FBI and police dress codes

I do not see any problem with the FBI and police officers that are plain-clothes, as well as secret service agents wearing cloaks in their work.  We as Wiccans sould have the right to come out of the broom-closet.

DEA and FBI

The D.E.A = Dickheads Entering A--Holes.

The FBI= Federal Beareu of Imbicles

PIGs = Police In Grabass Gear

FBI Pigs on a wing

On the morning of September 24th, FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas and raided the homes of several anti-war and social justice activists in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois. The FBI appears to be targeting people associated with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Arab-American Action Network. Search warrants indicate agents were looking for connections between local antiwar activists and groups in Colombia and the Middle East. Most of the people whose homes were searched or who were issued subpoenas had helped organize or attended protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, two years ago.The social justice community, mindful of the COINTELPRO intimidation tactics that the FBI has implemented in the past against anti-war and civil rights organizers, view the raids as an intimidation tactic. Within a day, activists organized a solidarity vigil, a press conference to raise public opinion of the matter, and put out a call for rallies nationwide.
Coverage Roundups: DC-IMC | Indybay | Chicago IMC | Twin Cities IMC
More Coverage from Twin Cities IMC: Oct6: Anti-War Activists: "We Have Nothing to Say to a Grand Jury" | Sept29: Midwest Social Justice Community Rallies Around Investigated Antiwar Activist | Sept24: At Least Four Minneapolis Houses Raided, Activists Subpoenaed in National FBI "Terror" Expedition Against Antiwar Activists | Breaking News
Demonstration Reportbacks: Portland, OR | Rochester, NY | Champaign, IL | Olympia, WA | Buffalo, NY | Washington, DC
Solidarity Statements: African People’s Solidarity Committee | Labor Activists Condemn FBI Repression | Send a Note of Protest and cc your local media
Related Stories: US Coast Guard admittedly spied in Olympia Activist circles | PA "Terror Watch" Bulletins Tracked Activists Across State
More Information: If An Agent Knocks | Committee to Stop FBI Repression

FBI and LA County Sheriff raid activist

FBI and LA County Sheriff raid veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes

author: Committee to Stop FBI Repression

link to www.stopfbi.net

On May 17, 2011 at 5:00 AM the SWAT Team of the Los Angeles Sheriff?s Department and members of the FBI raided the home of Carlos Montes, a long time Chicano activist and active member of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. The SWAT Team smashed the front door and rushed in with automatic weapons as Carlos slept. The team of Sheriffs and FBI proceeded to ransack his house, taking his computer, cell phones and hundreds of documents, photos, diskettes and mementos of his current political activities in the pro-immigrant rights and Chicano civil rights movement. Also taken were hundreds of historical documents related to Carlos Montes? involvement in the Chicano movement for the past 44 years. Carlos was arrested on one charge dealing with a firearm code and released on bail the following morning. His first court appearance is set for June 16, 2011. This attack on Carlos Montes is part of the campaign of FBI harassment taking place against the 23 peace and justice activists which has until now been centered in the Midwest. Carlos Montes? name was listed on the subpoena left in the office of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee last September 24. When Carlos Montes was placed in the LA County Sheriff's car, an FBI agent approached and asked him questions about the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Carlos Montes has done nothing wrong. This is an attack on him and an attack on the Chicano movement for equality. Carlos has been involved and a committed leader in the immigrant rights, anti war, solidarity, and quality education movements his whole adult life. Stop the Attacks on the Chicano and Immigrants Rights Movement! We demand all charges be dropped against Carlos Montes. We call for the immediate return of all his property. Please call and write US Attorney General Eric Holder (202) 353-1555 and demand Hands Off Carlos Montes and other activists. Join the LA Committee Against FBI Repression on May 24, 2011, at 7 PM to hear first hand about this attack and discuss the FBI repression targeting political activists and movements. The program will take place at F Square Printing, 519 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013.  http://www.stopfbi.net/organization/committee-stop-fbi-repression Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863-9977 www.Freedomarchives.org

homepage: http://www.stopfbi.net/organization/committee-stop-fbi-repression

FBI and Police got hackers on staff

The FBI and local police employ expert hackers to break into activists' computers to harass them.  Obama obviously condones this action or he is so much of a reagan style retarded imbicle that he does not know what is going on.  Or he is too stoned to care.

