U.S. House panel: GM, NHTSA documents related to recalls "unsettling"

A General Motors logo is seen on a vehicle for sale at the GM dealership in Carlsbad, California January 4, 2012 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

Reuters: Politics

U.S. House panel: GM, NHTSA documents related to recalls "unsettling"

Hollywood Conservatives Claim IRS Harassment: Documents Show They Were Gaming the System

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Hollywood Conservatives Claim IRS Harassment: Documents Show They Were Gaming the System

D’oh! John Doe prosecutors claim secrecy protection – after filing secret documents

D’oh! John Doe prosecutors claim secrecy protection – after filing secret documents
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By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON, Wis. – The comedy of errors apparently continues from prosecutors-turned-defendants in a civil rights lawsuit filed against them by a fed-up conservative political activist.

Again, the mishap involves confusion over apparently sealed court documents.

In their legal response to a motion to dismiss the Democrat-launched John Doe investigation into conservatives, the prosecutors’ legal counsel claim that the probe’s “Secrecy Orders” as well as Wisconsin law concerning such secret inquiries “limit Defendants’ ability to make a full evidentiary showing as to why Plaintiffs’ motion should be denied.”

OOPS, THEY DID IT AGAIN: Attorneys for prosecutors in a politically charged John Doe probe have filed court documents in a civil rights lawsuit, documents they claim they could not fire, according to a legal response filed Friday by the conservative suing the prosecutors.

In other words, the prosecutors are asking Milwaukee Federal Judge Rudolph Randa who is hearing the lawsuit to deny Eric O’Keefe’s motion to stop an investigation alleged to be robbing conservative groups of their First Amendment rights, but the prosecutors can’t show evidence as to why.

There’s just one problem, as O’Keefe’s attorneys point out in their response: The defendants have already filed with the court the materials they claim they cannot disclose to the court.

The defendants include Democrat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, his lieutenants, Assistant DA’s Bruce Landgraf and David Robles, John Doe Special Prosecutor Francis Schmitz, and Dean Nickel, a shadowy contracted investigator involved in the probe. Retired Judge Gregory Peterson, the presiding judge in the John Doe, also is named as a defendant in the civil rights suit.

In a scheduling conference on the lawsuit Thursday, the prosecutors’ attorneys repeatedly told the judge that Wisconsin law bars disclosure in the lawsuit of materials covered by the John Doe Secrecy Order, according to the plaintiffs’ motion to amend Randa’s scheduling order in the case.  They claimed “disclosure of such information in this litigation at this time could subject Defendants to criminal prosecution, that they were uncertain that this risk could be ameliorated by an order of (the federal court), and that they preferred to seek action by the John Doe Judge or other state officials.”

The prosecutors want more time to make their to make their case against O’Keefe’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the secret probe.

But the prosecutors’ attorneys have already filed documents – under seal – with the court that they claim must not be filed with the court on penalty of law, according to O’Keefe’s response. The exhibits filed include “various materials covered by the John Doe Secrecy Order.” Those documents apparently are sealed but available to the judge, according to the response.

All of the materials were documents the defendants told the judge they could not use to show why the motion for preliminary injunction should be dismissed.

The judge granted the prosecutors’ request, giving their attorneys until April 15 to file a supplemental response. Randa did, however, set a hearing on the preliminary injunction motion for April 30. That hearing is contingent on what Randa decides to do about the defendants’ motion to dismiss O’Keefe’s entreaty to shut down the John Doe probe. That decision is expected to be issued on April 14.

Milwaukee attorney Samuel Leib, who is representing Chisholm, Landgraf and Robles, did not return a call seeking comment. Neither did attorney Randall Crocker, who is serving as legal counsel for Schmitz. The prosecutors’ attorneys are being paid $ 175 an hour by the state – aka Wisconsin taxpayers.

David Rivkin, attorney for O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, another plaintiff in the civil rights suit, declined to comment on the plaintiffs’ response.

Earlier this week, Nickel’s legal team did not properly redact large sections of their legal response, information supposed to have been kept out of the public eye. As first reported by Wisconsin Reporter, the information became visible when copying and pasting them into a Word document, Wisconsin Reporter discovered.

