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The FBI tried to ambush my source

zionic 4y ago
It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side. Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society. Edit: To expound upon this further, I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security. We can debate where those lines are all day, but the heuristic should always favor freedom/lack of control over totalitarian surveillance. This unfortunately means that some bad things are effectively “allowed” to happen, because the trade off required to eliminate them is too severe. Edit 2: I can’t reply to any of you anymore due to the rate limit soft ban. I wish you all well. I’ll try and reply later.
- My70thaccount 4y ago
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- mistrial9 4y ago
  ok but those agencies look for enemies, and you have just made yourself one, and anyone else that agrees with you essentially, by the conflict "us or them" language. Real reform has many avenues, but none of those include becoming like your own enemy, and vilifying the job. I am not a fan and not making excuses, but the wording here is impossible to agree with, except to start some kind of riot?
  - zionic 4y ago
    > but the wording here is impossible to agree with Why? You haven’t disagreed with my argument, only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit and hope for incremental improvements by submitting extra hard. These agencies only exist and operate (in theory) with the consent of the governed. In reality almost no one consents to this, so these agencies rely on mass apathy and ignorance. If we talk about what they’ve done wrong, and how they actively harm America a few things happen: 1) it becomes less socially acceptable to work for them, and they struggle to attract talent 2) it becomes more politically feasible to argue for their removal The us-vs-them language is a feature, not a bug. People in large groups are (mostly) incapable of being both passionate and nuanced on the same subject. So sure, bringing up the children murdered by FBI and ATF at Waco doesn’t directly relate to ending mass illegal surveillance but it does help achieve the goal.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      > only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit that is most definitely not what I said at all
    - donthellbanme 4y ago
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once thought possible.
  - zionic 4y ago
    Are you not convinced this is correct, or not convinced it’s an American viewpoint? You could argue you disagree with the concept, but I don’t think you could honestly argue it’s not a traditionally American position.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      I suppose I'm not even sure it is an American position. If it ever was, I don't think it is now, or has been for several generations. We're not farmers or fur traders anymore — we have complex and large societies. Honestly I think trying to suggest anything is "an American viewpoint" dismisses too much nuance. We're neither all cut from the same cloth nor are our origins similar.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    as a many-generation American, I believe that the great compromise here was to find some balance, where strong law-and-order can exist, and free-as-in-freedom can also exist.. There is no scenario, I think, where either side does not fail and suffer from their own excesses over time.. so the trick is to address that as the parade continues.. Yes, we do remember Watergate.
  - rzz3 4y ago
    Or perhaps you’re just getting older, and your income level is rising, and you don’t operate near any edges of the bounds of the law. Due to your perspective, freedom may have become less important that security. Of course there is always a balance to be found, and everyone’s perspective is different, but personally I’m a 1 or a 2 in the `freedom |—————| safety` scale.
- tastyfreeze 4y ago
  The FBI has been an enemy of the people since its creation. Throughout its history it has wholesale spied on the public, collected dirt on political opponents and has been used to discredit dissidents. This agency is used solely to protect power. Their stated mission is ancillary to the true purpose. With a history like that the whole agency should be disbanded. But, power will find another way to legally spy on opponents. Before the FBI it was secret service agents that were loaned out for that kind of work.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I generally agree with your statement, but there is an additional function of agencies like the FBI (no, it's not to do with their PR campaigns on catching serial killers and child abuse rings). It's best explained by looking at the behavior of the US pharmaceutical corporations relative to outfits like Mexican and South American drug cartels. Both engage in the same business: selling drugs to consumers, but one is extremely violent, one is not. Most of the violence in the illegal drug trade is cartel-on-cartel violence, with a fair amount of innocent bystanders. Imagine if say, Purdue Pharma or Gilead were conducting armed raids on each other production lines, hijacking each others shipments, etc. Similarly, what if a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson were to abscond with millions of dollars in product and set up a rival operation? These corporations are all ultimately owned by Wall Street investors, by and large. This is who the FBI is there to serve and protect, a lot of people misunderstand that. They prevent such shenanigans as the drug cartels get up to (wholesale murder I mean) by investigating internal corporate crimes of that nature. Otherwise, the CEOs would be hiring private security (like cartel enforcers) to crack down on such things, in a extrajudicial process. The FBI also covers for the crimes of the mighty and powerful, too - HSBC laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa cartel drug money comes to mind, and then future FBI Director James Comey went to 'advise' them. No criminal charges were brought. If we look at Wall Street as a kind of white-collar organized crime ring, the FBI is basically their enforcement arm. This is why so many top top-level FBI types 'retire' to lucrative positions in Wall Street firms, as Mueller did. It's a rather telling trend. I suppose the kind of political operations they get up to are also in service of this general agenda, i.e. going after politicians who threaten Wall Street interests, covering up certain outrageous crimes that would reflect badly on the pillars of society, and so on. Overall, rather similar in function to the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo (and later, STASI), although not quite as powerful (they still can be embarrassed in legal proceedings, see the Steven Hatfill case, the Leonard Peltier case, etc.). So, they serve a particular function for their Wall Street masters, but it's a pretty sleazy world they live in, and nobody should trust them anymore than you'd trust some STASI operative.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  What do you mean "tolerate". There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    > There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency. Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases that don’t attract as much of a visocus response end with the cops getting away with gunning people down who we’re even criminals
