Investigations Into BATFE Accelerate (A Crude Chronology Since late March 2011)

[Ed Jewett]

Salem-News Reported U.S.-Mexico Inter-Military Task Force in 2010

Tim King Salem-News.com[B]Clarifying that the U.S. military was working on the Mexican side of the border is the point of this article. The fact that elements of the U.S. government are denying it is highly reprehensible.

Much more at the link:

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/octob...uth-tk.php


[/B]

[Ed Jewett]

Billion-Dollar Drug Gang Busted

3110

2011[Ouch!]
"The cartel is believed to handle 65 percent of all drugs illegally transported to the United States, drug experts say."

70 members of billion-dollar' drug gang arrested, official says

Jaw-dropping' amount of narcotics seized; alleged drug smugglers thought to have close ties to violent Mexican cartel

Law enforcement officials in Arizona seized thousands of pounds of narcotics and arrested at least 70 suspected drug smugglers with apparent ties to a violent drug cartel in Mexico, an official involved with the investigation in the U.S. Southwest told Reuters.
The operation, which included three raids conducted jointly by local, state, and federal officials over 17 months, led to the arrests of Mexican and American nationals working with a notorious drug cartel based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Further details of the operation will be released at a press conference at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Phoenix on Monday.
Authorities confiscated drugs, money, weapons, ammunition, and bullet-proof vests, cracking a "sophisticated network" of international drug smuggling in one of the largest such operations conducted in the Southwestern United States, the official said on Sunday.
Drugs were smuggled from Mexico into Arizona by car, plane, on foot, and through tunnels.
"This is one of the more substantial drug-smuggling operations going on right now. This is a billion-dollar drug trade organization linked to the cartel," the official said.
The cartel is headquartered in the northwestern state of Sinaloa on Mexico's Pacific coast, an area home to big marijuana and opium poppy plantations and considered the cradle of Mexican narcotics trafficking since the 1960s.


The cartel is believed to handle 65 percent of all drugs illegally transported to the United States, drug experts say.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his military campaign against the cartels after he took office in late 2006.
Jaw-dropping'
The raids were overseen by the DEA, Arizona state officials, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The official said the operation will shed light on elaborate drug smuggling into the United States and said the contraband confiscated in the raids was "jaw-dropping."
Officials captured some of the key players in the smuggling operation, the source said, adding that the suspects will be prosecuted at the state level.
The official said law enforcement officials are still looking for dozens of people in connection with the operation.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.co.../31/49198/

[Peter Lemkin]

Salem-News Reported U.S.-Mexico Inter-Military Task Force in 2010

Tim King Salem-News.com[B]Clarifying that the U.S. military was working on the Mexican side of the border is the point of this article. The fact that elements of the U.S. government are denying it is highly reprehensible.

Much more at the link:

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/octob...uth-tk.php


[/B]

....just as Tosh Plumlee told us long ago and over and over....

[Ed Jewett]

Emails, notes give insight into Gunwalker communications

• Add a comment
  

David Codrea

, Gun Rights Examiner
November 1, 2011


A Sipsey Street Irregulars/Gun Rights Examinerexclusive report

Email correspondence and handwritten notes obtained today by Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars and this correspondent provide details on information and strategy being shared between top level officials of the Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including between Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and then-ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson.
A total of seven documents are presented herein, including:

• A Feb. 4, 2011 letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Weich denying the walking of guns, itself the subject of a Feb. 8 Gun Rights Examiner column.
  
• Email correspondence between Breuer and Melson.
  
• The assignment of Gang Unit Prosecutor Joe Cooley to Operation Fast and Furious at the time when walked guns from Operation Wide Receiver were being reported by a fellow prosecutor.
  
• Cooley's handwritten notes.
  
• Notes from Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler--including about quantities of guns bought by straw purchasers and dollars spent.
  
• False assurances to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein by Gang Unit Chief Kevin Carwile that ATF did not allow guns to walk but instead learned of that "after the FFL began cooperating."
  
• Weinstein advising Breuer that guns walked, guns were lost, and no "upstream conspirators" were caught--"only straws."
  