The documents unveiled a previously sealed decision by Peterson. The judge, in late January stayed part of his own ruling ordering John Doe prosecutors to return private property seized in raids on several conservative targets. The judge has quashed several subpoenas, ruling the prosecution did not provide probable cause in carrying them out.

“The issue in this case is the scope of Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws. The State’s theory is that various parties engaged in illegal coordinated activities during the recent recall elections. I concluded, however, that the coordinated activities are not prohibited under the statutes,” the judge wrote in a sealed document quoted in Nickel’s loosely redacted response.

Nickel’s response has since been properly redacted, but the redacted information still shows up on Wisconsin Reporter’s PDF link.

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@watchdog.org

1. Sources: Secret probe targeting conservatives is abuse of prosecutorial powers


2. Scary! Phantom prosecutor in Dems’ war on conservatives disappears inside courthouse


3. EXCLUSIVE: Judge in Democrat-led John Doe probe recuses herself


4. Democrats’ ‘intelligence-gathering’ spreads in Wisconsin


5. Democrats tap anti-terror expert to head secret probe of Wisconsin conservatives


6. Sheriff Clarke: John Doe case shows Milwaukee DA is ‘weaponized for political purposes’


7. Clarke: John Doe into conservatives ‘unbridled,’ ‘dangerous’ and ‘tainted’


8. Sources: New judge named in Democrat-led secret probe


9. Vendetta justice? Criticism growing about John Doe prosecutor Bruce Landgraf


10. Will Wisconsin’s own ‘Miserable’ inspector jail conservative activist for speaking out about Dem probe?


11. Conservative targets bring in big guns to Democrat-led John Doe fight


12. ‘Dangerous’ game: Former FEC official blasts Democrats’ secret investigation of conservative groups


13. Center for Media and Democracy: Liberals are morally superior


14. Wisconsin Dems suddenly support political investigations


15. WI Republican attorney general to represent judges in Democrat-led John Doe probe


16. Republicans speak out about silent John Doe targeting conservatives


17. Biggest secret in John Doe may be just how judges and special prosecutors are selected


18. WSJ: John Doe judge deals body blow to secret probe targeting conservatives


19. Vos: Wait until John Doe in ‘rearview mirror’ before revisiting law


20. Lawsuits looming in Wisconsin’s crumbling John Doe probe?


21. Conservative to Democrat prosecutors: Shut down secret political probe or face civil rights lawsuit


22. John Doe target O’Keefe taking on IRS, too


23. Lawmaker: Wisconsin’s John Doe like Christie’s ‘Bridgegate’


24. Target files civil rights lawsuit against Wisconsin’s John Doe prosecutors


25. Disparate treatment: Civil rights lawsuit claims conservative speech trampled


26. Liberal group looking to take Wisconsin’s John Doe national


27. John Doe judge: ‘Results of the John Doe speak for themselves’


28. John Doe special prosecutor appeals judge’s ruling quashing subpoenas


29. John Doe prosecutor pushed for brain-damaged man’s conviction in ATF debacle


30. Conservatives counterpunch John Doe prosecutors’ move to stall injunction


31. Shadowy John Doe investigator invokes federalism in civil rights lawsuit


32. John Doe prosecutors wanted higher-priced lawyers, source says


33. Secret agent Dean Nickel’s defense: ‘Dean Nickel is not responsible’


34. D’oh! John Doe prosecutors claim secrecy protection – after filing secret documents

Please, feel free to “steal our stuff”! Just remember to credit Watchdog.org. Find out more

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Read more about D’oh! John Doe prosecutors claim secrecy protection – after filing secret documents and other interesting subjects concerning NSA at TheDailyNewsReport.com

UFOs Finally Turn Up in Documents Leaked by Edward Snowden

A number of people have asked, if there is a government UFO cover-up, why haven’t documents relating to them turned up in the massive intelligence leak by Edward Snowden. Well, in a new document released at The Intercept, the new website devoted to publishing information about the leaks, the flying saucers have arrived. Though where they’ve turned up might be cause for concern for the Fox Mulder’s out there.

