14 ms·

Ex‐FBI operative says he worked to disrupt political activities up to '74 (1975)

232 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
After we wake up and stop playing this bizarre “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game with Trump, the hangover from what the FBI (and the CIA) did in OUR elections is going to be massive. Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again!
- tehjoker 6y ago
  It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals while their true nature is torturing people in dark rooms. 100% that if they were doing this stuff in 1974, they're still doing some version of it today.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals That's not a thing that actually happened - "liberals" don't trust the intelligence agencies any more or less than they did before Trump. And I don't know why this article has people suddenly running defense for Trump when it doesn't even mention him. But interesting play nonetheless.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      Remember all the intelligence people, like former CIA director Brennan that became MSNBC pundits? Remember the time they made a big deal of Trump offending the CIA in front of the wall of fallen heroes? For the record, I despise Trump. I am not defending him, but I don't like people thinking highly of the longstanding dark institutions that have been at the heart of American politics since WW2. Trump = Bad does not mean any other part of the American state is good.
      - stretchcat 6y ago
        The wall of fallen spooks.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        It's not just the intelligence agencies. Gallup polling shows liberals' trust in the media skyrocketed after Trump's election and has remained persistently high despite the whole Russiagate farce.
        triceratops 6y ago
        > Russiagate farce You mean when the DoJ indicted, charged, or successfully prosecuted a number of Russian nationals and members of the Trump administration for election-related crimes or obstruction of justice? That farce? Like someone said, "For a purported witchhunt, they sure found a lot of actual witches."
        AndrewBissell 6y ago
        If all that was on offer from the beginning was taking out a few lackeys like Manafort and Stone obviously it wouldn't have captured liberals' attention the way it did. They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin. It was a classic psychological deflection tactic on liberals' part, "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump." Even the New Yorker was finally forced to admit "maybe we went too far with this." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-med...
        triceratops 6y ago
        > They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin "It couldn't be proved to be bad as some people said" is not the same thing as "farce". The stuff that was proven was bad and illegal. The Mueller report concluded that there was some evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1] The investigation achieved multiple convictions and indictments. > "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump. It's not an either-or. Trump was only ever a competitive candidate due to real, deep problems and widespread disillusionment with the establishment. But it's also possible that Russian social media campaigns, the DNC email hacks, and the Comey letter tipped the scales (80k votes in 3 states) in his favor in 2016. We'll never really know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report_findings_compared_to_Barr_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
    - Zetaphor 6y ago
      James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump
      - munk-a 6y ago
        "among the left" is a really wide net to throw and I don't think it really does any favors to your statement to be so overly general. I think it's pretty much the mirror image of the Benghazi investigations. Some investigating needed to happen, but politics got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. This isn't particularly surprising since the US's two party system usually leads to extremely incompatible "truths" now that social media bubbles exist.
      - krapp 6y ago
        > James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump Because of their resistance to Trump. That doesn't translate to the left, in general, suddenly being in favor of and trusting the three letter agencies or the military industrial complex. You know, the side of the political spectrum with all of the anti-war protestors and socialists. The narrative is bizarre. Edit: never mind, I see this is about discrediting Russiagate for whatever reason, I get it now.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        Both of these guys have been involved in really shady stuff in America's past, they are career company men and never represented or mounted any real threat to Trump. Comey may even be a big part of how Trump even became POTUS in the first place.
      - bee_rider 6y ago
        "The left" is multiply defined. If you mean Democrats generally, the party has become the number one home of middle class people with college degrees. They are naturally going to be more comfortable with the FBI than, say, old school left wing labor activists. It seems less likely that opinions are changing, and more likely that people with certain opinions are moving.
      - 6y ago
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad. Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad. Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true. [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russian-bounty-program-corroborated/story?id=71694167 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russi...
      - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program
        AndrewBissell 6y ago
        The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
        cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
        I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions. WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money. And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade. But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right. Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Maybe, but news from 1975 that already was part of revelations of that nature that triggered their backlash, legislative responses, and every other kind of “hangover” they could, before many people voting today we're even born, probably aren't much of a factor in that except as precedent and context, not news or triggering events.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    If you thought it was bad in 1975, wait until you learn about the patriot act, FISA courts, and FVEYS!
