The passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 is by now an all-too-familiar story. The American people, already suffering from the trauma of 9/11, were pushed into outright panic by the anthrax attacks, a series of anthrax-laced mailings that killed five, injured 17 and shut down Congress for the first time in modern history. The Act itself was introduced on a Tuesday and signed into law on Friday, before anyone had read let alone understood the sweeping changes it would introduce to American law.

Some of those changes were amendments to a little-known and little-used FBI instrument called National Security Letters, which allow the FBI and other agencies to issue businesses and institutions requests for private data on citizens, including financial transactions and communications records, regardless of whether or not they are even suspected of any crime, and to hold that data indefinitely. One of the most worrying aspects of the letters is the non-disclosure clause, which not only prohibits recipients from disclosing the contents of the letter, but even the fact that they have received a letter at all.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting the FBI’s National Security Letters and its predecessor- the 1978 Right to Financial Privacy Act, the aggressive expansion of the program’s scope with the passage of PATRIOT ACT, the gag order accompanying the letters – the non-disclosure clause, the collusion between the FBI, CIA and DOD in the issuance and implementation of these letters, and exposing the macrocosm of the police state control grid as a whole through this tyrannical tool.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here (Subscribers Only):

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

The popular conception of the police state, derived mainly from works of science fiction,
revolves heavily around the deployment of exotic technologies for keeping the populace firmly under the thumb of an authoritarian government. Perhaps it is the frequency with which these devices are presented to us in fictionalized form that prevents many from noticing that this technology is not the stuff of sci-fi fantasy, but increasingly a part of our everyday lives.

Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, began development on the taser which was completed in 1974, although not widely adopted by police departments until the last decade. Since its inception as a standard police implement the taser has courted controversy, with critics blaming the weapon for as many as 515 American deaths since 2001. It has also been denounced by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International, and other organizations as a potential weapon of terror.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, introducing and presenting the taser, the use and implementation of this ‘pain technology’ in other settings, including airplanes, airports as the front line of the police state and a testing ground for new police state technology, and how the police, TSA and other law enforcement agents are being actively recruited and encouraged to be as aggressive as possible in dealing with the public, and aided in doing so by the federal government, the courts, and the upper ranks of their own departments.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.

Those who seek to sow discord amongst the potential opposition to the growing control of the state over every aspect of the public’s lives can confuse and distract those opponents by engaging them in endless dialogues fretting about what a police state is, and whether our society is becoming one. Distracted in this way, the public can be tricked into believing that the police state is some imaginary future possibility, one that will only be realized when menacing troops in brown shirts, red arm bands and jack boots goose step people into internment camps against their will.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting the police state as a present reality rather than a future possibility, the distraction of the public by design, the need to look at the decades-long history documenting the step by step construction of our current system in order to recognize, understand and acknowledge our current police state status, and finally, the real key to dismantling our current police state.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

I cringe every time I read or hear this self-defeating fallacy repeatedly used in almost all arguments and advocacies intended to counter our government’s assault on our liberties. I know those who use this fallacy, whether a lone-wolf noble politician, enlightened commentators, or civil liberties experts and representatives, all mean well and have the best intentions with what they put forth in defense of our liberties. Nonetheless they are doing a great harm by unintentionally promoting a myth, an illusion, and a major fallacy.

Allow me list a few old and recent examples:

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” – Benjamin Franklin

PBS Headline- America at a Crossroads: ‘Security Versus Liberty: the Other War’

“If we allow the interests of national security to take away our freedoms, we surrender what it is to be an American.” – ACLU

Title: “Ten Years of Trading Liberty for Security” – Anthony Gregory, Independent

Title: “Guantanamo Bay Detainees: National Security or Civil Liberties” – Pamela M von Ness, FAS.Org

Just read the civil liberties related headlines daily and you will compile a very long list of similar titles and arguments. Most, if not all, fortify the false notion of ‘security vs. liberties,’ ‘the compromise between safety and rights,’ ‘sacrificing Constitutional rights to fight terrorism,’ … Granted, some, actually only a few, bother to include the notion of ‘perceived security;’ only in passing, a long way into the body text. For most Americans, busy with life, hassled with chores, too distracted by entertainment news, the part that quickly and easily sticks is the notion of making a choice between security and idealistic liberties.  And for many the answer comes down without any hesitation- it becomes a choice between life and death. And hey, when you face a life and death situation you ain’t gonna bother with some idealistic liberties concerns. Right?