Monday, July 28, 2003

Hacker claims he was working for FBI

---

Feds not talking, but county forging ahead on case

By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jesse Tuttle, a computer hacker better known as 'Hackah Jak.' (Joseph Fuqua II photo) | ZOOM |

"Jesse Tuttle was sure he had made a good deal two years ago when he agreed to help the government safeguard sensitive computer systems against hackers, thieves and terrorists.
For Tuttle, a computer hacker known around the world as "Hackah Jak," it was the chance of a lifetime.
The deal would help him avoid prosecution on computer hacking charges and would pay him to do something he loves: search the Internet for vulnerable computer systems. If he found one, he says, he wrote a report about it for the FBI in Cincinnati.
"He is a genius with computers," says Tuttle's lawyer, Firooz Namei. "He was basically the eyes and ears of the FBI on this world that no one knows exists."
But Tuttle's Internet sleuthing ended in May, when Hamilton County sheriff's deputies charged the 23-year-old Camp Dennison man with breaking into the county's computer network and accused him of storing child pornography on his home computer.
Tuttle says his work with federal authorities explains everything, and that he was arrested because one government agency didn't know what another was doing.
But the FBI isn't talking and county officials stand by Tuttle's arrest.
Tuttle's case is the product of an intensifying cyber war between hackers and law enforcement officials around the world. It's a high-tech war with high stakes.
The fight will decide who has access to everything from credit card numbers to military secrets to designs for the next generation of space shuttles.
And as Tuttle's case illustrates, it's not always easy to tell the good guys from the bad.
"You never really know what (a hacker's) motives are and who else they may be working with," says Dorothy Denning, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School who has written about cyber terrorism. "There is some risk involved."
But with the number of computer intrusions nationwide jumping from 22,000 to 82,000 in the past three years, authorities and private companies are increasingly willing to work with hackers like Tuttle in hopes of preventing online attacks.
The trend has sometimes caused disagreements and confusion among law enforcement agencies, as Tuttle claims happened in his case. And it has forced hackers who traditionally guard their independence to choose sides.
Hackers dedicated to making the Internet more secure call themselves "white hats," while those determined to damage or steal from Web sites consider themselves "black hats."
Tuttle refers to himself as a "gray hat," someone who does no serious harm but still enjoys the illicit thrill of cracking a system.
"It's always been like a sport for me," says Tuttle, who is free pending his trial. "Being able to do it, outsmarting the system. ... I find a lot of pleasure in it."
Whatever Tuttle's motives - and whether he was really working for or against the government, or both - his story is a cautionary tale from the front lines of a war most Americans never see.
Contact with the FBI
Tuttle says his motives have been clear since the day he agreed to help the government. He says everything he did - from tapping into computer systems to posing as a teenage girl online - was related to his work with the FBI.
He says he helped make several highly sensitive government networks more secure and, in one case, helped federal agents track a pedophile's online activities.
"I never tried to steal goods or services," Tuttle says. "If I found out about (a vulnerable system), I'd hack the system. If there was a problem ... I'd call the FBI and say there is a hole."
That's what he says he was doing earlier this year when he tapped into the county's Regional Computer Center, which stores electronic versions of court records, property tax information and other data.
Although Tuttle says the FBI never asked him to crack specific systems - including the county's system - he says the agency encouraged his work and paid him up to $1,000 cash at a time for information.
As a matter of policy, FBI officials neither confirm nor deny working with specific informants. But court records and other sources show a link between Tuttle and federal authorities.
Tuttle signed an agreement with federal prosecutors in August 2001 that helped him avoid criminal charges for hacking into the computer system of a New York brokerage firm. Although it was not a formal cooperation agreement, the document states that Tuttle "agreed to provide the government with information."
Tuttle and his lawyer at the time, C. Ransom Hudson, say it was understood that Tuttle would continue to help the FBI. Tuttle has business cards from agents in New York and Cincinnati and says he remained in regular contact.
"They decided to see how he could be useful," Hudson says of the FBI.
He says federal authorities delivered a new CD burner for Tuttle to his law office so the young computer hacker could take it home, copy information that he gathered on the Internet and share it with the FBI.