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      There weren't “FISA courts” before the revelations in the 1970s because there was no judicial oversight or legal limits with penalties applied to surveillance by the national security apparatus at all. FISA, the courts it created, and the criminalization of domestic surveillance outside of specified limitations were part of the backlash against the abuses that were revealed in the mid-1970s.
      - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
        I miss the days when “wiretapping” someone literally required you to physically tap into a wire. It’s so much easier to do it now.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again. How about "make citing sources and referring explicitly to documented acts of corruption cool again."
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    My first experience being “black pilled” with the Russia hoax was finally getting to the bottom of what that whole “trump tower computer backchannel to Russian Alfa bank” thing was all about[1] (this link will not give you the answer, just allegations) As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be. Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident? Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again! 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russian-bank/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...
    - VintageCool 6y ago
      It was three servers doing DNS lookups on each other. One was Alfa Bank. One was in Trump Tower. One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
      - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
        You’re leaving out the crucial details as to why any DNS queries or connections were made, while also still clinging to some allusion of malfeasance. Also you might want to let Snopes know. They still have it as “unproven”
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    By this line of reasoning you would not have distrusted the FBI up until the moment these stories broke in the mid 70s, long after the point where that distrust would have been useful in the present moment.
not_a_moth 6y ago
> sham “revolutionary” front groups used to disrupt a variety of political activities in this country More recently, the riots leading up to 2020 election. Glad they mysteriously stopped now anyways.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tehjoker 6y ago
  It got cold out is the more obvious explanation. There's a reason they are called "hot summers" in the history books. However, there is an element of truth in the fact that the Biden campaign succeeded in coopting liberal civil rights people after the election. IMO they should continue to fight hard against state oppression, which will continue regardless of the face of power.
  - chokeartist 6y ago
    > It got cold out is the more obvious explanation. Right. Because if Trump won the cold would have curtailed rioting. Totally believable.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      That did take the heat off a lot too. Whatever happened after Trump won would probably last until temperatures fell to below freezing at which point only very committed people would be out there, which isn't the millions in the streets we saw over the summer. It's hard to say how much property destruction there might have been, but tbh I don't really care because property is replaceable.
  - tuesdayrain 6y ago
    Google trends shows major spikes in "black lives matter" searches around election time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=black%20lives%20matter https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... It's foolish to assume that is a coincidence.
zug_zug 6y ago
If it were up to me, I'd pass a law saying anybody hired by such agencies must take an oath to America, to report their bosses within the agency who violate morality, democracy, or legality, to an oversight court. Consider just for one moment how likely you would be to ask somebody to do something illegal if they have taken an oath to report you to an oversight body.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Don’t they already do?
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  While the title is about CIA, its actually a story about DOJ and FBI. [1] The rot runs pretty deep. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-coverup-targeted-a-whistle-blower https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...
- cies 6y ago
  They take oaths and break them. Oaths dont help. We need: less dark budgets, less people/positions "above the law", whistle blower protection programs for these heroes, and put people in jail who thought to be above the law (this never happened yet). You can go to jail for some weed, but executing evil-yet-state-sponsored atrocities is a serious career. Topsy turvy all the way.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I agree specifically with less people/positions "above the law" but it'll be rough. The law in this case is politics - it's whatever the people say it is - and the political system is terribly broken right now. I think it is still proper to move these agencies to have more civilian oversight but in the short term we're going to see a whole lot of abuse of the system until our representation can be fixed.
    - walshemj 6y ago
      Should have split the FBI into a federal police force (with much stricter limits) and a smaller mi5 equivalent.
HashThis 6y ago
And that was before the FBI had NSA's data on US citizens. The FBI's version of X-Keyscore has a different name.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  It's obvious these sorts of programs are still ongoing. Probably all that really came out of the Congressional inquiries in the 1970s was the development of better methods to keep them hidden from the public. We only know about COINTELPRO because some mysterious group of activists stole a bunch of the records from an FBI field office in Pennsylvania!
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    They aren't mysterious anymore, six members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI revealed themselves a few years ago.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      TIL! Kinda surprising none of them suffered any repercussions but I suppose enough time had passed it wasn't considered worth drawing attention to it.