Civil liberties experts and spokespersons, intentionally or unintentionally, help frame the majority’s simple response when it comes to the state of our liberties in a national security state. And as we know, when asked, most Americans go for life- for so-called security. Just take a look at complied surveys for the last decade and you’ll see where the majority stands on this very wrongly framed question.

With the intended and unintended help of our media, civil liberties advocates and experts, liberties have been diminished to a choice, a luxury, and an ideal. We The People, the large majority, are under the false impression of being in a ‘give and take’ situation where liberties are given in return for security, when in reality their position is of ‘give and give.’

Our national security state on the other hand is in the clear position of ‘take and take.’ Think about it, if no grand-scale terrorism incident occurs, they will continue to take by showing their ‘taking’ as the reason for this safety from terrorism. On the other hand, If there is a large terrorism incident, the government will continue to take, and take even more, citing terrorism as justification for more liberty-butchering actions. They will take, continue to take, and most likely take more.

Meanwhile, without a single scientific or rational parallel established between police state practices and increased security, our experts and media continue to propagate this fallacy of linking security and liberty-butchering practices.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Now it is confirmed and official: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms that it intends to develop guidelines for how officials go about collecting intelligence from the sites. Yes. The Department of Homeland Security is not going to take a second seat to the FBI or NSA. It is flexing its muscles. It is stomping its feet, and it is determined to get its way. It is all set and ready to create its own policies and operations for monitoring social network media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook:

Caryn Wagner, undersecretary of the DHS, told an audience Monday at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense in Colorado Springs that the agency began to draw up guidelines for monitoring social networking sites after the sites were heavily used during government uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa this year.

According to an Associated Press report Tuesday, federal agents are still mulling over how to best pull intelligence from social media sites and determine whether it is valid or Web chatter.”We’re still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source,” said Wagner, according to the AP report. “How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?”

…

Oh, let’s add this idiotic comment by Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group as well:

“Some users might be disturbed, but what would they expect?” Olds asked. “The info they post online is essentially in the public domain in most cases and it’s easy to understand why the government would look for any edge they can find vs. terrorists.”

…

Please, someone contact this ‘yoyo’ and ask him: Since when does the government distinguish between public domain, private and those that fall in the middle? Is he high on something? Or maybe shows signs of an onset of dementia? Hello?

Let’s see: NSA has been tapping all our communications-phone, e-mail, fax …for almost a decade now with no warrants, no legal rights, in fact by directly challenging the Constitution and privacy laws. So does this dude consider the airwaves, all land lines, internet accounts and servers … all as public domain, thus totally naked and open for government grab?

Same goes for the FBI. They can sit down and type up a letter for themselves and use it as a license to grab people’s mail, GPS, even access to their homes. Does that self-granted violation right make these private properties public domain? As far as I know there is not much left that is considered private domain, and doesn’t that make this public domain issue a moot point?

Come on, I am asking you! With the NSA’s limitless spying authority on all American citizens, with the FBI’s limitless search and seizure powers, with the PATRIOT ACT, with our bodies-arses open to grab in airports (and soon on highways), what do we have  left that is considered private-personal domain?! Everything is public domain, so why even distinguish anymore?!

I think it is time to bring back the carrier pigeons and falcons. Some business-minded people should use this opportunity to make a few bucks and provide the public with an alternative to communicate privately. We’ll roll our messages, tie’em to their legs and hope our word will get to the ‘intended’ recipient privately; unread and untouched by the preying eyes of the NSA, DHS, FBI and who knows who else …

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Lorie Van Auken joins us and shares with us her reflections ten years on about the events of 9/11 and her loss. She discusses the still- classified 28 pages of the JICI dealing with terrorist financing, the 9/11 families’ stalled lawsuit to bankrupt the terrorists and the direct interventions by the White House to protect the Saudi regime against the justice-seeking families, and the many uninvestigated questions and facts covered up by the 9/11 commission. She questions our current many-fronted wars and the senselessness of the occupation of and our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan with Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden both dead, while our economy is crashing here at home. Ms. Van Auken talks about the three versions of the NORAD timeline, the passage of the Patriot Act as a vehicle to erode our civil liberties, NSA’s illegal wiretapping of our domestic communications under the guise of security, and more!