The CD burner, along with the rest of Tuttle's computer equipment, is now in the hands of sheriff's investigators.
Prosecutor Mike Allen says the man known as Hackah Jak is a criminal, regardless of whatever else he may have been doing. He says he has not yet contacted the FBI about the case.
"We don't know anything about it," Allen says. "We're just concerned about our case."
Namei says the FBI's efforts in the worldwide cyber war will suffer as long as local authorities prosecute his client.
"These charges could be destructive to a relationship that the FBI has nurtured," says Namei, who says he has spoken several times to FBI agents about their work with Tuttle. "
Tuttle says he just wants his name cleared.
He says he knows nothing about child pornography on his computer but speculates it may stem from his work on the pedophile case. And he says his brief invasion of the county's system was typical of his work with the FBI.
Typically, Tuttle learned about potentially vulnerable systems from talking to other hackers online. The only wrinkle this time was that he says he investigated the county's system after a freelance writer asked him whether he thought it might be vulnerable. "I gained access in two seconds," Tuttle says of the county's system.
He says he was preparing a report about it for the FBI at the time of his arrest.
An online celebrity
Even before his arrest, Tuttle had numerous brushes with controversy. Though most know him as a bartender who lives with his parents in Camp Dennison, his alter ego, Hackah Jak, has been an online celebrity for years.
His hacker resume includes raids on Web sites for Sony Corp., Comedy Central and even the Girl Scouts. In each case, he says, he left a calling card but rarely did significant damage.
After cracking a food Web site, for example, he added a series of recipes for meals "you can eat while hacking."
Like many hackers, some of whom have dubbed themselves "hacktivists," Tuttle says there is good in what he does. Hackers can make political statements, he says, and their raids often lead to improvements in computer security.
While that may be true, some experts say, it also may be nothing more than an excuse for bad behavior.
"I think there's a lot of people who say they are hacktivists when in reality they are just interested in sophomoric attempts to get notoriety," says Dan Moniz, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting people's freedoms online.
But Tuttle says he's more interested in hacktivism than showing off.
He points out that Hackah Jak was among the most vocal of the hackers who raided Chinese government Web sites after China seized an American spy plane more than two years ago.
He said he did much the same after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when he helped create "The Dispatchers," a group of hackers that targeted government sites in several Middle Eastern countries.
Tuttle says the same sense of patriotism that drove him then was one of the reasons his deal with the FBI was so appealing.
He acknowledges he had another motive, too: The opportunity to avoid criminal charges for hacking the New York brokerage firm.
A risky business
It is that mix of motives that makes any deal with hackers a risky proposition. Hackers, by their very nature, walk a fine line between harmless fun and serious legal trouble.
But as computer crime continues to rise, hackers have found their skills are marketable.
"We won't hire them, but some will," says Peggy Weigle, chief executive officer of Sanctum Inc., a security consulting firm in Santa Clara, Calif. "There is a kind of religious debate about it. Some feel once they do that sort of thing, they've gone too far."
There are risks for hackers, too. While most security work is done with full disclosure to the parties involved, hackers like Tuttle work in a less defined, more dangerous world.
That's because the act of cracking a system is usually a crime, even if the hacker does no harm and later tells the Web site manager how to fix the security breach.
"How that's received depends on who is on the other end," Moniz says. "Some will say 'thanks,' and some will file a lawsuit or criminal charges."
Hamilton County officials have taken the latter approach with Tuttle.
"He didn't do anything malicious. He just got in there," says Ed DePompei, a project manager at the Regional Computer Center. "But if you leave your door open and somebody walks in and sits down in your chair, would you consider that a crime? Just because the door is open, it doesn't mean I'm inviting you in."
Tuttle says he doesn't understand how an act he considers a good deed could be turned into criminal charges and a possible 80 years in prison.
But despite his predicament, he says he is eager to get back online and back into the cyber war.
"The work I do for the FBI," Tuttle says, 'I can still do that work for them.' "

FBI

The FBI harasses me by breaking into my computer and putting forkbombs in it.