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      Convicting an unpopular guy is easy. Shutting down a government institution is not. Even Obama failed to shut down Gitmo, despite being the most powerful person in the country for 10 years.
      - Volundr 4y ago
        Did he try? I always counted it among many broken promises never even attempted.
        snovv_crash 4y ago
        It was the first thing he tried, and he was blocked by Congress who refused to fund the shutdown operation.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        That looked to me like providing cover for not performing. All the evidence suggests Obama was Their Man from the beginning. (E.g. expanding "death from the sky" program -- even against a US citizen and his children, weaponizing Espionage Act against reporters & whistleblowers.) Most interesting to me is how They arranged to get him a Nobel Peace prize for nothing. (They got one for Kissinger, too!)
- markovbot 4y ago
  > It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful recourse against the myriad of government abuses.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    I think if a well organized and coordinated initiative began where people talked about it in a skillful manner, and documented the outcomes of those conversations, something could come out of that. Unorganized, uncoordinated complaining on various internet forums, it seems not much comes out of this.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    We have the courts, the threat of which forced the government to make the only illegal program in Snowden's leaks legal. We have the ballot box, which elected Obama, who shut down email metadata surveillance even before it leaked.
    - krapp 4y ago
      Also that Second Amendment we all have to pay for with our childrens' blood in perpetuity. That's supposed to be the only thing keeping our government from slipping into tyranny. Despite all the tyranny our government has apparently slipped into.
zarriak 4y ago
It is crazy to think that such little progress was made after Snowden that it is not even slightly off to think that even Snowden didn’t depict the true vastness of the power of the NSA.
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- the_only_law 4y ago
  The stuff 3-letter agencies have gotten away with over the last century is insane. The NSA is a popular one to talk about now for good reasons but another one that always leaves me feeling angry is MKUltra and how the CIA basically tortured US citizens for science, Richard Helms destroyed evidence and died a free man. And we just seem to look back at it say “yeah these were bad people” and let it happen again. In the end the only people being held responsible for anything seem to be the people who warn us and let us know.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    The biggest lie about MK-ULTRA is that it ended. Second biggest is what it was about. It was a PSY-OP against the US public. The stories, about e.g. spying via ESP, were false. They are still believed by most who have heard of the code name and supposed investigation. So, a successful operation against us.
GiorgioG 4y ago
I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side. I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
- y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
  I think deep down, many people in those camps realize it, but it's a very tough pill to swallow. Particularly if one is not equipped to mentally handle the hard emotions. These realizations amplify that feeling of helplessness.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Exactly, we aren't talking about the ways these parties are different, we're fully aware of that, we are talking about the ways these parties are the same. When we say "both sides" or "both sides are the same" we are talking about the ways in which they are the same, and that these ways are problematic and bothersome. Its as valid of a stance, for an individual, as a different individual choosing to privilege a way in which one party is different.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Why else do you think career politicians from across the spectrum, from liberal Gavin Newsom to conservative Ron DeSantis, have worked hard to explicitly block ranked choice voting reforms? Not just voice their opinions against it, but proactively halt and override legislative reforms when they happen. The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of political involvement. "It's a big club, and you're not in it." -- George Carlin
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Single-winner ranked ballots methods are reform theater; they aren't particularly “more fair and inclusive” that FPTP in general, and the particular method called “Ranked Choice Voting”, “Alternative Vote”, or “Instant Runoff Voting” in particular is only minimally different in structure and effect from majority-runoff. Established elites make a show of opposing IRV/AV/RCV because centering the debate on that focusses attention there rather than on real reform, which requires systems that produce proportional results.
robonerd 4y ago
> [the lawyer] told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. [...] The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. [...] While the FBI knows who the lawyer is, I will not name him, even though he betrayed me.) Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and the story unresolved without knowing who it was.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  > Why protect this asshole? Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes to constitute “betrayal” in the future. Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic signalling to future sources.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    You'd trust this guy?! He has spooks crawling all over him. This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source, and the journalist won't even name that lawyer. An NSA/TLA/etc leaker would need a death wish to approach this journalist now, having read this story.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source The lawyer introduced the journalist to the source. So at the very least, the source seems to have trusted the lawyer too. It also sounds like the lawyer provided the journalist with the audio recordings of phone calls about the ambush.
      - robonerd 4y ago
        The source coming from and trusting the lawyer doesn't change the fact that the lawyer was informing to the FBI and was an associate to this journalist. > Eventually, he confessed to me that the FBI had been waiting in Bruges to trap my source. He said that the FBI knew about the meeting because he had told them about it, and that he had also told the FBI that the source wanted to provide me with NSA documents. He admitted that he had been informing on me. The journalist has spooks all over him. Whatever you think of the journalist's intentions, you'd have to be a complete fool to get near him. At least he's been honest about this much, so future leakers will be forewarned.
