a constitutionalist President (Christian or not) is elected, you might want to speak to the family of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
Chuck Baldwin

NOTE TO THE READER:  Chuck Baldwin is a syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, author, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded.  He was the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party. He and his wife, Connie, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren.  See Chuck's complete bio at: http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=6  To subscribe, click on this link and follow the instructions: http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=450  Chuck Baldwin's commentaries are copyrighted and may be republished, reposted, or emailed providing the person or organization doing so does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and that the column is copied intact and that full credit is given and that Chuck's web site address is included.  Editors or Publishers of publications charging for subscriptions or advertising who want to run these columns must contact Chuck Baldwin for permission.  Radio or television Talk Show Hosts interested in scheduling an interview with Chuck should contact sec@chuckbaldwinlive.com   Readers may also respond to this column via snail mail.  The postal address is P.O. Box 10, Kila, MT 59920.  When responding, please include your name, city and state.  And, unless otherwise requested, all respondents will be added to the Chuck Wagon address list.  Please visit Chuck's web site at http://chuckbaldwinlive.com  *If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order.  Use this link:  http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=19

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The arrest of Shawn Christy. Was the FBI justified?

As many of you know Shawn and his father, Craig Christy, were arrested on August 18th.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:

But Shawn and Craig, 47, are accused of being interested in technology as well. On Aug. 18, the day after a federal grand jury in Alaska indicted the pair, agents at the FBI office in Allentown, Pa., arrested the father and son and charged them with making hundreds of harassing, expletive-filled, and threatening phone calls to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's attorney John Tiemessen and employees of his law firm in early August.The calls were placed after Tiemessen and Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee and potential 2012 presidential candidate, obtained restraining orders against the two men in the last year because of what they said was harassment, including text messages and phone calls to Palin family members and friends. 

Shawn Christy reportedly admitted in court to having threatened to rape Palin, and sending her numerous emails and gifts. Following their arrest, Craig and Shawn appeared in U.S. district court in Allentown. "There's a level of obsession here that elevates the conduct from merely creepy to truly threatening," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gallagher reportedly said in arguing for the men to be held until they're transported to Anchorage for further court hearings. They face up to two years in jail, U.S. Attorney Retta-Rae Randall tells The Daily Beast.

I had written about Christy two times in April. Once essentially calling Sarah out for publicly playing the victim over these phone calls rather than handling it quietly (Like President Obama would) and then again later in the month after Christy lost his job, possibly over this same publicity.

I spoke to Shawn on the phone and though I did detect some difficulty separating reality from fantasy, I did not believe that Shawn posed a viable threat to the Palin family at that time. (An assessment also shared by the FBI, Secret Service, and Alaska law enforcement.) I did however tell Shawn that he should NEVER come to Alaska again, and that he needed to stop making any calls, or sending any e-mails, to the Palin family or friends. He agreed that was a good idea.

However clearly he did not take that "good idea" to heart.

In an affidavit dated Aug. 12, FBI Special Agent Jacqueline DeCou details the quite disturbing calls that the father-and-son duo allegedly made to the offices of Tiemessen and his family members. In an Aug. 1 call that Shawn allegedly left Tiemessen, he says: "... are you just a little fucking Semite kike that likes to get a dick up your ass and likes to fuck people over? Well, surprise, for the first time in your life, John, somebody small, some little dick fuck from McAdoo is going to ram it up your fucking ass and take everything away that you ever fucking—everything you fucking love ..." 

On Aug. 4, Craig allegedly left Tiemessen a death threat, according to the affidavit, in which he said: "I tell you, motherfucker, you're playing with the wrong fucking boy. I tell you what, you want to play fucking games like that, I'll fucking kill you. There's a fucking threat now, fucking bring it on, motherfucker. You got that? You wanna fuck with my boy like that, I will come and fucking kill you ..."

I am sorry, but there is just NO excuse for making these kind of threatening phone calls, or sending e-mails with a similar content.

I also spoke to Shawn's mom, Karen Christy, about the situation (Before I knew anything about the above exchanges.)  I chose to talk to Karen instead of her husband because I believed she was the most rational person in the family.

I talked to her about getting Shawn counseling, but she said he had passed a psychiatric evaluation with no problem, and that Shawn only had problems stemming from his exposure to Lyme disease.  She spoke about his gentleness and intelligence, and seemed to believe that the REAL problem stemmed from Sarah Palin and her family. Sadly there seemed to me to be a certain disconnect for Karen when it came to her son and husband's behaviors.

Anyway after that phone call I severed my communication with the Christy family.

Listen I know that it is very natural for those of us who have watched Sarah and her crazy antics all of these years to almost automatically take the side of anybody with whom she has a conflict.  But if what is described in the above affidavits is accurate, and I am sorry but it is hard to believe at this point that it is not, then as rational people we have to recognize that in this circumstance Sarah Palin might actually have really been the victim.

In other words, to answer the question posed in my headline, yes, it appears that the FBI was probably justified in their arrest of Shawn and Craig Christy.   I may wish that such were not the case, but all of the evidence seems to suggest that they had little choice.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Travesty of justice.

Courtesy of ADN:

Ben Stevens has been told he's off the hook in the rapidly fading Alaska political corruption investigation, according to people with knowledge of the case. 

Family friends of Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president and son of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, say he's recently received a letter from federal prosecutors that he won't face charges. A government source who spoke only on background confirmed that the letter was sent and that the long-running investigation has concluded without an indictment. 

At the door of their family home in South Anchorage on Wednesday, Stevens' wife, Elizabeth, reviewed a draft of this story and said Stevens would have no comment. 