      - pja 6y ago
        They were all retired IIRC & they waited until the statute of limitations for those crimes had passed before revealing themselves. So it would have been difficult for the government to meaningfully retaliate without making significant changes to the legal system & it's not exactly an episode that the government wanted to draw attention to. I suppose they could have gone for extra-legal methods, but after so much time the people with the motivation to make that happen (if it was possible at all) would have mostly retired too.
dundarious 6y ago
Somewhat famously, in an interview with BBC's Andrew Marr, Noam Chomsky[0] used COINTELPRO as an example of press subordination to power, by comparing their self-adulation over uncovering Watergate (an attack on 50% of corporate/state power, the Democrats) to their lack of reporting and even awareness of COINTELPRO (an attack on a wide variety of largely powerless social movements and civil liberties groups). Knowledge of COINTELPRO was only achieved thanks to the burglary of an FBI office, with documents mailed to major newspapers, and only the Washington Post willing to run the story. The burglars[1] revealed themselves[2] only recently. [0] https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961 https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-f...
- api 6y ago
  The fight against totalitarian communism is full of great examples of the principle that if you fight against an enemy there's a tendency to become that enemy. COINTELPRO is only one example. Another is the fact that we placed much of the US economy under at least indirect state control via the Cold War national security state in order to battle the evil of state controlled economies. I saw the same thing after 9/11 when there seemed to be a strong push for some kind of theocracy in the USA, albeit of a far lighter variety than was found in Afghanistan, and a general revival of ultra-right reactionary ideologies that somewhat resemble those of the 9/11 hijackers. We also surrendered a great deal of freedom (especially privacy) to battle those terrorists who supposedly hate our freedom. Edit: I can keep going... during WWII we put Japanese Americans in camps.
  - voodootrucker 6y ago
    Not sure why the down votes. I've been joking for a while I'd like to see a sitcom where the main characters are an Islamic and domestic terrorist living together in New York while they execute their plots. A terrorist "odd couple" if you will. I think the characters could bond over a lot of shared ideals, despite their superficial differences. (And of course they'd have to be incompetent or it wouldn't be a funny.)
ilaksh 6y ago
There's a phenomenon I have noticed where things like these are okay to discuss if they involve someone else's government or if they are far enough back in the past. But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories". It's just good to know that anything bad they were doing is over now. It must be. Because the US government, and all of its agencies and military actions, despite a few bad apples in the past, is trustworthy and true to the pure mission of democracy and freedom for all. And there are never any "means to an end" "ethical compromises" anymore. Other countries, sure. But ours? No, of course we rooted all of that out. Only the pure of heart survive here. The pure light of Democracy doesn't permit evil or corruption or subversion to survive. And anyone who suggests otherwise and makes a serious allegation against the government or admits a fundamental lack of trust for it, is definitely mentally ill and should be publicly noted as such. /s
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  > But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories". This is indeed a really interesting, perhaps even engineered, phenomenon. It's quite striking for example that people will clamor to have Confederate generals' or even George Washington's name removed from schools and public buildings, but don't bat an eye at having a major airport named after the Dulles brothers.
  - godelski 6y ago
    I think engineered outrage has been openly discussed for quite some time. America does it to its own people. Other nations do it to and about American citizens. And this isn't even remotely unique to America. Every major country plays the same game, just to different degrees (if anyone is aware of a major country that doesn't play this I'm honestly interested). Why would "trying to manipulate perception" be surprising for a country to do? Is that not what propaganda is at the root of it? Why wouldn't this idea also advance and get better? We've got native advertising, why not native propagandizing? (foreign and/or domestic) And why would America or China (insert enemy) be unique in using this tactic?
dukeofdoom 6y ago
They've done a great job with political prosecutions of Trump's inner circle and the people that helped to get him elected. Successful Prosecuted or Charged: Steve Bannon Michale Flyn Julian Assange Paul Manaford And Trump Himself (impeachment) Let that be a lesson to any future Populists!
- munk-a 6y ago
  I assume that was stated with heavy sarcasm since two of those people (Micheal Flynn + Paul Manafort) have already been pardoned[1] and none of them were either handed or likely to be handed serious sentences anyways. Michael Flynn is as close as you can get to a legit case of treason and his sentencing had already been kicked down the road several times. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executive_clemency_by_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...
  - dukeofdoom 6y ago
    Well actually, Flynn case was based on him lying to an FBI agent during a party. The case was pure entrapment. It was so bad, that eventually the government itself asked for the case to be dismissed. Then a partisan hack judge (Sullivan), decided that he was going to continue with the prosecution by appointing his own prosecutor (I kid you not). Watch a lawyer explain what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYdF4UvJf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYdF4UvJf0 More background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQG1lM0gvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQG1lM0gvU
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      > It was so bad, that eventually the government itself asked for the case to be dismissed. I'm sure that's why and not Flynn's relationship with the President...