ratsmack 4y ago
The corruption is deep and wide within our government (deep state?) and it doesn't matter which political faction is in power. The attack on the dissemination of information and transparency seems to be accelerating every day. It's almost as if there is something to hide... as if the only way to maintain a position of power is to obfuscate, lie and and deflect at every point a question is asked.
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tgv 4y ago
The piece is pretty vacuous. It lacks so much information, it reads as a made-up story. Does anybody know what documents he’s talking about?
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  He admits himself there may have never been documents. I don't think it reads as made up, but it really does seem like there's not really anything there. A meeting that did not happen with someone that may or may not have had something....
  - jmprspret 4y ago
    If anything I hope it was just a ploy by the lawyer to troll the FBI and waste some time and resources.
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- tootie 4y ago
  It's surprising to see Risen write for The Intercept but honestly this piece would probably not get printed by NYT. It's definitely an incomplete story without any conclusive proof of who did what or why and is something of a personal narrative. I guess Risen just wanted this on the record somewhere since people were telling their side of the story elsewhere.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Risen said the NYT killed his story about the CIA, which was later published in his book and caused the Obama administration to subpoena him for his sources.
jessaustin 4y ago
"whole" story There doesn't seem to be any reason to credit any particular novel detail in this... whatever this is. The details already related in Schmidt's book could be believed, I guess, but basically just amount to "FBI boondoggle to Europe". Wow that's news. We're not told who the go-between was, who the various parties in Belgium were, anything at all about why anyone believed "the source" was worth thinking about or even existed. It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. [EDIT: removed dumb question] At the time he may have been an FBI agent, though he also appears to be a documentary filmmaker and lawyer. DDG seems to believe he is associated with various IMDB entries, but that association has been deleted from IMDB. Risen's relationship with FBI is not as adversarial as portrayed here. No matter how he deflects, it seems unlikely to distract from the poor publicity FBI have recently. One suspects the real news, which if anything about this is true we'll learn years from now, is the identity of the go-between.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. Are we sure he was an FBI agent? There's a reference to court testimony by FBI agent Grayden Ridd in this 2013 story about Robert McFarlane (of Iran-Contra infamy). https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-sudan/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-sudan/index.html (I somehow didn't see in the news that McFarlane died last month.)
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    Good catch!
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
FBI tried to ambush a suspected criminal* I don't understand the controversy.
- lapcat 4y ago
  FBI tried to ambush a whistleblower. You can say that whistleblowing is a crime, but what if the whistleblower has evidence of even greater crimes being committed? That makes the ambush a cover-up.
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  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    > but what if That's kind of the issue though. We don't in fact know what the source really had. Was it legal or illegal? Who knows?
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Well, the reporter claims to have audio recordings of plans for the ambush (presumably, recordings reviewed by the reporter's editors at least), and the FBI apparently considered it important enough to send a whole big team to Belgium. Who knows if the source had anything, but it seems the FBI was very worried.
      - JKCalhoun 4y ago
        I agree with that – that it seemed to motivate the FBI. At the same time, we all know the FBI has been wrong before though, so I remain unconvinced that their urgency reflects the truthfulness of the claim.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    There are legal whistleblowing avenues and protections. Nowhere does it say to give classified material to the press. Maybe they tried that already and the reporter was a last resort. That's still a criminal act and it's the FBI's job to go after these things. I just don't see what the big deal is.
ajross 4y ago
I'm not really understanding what the newsworthy bits here are. There's an implication that this source had some kind of huge trove of data, but the reporter never got it and that's not what the story is about. Instead, this story alleges: (1) the reporter planned to meet with a source to get a classified leak, (2) the FBI got wind of it, and (3) they planned what amounts to a sting operation (I guess, it's complicated because this was in France) to catch the leaker. That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. Beyond that there's some juicy details about the lawyer who originally ratted on the source and then got cold feet and warned the reporter. And that's interesting. But... there's no government abuse angle here, not without knowing the contents of that leak that didn't happen.
- alaricus 4y ago
- lapcat 4y ago
  > That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. Ask yourself if the FBI is investigating the NSA. Did the FBI investigate the NSA before Snowden? You can enforce the law very selectively, prosecuting whistleblowers who are trying to reveal evidence of crimes committed by the government itself.
- zionic 4y ago
  > That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. I’m not sure this is true, considering the programs in the “leak” might themselves be illegal. The problem with your position is it allows the following loop: Government makes it illegal to report government crime, then government commits crime. You can’t report the crime without breaking the law, so the government effectively is bound by no law. How do you break this cycle? The only solution is to have it such that reporting a crime cannot itself be a crime, classification or otherwise.
  - jameshart 4y ago
hhh 4y ago
http://archive.today/v1271 http://archive.today/v1271
chatmasta 4y ago
In Bruges is a fantastic film, one of my favorites as well, and makes for a poignant backdrop to this story, wherein the reporter unknowingly manifests its plot from his semi-ironic suggestion of meeting there. The imagery of the FBI guys waiting around in Bruges is just too perfect. Life imitates art.
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  As I prepared to travel to Bruges, I tried to take a few precautions to avoid detection. I planned to fly from Washington to Paris, then pay cash for a train ticket to Bruges. I hoped that would reduce the digital evidence of my travel. I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and all that.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  I was about to say that, but you beat me to it. > The FBI team in Bruges waited and waited, according to the lawyer, frustrated and in vain.