Lorie Van Auken, the mother of two children, lost her husband Kenneth Van Auken in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She is one of the “Jersey Girls” who, along with Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza, fought the Bush administration for a commission to investigate the attacks. Ms. Van Auken is also a member of the September 11 Advocates.

Here is our guest Lorie Van Auken unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Julia Davis joins us to discuss her experience with the Department of Homeland Security as a federal officer, her discovery and reporting of serious security lapses within the department, and the unprecedented magnitude of retaliation and abuses she suffered as a whistleblower. She talks about the recently screened documentary on her plight, The Terror Within, how the DHS spent their money on aerial surveillance with a Blackhawk helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane, warrantless surveillance, wiretaps, sneak and peek burglaries, Internet monitoring and On-Star tracking of her and her family, the mainstream media, and more!

Julia Davis is a National Security/Anti-Terrorism Expert, Investigative Journalist, former Customs and Border Protection Officer and a National Security Whistleblower. Julia is a member of the Academy of Arts & Sciences and Screen Actors Guild. She serves as an Advisory Council member for the Hollywood Stuntman Hall of Fame. Julia earned a Master’s degree as an Aviation and Spacecraft Engineer, she is fluent in four languages and graduated with honors from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). Julia wrote the screenplay for an award-winning feature film, authored teleplays for TV Series/ documentaries and is an accredited film and television producer. Her investigative reports, news articles and photographs have been prominently featured by various publications and news outlets.

Here is our guest Julia Davis unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Welcome. This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett for BoilingFrogsPost.com.

A recent court case in Utah has uncovered yet more evidence that the FBI is hiding key documents from the public by placing them in a separate, hitherto unknown electronic storage medium known as an “S-drive.” The fact that this drive was previously unknown has raised the specter that the FBI is using it as a place to hide requests for sensitive documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Now, a federal judge has given the FBI until the end of the month to explain what the S-drive is, how it is being used, and whether it contains key documents related to the case in question.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI is not required to say if a document exists, only that they searched their database and found no records responsive to the request. If these documents are placed in an external or disconnected storage drive, however, the agency can insure that they will never show up in any FOIA request. In fact, the FBI has been known to have used this very technique in the past. Going under such names as “June files,” “zero files” and “I-drive,” the agency has a long and documented history of placing key evidence in special, compartmentalized files that are reviewed by senior officials before the information is placed into the bureau’s official files.

Joining James Corbett this week to discuss the history and significance of the FBI’s secret storage drives are attorney Jesse Trentadue and the former privacy act coordinator at the Minneapolis FBI field office and noted FBI whistleblower, Coleen Rowley.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Lew Rockwell, founder and Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, joins us to discuss the constitutional rule and the roll back of our liberties and constitutional rights during the past decade, the rise of the police state, the PATRIOT ACT and our tyrannical government’s exemption from the rule of law domestically and internationally, our current economic model based on corporate fascism, and the need for ideological enlightenment. He talks about Eisenhower and how despite his commonly remembered speech warning against “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he himself entrenched this very machinery in American life, and forged a program for the permanent militarization of our country. Mr. Rockwell talks about the Tea Party, and voices his criticism of their tendencies toward inconsistency, especially on the military and the issue of war, xenophobia, and on favoring national IDs, John Maynard Keynes and his admiration of the Nazi economic program, and more!

Lew Rockwell is a libertarian political commentator, activist, author, and founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He served as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff between 1978 and 1982. His website, lewrockwell.com, features a selection of articles, including opposition to war and imperialism. Mr. Rockwell is the author of Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard with Walter Block, and The Left, The Right, and The State.

Here is our guest Lew Rockwell unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

They say don’t count your chickens before they hatch. I say this doesn’t apply to the US political hatching machine, since there are more than chickens at stake. I’ll go even further and say we must start counting the eggs regardless of how many ultimately hatch. The cycle of laying eggs to hatched chickens is way too long in US political machinations hard at work towards the new world order. If one wants to keep up and be aware, one must pay close attention to the incubators and each entering egg. The Obama administration’s Bin Laden Death Script is the new designated incubator for a special batch of eggs. No matter how many will actually hatch. No matter how many will turn into specially designed future egg-laying chickens. What matters is the ultimate objective in engineering this latest designed political incubator. What matters is the path or paths set to follow the machine’s chicken delivery conveyor belts that will extend and wrap the globe, and deliver the new order.