That document is a Powerpoint presentation from the British intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), titled simply enough “The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations“, in which three of the fifty slides are images of ‘UFOs’. Unfortunately, there is no text related to the images, so there could be a number of reasons for them being included – from pointing out people’s belief systems, through to them possibly being part of actual psychological operations (psy-ops). The only clue might be that the images are listed under a heading of “Influence and Information Operations”.

Besides the UFO references, there are a number of allusions to magic, from the mission statement to produce “cyber-magicians”, to another slide listing the historical involvement of professional magicians with psy-ops, through to finishing with an image of Teller beside a quote, “Conjuring with Information”.

Glenn Greenwald has written some commentary on the latest release of documents, pointing out how they show intelligence agencies are intentionally manipulating online discussions:

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.

Returning to the topic of UFOs, writer/film-maker Mark Pilkington is well-acquainted with the dual topic of UFOs and intelligence agency deceptions via the intensive research he did for his book and related documentary Mirage Men. On his blog, Mark notes that “it’s clear that [intelligence agencies] consider the UFO subject, its attendant beliefs, and the vocal community surrounding it, to be a useful field of operations for their activities”. He also points out that not much has changed in the last six decades, given the similarities between the newly released document and a research paper released in 1950 titled “Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare” – right down to the listing of magicians who have participated in psy-ops.

If you’d like to learn more about this subject, take a look at the lecture Mark gave a couple of years ago (embedded below), titled “The Abuses of Enchantment: Folklore and Deception in the Disinformation Age”:

As Greenwald points out, “these GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to disseminate deception online… Claims that government agencies are infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that… No government should be able to engage in these tactics”.

Or, as Fox Mulder told us all those years ago: “Trust no-one”.

Source: Daily Grail

Note: The featured image above is not from the GCHQ documents.

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The Global Elite

UFOs Finally Turn Up in Documents Leaked by Edward Snowden

Government seizes and destroys 160-year-old historical documents; genealogists and historians are outraged

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Government seizes and destroys 160-year-old historical documents; genealogists and historians are outraged

Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit

posted on Dec, 29 2013 @ 03:50 PM

These driblets of information help to confirm what many know already. I have to say though that the mention of ‘Technical deficencies’ sounds a bit suspect, when we also already know some were compelled to accomodate the NSA anyway. The shipping gigs were also already around courtesy of the CIA and all their clandestine companies, only the tech is changing.
So this ‘Lady’ is spouting off about what they can do, or is it just a cover to make the NSA’s little helpers, like Microsoft and AOL etc, seem like innocent victims? Her and her cohorts are just feckdogs, and we know they like a bit of private enterprise on the side to boot…no wonder they are expanding rapidly!
I want them OTF, they are disrupting the common internet culture, with their noses stuck up our backsides, and their blocking keywords and so on…blah blah. NSA feck off!

AboveTopSecret.com New Topics In Breaking Alternative News

Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit

Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit

posted on Dec, 29 2013 @ 03:50 PM

These driblets of information help to confirm what many know already. I have to say though that the mention of ‘Technical deficencies’ sounds a bit suspect, when we also already know some were compelled to accomodate the NSA anyway. The shipping gigs were also already around courtesy of the CIA and all their clandestine companies, only the tech is changing.
So this ‘Lady’ is spouting off about what they can do, or is it just a cover to make the NSA’s little helpers, like Microsoft and AOL etc, seem like innocent victims? Her and her cohorts are just feckdogs, and we know they like a bit of private enterprise on the side to boot…no wonder they are expanding rapidly!
I want them OTF, they are disrupting the common internet culture, with their noses stuck up our backsides, and their blocking keywords and so on…blah blah. NSA feck off!

AboveTopSecret.com New Topics In Breaking Alternative News

Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit

Documents show Blair government let US spy on Britons

Paul Mason
Channel 4 News
November 21, 2013

Tony Blair’s government allowed America to store and analyse the email, mobile phone and internet records of potentially millions of innocent Britons, Channel 4 News can reveal.

In 1946, peace was less than a year old. Labour was in power and the wartime signals intelligence service had been renamed as GCHQ. Building on their wartime collaboration, Britain and America signed an agreement that was to prove crucial to the so-called “special relationship”.

They agreed to share intelligence on foreign countries but not to spy on each other’s citizens. Later that was extended to five English-speaking countries, and is known as the “five eyes” agreement.