- gilleain 4y ago
  Hopefully they got to see the swans. Like a fairytale, really. More seriously, what appeals to me about films like that is how 'real life' crime (as far as I can know) is not like a glamourised action movie. It is more haphazard, and contingent on personal decisions and people's character flaws. For me, the line 'I am sorry I called you an inanimate object. I was upset' is more real than any number of Godfather movies.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
It is a fascinating read. Still, I am not sure if it is a good sign that the story presented, if true, seems more intriguing than average "Blacklist" episode. I would normally default to blaming X ( in this case Holder, Pompeo and Trump as they are named in the story ), but the reality is those are just people, who just happened to use that power. The issue is that unchecked power apparently will exist until a truly unscrupulous man uses it to his advantage ( if that did not happen already ).
- crayboff 4y ago
  As much as I enjoy blaming the Trump administration, this story didn't actually name Trump/Holder/Pompeo. This all happened under Obama's admin with Comey Your point still stands though regardless
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    It is possible that I was not sufficiently clear with the way I phrased it; I apologize for that. The story of this particular case technically does not involve Trump or Pompeo. The linked article, however, does list the following paragraph: "The Trump administration went to even greater extremes than its predecessor to target the press. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly considered kidnapping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who at the time was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Yahoo News reported last September that former President Donald Trump even raised the possibility of assassinating Assange. Pompeo was reportedly obsessed with targeting Assange after a massive leak of CIA hacking tools, known as Vault 7. WikiLeaks published Vault 7 documents in 2017, revealing that the CIA had the ability to hack the computer systems built into a wide range of consumer products, including cars, televisions, and home appliances. In April 2017, Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.”"
    - crayboff 4y ago
      Thanks for the clarification, I interpreted your original post as referring to the story and not the side note about Assange.
Zariel 4y ago
Not far off Burn After Reading
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arminiusreturns 4y ago
The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter Biden laptop story. [1] Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started informing on him, but an educated guess would say he always was! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first place? (source didn't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!) Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI. Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be considered useless as journalist. For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it started and he was always raked across the coals in the now disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a shadow of it's former self. 1. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-bide...
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slim 4y ago
Whistleblower POV : Reporter chose a strange meeting place in a strange town in a strange country in europe. When I got there it was full of FBI agents, so I walked away. Reporter set me up and then made up a story about a lawyer.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  The Intercept has burned sources before (Reality Winner and maybe others), so I don't see why any actual whistleblower would trust them at this point.
  - slim 4y ago
    Reporter was working for New York Times a the time. I suppose New York Times also burned sources, so your argument is still valid.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    Especially after what The Intercept did to its founder.
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nullc 4y ago
I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie my ass off every day'". From personal experience being targeted with harassment and vexatious litigation by a fantasist conman, many of his victims and enablers will sometimes admit he often lies or 'exaggerates', but the reality is that he virtually always lies, that his documents are either completely uninteresting but misrepresented or interesting but obvious forgeries. When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. Risen's description-- including features like the corrupted USB stick-- resonate for me.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. Except that Risen said he already met the source. The ambush was for their follow-up meeting.
  - nullc 4y ago
    I saw that he said "met" but was the "met" online? I had been leaning towards assuming it was. If they'd met in person why were they traveling to a far off country?
  - rendaw 4y ago
    The question isn't whether the human exists, but whether the human had any information. Even if the source wasn't in on it, he could have been lead on by the lawyer.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.
trhway 4y ago
> Later, he split his time between the United States and Europe; he told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. >The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service. >the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious that it had been put in writing beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA illegal spying ..." or something like that :)
ineedasername 4y ago
TLDR: the FBI was trying to catch some in the act of commiting a crime. This seems fine. A separate issue mentioned, but was a completely separate event, was the DOJ trying to force the journalist into revealing a different source in a different leak. This does not seem fine, but it also failed
asimpleusecase 4y ago
The story reads like a diversion tactic. What proof is there that there was an FBI team waiting around? A compromised source (the unnamed lawyer) introduces a juicy lead just a the peek of other litigation in the reporters life. But the juicy lead comes of nothing. Don’t have any way to know if there was anything real behind it. A confusing hall of mirrors emerged where the reporter was going to a meeting arranged by a source compromised by the FBI and then canceled in effect by the same person. Reads like diversion and playing psyops on the reporter.
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  To me it seems this whole story is based on the "adrenaline junky" lawyer who is also an established liar. He could have just made up the juicy leak and then chicken out when he would have to deliver. So he sent an anonymous mail and later made up the FBI story. Lots of smoke and mirrors but in the end all of it could be explained by one guy with nothing to show for trying to get some fame through the journalist.