FBI Set-Up at Pioneer Square.

author: Damos Abadon

FBI "thwarts" it's own so-called bomb plot at Pioneer Square on Friday Nov. 26th. All major & even some [apparently liberal] news outlets pass off this bullshit as an actual event. Predictably, the dopes (e.i. general public) all fall for it, hook/line/sinker. Get ready for MORE security, MORE police, MORE surveillance, & MORE lenses watching your every move.

All these "thwarted bomb plots" are starting to become a real cliché. Some harmless 19 year old no-body with a clean record, brown skin, & two Mohamuds in his name gets fingered by the FBI informant goons in 2009. Over the next year or so, federal goons pretend to be this guy's friend, leaning on him, spoon-feeding him all sorts of phony baloney about carrying out some attack that he NEVER originally had any intention of carrying out. They give him all this material that he never would've had access to, or even the slightest clue of where to get it. They spend a year setting up & totally ENTRAPPING this guy, who in the beginning never EVER had a great sceme to carry out anything, maybe other than attending college. At one point, Mohamud Osmond Mohamud was planning to head to Alaska for a seasonal fishery job (which seems really unusual for a "hardened terrorist"). However, the fed. goons stopped him from going because how could he have carried out some fake bombing here in Portland if he was slinging fish in Alaska, right?

The "plot" was eventually "uncovered" & predictably, all the thought-less dopes swallow the LIES. Typically, all media outlets including The Oregonian, NPR/OPB, & even most of so-called "progressive" talk radio (locally at least) has been hashing out this one-sided propaganda about how Mohamud Osmond Mohamud was some eeeeeeevil jihadist & how the FBI did it's "due diligence".

Which is all total bullshit, of course. But who cares, right?

Local/area muslims are once again scape-goated & forced into defending themselves against something they had NOTHING to do with (funny how, when ever a CHRISTIAN actually CARRIES OUT a ruthless act of terror, the christian community isn't made to account for anything). Like clockwork (no really, you could literally set your watch to it), the first wave of vigilante attacks goes under way, starting with an arson attack at a mosque in Corvallis - apparently the one the FBI's patsy once attended. A $10,000 reward has been offered for info. lending to the arrest of the suspect. This reward will never be collected of course, because the police aren't looking. Expect to see a spike in hate crimes in the metro area over the next several weeks. This may include everything from [other] mosques being vandalized, to assaults on anyone wearing a headscarf, to increased police harassment of anyone who looks like they could possibly be muslim. We have this on-going cesspool of racist, anti-muslim hysteria to thank for this. And yeah, it will totally get worse incase you were wondering. Portland's "livingroom" already has armed patrols, unarmed security, & dozens of electronic lenses trained upon it. Expect more of all that. The Dept. of Däs Fatherland Security has been wanting a major cash influx for their local branch, & now they have it. They win, WE lose.

Only in this country could you have this weird mix of fo' holiday cheer, ravenous consumption, xenophobia, & heightened security/fear - all meshed together to form this continuous national psychosis. And it's not going to let up anytime soon because we've entered the age of "failed plots" & "thwarted attacks" & ever-increasing security & ballooning defense/police budgets. Mark my words, a few months from now or sooner there's going to be yet another "foiled plot" to blow up something. And once again the scared dummies all will be whipped up into thinking there's a jihadist lurking around every corner, just waiting to get them. More people have died in CROSSWALKS in Portland last year than have been killed in terrorists attacks nationally! More people die from dog bites, but try telling that to anyone.

This is tatamount to police entrapment.  Face it - This paranoid nation is one of the most racist nations in the world.  I for one do not talk to the FBI.

The FBI and hackers

Why does the FBI hack my computer?  Are they harassing me?

FBI spies on activists

What is the FBI - some new Gestapo?  The FBI is America's new secret police.  Are we on our way to a police state in the USA?  Cointel Pro #666?