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 12:47 pm

Tags: big brother, foreign affairs

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Infowars

Documents show Blair government let US spy on Britons

I noticed the story from the deaf man and his communication accessibility limitations. I thought I would share some, very shocking, news about why this man and so many others are unable to access simple programs. AT&T allowed Nigerian criminals access to a Federally subsidized service for the disabled. The FCC filed charges and demanded more than $40 Million to be returned for fraudulent billing along with almost $20 Million more in interest and fines. FCC documents: AT&T Settles TRS fraud

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If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.

I noticed the story from the deaf man and his communication accessibility limitations. I thought I would share some, very shocking, news about why this man and so many others are unable to access simple programs. AT&T allowed Nigerian criminals access to a Federally subsidized service for the disabled. The FCC filed charges and demanded more than $40 Million to be returned for fraudulent billing along with almost $20 Million more in interest and fines. FCC documents: AT&T Settles TRS fraud

Raided Anti-War Activists to Be in Federal Court With Motion to Unseal Secret Documents

St. Paul, MN – Two Minneapolis anti-war and international solidarity activists will be in federal court, Nov. 1, to demand an end to the government secrecy surrounding their case. Jess Sundin and Mick Kelly are two of the 23 Midwest activists targeted by an investigation that included two years of spying by undercover agents, Sept. 2010 raids of homes and offices in Minneapolis and Chicago by the FBI, and a secret Chicago grand jury.

Their attorney will present arguments for a motion to unseal the affidavits used to obtain the search warrants for their homes more than three years ago.

Jess Sundin, a plaintiff in the case, said, “The government launched its vicious attack on anti-war and international solidarity activists with two years of surveillance by undercover agents, then carried out FBI raids on a dozen homes and offices and attempted to force our testimony to a grand jury in Chicago. Every step of the way, the government acted under a cloak of secrecy and has insisted on guarding those secrets to this day. On Friday, Nov. 1, we will have our day in court, as our attorney argues for our motion to unseal the affidavits that were used to obtain the search warrants for those FBI raids.”

Bruce Nestor, attorney for the plaintiffs, writes in a document filed with the court, “Over three years ago, based upon the submission of secret evidence, the United States government convinced Magistrate Judge Susan R. Nelson to seal the search supporting affidavits at issue in this matter. Over three years after the applications and affidavits were ordered sealed, there are no public signs that the government is continuing its investigations related to these warrants or of the individuals named in the warrants. Indeed, while turning the constitutional presumption of innocence on its head by stating that the Petitioners in this matter remain subject to prosecution and therefore under ‘suspicion.’”

Nestor continues, “The government’s position in this matter also raises the question, ‘What is the prosecution trying to hide?’ [This also] … prevents undersigned counsel from effectively challenging the government’s claims.”

The hearing will take place in courtroom 3C at the United States Courthouse in Saint Paul (316 N Robert Street) at 9:00 a.m.

Global Research

Raided Anti-War Activists to Be in Federal Court With Motion to Unseal Secret Documents

Homeland Security Documents Found in Target Parking Lot

After a raid on a lumber business near Richmond, Virginia, an anonymous passerby found the Homeland Security staging documents in the parking lot of a Target store.

On Thursday Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations executed search warrants at the Lumber Liquidator’ s Virginia headquarters in Toano. Another business location for the hardwood-flooring retailer in suburban Richmond was also searched. At the time, a spokesman for the feds declined to say whether the warrant was related to a particular person or for the company as a whole. Lumber Liquidators has 305 stores in North America.

In a statement, the company said it was cooperating to provide information and documentation to “answer questions relating to the importation of certain products.”

On Friday, September 27, NBC 12, a local affiliate, reported it had inside information [See video] on the reason for the raid:

NBC12 uncovered information that says the reason for this raid is that protected wood was being illegally imported. The investigation reveals that the wood species is part of the habitat of the highly endangered Siberian tiger.

The wood originates in Russia and is processed in China, but according to information on the documents, government agents suspect the it was declared as coming from other countries. That would be a violation of the “Lacey Act,” which combats trafficking of “illegal” wildlife, fish and plants.