"Documents in the possession of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee provide a much clearer picture than that given by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer in his statement of yesterday of what the Justice Department knew of the tactic of 'letting guns walk' and when they, and Breuer himself, knew about it," Mike Vanderboegh writes in his companion report to this one.
Among some of the elements brought into better focus:

• The revelation by then-Phoenix Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge George Gillett to Cooley that "Fast and Furious" was an OCDETF (Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force) operation requiring Department of Justice approval is something Janet Napolitano was unwilling to admit to Rep. Trey Gowdy in an Oct. 26 House Judiciary Committee Hearing.
  
• The admission in a Dec 2009 email from Melson to Breuer talking about tracing from seizures that "we do seem to be making progress with our Mexican partners."
  
• A recommended startegy from Weinstein to Breuer that "[T] he best move is to indict both Wide Receiver I and Wide Receiver II under seal and then unseal as part of Project Deliverance, where focus will be on aggregate seizures and not on particulars of any one indictment." The DOJ lauded the success of Deliverance in a June 2010 press release.
  
• Also bear in mind that Grindler is the No. 2 guy at Justice--Eric Holder's Chief of Staff.
  

See the accompanying sidebar slideshow for screen captures of handwritten notes and open the sidebar media player to review the pdf file featuring all seven documents or click here to view them.
Click here to read Vanderboegh's analysis on Sipsey Street Irregulars.
------------
Also see:

[Ed Jewett]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3169[/ATTACH]
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OSZef-J_jeY/Tr...holder.jpg


[ATTACH=CONFIG]3168[/ATTACH]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ur0hk7YQYvA/Tr...meline.jpg

[Ed Jewett]

In another in a series of exclusives reported on the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, online journalist Mike Vanderboegh has obtained a transcript and recording of a telephone conversation between "Operation Wide Receiver" confidential informant Mike Detty and then-Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Phoenix Field Division, William Newell, a central figure in the "Fast and Furious" government gunwalking scandal.
Earlier this morning, Vanderboegh sent a preliminary draft of his report to Gun Rights Examiner, and this correspondent contacted Detty so that he would be informed of it and the two could speak prior to its release. It is important to note Detty was not Vanderboegh's source for obtaining the recording.

Advertisement

Click here to read this Sipsey Street Irregulars exclusive, and click on the sidebar media player to listen to the phone conversation.
Also see:

• A Journalist's Guide to Project Gunwalker' for a complete list with links of independent investigative reporting and commentary done to date by Sipsey Street Irregulars and Gun Rights Examiner. Note to newcomers to this story: "Project Gunrunner" is the name ATF assigned to its Southwest Border Initiative to interdict gun smuggling to Mexico. "Project Gunwalker" is the name I assigned to the scandal after allegations by agents that monitored guns were allowed to fall into criminal hands on both sides of the border through a surveillance process termed "walking" surfaced.
  

Continue reading on Examiner.com Vanderboegh reports call between ATF's Newell and Wide Receiver' CI - National gun rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-na...z1e7V3IxDS

****

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2011

SSI Exclusive: ATF & the Washington Post conspired to violate the Tiarht Amendment. "Big Dog" talks to "Mad Dawg" about Sari Horwitz & Wide Receiver.




"Hey, baby, let's go to Mexico."

On Monday, 13 December 2010, the Washington Post ran a story by Sari Horwitz and James V. Grimaldi entitled "U.S. gun dealers with the most firearms traced over the past four years." It began:

A decade ago, politicians and the press routinely reported on gun stores across the nation that had the most traces for firearms recovered by police. In 2003, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress passed a law that hid from public view the government database that contained the gun tracing information.

The Washington Post has obtained the names of the gun dealers nationwide with the most traces over the past four years. In addition, The Post has uncovered the names of the dealers, all from border states, with the most traces from guns recovered in Mexico over the past two years.

In these paragraphs, Grimaldi and Horwitz admit up front that their sources have violated federal law, called the Tiahrt Amendment. We now know who at least one of those federal sources that the Washington Post used for that story was -- William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division.

In a recording of a telephone conversation obtained by Sipsey Street Irregulars, Newell, who refers to himself as "the big dog" in Phoenix is overheard talking to a Federal Firearms Licensee, Mike Detty, owner of Mad Dawg Global Marketing and a confidential informant for the Tuscon ATF office, about a variety of subjects, including the Washington Post story and Operation Wide Receiver, in which Detty played an integral part.