We have had a few chickens hatch immediately following the death script; the early chicks. After the Osama Death Script release Obama’s job approval ratings jumped 11 percentage points to 57 percent according to a New York Times poll, and 9 percentage points according to a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. The Osama Death Script also brought a reversal in months of rising opposition to the war, when polls showed that record-low levels of Americans thought the war had  been worth it in the long run. Also, a slim majority of Americans now say things are going well for the United States in Afghanistan, a four-percentage-point increase from late March. This marks the first time in nearly two years that the majority has held this view, and only the second time since Gallup began tracking these opinions on the war in 2006.

Pakistan appears to be the batch about to hatch. I am going to reiterate what I wrote in my article, Bin Laden Death Script & the Needed Trigger for Next Step-Pakistan, neither party-US-China-Pakistan, has played all their cards yet:

The White House neocons are in the midst of age-old diplomatic games, bluffing, and hedging their bets. They have the ‘foreign & military aid’ card. They have the ‘ISI dirt files’ card. They have the ‘ultimate China leaning’ card. And of course, they have the ‘mighty power of preemptive occupation war’ card which is always blessed and supported by NATO and overlooked by their butlers in the UN.

…

Sometimes we come across an odd egg or two standing out like a giant Ostrich egg among tiny chicken eggs; like the following strange case popping up with even stranger timing; could it be an egg from the Iran Batch? :

Two defectors from Iran’s intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials had “foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks,” according to a court filing Thursday in a federal lawsuit in Manhattan that seeks damages for Iran’s “direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history.”

Interestingly, despite all the contradictory, hole-filled and ever-changing Osama Death Script, and with so many eggs in the hatchery, we haven’t had any serious ‘Egg on the face’ case. One of the biggest reasons this hatchery-incubator had remained in a designed stage so long, until coming into the implementation stage recently, was the fear of losing a chicken or two that had been hatched from the 9/11 incubator. It was the question of what if the ‘Osama Death Script’ backfires and ends the motivation-reasons behind the many wars abroad and many newly gained government police powers here in the United States? It was the uncertainty as to whether we could continue this ‘Al-Qaeda Fear Brand’ and ‘war on terror’ without a healthy-wealthy and very alive Osama Man. The outcome, so far, has proved those fears baseless:

  Thanks to the real powers’ PR and propaganda machine, Al-Qaeda and the virtual terror machine have been deemed independent of Osama Bin Laden, and able to sustain, expand and grow ever increasingly and ever more powerful. The Bin Laden Chicken has been replaced by McQaeda Franchisees:

They kidnap Westerners in the deserts of Africa, turn Western-born Muslims into radicals, send bombs to the United States from Yemen and mount bloody attacks in Iraq and Pakistan.

These homegrown terror groups worldwide are informally dubbed Al Qaeda franchises – affiliates that do most of their own fundraising, recruiting and killing. The question now is this: What impact will the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden have on the ability and willingness of the franchises to mount attacks?

Emails found on flash drives from bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan two weeks ago show that he was communicating more than Western intelligence had thought. But Al Qaeda’s ideology plays a much bigger role in fostering terror than bin Laden’s personal involvement, said Gen. David Richards, Britain’s top military chief.”Yemen, Somalia and other places in the Middle East are today more important in a counter-terror context than what was going on…in Osama’s compound,” Richards told British lawmakers.

…

However, Al Qaeda franchises were responsible for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166, and the 2002 attacks on a Bali island night club that killed 202 people, many foreign tourists.

The head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, Jonathan Evans, has said it’s only a matter of time before “we see terrorism on our streets” from the Al Qaeda movement in Somalia, known as al-Shabab. He also said it is likely that Al Qaeda supporters in the Arabian Peninsula will step up attacks on Western targets.

…

And just to reassure our real hatchery and incubator-designers, a few days ago, after the supposed Bin Laden death, our supposed representatives from both houses and both parties reached a deal on a long-term extension of the PATRIOT Act without any of the inconvenient civil rights provisions and for an additional four years.