      - dukeofdoom 6y ago
        If you think the courts are on Trump's side, you haven't been paying attention.
everdrive 6y ago
In this thread: >If they were doing this then, imagine what they're doing now! >[link to snowden wikipedia article] >I think all of them are breaking the law, despite the fact that I don't know how the law works.
PaulHoule 6y ago
That cointelpro method became the flamboyant sting directed at the mafia after illegal gambler j Edgar Hoover died and no longer covered for them.
honkycat 6y ago
You look around at the gig economy, our stagnant wages, our failing industrial sector, our hyper-militarized police force, and wonder "How did we get here?" I can tell you how we got here: COINTELPRO. The FBI's war on political freedom. I don't believe for a second it ever stopped, rather, they just found new euphemisms to use. I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics. The FBI and law enforcement agencies use federal funds to destabilize and destroy our worker and leftist movements over and over again. Progress cannot happen because whenever people begin to organize, their organizations are destroyed. Look at Occupy Wall Street, a valid movement protesting the bailing out of big, corrupt banking institutions while leaving the average person out to dry. They were maced, demeaned by the media, their organizers stalked and harassed by police organizations.
- fwsgonzo 6y ago
  I wonder if the number and size of the 3-letter agencies in the US make this a certainty simply because people want to have something to do. And they can't go after money, not even the IRS does that: https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics. It's important to realize that this isn't partisan behavior. They use the same tactics against anarchists and anti-authoritarians, or really any threat to institutional power. An obvious recent example on the other side being their campaign against Trump, e.g. Steele Dossier, and the apparently true Hunter Biden story being derided as "Russian disinformation" by "intelligence sources" in the run up to the election. Because Trump, for all his faults, was one of the most prominent threats to institutional power in recent history. And Trump sucks, let's be clear about that, but it's the same dynamic and it's important to see it for what it is even when it's being deployed against someone you don't like.
alsetmusic 6y ago
This type of behavior has resulted in an inquiry of long-term (up to five years at a time) police undercover work in the UK[0]. There is a short podcast series on the ways in which UC police wrecked the lives of women with whom they entered into long-term sexual relationships as part of their cover. Really unconscionable behavior by the state. The series is called Bed of Lies. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry
freen 6y ago
It is well known that the bulk of the budget for the American communist party was, and continues to be funded by CIA stooges’ dues.
baby 6y ago
Is there a good documentary on gov or political disruption as attacks?
- dundarious 6y ago
  There is a documentary about the burglars [0] who revealed COINTELPRO, called 1971 [1]. It's really an awful name for SEO! It was released in 2014 so searches for "1971 2014" might return useful results. Funnily enough, there is also a completely unrelated film called '71. Anyway, 1971 is more about the reveal of the program, so details about the program itself are secondary. I would love to see a documentary/drama series about UK agent provocateur, Bob Lambert [2]. > To gain credibility as an activist, he formed friendships with other movement members; he also embarked in long-term relationships with women as a means of establishing a cover story. He fathered a child with one of the activists he was spying on. > In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the 'McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from McDonald's Corporation that took ten years to resolve. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve... [1] https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/1971/ https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/1971/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police_officer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 6y ago
Isnt that just a bunch of conspiracy theories? Hanlons razor! Its just a few bad actors not systemic to the org. At least it stopped after the Church committee, because its impossible to keep a secret conspiracy secret. Its just a bunch of coincidences that aligned by chance. Did everyone here forget their tinfoil hat? We should censor such conspiracy craziness for the greater good, because the platforms are private and have every right to do so, also people who believe in conspiracy theories are mentally ill. Talk like this is just illogical people trying to put meaning to events that happen where there is none. Its not like there is cordination among rich and powerful groups of people to conspire against the people, thats just a cliched trope.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Conspiracy theory: Many crazy conspiracy theories are published and promoted by intelligence agencies to foster public distrust in the existence of actual conspiracies. Meanwhile many "crazy conspiracy theories" are based on a real conspiracy, so if QAnon is full of bullshit then Epstein is a non-story and anyone asking questions is a conspiracy nut.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    I think this is absolutely a real phenomenon. I've even witnessed liberals starting to make jokes about the Epstein case itself because they seem to be convinced that the idea it's anything more than one lone guy is crazy simply by association with QAnon. Jasun Horsley refers to QAnon and things like it as "conspiratainment" or "the second Matrix": essentially, since some people will unavoidably begin to perceive that the consensus reality is not what it seems to be, you set them up to enter a second one which is as much a hall of mirrors as the first. It's discussed a bit starting at 29:15 here: https://youtu.be/kpAbgKcG7mo?t=1755 https://youtu.be/kpAbgKcG7mo?t=1755
sacks2k 6y ago
When we have overwhelming evidence of fraud in the 2020 election and it's passed off as nothing, I really can't believe anything anymore, unless I see absolute truth (2020 election rules).
- ramphastidae 6y ago
  Citation needed.
  - sacks2k 6y ago
    I will give you this same response with pretty much everything from now on and I'm also going to use these same rules if I ever get Jury duty.