FBI Raids in Chicago

*Breaking News* At least four houses in Minneapolis raided, other houses in Michigan, NC, Chicago targeted.

Update - At least four known houses were raided this morning including another location at Stevens Square. There were also at least two subpoenas served on activists. Keep on alert! Know your rights! Don't talk to the FBI

Urgent - Community Meeting tonight! 5:30 pm Walker Church 3104 16th Ave S regarding the FBI Raids

On Friday morning, three houses in the Minneapolis area are believed to have been raided by SWAT Teams. While we have few details right now, the F.B.I. appears to be targeting people associated with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Besides the raids in Minneapolis, houses in Michigan, North Carolina and Chicago were also targeted.

Raids occurred at 1823 Riverside, above the Hard Times Cafe, and the 2900 block of Park Ave. One other raid is reported, as well. Outside Hard Times Cafe, three unmarked black SUVs (one with an Illinois license plate) sat in the parking area as of 10am, when a lawyer observed 8 FBI agents sitting in the residence examining materials. Otherwise the scene was calm.

Agents had broken in the door there at 7am Friday morning, breaking an aquarium in the process.

The Federal search warrants appear to be focusing on seizing electronic devices, international travel, and allegeing "co-conspirators." They do not authorize arrests.

The search warrant for 1823 Riverside, the residence of activist Mick Kelly, sought information "regarding ability to pay for his own travel" to Palestine and Columbia from 2000 to today. The warrant hyped potential documents indicating any contacts/facilitation with FARC, PFLP, and Hezbollah - what it called "FTOs" or "foreign terrorist organizations". It mentioned seeking information on the alleged "facilitation of other individuals in the US to travel to Colombia, Palestine and any other foreign location ins upport of foreign terrorist organizations including but not limited to FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah".

The wording of the warrant appears to indicate the government seeks to create divisions among social justice and international soldarity activists by hyping alleged connections to what they call "foreign terrorist organizations."

The warant also sought information on "Kelly's travel to and from and presence in MN, and other foreign countries [sic] to which Kelly has taveleled as part of his work in FRSO [Freedom Road Socialist Organization", as well as materials related to his finances and the finances of FRSO, and all computer and electronic devices.

The federal warrant was signed by Judge Susan Nelson at 3:30pm yesterday, September 23.

FBI v. Democracy

The FBI’s War On Democracy --Claude Marks discusses the new film COINTELPRO 101

author: Angola 3 News

Claude Marks, Director of The Freedom Archives,says "we undertook to make this new film, knowing that no government agent or agency has ever been held accountable for the assassinations of leaders, the destruction of organizations, the imprisonment and political targeting of so many people - people who still remain prisoners of the wars against movements for liberation and self-determination within the US borders."

COINTELPRO 101

Watch the trailer, and view embedded links here:

 http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2010/09/fbis-war-on-democracy-claude-marks.html



The FBI's War On Democracy
--Claude Marks discusses the new film COINTELPRO 101

By Angola 3 News

Claude Marks, Director of The Freedom Archives, talks to Angola 3 News about the highly anticipated new documentary film, entitled COINTELPRO 101, which is premiering on October 10, at the Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts in San Francisco.

According to its website, the Freedom Archives "contains over 8000 hours of audio and video tapes. These recordings date from the late-60s to the mid-90s and chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international solidarity movements. The collection includes weekly news/ poetry/ music programs broadcast on several educational radio stations; in-depth interviews and reports on social and cultural issues; diverse activist voices; original and recorded music, poetry, original sound collages; and an extensive La Raza collection."

Freedom Archives has released other audio and video documentaries, including the recent video about the San Francisco Eight, entitled "Legacy of Torture." Legacy of Torture can be viewed online, as well as the previous films Voices of Three Political Prisoners (featuring Nuh Washington, Jalil Muntaqim and David Gilbert), Charisse Shumate: Fighting for Our Lives, and Self Respect, Self Defense & Self Determination (featuring Mabel Williams and Kathleen Cleaver, introduced by Angela Davis).

