Remember the breaking stories, just before Christmas, regarding FBI surveillance of Occupy Wall Street? Well, according to extremely underreported, breaking news in the past 24 hours, the initial coverage of this story was just scratching the surface of this fascist—yes, there’s no other word for it--horror show.
From the breaking PCJ release, linked farther down, below…
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Years, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51)…
Bold type is diarist’s emphasis.
From Naked Capitalism Publisher Yves Smith, in the past hour…
Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street
Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism
Sunday, December 30th, 2012
If you had any doubts of the veracity of former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson’s depiction of the financial crisis as a “quiet coup,” a pre-Christmas release of FBI documents should put them to rest. While I linked to a discussion of the results of the Partnership for Civil Justice’s FOIA of FBI materials on Occupy Wall Street, I was remiss in not writing them up earlier. Both the Partnership for Civil Justice and Naomi Wolf at the Guardian (hat tip Scott A) provide good overviews. The PCJ also published the FBI documents it obtained.
If you’ve been following the story of the official response to Occupy Wall Street, it was apparent that the 17 city paramilitary crackdown was coordinated; it came out later that the Department of Homeland Security was the nexus of that operation. The deep FBI involvement is a new and ugly addition to this picture. Several impressions emerge from reading the summaries and dipping into the FBI documents:
The FBI deemed OWS to be a terrorist organization and went into “guilty until proven innocent” mode. Many of the FBI descriptions of possible OWS actions or those of affiliated organizations like Adbusters consistently look to have taken the most inflammatory snippets and presented them out of context
…
…The banks were deeply involved in the effort to put down OWS. The executive director of the PCJ stated, “These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.” Naomi Wolf adds:
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).
…
Documents released show coordination between the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and corporate America. They include a report by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), described by the federal government as “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” The DSAC report shows the nature of secret collaboration between American intelligence agencies and their corporate clients – the document contains a “handling notice” that the information is “meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…”….DSAC issued several tips to its corporate clients on “civil unrest” which it defines as ranging from “small, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.”…
And, from the Guardian (UK), earlier on Saturday…
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent
Naomi Wolf
Guardian.co.uk
Saturday, December 29, 2012 9:58 EST
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61)…
At this early juncture, words cannot convey my sentiments about this travesty. Perhaps what is most reprehensible about this is that it’s all occurred under the auspices of a supposedly-Democratic administration.
IMHO, it is long past time for Daily Kos management to speak out, officially, about this. And, more specifically, to provide pertinent details with regard to how--if at all--these story developments affect the blog's raison d'etre.
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UPDATE (2:45PM EST, 12/30/12):
FOR THE RECORD...A DIARIST'S NOTE:
There are many, very basic FACTS about news stories of this nature which inherently trump any focus upon minutiae.
Those basic facts are noted in this post (i.e.: starting with the headline of it), and the links to it.
Additionally, the reality is that this is still a developing story.
As with many highly controversial news stories--and especially those that are critical of our government or other large entities--significant attempts are often made to discredit the sources of the story. It goes with the territory.
As I have noted in the comments in this post and elsewhere, I expect(ed) nothing less than an intensive effort to discredit this story to be implemented from the get-go. That is the way these things "work."
Overview of the minutiae of any story, however, is always a LEGITIMATE part of "the process." To refute basic facts, which transcend the minutiae, however, are not. They are the definition of editorializing. And, HEY, editorializing is fine by me. At the end of the day, these are diaries on blogs.
Paraphrasing the old saying: "We are all entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts."
Last but not least, I stand by everything I've stated in this post. If there are facts which don't support the linked articles to this post I'd love to read/hear about them.