232 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

After we wake up and stop playing this bizarre “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game with Trump, the hangover from what the FBI (and the CIA) did in OUR elections is going to be massive. Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again!

tehjoker 6y ago
It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals while their true nature is torturing people in dark rooms. 100% that if they were doing this stuff in 1974, they're still doing some version of it today.
- krapp 6y ago
  >It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals That's not a thing that actually happened - "liberals" don't trust the intelligence agencies any more or less than they did before Trump. And I don't know why this article has people suddenly running defense for Trump when it doesn't even mention him. But interesting play nonetheless.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Remember all the intelligence people, like former CIA director Brennan that became MSNBC pundits? Remember the time they made a big deal of Trump offending the CIA in front of the wall of fallen heroes? For the record, I despise Trump. I am not defending him, but I don't like people thinking highly of the longstanding dark institutions that have been at the heart of American politics since WW2. Trump = Bad does not mean any other part of the American state is good.
    - stretchcat 6y ago
      The wall of fallen spooks.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      It's not just the intelligence agencies. Gallup polling shows liberals' trust in the media skyrocketed after Trump's election and has remained persistently high despite the whole Russiagate farce.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        > Russiagate farce You mean when the DoJ indicted, charged, or successfully prosecuted a number of Russian nationals and members of the Trump administration for election-related crimes or obstruction of justice? That farce? Like someone said, "For a purported witchhunt, they sure found a lot of actual witches."
        AndrewBissell 6y ago
        If all that was on offer from the beginning was taking out a few lackeys like Manafort and Stone obviously it wouldn't have captured liberals' attention the way it did. They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin. It was a classic psychological deflection tactic on liberals' part, "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump." Even the New Yorker was finally forced to admit "maybe we went too far with this." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-med...
        triceratops 6y ago
        > They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin "It couldn't be proved to be bad as some people said" is not the same thing as "farce". The stuff that was proven was bad and illegal. The Mueller report concluded that there was some evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1] The investigation achieved multiple convictions and indictments. > "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump. It's not an either-or. Trump was only ever a competitive candidate due to real, deep problems and widespread disillusionment with the establishment. But it's also possible that Russian social media campaigns, the DNC email hacks, and the Comey letter tipped the scales (80k votes in 3 states) in his favor in 2016. We'll never really know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report_findings_compared_to_Barr_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
  - Zetaphor 6y ago
    James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump
    - munk-a 6y ago
      "among the left" is a really wide net to throw and I don't think it really does any favors to your statement to be so overly general. I think it's pretty much the mirror image of the Benghazi investigations. Some investigating needed to happen, but politics got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. This isn't particularly surprising since the US's two party system usually leads to extremely incompatible "truths" now that social media bubbles exist.
    - krapp 6y ago
      > James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump Because of their resistance to Trump. That doesn't translate to the left, in general, suddenly being in favor of and trusting the three letter agencies or the military industrial complex. You know, the side of the political spectrum with all of the anti-war protestors and socialists. The narrative is bizarre. Edit: never mind, I see this is about discrediting Russiagate for whatever reason, I get it now.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      Both of these guys have been involved in really shady stuff in America's past, they are career company men and never represented or mounted any real threat to Trump. Comey may even be a big part of how Trump even became POTUS in the first place.
    - bee_rider 6y ago
      "The left" is multiply defined. If you mean Democrats generally, the party has become the number one home of middle class people with college degrees. They are naturally going to be more comfortable with the FBI than, say, old school left wing labor activists. It seems less likely that opinions are changing, and more likely that people with certain opinions are moving.
    - 6y ago
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad. Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad. Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true. [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russian-bounty-program-corroborated/story?id=71694167 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russi...
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
      - cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
        I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions. WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money. And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade. But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right. Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?
dragonwriter 6y ago
Maybe, but news from 1975 that already was part of revelations of that nature that triggered their backlash, legislative responses, and every other kind of “hangover” they could, before many people voting today we're even born, probably aren't much of a factor in that except as precedent and context, not news or triggering events.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  If you thought it was bad in 1975, wait until you learn about the patriot act, FISA courts, and FVEYS!
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    There weren't “FISA courts” before the revelations in the 1970s because there was no judicial oversight or legal limits with penalties applied to surveillance by the national security apparatus at all. FISA, the courts it created, and the criminalization of domestic surveillance outside of specified limitations were part of the backlash against the abuses that were revealed in the mid-1970s.
    - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      I miss the days when “wiretapping” someone literally required you to physically tap into a wire. It’s so much easier to do it now.
jancsika 6y ago
> Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again. How about "make citing sources and referring explicitly to documented acts of corruption cool again."
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  My first experience being “black pilled” with the Russia hoax was finally getting to the bottom of what that whole “trump tower computer backchannel to Russian Alfa bank” thing was all about[1] (this link will not give you the answer, just allegations) As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be. Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident? Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again! 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russian-bank/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...
  - VintageCool 6y ago
    It was three servers doing DNS lookups on each other. One was Alfa Bank. One was in Trump Tower. One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
    - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      You’re leaving out the crucial details as to why any DNS queries or connections were made, while also still clinging to some allusion of malfeasance. Also you might want to let Snopes know. They still have it as “unproven”
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  By this line of reasoning you would not have distrusted the FBI up until the moment these stories broke in the mid 70s, long after the point where that distrust would have been useful in the present moment.