Angola 3 News: What can you tell us about your upcoming film COINTELPRO 101?

Claude Marks: We've been aware of the need to talk more about COINTELPRO since we made The Legacy of Torture - the video about the government torture of the Panthers in New Orleans in 1973 - which later became the unjust basis for the San Francisco 8 Case. In travelling with that film and organizing for the dropping of charges, we referred to COINTELPRO but often were talking to younger people in particular, who had not heard the term and had no historical frame of reference for that period of intense repression.

So we undertook to make this new film, knowing that no government agent or agency has ever been held accountable for the assassinations of leaders, the destruction of organizations, the imprisonment and political targeting of so many people - people who still remain prisoners of the wars against movements for liberation and self-determination within the US borders.

COINTELPRO 101 is not the first or only film on the subject, although there have not been many, but we hope it can help reinvigorate some organizing work, and reopen some thinking about the violence directed against progressive movements, this hidden history, and nature of the state and its agencies of repression.

A3N: How was the film showing and related workshop at the US Social Forum received by the audience?

CM: This was a good opportunity to infuse the very broad conversations at the Social Forum with a self-conscious discussion about the nature and continuity of government repression. From the European invasion & Middle Passage forward, we have always seen genocide. Prisons, COINTELPRO, Abu Ghraib... all represent the continuity of what any movements to change power relations are and will be up against.

A3N: Your website states that the film's "intended audiences are the generations that did not experience the social justice movements of the sixties and seventies." Given that COINTELPRO officially ended in the early 1970s, why is this story so important for the younger generation to know about?

CM: Well, the mission of the Freedom Archives is to help educate people, and especially the rising new generations, as to the true nature of recent radical history. The high point of struggle represented by the loosely used term "the sixties" and the violent repression against it, contains essential lessons for every young person seeking a more just society. More generally, people should not be misled by the myth of democracy, the idea that the system can be made to work for "us" or that those in power will somehow reach a moral epiphany and give up anything of consequence without a fight.

We see this myth exposed today in many ways - mass imprisonment, the tearing up of families and communities - driven by racism - the criminalization of dissent so any act of resistance becomes by their definition an act of "terrorism."

This is a continuum that is unleashed upon the world's peoples as well as internally. Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are targeted. Muslims and South Asians are targeted. Women and queer folks are targeted. Prisoners are subjected to the worst inhumanities, and if they are ever released, what do they have they to look forward to?

The U.S. has by far the largest incarceration rate in the world—as they build more prisons, the schools deteriorate and the public education system lies in racist tatters.

A3N: How do you think the US government's repression of the Left today differs from the COINTELPRO era?

CM: In the 1970s, the public and some officials, faced with the exposure of the illegal acts of government and police agencies against dissent, feigned concerns about the loss of civil liberties, held hearings, and alleged that reforms would take place. But today, the acts of the FBI, police, and other agencies, once illegal, are now legitimate, legal - via the Patriot Act and other unconstitutional measures, all in the name of homeland security and defending the nation against "terrorism."

The playing field has changed. The government now openly conducts assassinations anywhere in the world, can declare people to be "enemy combatants" and imprison them indefinitely without charges; drone warfare permits mass civilian murders by so-called military experts thousands of miles away without risking US military casualties - it's a "game" except to the thousands of victims.

Today the government claims the right to breach international human rights laws and conventions with no accountability. And the corporate media is so integrated into this strategy, that there is little room for "legitimate" opposition to get a hearing. So it becomes incumbent upon us to organize and message independently and with few resources.

COINTELPRO 101 is made with mainly love and fumes, but we hope that it will be a useful tool to engage in dialogue and to help organize movements that challenge the mythology that dissent is a guaranteed right, that seek the release of political prisoners, that counter the miseducation of our youth with an understanding of the past so they can better shape the future.

A3N: Knowing what we do about this repression in the past and present, how can activists today best defend ourselves? How should our organizing strategies be modified?