It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side. Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society. Edit: To expound upon this further, I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security. We can debate where those lines are all day, but the heuristic should always favor freedom/lack of control over totalitarian surveillance. This unfortunately means that some bad things are effectively “allowed” to happen, because the trade off required to eliminate them is too severe. Edit 2: I can’t reply to any of you anymore due to the rate limit soft ban. I wish you all well. I’ll try and reply later.

My70thaccount 4y ago
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mistrial9 4y ago
ok but those agencies look for enemies, and you have just made yourself one, and anyone else that agrees with you essentially, by the conflict "us or them" language. Real reform has many avenues, but none of those include becoming like your own enemy, and vilifying the job. I am not a fan and not making excuses, but the wording here is impossible to agree with, except to start some kind of riot?
- zionic 4y ago
  > but the wording here is impossible to agree with Why? You haven’t disagreed with my argument, only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit and hope for incremental improvements by submitting extra hard. These agencies only exist and operate (in theory) with the consent of the governed. In reality almost no one consents to this, so these agencies rely on mass apathy and ignorance. If we talk about what they’ve done wrong, and how they actively harm America a few things happen: 1) it becomes less socially acceptable to work for them, and they struggle to attract talent 2) it becomes more politically feasible to argue for their removal The us-vs-them language is a feature, not a bug. People in large groups are (mostly) incapable of being both passionate and nuanced on the same subject. So sure, bringing up the children murdered by FBI and ATF at Waco doesn’t directly relate to ending mass illegal surveillance but it does help achieve the goal.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit that is most definitely not what I said at all
  - donthellbanme 4y ago
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once thought possible.
- zionic 4y ago
  Are you not convinced this is correct, or not convinced it’s an American viewpoint? You could argue you disagree with the concept, but I don’t think you could honestly argue it’s not a traditionally American position.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    I suppose I'm not even sure it is an American position. If it ever was, I don't think it is now, or has been for several generations. We're not farmers or fur traders anymore — we have complex and large societies. Honestly I think trying to suggest anything is "an American viewpoint" dismisses too much nuance. We're neither all cut from the same cloth nor are our origins similar.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  as a many-generation American, I believe that the great compromise here was to find some balance, where strong law-and-order can exist, and free-as-in-freedom can also exist.. There is no scenario, I think, where either side does not fail and suffer from their own excesses over time.. so the trick is to address that as the parade continues.. Yes, we do remember Watergate.
- rzz3 4y ago
  Or perhaps you’re just getting older, and your income level is rising, and you don’t operate near any edges of the bounds of the law. Due to your perspective, freedom may have become less important that security. Of course there is always a balance to be found, and everyone’s perspective is different, but personally I’m a 1 or a 2 in the `freedom |—————| safety` scale.
tastyfreeze 4y ago
The FBI has been an enemy of the people since its creation. Throughout its history it has wholesale spied on the public, collected dirt on political opponents and has been used to discredit dissidents. This agency is used solely to protect power. Their stated mission is ancillary to the true purpose. With a history like that the whole agency should be disbanded. But, power will find another way to legally spy on opponents. Before the FBI it was secret service agents that were loaned out for that kind of work.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I generally agree with your statement, but there is an additional function of agencies like the FBI (no, it's not to do with their PR campaigns on catching serial killers and child abuse rings). It's best explained by looking at the behavior of the US pharmaceutical corporations relative to outfits like Mexican and South American drug cartels. Both engage in the same business: selling drugs to consumers, but one is extremely violent, one is not. Most of the violence in the illegal drug trade is cartel-on-cartel violence, with a fair amount of innocent bystanders. Imagine if say, Purdue Pharma or Gilead were conducting armed raids on each other production lines, hijacking each others shipments, etc. Similarly, what if a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson were to abscond with millions of dollars in product and set up a rival operation? These corporations are all ultimately owned by Wall Street investors, by and large. This is who the FBI is there to serve and protect, a lot of people misunderstand that. They prevent such shenanigans as the drug cartels get up to (wholesale murder I mean) by investigating internal corporate crimes of that nature. Otherwise, the CEOs would be hiring private security (like cartel enforcers) to crack down on such things, in a extrajudicial process. The FBI also covers for the crimes of the mighty and powerful, too - HSBC laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa cartel drug money comes to mind, and then future FBI Director James Comey went to 'advise' them. No criminal charges were brought. If we look at Wall Street as a kind of white-collar organized crime ring, the FBI is basically their enforcement arm. This is why so many top top-level FBI types 'retire' to lucrative positions in Wall Street firms, as Mueller did. It's a rather telling trend. I suppose the kind of political operations they get up to are also in service of this general agenda, i.e. going after politicians who threaten Wall Street interests, covering up certain outrageous crimes that would reflect badly on the pillars of society, and so on. Overall, rather similar in function to the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo (and later, STASI), although not quite as powerful (they still can be embarrassed in legal proceedings, see the Steven Hatfill case, the Leonard Peltier case, etc.). So, they serve a particular function for their Wall Street masters, but it's a pretty sleazy world they live in, and nobody should trust them anymore than you'd trust some STASI operative.
missedthecue 4y ago
What do you mean "tolerate". There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency. Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases that don’t attract as much of a visocus response end with the cops getting away with gunning people down who we’re even criminals
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Convicting an unpopular guy is easy. Shutting down a government institution is not. Even Obama failed to shut down Gitmo, despite being the most powerful person in the country for 10 years.
    - Volundr 4y ago
      Did he try? I always counted it among many broken promises never even attempted.
      - snovv_crash 4y ago
        It was the first thing he tried, and he was blocked by Congress who refused to fund the shutdown operation.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        That looked to me like providing cover for not performing. All the evidence suggests Obama was Their Man from the beginning. (E.g. expanding "death from the sky" program -- even against a US citizen and his children, weaponizing Espionage Act against reporters & whistleblowers.) Most interesting to me is how They arranged to get him a Nobel Peace prize for nothing. (They got one for Kissinger, too!)
markovbot 4y ago
> It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful recourse against the myriad of government abuses.
- mistermann 4y ago
  I think if a well organized and coordinated initiative began where people talked about it in a skillful manner, and documented the outcomes of those conversations, something could come out of that. Unorganized, uncoordinated complaining on various internet forums, it seems not much comes out of this.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  We have the courts, the threat of which forced the government to make the only illegal program in Snowden's leaks legal. We have the ballot box, which elected Obama, who shut down email metadata surveillance even before it leaked.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Also that Second Amendment we all have to pay for with our childrens' blood in perpetuity. That's supposed to be the only thing keeping our government from slipping into tyranny. Despite all the tyranny our government has apparently slipped into.