not_a_moth 6y ago

> sham “revolutionary” front groups used to disrupt a variety of political activities in this country More recently, the riots leading up to 2020 election. Glad they mysteriously stopped now anyways.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tehjoker 6y ago
It got cold out is the more obvious explanation. There's a reason they are called "hot summers" in the history books. However, there is an element of truth in the fact that the Biden campaign succeeded in coopting liberal civil rights people after the election. IMO they should continue to fight hard against state oppression, which will continue regardless of the face of power.
- chokeartist 6y ago
  > It got cold out is the more obvious explanation. Right. Because if Trump won the cold would have curtailed rioting. Totally believable.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    That did take the heat off a lot too. Whatever happened after Trump won would probably last until temperatures fell to below freezing at which point only very committed people would be out there, which isn't the millions in the streets we saw over the summer. It's hard to say how much property destruction there might have been, but tbh I don't really care because property is replaceable.
- tuesdayrain 6y ago
  Google trends shows major spikes in "black lives matter" searches around election time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=black%20lives%20matter https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... It's foolish to assume that is a coincidence.

zug_zug 6y ago

If it were up to me, I'd pass a law saying anybody hired by such agencies must take an oath to America, to report their bosses within the agency who violate morality, democracy, or legality, to an oversight court. Consider just for one moment how likely you would be to ask somebody to do something illegal if they have taken an oath to report you to an oversight body.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Don’t they already do?
rmrfstar 6y ago
While the title is about CIA, its actually a story about DOJ and FBI. [1] The rot runs pretty deep. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-coverup-targeted-a-whistle-blower https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...
cies 6y ago
They take oaths and break them. Oaths dont help. We need: less dark budgets, less people/positions "above the law", whistle blower protection programs for these heroes, and put people in jail who thought to be above the law (this never happened yet). You can go to jail for some weed, but executing evil-yet-state-sponsored atrocities is a serious career. Topsy turvy all the way.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I agree specifically with less people/positions "above the law" but it'll be rough. The law in this case is politics - it's whatever the people say it is - and the political system is terribly broken right now. I think it is still proper to move these agencies to have more civilian oversight but in the short term we're going to see a whole lot of abuse of the system until our representation can be fixed.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Should have split the FBI into a federal police force (with much stricter limits) and a smaller mi5 equivalent.

HashThis 6y ago

And that was before the FBI had NSA's data on US citizens. The FBI's version of X-Keyscore has a different name.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
It's obvious these sorts of programs are still ongoing. Probably all that really came out of the Congressional inquiries in the 1970s was the development of better methods to keep them hidden from the public. We only know about COINTELPRO because some mysterious group of activists stole a bunch of the records from an FBI field office in Pennsylvania!
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  They aren't mysterious anymore, six members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI revealed themselves a few years ago.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    TIL! Kinda surprising none of them suffered any repercussions but I suppose enough time had passed it wasn't considered worth drawing attention to it.
    - pja 6y ago
      They were all retired IIRC & they waited until the statute of limitations for those crimes had passed before revealing themselves. So it would have been difficult for the government to meaningfully retaliate without making significant changes to the legal system & it's not exactly an episode that the government wanted to draw attention to. I suppose they could have gone for extra-legal methods, but after so much time the people with the motivation to make that happen (if it was possible at all) would have mostly retired too.

dundarious 6y ago

Somewhat famously, in an interview with BBC's Andrew Marr, Noam Chomsky[0] used COINTELPRO as an example of press subordination to power, by comparing their self-adulation over uncovering Watergate (an attack on 50% of corporate/state power, the Democrats) to their lack of reporting and even awareness of COINTELPRO (an attack on a wide variety of largely powerless social movements and civil liberties groups). Knowledge of COINTELPRO was only achieved thanks to the burglary of an FBI office, with documents mailed to major newspapers, and only the Washington Post willing to run the story. The burglars[1] revealed themselves[2] only recently. [0] https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961 https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-f...