As any critical thinking and attention paying reader may already suspect, there were many eggs laid inside the Osama Death Script incubator. Some have already hatched; time will show how many will last long enough and grow into full chickens. Some are about to hatch; follow the news and developments around the world and you’ll see and recognize the chicks as they pop up. Some may take a while to hatch; patience is a virtue, if the only one, our ‘real’ rulers are known to have. And some will never hatch; well, they say no risk no rewards.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Now I want you to consider a real-life case. The place- The United States of America. The court- United States Foreign Surveillance Court. The parties- US Federal Government vs. Secret Foreign Targets inside the Unites States. The purpose- for independent and judicial judges to oversee government requests for surveillance warrants, and after carefully reviewing the requests and shown causes, make decisions to grant or not to grant warrants. Last year, in 2010, the federal police agencies brought before these FISA judges 1506 such warrant requests. Last year, in 2010, the FISA Court, every single judge in the FISA Court, eleven out of eleven judges of the FISA Court, granted every single warrant requested of them by our federal police agencies. All 1506 of them. Every single request:

The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 1,506 government requests to electronically monitor suspected “agents” of a foreign power or terrorists on U.S. soil last year, according to a Justice Department report released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The two-page report, which shows about a 13 percent increase in the number of applications for electronic surveillance between 2009 and 2010, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists and published Friday.“The FISC did not deny any applications in whole, or in part,” according to the April 19 report to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).

The 11-member court denied two of 1,329 applications for domestic-intelligence surveillance in 2009. The FBI is the primary agency making those requests.

…

Let me preempt a few possible, and possibly reasonable, arguments in favor of this real-life and real US government case. May I?

The US Federal Government, in this case mainly the FBI, must be very diligent and thorough with their targets, evidence & presentation of these cases

There have been reports after reports issued by government-leaning government investigative agencies revealing widespread abuse of power, when it comes to our federal police agencies and their unchecked surveillance and search practices. This may give you the flavor and extent of what we are talking about here:

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats

…

Or maybe this one on how the FBI presents its cases to the federal courts:

Violations of the Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Other Legal Authorities: In the third category EFF found violations which “were consistently the most brazen and egregious” ones. FBI reported that “its agents had made false statements in written declarations to courts,” in addition to using “improper evidence to obtain grand jury subpoenas.” The FBI would also use “a target’s username and password to access and download account information and a warrantless search of password-protected files.” However, it was found that these violations are often the most redacted and that redaction occurs on an inconsistent and arbitrary basis—supporting the conclusion that the FBI is withholding information.

…

This is not a big deal for us the citizens since the warrants allow only the surveillance of suspected foreign entities.

Okay, do you remember my State Secrets Privilege case? While I cannot divulge specifics such as the methods of intelligence gathering or target details, I can tell you this much: the FBI collects information directly and indirectly. What do I mean by that? Let’s say we have this foreign person José, and the FBI is tapping his phone and all his e-mails. This José guy in any given day talks with dozens of people over the phone, and some of these people who are either calling José or receiving calls from José are American citizens. The FBI collects everything said/written not only by José, but also everything said and written to José by everyone; including those non-suspect US citizens. Are you following me so far? Okay, good. Now, when the FBI gets what it considers ‘juicy stuff,’ not only criminal or terrorism related juicy, but even politically juicy stuff, it keeps, saves, shares and uses that information in various ways. It doesn’t matter whether the originator of the particular ‘juicy stuff’ is José the target or not. Please tell me you catch my drift!

Let me give you a real example of this. We, at FBI counterintelligence, had a certain foreign target we were monitoring 24/7 (all his/her communications). This target had intimate (financially, criminally, and in one case, sexually) relationships with several elected officials in the US Congress. The FBI had compiled thick files not only on the foreign target, but on every single congresswoman and congressman. And to add insult to injury, this was not done for the sake of justice and possible criminal prosecution, but for political leverage used in rainy days…A solid veteran FBI agent filed his documented complaint on these cases in 2001-2002:

The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) has obtained a copy of an official complaint filed by a veteran FBI Special Agent, Gilbert Graham, with the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (DOJ-OIG). SA Graham’s protected disclosures report the violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in conducting electronic surveillance of high-profile U.S. public officials.