Although the audio file of the conversation is not dated, comparing internal evidence in the conversation with the references to the Washington Post article, it likely took place on 13 or 14 December 2010. Some relevant excerpts:

Detty: I got a call from Sari Horwitz at the Washington Post.

Newell: Oh, yeah, I saw that article.

Detty: And she wanted my comments and one of the things that she said to me, she said . . . I said, 'You know Sari I don't feel comfortable talking to you at least until I talk to somebody at ATF and see what, kinda, what they want me to do. Chances are that they won't want me to comment at all.' And she said, 'well we've already talked to, uh, ATF in Phoenix,' and I said, 'Well, who did you talk to?' and she said 'Well, we talked to the SAC Bill Newell there, and he told us that you're the one that made contact and that you've been cooperating with ATF. . .'

Newell: No. She's . . . she's . . . she's . . . she's playing the old . . . she's a typical reporter playing the old, uh . . . the old, uh, you know, dropping names, um, no, yeah, he did come to talk to us and what they did is what they did for that story . . . I saw that story today and what they did is that they pull court records, and, you know, there's nothing we can do for them, especially in Arizona and places like Arizona they have open court records and in the federal system once the court records are, you know, once the federal and state court records are filed . . . you know they spent a year doing that story, they go out and they look at all the different court records. I'm sorry she called you, it . . . it . . . it's never my intention for her to call anybody.

Detty: No, no, no, it's just that it . . . it took me off guard and for her to say, 'Well, yeah, you know he told us that you were cooperating' and, and, uh . . .

Newell: No, that's wrong. She's . . . you know, she . . . what, what I said and what she was referring to is she (unintelligible) people from headquarters (unintelligible) and what I said was 99 percent of our gun dealers in the United States cooperate with us . . . she . . . she tried to do the same thing with me. She talked to several SACs on the border. It's typical with the reporters, they'll do this. They'll try to say, 'Well, aren't the gun dealers responsible?' I said, 'listen, if a gun dealer knowingly allows certain things to occur without any ATF oversight, yeah." I said 'but 99 percent of our gun dealers are cooperative. They call us, when, you know, there is something illegal going on or about to go on.' And I said, 'without that assistance, you know, we couldn't make the cases we make for the most part. So that's what she's referring to. I would never, never . . . I mean, this is the first time in 22 years I ever gotten a call like this. You know, she obviously played, she obviously played that very well, which I'm sorry that she did because that was not the . . . you have no obligation to talk to her at all. If a reporter ever calls you, you're under no obligation to talk to her at all.

Detty: Well, again, you know she made it sound like, you know this was being talked about and, 'oh yeah, they won't have a problem with it because I talked to this guy,' and, and I left it at that, and what I told was, I said 'Look, you know, um, whether these guys think I set 'em up or not, um, or whether I'm a greedy gun dealer that doesn't care about what guns are going south,' I said, 'either way you print that, I'm the loser,' and I said, 'Don't attach my name to anything, and don't, um, don't quote me on anything, um. 'cause it'll come back to you.' So today, happily, I was glad to see that my name, even my corporate name, was not mentioned in her article. . .

Newell blaming "court records" for disclosure of Detty's involvement in straw man sales was a red herring. In the Grimaldi-Horwitz story there are only four mentions of court records. Indeed, the bulk of the story involves lists of supposed "bad guy" gun dealers derived from the illegally-leaked trace data -- which could only have come from the ATF -- and their reactions to being listed on the Washington Post's illegal list.

One of them was Carter's Country in Houston, who immediately hired Dick DeGuerin to defend them against the slander. Another was Lone Wolf Trading Company:

Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, is ranked eighth on the list with about 1,515 firearms traced. Lone Wolf sits in a strip mall, next to Spa Tahiti. Inside, model airplanes hang from the ceiling and the heads of animals adorn the walls. A sign behind the cash register advertised AK-47s for $499.

Lone Wolf has jumped from No. 61 on the 2004 list.

Last year, 12 people were indicted on charges of making false statements in order to buy 17 AK-47-type rifles headed to Mexico. The guns were purchased from seven stores, including Lone Wolf.