zarriak 4y ago

It is crazy to think that such little progress was made after Snowden that it is not even slightly off to think that even Snowden didn’t depict the true vastness of the power of the NSA.

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the_only_law 4y ago
The stuff 3-letter agencies have gotten away with over the last century is insane. The NSA is a popular one to talk about now for good reasons but another one that always leaves me feeling angry is MKUltra and how the CIA basically tortured US citizens for science, Richard Helms destroyed evidence and died a free man. And we just seem to look back at it say “yeah these were bad people” and let it happen again. In the end the only people being held responsible for anything seem to be the people who warn us and let us know.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The biggest lie about MK-ULTRA is that it ended. Second biggest is what it was about. It was a PSY-OP against the US public. The stories, about e.g. spying via ESP, were false. They are still believed by most who have heard of the code name and supposed investigation. So, a successful operation against us.

GiorgioG 4y ago

I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side. I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
I think deep down, many people in those camps realize it, but it's a very tough pill to swallow. Particularly if one is not equipped to mentally handle the hard emotions. These realizations amplify that feeling of helplessness.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Exactly, we aren't talking about the ways these parties are different, we're fully aware of that, we are talking about the ways these parties are the same. When we say "both sides" or "both sides are the same" we are talking about the ways in which they are the same, and that these ways are problematic and bothersome. Its as valid of a stance, for an individual, as a different individual choosing to privilege a way in which one party is different.
anonporridge 4y ago
Why else do you think career politicians from across the spectrum, from liberal Gavin Newsom to conservative Ron DeSantis, have worked hard to explicitly block ranked choice voting reforms? Not just voice their opinions against it, but proactively halt and override legislative reforms when they happen. The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of political involvement. "It's a big club, and you're not in it." -- George Carlin
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  Single-winner ranked ballots methods are reform theater; they aren't particularly “more fair and inclusive” that FPTP in general, and the particular method called “Ranked Choice Voting”, “Alternative Vote”, or “Instant Runoff Voting” in particular is only minimally different in structure and effect from majority-runoff. Established elites make a show of opposing IRV/AV/RCV because centering the debate on that focusses attention there rather than on real reform, which requires systems that produce proportional results.

robonerd 4y ago

> [the lawyer] told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. [...] The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. [...] While the FBI knows who the lawyer is, I will not name him, even though he betrayed me.) Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and the story unresolved without knowing who it was.

alasdair_ 4y ago
> Why protect this asshole? Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes to constitute “betrayal” in the future. Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic signalling to future sources.
- robonerd 4y ago
  You'd trust this guy?! He has spooks crawling all over him. This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source, and the journalist won't even name that lawyer. An NSA/TLA/etc leaker would need a death wish to approach this journalist now, having read this story.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source The lawyer introduced the journalist to the source. So at the very least, the source seems to have trusted the lawyer too. It also sounds like the lawyer provided the journalist with the audio recordings of phone calls about the ambush.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      The source coming from and trusting the lawyer doesn't change the fact that the lawyer was informing to the FBI and was an associate to this journalist. > Eventually, he confessed to me that the FBI had been waiting in Bruges to trap my source. He said that the FBI knew about the meeting because he had told them about it, and that he had also told the FBI that the source wanted to provide me with NSA documents. He admitted that he had been informing on me. The journalist has spooks all over him. Whatever you think of the journalist's intentions, you'd have to be a complete fool to get near him. At least he's been honest about this much, so future leakers will be forewarned.

ratsmack 4y ago

The corruption is deep and wide within our government (deep state?) and it doesn't matter which political faction is in power. The attack on the dissemination of information and transparency seems to be accelerating every day. It's almost as if there is something to hide... as if the only way to maintain a position of power is to obfuscate, lie and and deflect at every point a question is asked.