Before his retirement in 2002, SA Gilbert Graham worked for the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) Squad NS-24. One of the main areas of Mr. Graham’s counterintelligence investigations involved espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States. On April 2, 2002, Graham filed with the DOJ-OIG a classified protected disclosure, which provided a detailed account of FISA violations involving misuse of FISA warrants to engage in domestic surveillance. In his unclassified report SA Graham states: “It is the complainant’s reasonable belief that the request for ELSUR [electronic surveillance] coverage was a subterfuge to collect evidentiary information concerning public corruption matters.” Graham blew the whistle on this illegal behavior, but the actions were covered up by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s office.

Click here to read the unclassified version of SA Graham’s Official Report.

…

Rubber-Stamping Judges does not necessarily mean ‘Crooked Judges.’

You are wrong. In most cases it does. I have another veteran FBI agent who spent 4 years of his/her early career as an agent tasked with running background checks on to-be-appointed federal judges. Not a single candidate judge whom this agent obtained and documented various nefarious activities and or background on was excluded from judgeship. According to him/her, the DOJ-FBI shied away from ‘quirky and squeaky clean’ candidates.

Speaking of crooked and or crooked-smelling judges, let me leave you with a real-life real-judge of our current Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court:

The judge who presided over the trial of vice presidential aide Lewis Libby has been appointed to the secret court that oversees U.S. intelligence wiretaps. Reggie Walton, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts effective May 19 [2007].

…

So who is this Judge Reggie Walton? Well, neither he nor the federal government wants you to know. They have ensured his not very ‘squeaky clean’ past remains a secret:

What do two of the biggest national-security news stories of the century — the Valerie Plame leak scandal and the legal case of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds — have in common?

They both are being presided over by the same federal judge in the District of Colombia, Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee to the federal court and a man who appears to have a few well-kept secrets of his own.

All federal judges are required under ethics rules to file what is known as “financial disclosure reports.”

The disclosure statement filed by Walton, which was obtained through the dogged efforts of a conservative watchdog group called Judicial Watch, is curious in what it does not reveal. Remember, this judge is arguably handling two of the most sensitive and potentially far-reaching challenges to the free press and the public’s right to know of our times. …

…

So given the high-stakes poker being played in both these cases, one civil and one criminal, why has no one in the establishment press bothered to ask what is contained in Judge Walton’s financial disclosure statement? After all, his investments and financial backers would be of keen interest in gauging his ability to hear these cases in an unbiased manner, right?

…

So Judge Walton seems to be in a critical role in serving as the point man in the federal judicial system for two explosive cases — the Edmonds civil case and Libby’s criminal case — both of which have vast implications for the White House and for the country in general.

So shouldn’t we know who’s buttering Walton’s bread in terms of financial backing? Why have ethics rules mandating such disclosures, if the information is not disclosed in cases, such as these, where the stakes are so high?

Well, it seems, at least according to the only document that Judicial Watch could shake loose in its public-records quest, that Walton doesn’t think so. His financial disclosure statement, the one released for public inspection through Judicial Watch, is completely redacted, every line of it.

Take a look here for yourself.

Now, ask yourself, why would that be, and what might lurk in the shadows of Judge Walton’s fiscal closet? If there nothing to hide, then there is nothing to lose by shedding some light on the retractions, is there?

…

I am going to answer one of Mr. Conroy’s excellent questions: “what might lurk in the shadows of Judge Walton’s fiscal closet?” My answer: It is exactly what it takes to be appointed to FISA Court as a judge
 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Today marks the end of week 1 of our online fundraising campaign. I am thankful to those of you who have kindly donated and helped with getting the word out. We have had contributions from 235 of you; thank you! We still have a long way to go to reach the first benchmark of 1000. As you can see I am counting the number of supporters rather than the dollar amount. For me, that is far more important, and that’s why no amount is considered too small; your willingness to support this site is what really counts. So please, let’s unite on this and take the countdown journey together. We need your help to get the word out and invite others to join this campaign. How hard is it to bring together 1000 or so members of the irate minority club?  We can do it!
 

Other Updates

Peter and I are scheduled to interview three exciting guests: Activist and the founder of Cryptome.Org, John Young, author and activist Naomi Wolf, and the Director of Project Censored, Peter Phillips.

Here is the latest from Jamiol’s World:
 

German company accused of drug smuggling in Afghanistan
Nancy Isenson, APN/AFP