But that’s not all NBC 12 uncovered. The station’s anonymous source known as “Eric” explained how he discovered documents pertaining to the plan.

He says he found Homeland Security’s Operation Plan in the parking lot of the Target on West Broad Street. Those documents do say that was supposed to be the staging area in Henrico.  Agents also raided the headquarters in Toano.

The main objective of the plan: to collect emails and documents that could prove the company is importing illegal wood from Russia. Eric says somebody should not have been so careless and people have the right to transparency. The papers also have the names and cell phone numbers of the agents involved.

I think it just points to government insecurity really…I think the people have the right to know what the government is doing.

The Target store is located near Lumber Liquidators in Henrico County. ‘Eric’ says he has not planned to do anything with the documents while Homeland Security has refused to comment “on the lost file.”

American Thinker Blog

Homeland Security Documents Found in Target Parking Lot

Gems Mined from the NSA Documents and FISA Court Opinions Released Today

Today, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released hundreds of pages of documents about the NSA telephone call record program. The documents primarily concern events in 2009, when the FISA court first learned that the NSA had been misusing its phone records surveillance program for years. We’re still reviewing the documents, but here are a few particularly interesting items we’ve uncovered so far.

Clapper’s Continued Trouble with the Truth

On June 6, just days after the Guardian newspaper published the first of many articles on NSA spying, Director of National Intelligence Clapper attempted to reassure the public that the NSA telephone record program was limited and restrained. “The information acquired does not include … the identity of any subscriber.”

Documents released today show this to be false.  In an August 3, 2009 declaration to the FISA court, NSA Director Keith Alexander wrote that “the collected metadata thus holds contact information that can be immediately access as a new terrorist-associated telephone identified are identified.” While it is not surprising that the NSA can correlate a phone number to a person (phone book technology has been available for some time), here we have it in black and white that Dir. Clapper attempted to mislead the public. 

The Search for a Basis for Searching

In a March 2, 2009 FISA court opinion, the Court noted that the program collects “communication of U.S. person who are not the subject of an FBI investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, and are data that otherwise could not be legally captured in bulk by the government.” (first emphasis by the court, second ours).  ”Ordinarily, this alone would provide sufficient grounds for a FISC judge to deny the application.”

The Court noted that, nevertheless, the spying was approved, based on the Court’s confidence in the NSA’s assurances of a good process and strict controls. By March 2009, however, “The Court no longer has such confidence.” The Court’s particularly scathing statement about its distrust in the NSA can be found on page 12 here.

What happened was that the FISC required the NSA have a “reasonable articulable suspicion” before conducting a search on a phone number.  The NSA decided, independently, that it could run searches on the database to develop the basis for the reasonable articulable suspicion.  Hence, the NSA was conducting suspicionless searches for information to obtain the court-required basis to search for that information.

The NSA’s Word Games Confuse Even the NSA

As we’ve noted time and time again, the NSA plays with language, using words in non-standard ways.  After not reporting violations to the FISC for years, the NSA had this explanation: “there was never a complete understanding among the key personnel who reviewed the report … regarding what each individual meant by the terminology used in the report.”  The NSA presents this as an excuse why it misled the court.

Want to Know Why the NSA Gave Raw Access to the CIA, FBI and NCTC in Violation of a Court Order?

So did the Court, who ordered the NSA to explain the violation of its prior order. So did we. However, you’re not going to find out today. Four pages of NSA Director Alexander’s response to this question are redacted.

NSA Director General Keith Alexander 2009 v. 2013

Gen. Alexander, June 25, 2013: The telephone records program was “approved by the Administration, Congress, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. With these exceptional authorities came significant oversight from all three branches of the government.”

Gen Alexander, August 17, 2009: Non-compliance with court ordered “stemmed from a basic lack of shared understanding among key NSA mission, legal and oversight stakeholders concerning the full scope of the” telephone records program.

Related Cases

Jewel v. NSA
First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA

Truthout Stories

Gems Mined from the NSA Documents and FISA Court Opinions Released Today

Process Servers Will Be The Best Option For Serving Documents

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Learn more about legal process servers. Stop by Bobby Huolt\’s site where you can find out all about a Fort Worth process server and what they can do for you.

Process Servers Will Be The Best Option For Serving Documents