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tgv 4y ago

The piece is pretty vacuous. It lacks so much information, it reads as a made-up story. Does anybody know what documents he’s talking about?

JKCalhoun 4y ago
He admits himself there may have never been documents. I don't think it reads as made up, but it really does seem like there's not really anything there. A meeting that did not happen with someone that may or may not have had something....
- jmprspret 4y ago
  If anything I hope it was just a ploy by the lawyer to troll the FBI and waste some time and resources.
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tootie 4y ago
It's surprising to see Risen write for The Intercept but honestly this piece would probably not get printed by NYT. It's definitely an incomplete story without any conclusive proof of who did what or why and is something of a personal narrative. I guess Risen just wanted this on the record somewhere since people were telling their side of the story elsewhere.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Risen said the NYT killed his story about the CIA, which was later published in his book and caused the Obama administration to subpoena him for his sources.

jessaustin 4y ago

"whole" story There doesn't seem to be any reason to credit any particular novel detail in this... whatever this is. The details already related in Schmidt's book could be believed, I guess, but basically just amount to "FBI boondoggle to Europe". Wow that's news. We're not told who the go-between was, who the various parties in Belgium were, anything at all about why anyone believed "the source" was worth thinking about or even existed. It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. [EDIT: removed dumb question] At the time he may have been an FBI agent, though he also appears to be a documentary filmmaker and lawyer. DDG seems to believe he is associated with various IMDB entries, but that association has been deleted from IMDB. Risen's relationship with FBI is not as adversarial as portrayed here. No matter how he deflects, it seems unlikely to distract from the poor publicity FBI have recently. One suspects the real news, which if anything about this is true we'll learn years from now, is the identity of the go-between.

lapcat 4y ago
> It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. Are we sure he was an FBI agent? There's a reference to court testimony by FBI agent Grayden Ridd in this 2013 story about Robert McFarlane (of Iran-Contra infamy). https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-sudan/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-sudan/index.html (I somehow didn't see in the news that McFarlane died last month.)
- jessaustin 4y ago
  Good catch!

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

FBI tried to ambush a suspected criminal* I don't understand the controversy.

lapcat 4y ago
FBI tried to ambush a whistleblower. You can say that whistleblowing is a crime, but what if the whistleblower has evidence of even greater crimes being committed? That makes the ambush a cover-up.
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- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > but what if That's kind of the issue though. We don't in fact know what the source really had. Was it legal or illegal? Who knows?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Well, the reporter claims to have audio recordings of plans for the ambush (presumably, recordings reviewed by the reporter's editors at least), and the FBI apparently considered it important enough to send a whole big team to Belgium. Who knows if the source had anything, but it seems the FBI was very worried.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      I agree with that – that it seemed to motivate the FBI. At the same time, we all know the FBI has been wrong before though, so I remain unconvinced that their urgency reflects the truthfulness of the claim.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  There are legal whistleblowing avenues and protections. Nowhere does it say to give classified material to the press. Maybe they tried that already and the reporter was a last resort. That's still a criminal act and it's the FBI's job to go after these things. I just don't see what the big deal is.

ajross 4y ago

I'm not really understanding what the newsworthy bits here are. There's an implication that this source had some kind of huge trove of data, but the reporter never got it and that's not what the story is about. Instead, this story alleges: (1) the reporter planned to meet with a source to get a classified leak, (2) the FBI got wind of it, and (3) they planned what amounts to a sting operation (I guess, it's complicated because this was in France) to catch the leaker. That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. Beyond that there's some juicy details about the lawyer who originally ratted on the source and then got cold feet and warned the reporter. And that's interesting. But... there's no government abuse angle here, not without knowing the contents of that leak that didn't happen.

alaricus 4y ago
lapcat 4y ago
> That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. Ask yourself if the FBI is investigating the NSA. Did the FBI investigate the NSA before Snowden? You can enforce the law very selectively, prosecuting whistleblowers who are trying to reveal evidence of crimes committed by the government itself.
zionic 4y ago
> That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law. I’m not sure this is true, considering the programs in the “leak” might themselves be illegal. The problem with your position is it allows the following loop: Government makes it illegal to report government crime, then government commits crime. You can’t report the crime without breaking the law, so the government effectively is bound by no law. How do you break this cycle? The only solution is to have it such that reporting a crime cannot itself be a crime, classification or otherwise.
- jameshart 4y ago

hhh 4y ago

http://archive.today/v1271 http://archive.today/v1271

chatmasta 4y ago

In Bruges is a fantastic film, one of my favorites as well, and makes for a poignant backdrop to this story, wherein the reporter unknowingly manifests its plot from his semi-ironic suggestion of meeting there. The imagery of the FBI guys waiting around in Bruges is just too perfect. Life imitates art.