Stevens, 52, was one of six state legislators whose offices were raided by the FBI on Aug. 31, 2006. Four were eventually charged and convicted. 

In 2007, Stevens was identified as the recipient of bribes in the charges to which two officials of Veco Corp., Bill Allen and Rick Smith, pleaded guilty. 

While Stevens served in the Legislature, he disclosed that Veco, an oil field services company long active in Alaska politics, paid him $243,250 between 2002 and 2006 for "consulting." But he never would say what work he did for the money, even after a citizen complained to the Alaska Public Offices Commission that the fees were thinly disguised bribes. 

On the witness stand in the 2007 trial of former House Speaker Pete Kott, Smith, a Veco vice president, was asked which state senators he had bribed. 

"That would be Ben Stevens and John Cowdery," Smith testified. (Cowdery pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2008.) 

Federal authorities also investigated Stevens over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees paid to him by fishing interests that benefited from legislation promoted by his father in Congress. 

This is devastating news for Alaskans, like myself, who have been working to see the corruption in this state cleaned up.

Ben Stevens was considered by most of us to be a slam dunk for the FBI. He had his fingers in everything, and was considered one of the most egregious of the "Corrupt Bastards Club."

With the dropping of Stevens investigation, and Pete Kott and Vic Kohring starting to wriggle out of the grasping fingers of justice, it appears that there will be NO real deterrent to prevent the Republican party from continuing in the future to take kickbacks from oil companies, ensure sweetheart deals for their donors, and keep right on screwing over the people of Alaska.

As some of you may remember the investigation against Rep. Don Young was dropped last year, but as surprising as that was, having Ben Stevens walk away from this whole thing smelling like a rose is almost unthinkable.

Of all of the corrupt bastards the FBI was after, Stevens seemed like the easiest case to make. Hell, essentially EVERYBODY had sold him out!

Personally I find this very unsettling.  And for those of you who were still holding out hope that the long rumored federal investigation against Sarah Palin might bubble to the surface in the near future, I would suggest that you not hold your breath on that one either.

This state is filled with awe inspiring beauty, but there is a great ugliness running through our politic system, and apparently for the time being it is here to stay.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

FBI might be prepared to investigate News Corps under RICO statutes. In other words the same statutes they use to investigate the Mafia.

Courtesy of AdWeek:

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes. 

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, establishes a way to prosecute the leaders of organizations—and strike at the organizations themselves—for crimes company leaders may not have directly committed, but which were otherwise countenanced by the organization. Any two of a series of crimes that can be proven to have occurred within a 10-year period by members of the organization can establish a pattern of racketeering and result in draconian remedies. In 1990, following the indictment of Michael Milken for insider trading, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm that employed him, collapsed in the face of a RICO investigation. 

Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect. 

Here is where the RICO logic comes in. The usual path of a criminal investigation follows the crimes back to the source—that’s what happened to News Corp. in the U.K. when the royal family discovered that its voice mail messages were appearing in the press. But in a RICO investigation, you are really following the ethos and methods of operation of a group or organization to the crime. In other words, criminal activity is not seen as an isolated or particular event—as News Corp. has desperately and unsuccessfully tried to portray the crimes that occurred in the U.K.—but as an established pattern of conduct. 

As it happens, much of this pattern of conduct at News Corp. has long been hiding in plain sight. How the company has gotten away with such behavior is, in fact, a subtext of the investigations that are now unfolding. 

Partly, the company has escaped legal scrutiny because this is a boys-will-be-boys sort of story. News Corp.’s by-any-means aggressiveness has become so much a part of its identity that it seemed almost redundant to find fault with it. Everybody knew but nobody—for both reasons of fear and profit—did anything about it; hence its behavior has become, however unpleasant, accepted. 

And partly, it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here. That sting involves regular taunting and, often, lies—Obama is a Muslim. (Or, if not outright lies, radical remakes of reality.) Threats pervade the company’s basic view of the world. “We have stuff on him,” Murdoch would mutter about various individuals who I mentioned during my interviews with him. “We have pictures.” 

Similarly, the Post and Fox News heap praise and favors on partisans, who in turn do them favors (the police, in New York as well as London, receive and return the favors). 

This reward and punishment has translated into substantial political power, both in terms of regulatory advantages and, too, in the ability of the company to shield itself from the kind of scrutiny that it has taken a perfect storm of events to have it now receive.

Use the same methods to investigate News Corp that the FBI used to investigate, and imprison, Mafia members? 

Considering what we know about how Fox News has used its influence to control elections, cover up for their favorite politicians, and attack competitors, it makes perfect sense to me.

Friday, July 29, 2011

2nd Amendment - "Dumb & Dumber" AKA "Fast and Furious" (video, 2h42s)

ATF Weapons Operations (C-Span Videos)

Jul 26, 2011

House Committee Oversight and Government Reform
Officials in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' (ATF) operation know as "Fast and Furious" apologized for mistakes made and said they would have done things differently if given a second chance.  They said that the investigation was designed to destroy a large-scale arms smuggling operation from Phoenix to Mexico.  Guns linked to the operation had been found at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including the scene of a border agent killing in rural Arizona.  ATF agents based in Mexico also testified, saying they could not understand why their agency permitted an operation that eventually armed Mexican drug cartel members.
video source: http://wwww.c-spanvideo.org/program/ATF




more related video clips
The video clips below, and more, re "ATF's 'Fast and Furious' can be seen at:
related programs (videos at http://wwww.c-spanvideo.org/program/ATF):