Your FBI In Peace And War
There's an important story out today that illustrates why Sidney Powell, in item #7 of her Motion to Compel in the Flynn case, is demanding:
7. All documents, reports, correspondence, and memoranda, including any National Security letter or FISA application, concerning any earlier investigation of Mr. Flynn, and the basis for it.
The title of the article is pretty self explanatory--Court: FBI Must Destroy Memos Calling Antiwar.com a Threat: Ruling comes after a eight-year battle over secret surveillance of the popular website after 9/11 .
Obviously, if the FBI was monitoring an innocuous outfit like Antiwar.com, one can imagine what might have been going on with regard to someone like General Michael Flynn--regarded as a genuine existential threat to the US-UK Deep State. Powell is absolutely right to suspect that the FBI may retain "documents, reports, correspondence, and memoranda". Nor is it far fetched to suspect that National Security letters (NSL) may have been used to obtain all sorts of records regarding Flynn or that the FBI may have sought (and perhaps obtained) a FISA against Flynn previous to the Carter Page FISA. Anyone who didn't at least suspect a FISA and take the use of NSLs against Flynn would be a fool.
The article also gives readers an opportunity to test their understanding of FBI Guidelines for National Security investigations. The article reveals that the FBI did in fact open a Threat Assessment on Antiwar.com and at least sought to open a Preliminary Investigation (PI). A PI, if obtained, would not have allowed for a FISA, but it would have allowed the use of NSLs to obtain financial records and many other records.
I'll copy in the article's account of what the lawsuit was all about. Note that, since this was a national security investigation, Antiwar.com became aware only by accident that they were being, or had been, targeted and monitored as a possible national security risk. The same could have been happening to Flynn, without him being aware. I urge you to read the rest of the article (linked above) to get a taste of the puerile, yet dangerous, thinking behind this caper. The same quality of reasoning will likely show up in the documentation associated with the Russia Hoax. Also, note that the absurd resistance to the lawsuit went on for eight years --hey, money's no object for the government, unlike for the rest of us. The Appellate Court opinion can be found here .
In a major victory for Antiwar.com, free speech and journalism, a federal appeals court has ruled that the FBI must expunge surveillance memos that agents had drafted about the website’s co-founders Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo in the early years following the 9/11 attacks.
“It’s been a long fight and I’m glad we had an outcome that could might affect future FBI behavior,” said Garris, who runs Antiwar.com, based in the San Francisco Bay area. “I just wish Justin was still here to know that this has happened.”
Raimondo, 67, passed away in June from a long bout with cancer. He and Garris had sued the FBI in 2013 demanding it turn over all the memos and records it was keeping on the two men and the website, which has been promoting anti-interventionist news and views from a libertarian-conservative perspective since 1995. ...
They won their case, and in 2017 the FBI agreed to turn over all the memos and settle their legal fees, $299,000, but the final expungement of two key memos involving intelligence gathered on the men and Antiwar.com, had yet to be expunged from the agency’s record.
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It all began when an observant reader brought a heavily redacted 2004 memo to Antiwar.com’s attention in 2011. It was part of a batch of documents the reader had obtained through FOIA requests. It was clear from the documents’ contents that the FBI had been collecting information and records on Raimondo and Garris for some time. At one point the FBI agent writing the April 30, 2004 memo on Antiwar.com recommended further monitoring of the website in the form of opening a “preliminary investigation …to determine if [redaction] are engaging in, or have engaged in, activities which constitute a threat to national security.”
Why? Because the website was questioning U.S. war policy (for those who do not remember, if you took an anti-war position anytime between September 11, 2001 and 2004 you were considered so far Left you couldn’t see straight, or you had to be a subversive, if not a traitor to your country. It is clear from the memos the agents involved were erring toward the latter in regards to Antiwar.com.
Agents noted that Antiwar.com had, or linked to, published counter-terrorism watch lists (already in the public domain). The FBI noted at least two of Raimondo’s columns and wondered openly, “who are (Antiwar.com’s) contributors and what are the funds utilized for?” This, after acknowledging there was no evidence of any crime being plotted or committed.
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