alamortsubite 4y ago
As I prepared to travel to Bruges, I tried to take a few precautions to avoid detection. I planned to fly from Washington to Paris, then pay cash for a train ticket to Bruges. I hoped that would reduce the digital evidence of my travel. I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and all that.
AlbertCory 4y ago
I was about to say that, but you beat me to it. > The FBI team in Bruges waited and waited, according to the lawyer, frustrated and in vain.
gilleain 4y ago
Hopefully they got to see the swans. Like a fairytale, really. More seriously, what appeals to me about films like that is how 'real life' crime (as far as I can know) is not like a glamourised action movie. It is more haphazard, and contingent on personal decisions and people's character flaws. For me, the line 'I am sorry I called you an inanimate object. I was upset' is more real than any number of Godfather movies.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

It is a fascinating read. Still, I am not sure if it is a good sign that the story presented, if true, seems more intriguing than average "Blacklist" episode. I would normally default to blaming X ( in this case Holder, Pompeo and Trump as they are named in the story ), but the reality is those are just people, who just happened to use that power. The issue is that unchecked power apparently will exist until a truly unscrupulous man uses it to his advantage ( if that did not happen already ).

crayboff 4y ago
As much as I enjoy blaming the Trump administration, this story didn't actually name Trump/Holder/Pompeo. This all happened under Obama's admin with Comey Your point still stands though regardless
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  It is possible that I was not sufficiently clear with the way I phrased it; I apologize for that. The story of this particular case technically does not involve Trump or Pompeo. The linked article, however, does list the following paragraph: "The Trump administration went to even greater extremes than its predecessor to target the press. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly considered kidnapping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who at the time was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Yahoo News reported last September that former President Donald Trump even raised the possibility of assassinating Assange. Pompeo was reportedly obsessed with targeting Assange after a massive leak of CIA hacking tools, known as Vault 7. WikiLeaks published Vault 7 documents in 2017, revealing that the CIA had the ability to hack the computer systems built into a wide range of consumer products, including cars, televisions, and home appliances. In April 2017, Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.”"
  - crayboff 4y ago
    Thanks for the clarification, I interpreted your original post as referring to the story and not the side note about Assange.

Zariel 4y ago

Not far off Burn After Reading

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arminiusreturns 4y ago

The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter Biden laptop story. [1] Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started informing on him, but an educated guess would say he always was! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first place? (source didn't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!) Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI. Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be considered useless as journalist. For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it started and he was always raked across the coals in the now disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a shadow of it's former self. 1. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-bide...

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slim 4y ago

Whistleblower POV : Reporter chose a strange meeting place in a strange town in a strange country in europe. When I got there it was full of FBI agents, so I walked away. Reporter set me up and then made up a story about a lawyer.

photochemsyn 4y ago
The Intercept has burned sources before (Reality Winner and maybe others), so I don't see why any actual whistleblower would trust them at this point.
- slim 4y ago
  Reporter was working for New York Times a the time. I suppose New York Times also burned sources, so your argument is still valid.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Especially after what The Intercept did to its founder.
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nullc 4y ago

I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie my ass off every day'". From personal experience being targeted with harassment and vexatious litigation by a fantasist conman, many of his victims and enablers will sometimes admit he often lies or 'exaggerates', but the reality is that he virtually always lies, that his documents are either completely uninteresting but misrepresented or interesting but obvious forgeries. When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. Risen's description-- including features like the corrupted USB stick-- resonate for me.

lapcat 4y ago
> I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. Except that Risen said he already met the source. The ambush was for their follow-up meeting.
- nullc 4y ago
  I saw that he said "met" but was the "met" online? I had been leaning towards assuming it was. If they'd met in person why were they traveling to a far off country?
- rendaw 4y ago
  The question isn't whether the human exists, but whether the human had any information. Even if the source wasn't in on it, he could have been lead on by the lawyer.
guerrilla 4y ago
> When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.

trhway 4y ago

> Later, he split his time between the United States and Europe; he told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. >The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service. >the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious that it had been put in writing beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA illegal spying ..." or something like that :)

ineedasername 4y ago

TLDR: the FBI was trying to catch some in the act of commiting a crime. This seems fine. A separate issue mentioned, but was a completely separate event, was the DOJ trying to force the journalist into revealing a different source in a different leak. This does not seem fine, but it also failed

asimpleusecase 4y ago

The story reads like a diversion tactic. What proof is there that there was an FBI team waiting around? A compromised source (the unnamed lawyer) introduces a juicy lead just a the peek of other litigation in the reporters life. But the juicy lead comes of nothing. Don’t have any way to know if there was anything real behind it. A confusing hall of mirrors emerged where the reporter was going to a meeting arranged by a source compromised by the FBI and then canceled in effect by the same person. Reads like diversion and playing psyops on the reporter.

sigmoid10 4y ago
To me it seems this whole story is based on the "adrenaline junky" lawyer who is also an established liar. He could have just made up the juicy leak and then chicken out when he would have to deliver. So he sent an anonymous mail and later made up the FBI story. Lots of smoke and mirrors but in the end all of it could be explained by one guy with nothing to show for trying to get some fame through the journalist.