api 6y ago
The fight against totalitarian communism is full of great examples of the principle that if you fight against an enemy there's a tendency to become that enemy. COINTELPRO is only one example. Another is the fact that we placed much of the US economy under at least indirect state control via the Cold War national security state in order to battle the evil of state controlled economies. I saw the same thing after 9/11 when there seemed to be a strong push for some kind of theocracy in the USA, albeit of a far lighter variety than was found in Afghanistan, and a general revival of ultra-right reactionary ideologies that somewhat resemble those of the 9/11 hijackers. We also surrendered a great deal of freedom (especially privacy) to battle those terrorists who supposedly hate our freedom. Edit: I can keep going... during WWII we put Japanese Americans in camps.
- voodootrucker 6y ago
  Not sure why the down votes. I've been joking for a while I'd like to see a sitcom where the main characters are an Islamic and domestic terrorist living together in New York while they execute their plots. A terrorist "odd couple" if you will. I think the characters could bond over a lot of shared ideals, despite their superficial differences. (And of course they'd have to be incompetent or it wouldn't be a funny.)

ilaksh 6y ago

There's a phenomenon I have noticed where things like these are okay to discuss if they involve someone else's government or if they are far enough back in the past. But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories". It's just good to know that anything bad they were doing is over now. It must be. Because the US government, and all of its agencies and military actions, despite a few bad apples in the past, is trustworthy and true to the pure mission of democracy and freedom for all. And there are never any "means to an end" "ethical compromises" anymore. Other countries, sure. But ours? No, of course we rooted all of that out. Only the pure of heart survive here. The pure light of Democracy doesn't permit evil or corruption or subversion to survive. And anyone who suggests otherwise and makes a serious allegation against the government or admits a fundamental lack of trust for it, is definitely mentally ill and should be publicly noted as such. /s

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories". This is indeed a really interesting, perhaps even engineered, phenomenon. It's quite striking for example that people will clamor to have Confederate generals' or even George Washington's name removed from schools and public buildings, but don't bat an eye at having a major airport named after the Dulles brothers.
- godelski 6y ago
  I think engineered outrage has been openly discussed for quite some time. America does it to its own people. Other nations do it to and about American citizens. And this isn't even remotely unique to America. Every major country plays the same game, just to different degrees (if anyone is aware of a major country that doesn't play this I'm honestly interested). Why would "trying to manipulate perception" be surprising for a country to do? Is that not what propaganda is at the root of it? Why wouldn't this idea also advance and get better? We've got native advertising, why not native propagandizing? (foreign and/or domestic) And why would America or China (insert enemy) be unique in using this tactic?

dukeofdoom 6y ago

They've done a great job with political prosecutions of Trump's inner circle and the people that helped to get him elected. Successful Prosecuted or Charged: Steve Bannon Michale Flyn Julian Assange Paul Manaford And Trump Himself (impeachment) Let that be a lesson to any future Populists!

munk-a 6y ago
I assume that was stated with heavy sarcasm since two of those people (Micheal Flynn + Paul Manafort) have already been pardoned[1] and none of them were either handed or likely to be handed serious sentences anyways. Michael Flynn is as close as you can get to a legit case of treason and his sentencing had already been kicked down the road several times. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executive_clemency_by_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...
- dukeofdoom 6y ago
  Well actually, Flynn case was based on him lying to an FBI agent during a party. The case was pure entrapment. It was so bad, that eventually the government itself asked for the case to be dismissed. Then a partisan hack judge (Sullivan), decided that he was going to continue with the prosecution by appointing his own prosecutor (I kid you not). Watch a lawyer explain what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYdF4UvJf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYdF4UvJf0 More background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQG1lM0gvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQG1lM0gvU
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    > It was so bad, that eventually the government itself asked for the case to be dismissed. I'm sure that's why and not Flynn's relationship with the President...
    - dukeofdoom 6y ago
      If you think the courts are on Trump's side, you haven't been paying attention.

everdrive 6y ago

In this thread: >If they were doing this then, imagine what they're doing now! >[link to snowden wikipedia article] >I think all of them are breaking the law, despite the fact that I don't know how the law works.