CM: We must organize to show our outrage with more consistency and despite risks. There is an urgency to demand more of one another as well. Challenging the state is serious and will not succeed as a result of stroking egos or the pronouncements of self-declared leaders. It is hard work and requires a deep commitment and a passion for serving the people and rebuilding our communities. Our capacity must grow in realistic ways as there are no shortcuts, and the path includes defeats and sacrifice. This is one of the things that our political prisoners and the many martyrs can teach us.

A3N: For our readers not close enough to San Francisco for the October 10 premiere, how will folks be able to watch the new film?

CM: The film will begin to show in communities and on campuses this fall and winter. People can reach us to make arrangements. At some point we will also manufacture DVDs. We hope to have it available with subtitles in other languages as well. Also check the website as we have resources about COINTELPRO posted and will also add a teaching curriculum to accompany the film.

A3N: How can folks best support your efforts?

CM: We are very much a grassroots organization. We have no corporate or government funding. We are one voice among many, but we encourage people to support the work of independent media, including ourselves. We welcome your questions and comments and greatly appreciate your support.

Also please use the audio and video documentaries that we've produced as educational materials and organizing tools. The actual Freedom Archives is searchable on line and is intended to preserve radical history and culture. So check us out!

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

CM: Years ago, as the movements grew and we worked in various political and media organizations, we were fond of quoting part of an 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass, often using Ossie Davis's dramatic rendition of his famous words. They sum up a lesson that is central to what I am saying, and is at the heart of COINTELPRO 101. Many of your readers are probably familiar with it, but its essence bears repeating:

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation... want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

--Angola 3 News is a new project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.

Chicago FBI is corrupt

and there is a corrupt druid running it.

Political Prisoners anf the FBI

Political Prisoner Correspondence and the FBI

author: Sacramento Prisoner Support        e-mail: sacprisonersupport[at]riseup[dot]net

Recent FOIA documents have uncovered some interesting information...

Recently we began receiving documents in response to a FOIA request we filed with the FBI about Eric McDavid. The documents have uncovered a few alarming pieces of information, but one in particular we felt it necessary to share with the public as soon as possible. For years people have been speculating that writing political prisoners would result in a person being "put on a list." Unfortunately, it seems that those speculations were not unfounded.

We have received perhaps hundreds of pages documenting Eric's correspondence with other people. These letters are not just kept on file - the Sacramento County Main Jail forwarded all of these letters to the Sacramento FBI field office, which then forwarded them to local field offices around the country (and to law enforcement internationally) to warn the FBI in other cities of a "possible environmental/animal rights extremist" or "a possible anarchist extremist" in their community. Originally, the FBI's communications included a statement that "Sacramento is forwarding this communication for information purposes only." But later, they began including a much longer statement which read, in part: "this information has been determined to be of such a nature that some follow-up as to the possibility of criminal activity is warranted..." These statements were included no matter what was the content of the letter - often the documents include the statement that the letter was "benign in nature."

It is unclear whether or not the FBI is still forwarding Eric's correspondence to local field offices. We have not received any documents dated after his move to a federal facility. It is also unknown whether or not all correspondence with political prisoners is treated in the same manner. What we do know is that if a person sent Eric a letter to the Sacramento County Main Jail with their full name and address on it, the local FBI field office more than likely now has that information.

We are not sharing this information to raise alarm or spread fear. We have every intention of continuing to write political prisoners, and we urge others to do the same. That said, we hope to expose the FBI's politically motivated investigations and, unlike the FBI, we believe people have a right to know when they have been spied on. This kind of government intrusion could cause the "chilling effect" so often thrown about in conversations about 1st amendment activities. But when we give in to those fears, political prisoners are the ones who suffer. And this is exactly what the government wants. The state is constantly trying to expand its reach by gathering information about social movements and those who participate in them. Instead of letting this new information scare us into silence, we should use it to make informed decisions about how we support and prioritize political prisoners. This kind of repression has implications for more than just people involved in "activism." Millions of people are incarcerated in this country. It is possible that the government uses similar tactics to investigate other communities that they actively repress. Writing our friends, family members and comrades should not be a justified excuse for investigation - no matter who our friends are.

To view some of these documents, please visit:  http://ecoprisoners.org/news.htm