NYPD's civil rights violations worse than imagined after FBI partnership revealed.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) really has gone rogue; at least that's what a high-level FBI official believes.
Among the 5 million emails the group Anonymous hacked from the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor in February, one seems to not only confirm the controversial NYPD surveillance activities uncovered by the Associated Press, but hints at even worse civil liberties violations not yet disclosed. Anonymous later turned the emails over to WikiLeaks, with which Truthout has entered into an investigative partnership.
I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel (NYPD's Intelligence Division) has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out - it always eventually comes out. They are going to make [former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right felonious activity, and violations of US citizen's rights they have been engaged in.
The description of alleged NYPD excesses was leveled by an unnamed FBI "senior official" in late November 2011, in an email sent to Fred Burton, vice president for intelligence at the Austin, Texas-based Stratfor and former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division at the State Department. Burton then sent the official's email to what appears to be a listserv known as the "Alpha List."
Burton did not identify the senior FBI official in the email he sent to the listserv. He describes him as a "close personal friend," and claims he "taught him everything that he knows." He also instructs members of the listserv not to publish the contents of the email and to use it only for background.
Stratfor, in a statement released after some of the emails were made public, said some of the emails "may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic" but "having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them."
What's particularly stunning about the FBI senior official's description of NYPD Intelligence Division activities, is how he connects them to previous instances when his own agency bent and broke the law in pursuit of intelligence on perceived enemies of the state throughout the 20th century - and concludes the NYPD Intelligence Division's violations are worse. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former New York Times reporter Tim Weiner writes in his new book, "Enemies: A History of the FBI," the Bureau has been "America's closest counterpart" to a secret police.
In the email, Burton queried the FBI official to gain a better understanding of why the FBI declined to get involved with a case involving an alleged "lone wolf" terrorist and al-Qaeda sympathizer named Jose Pimentel, a 27-year-old American of Dominican descent, accused of trying to build three pipe bombs to detonate in New York City.
The FBI official responded by describing some turf and relationship issues between NYPD intelligence officials and NYPD and FBI investigators on New York City's Joint Terrorism Task Force. It appears the FBI senior official was responding to a news story about Pimentel's arrest published by the far-right leaning Newsmax, headlined "FBI- NYPD Tensions Highlighted in Terror Case," which was attached to an email Stratfor analysts had sent around the office.
There are two issues with this case (off the record of course).
One is the source (confidential informant) was a nightmare and was completely driving the investigation. The only money, planning, materials etc the bad guy got was from ... the source. The source was such a maron [sic], he smoked dope with the bad guy while wearing an NYPD body recorder - I heard in open source [sic] yesterday btw [by the way], he is going to be charged with drug possession based on the tape. Ought to go over very nicely when he testifies against the bad guy, don't you think?
Issue two is that the real rub is between NYPD Intel, [Intelligence Division] and NYPD - JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force], not the FBI per se. The NYPD JTTF guys are in total sync with the Bureau and the rest of the partners who make up the JTTF - I understand there are something like 100 NYPD dics [detectives] assigned to the JTTF. NYPD Intel (Cohen, et al) on the other hand, are completely running their own pass patterns. They hate their brother NYPD dics on the JTTF and are trying to undermine them at every turn. They are also listening to [former CIA official David] Cohen [the head of NYPD's Intelligence Division] who, near as anybody can tell, never had to make a criminal case or testify in court.
The FBI knew the NYPD Intelligence agents were involved in widespread 'felonious' activity in violation of Americans' civil rights, yet the FBI does not appear to have opened a civil rights investigation or done anything to stop this illegal activity. Our laws are designed to apply equally to protect all of us, including to protect us from illegal police activity. When the FBI abdicates this responsibility, all Americans suffer."
No matter how bad the mutual acrimony between NYPD intelligence analysts and New York City's JTTF has gotten, German isn't surprised that the FBI has declined to investigate allegations of the NYPD Intelligence Division breaking the law.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11326-hacked-intel-email-nypd-involved-in-damn-right-felonious-activity
NYPD opens branch in Israel.
Welcome to the Global police state!
The New York Police Department opened its Israeli branch in the Sharon District Police headquarters in Kfar Saba. Charlie Ben-Naim, a former Israeli and veteran NYPD detective, was sent on this mission.
You don’t have to fly to New York to meet members of the police department considered to be the best in the world — all you have to do is make the short trip to the Kfar Saba police station in the Sharon, where the NYPD opened a local branch.
Behind the opening of the branch in the Holy Land is the NYPD decision that the Israeli police is one of the major police forces with which it must maintain close work relations and daily contact.
Ben-Naim was chosen for the mission of opening the NYPD branch in Israel. He is a veteran detective of the NYPD and a former Israeli who went to study in New York, married a local city resident and then joined the local police force. Among the things he has dealt with in the line of duty are the extradition of criminals, the transmitting of intelligence information and assistance in the location of missing persons, both in the United States and in Israel.
It was decided, in coordination with the Israeli police, that the New York representative would not operate out of the United States embassy but from a building of the Sharon District Police headquarters, situated close to the Kfar Sava station. The NYPD sign was even hung at the entrance to the district headquarters, and Ben-Naim’s office is situated on the first floor of the building. One of the walls bears the sign: “New York Police Department, the best police department in the world.”
According to an article published in the SpyTalk blog on The Washington Post in 2010, the NYPD had opened intelligence division liaison offices in a whopping 11 countries.
In the article, the author Jeff Stein noted many concerns about the lack of oversight and accountability for the NYPD officers stationed abroad. Furthermore, he noted the fact that the foundation that actually funds the NYPD intelligence division’s International Liaison Program (ILP) has a striking lack of transparency.
The ILP is actually supported by private donations through the New York Police Foundation and the foundation will not disclose how much they have actually given to the NYPD beyond stating that they sought to raise $1.5 million for the program in 2010 alone.
The NYPD refuses to state if or how much of their $178 million intelligence and counterterrorism budget goes towards placing officers in foreign countries and the New York City Council member himself tasked with police oversight barely knows anything about the ILP.
The council member, Peter Vallone, Jr., doesn’t even know the full budget allocated to the ILP and when asked if it was “fair to say” that he had no idea what the ILP was actually spending he replied, “that’s fair. But my main concern is their use of taxpayer funds here in NYC,” according to Stein.
Leonard Levitt, former veteran police reporter for Newsday, called it “a mini-CIA,” adding, “There are no safeguards to ensure that the NYPD doesn’t break the law.”
Even the former head of the FBI Office of International Operations from 2004 to 2008, Thomas Fuentes, called the ILP “a complete waste of money.”
Laura Rozen puts it well in writing that one of the major concerns is, “that the NYPD intelligence division operates overseas entirely outside the chain of command, or oversight, of US federal agencies.”
Indeed, this is quite troubling and the fact that a domestic police agency is operating overseas seems outright absurd, yet it doesn’t seem to bother anyone enough to actually bring this issue to light and question the legitimacy of the practice.
Hopefully this latest revelation will help push Americans, and especially New Yorkers, to begin demanding increased transparency and scrutiny.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/09/nypd-kfar-saba-branch-new-york-p.html
http://EndtheLie.com/2012/09/07/new-york-police-department-opens-a-new-branch-in-kfar-saba-israel/#ixzz26Acem5ka