PaulHoule 6y ago

That cointelpro method became the flamboyant sting directed at the mafia after illegal gambler j Edgar Hoover died and no longer covered for them.

honkycat 6y ago

You look around at the gig economy, our stagnant wages, our failing industrial sector, our hyper-militarized police force, and wonder "How did we get here?" I can tell you how we got here: COINTELPRO. The FBI's war on political freedom. I don't believe for a second it ever stopped, rather, they just found new euphemisms to use. I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics. The FBI and law enforcement agencies use federal funds to destabilize and destroy our worker and leftist movements over and over again. Progress cannot happen because whenever people begin to organize, their organizations are destroyed. Look at Occupy Wall Street, a valid movement protesting the bailing out of big, corrupt banking institutions while leaving the average person out to dry. They were maced, demeaned by the media, their organizers stalked and harassed by police organizations.

fwsgonzo 6y ago
I wonder if the number and size of the 3-letter agencies in the US make this a certainty simply because people want to have something to do. And they can't go after money, not even the IRS does that: https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics. It's important to realize that this isn't partisan behavior. They use the same tactics against anarchists and anti-authoritarians, or really any threat to institutional power. An obvious recent example on the other side being their campaign against Trump, e.g. Steele Dossier, and the apparently true Hunter Biden story being derided as "Russian disinformation" by "intelligence sources" in the run up to the election. Because Trump, for all his faults, was one of the most prominent threats to institutional power in recent history. And Trump sucks, let's be clear about that, but it's the same dynamic and it's important to see it for what it is even when it's being deployed against someone you don't like.

alsetmusic 6y ago

This type of behavior has resulted in an inquiry of long-term (up to five years at a time) police undercover work in the UK[0]. There is a short podcast series on the ways in which UC police wrecked the lives of women with whom they entered into long-term sexual relationships as part of their cover. Really unconscionable behavior by the state. The series is called Bed of Lies. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry

freen 6y ago

It is well known that the bulk of the budget for the American communist party was, and continues to be funded by CIA stooges’ dues.

baby 6y ago

Is there a good documentary on gov or political disruption as attacks?

dundarious 6y ago
There is a documentary about the burglars [0] who revealed COINTELPRO, called 1971 [1]. It's really an awful name for SEO! It was released in 2014 so searches for "1971 2014" might return useful results. Funnily enough, there is also a completely unrelated film called '71. Anyway, 1971 is more about the reveal of the program, so details about the program itself are secondary. I would love to see a documentary/drama series about UK agent provocateur, Bob Lambert [2]. > To gain credibility as an activist, he formed friendships with other movement members; he also embarked in long-term relationships with women as a means of establishing a cover story. He fathered a child with one of the activists he was spying on. > In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the 'McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from McDonald's Corporation that took ten years to resolve. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve... [1] https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/1971/ https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/1971/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police_officer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 6y ago

Isnt that just a bunch of conspiracy theories? Hanlons razor! Its just a few bad actors not systemic to the org. At least it stopped after the Church committee, because its impossible to keep a secret conspiracy secret. Its just a bunch of coincidences that aligned by chance. Did everyone here forget their tinfoil hat? We should censor such conspiracy craziness for the greater good, because the platforms are private and have every right to do so, also people who believe in conspiracy theories are mentally ill. Talk like this is just illogical people trying to put meaning to events that happen where there is none. Its not like there is cordination among rich and powerful groups of people to conspire against the people, thats just a cliched trope.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Conspiracy theory: Many crazy conspiracy theories are published and promoted by intelligence agencies to foster public distrust in the existence of actual conspiracies. Meanwhile many "crazy conspiracy theories" are based on a real conspiracy, so if QAnon is full of bullshit then Epstein is a non-story and anyone asking questions is a conspiracy nut.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  I think this is absolutely a real phenomenon. I've even witnessed liberals starting to make jokes about the Epstein case itself because they seem to be convinced that the idea it's anything more than one lone guy is crazy simply by association with QAnon. Jasun Horsley refers to QAnon and things like it as "conspiratainment" or "the second Matrix": essentially, since some people will unavoidably begin to perceive that the consensus reality is not what it seems to be, you set them up to enter a second one which is as much a hall of mirrors as the first. It's discussed a bit starting at 29:15 here: https://youtu.be/kpAbgKcG7mo?t=1755 https://youtu.be/kpAbgKcG7mo?t=1755

sacks2k 6y ago

When we have overwhelming evidence of fraud in the 2020 election and it's passed off as nothing, I really can't believe anything anymore, unless I see absolute truth (2020 election rules).

ramphastidae 6y ago
Citation needed.
- sacks2k 6y ago
  I will give you this same response with pretty much everything from now on and I'm also going to use these same rules if I ever get Jury duty.