Owner Andre Howard could not be reached for comment. ATF officials said they have no indication that Lone Wolf is doing anything wrong or illegal.

Of course not. They're hardly likely to draw attention to their principle source for Fast and Furious weapons going to the Mexican cartels.

Other sources who were interviewed by the Washington Post tell Sipsey Street that they were told by Horwitz and Grimaldi that the ATF headquarters was cooperating with the story. It is not against the law to publish a leak from ATF about trace data. It IS a federal crime for ATF personnel to leak trace data to a media outlet. Obviously the political interests of ATF headquarters and the Department of Justice coincided with the Washington Post's agenda in doing the story based on illegally-leaked data.

In the conversation Newell evinces a great deal of knowledge about the story and indicates that ATF headquarters was on the line when he he talked to Horwitz. It would be interesting to me to subject this tape to voice stress analysis and find out where and about what Newell is lying. Where he begins to stammer is a clue.

Newell: I'm sorry that that reporter called you because she called several people and, you know, there's like four or five reporters that worked on this thing including a reporter in Mexico and they went out and they talked to a hundred people (unintelligible) they talked to a ton of people, they went through court records left and right and you're not the only gun dealer that they called and I said, 'listen,' I said, "I can't stop them from calling' and I said, I told another guy, I said, "You're under no obligation to say anything to these people.' I mean, if they want, if they start say 'no comment' and hang up the phone, I mean, you know, you're under no obligation. If you want to make a comment, then, hey, make a comment, knock yourself out. But if you notice in that story it says . . . she talked to me on the phone for about an hour hour which was a three way call to one in our headquarters and I . . . over and over again I said to all these reporters, I said, 'Listen, most of our great information on firearms trafficking comes from cooperative dealers who don't want a bad name associated with then and that's why we work with the NSSF who do all these campaigns' and so I said, "So, yeah, there are bad dealers. . . there's bad everything. We have bad ATF agents who get caught up doing things they shouldn't do and it happens. It's human nature. . .'

Detty: Uh, huh.

Newell: And I said ninety nine percent of our dealers are cooperative people who give us information and really are under no obligation to do so, but we appreciate when they do.' And of course, I don't know . . . there's some of that in there but of course they kinda leave that stuff off to the side because that doesn't . . . that's not juicy, you know?

Detty: Yeah.

Newell: But, um, I . . .

Detty: And to be honest with you I'd love for them to know the full story because, um, I'm not a bad guy and I've really gone out of my way to, to help you guys . . . I mean I've brought you some good cases, and as a result there's a whole bunch . . . I think probably right now, not counting anything from Wide Receiver, over twenty people in prison right now that deserve to be there. Um, and I would love for that story to be told, and there's just no good way to do that without putting me at risk. . .

Toward the end of the conversation, Detty gets around to asking about why Wide Receiver hasn't produced any prosecutions:

Detty: "You know, I was just curious with, uh, with Wide Receiver, you know, three years ago, I think, the U.S. Attorney here told me they were planning on arresting something like forty people and its my understanding, I think it was, November 10th or November 9th, they made six arrests here in Tucson.

Newell: Right.

Detty: But I haven't seen. . . I check the website daily and I haven't seen a press release regarding that. Is there a reason that you're waiting on that or hoping to make more arrests?

Newell: Yeah, there'll be . . . uh, we're waiting. There's some other stuff going on, uh, that's part of that, and so it'll be a wait, it'll be a bit here. Probably another month or so.

Detty: I was just curious because I, well, I mean, all the time and effort and man hours that went into that one case and I think we had at least two or three air surveillances from my house and there was the 48-hour surveillance all the way out to the border and the 50 .38 Supers and (unintelligible) and all that nonsense . . .

Newell: Right.

Detty: That uh . . .

Newell: Right.

Detty: That would be a case that you would be able to stand up and hold up the headline and say 'look what we did' . . .

Newell: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, and we plan on doing that, its just the matter that right now there's another thing going on that, if we did that right now we'd would mess that other deal up, so . . .

Detty: Gotcha. Okay.

"There's another thing going on."

We now know that the other thing was Fast and Furious.

And shortly after this phone conversation -- within hours maybe, within days certainly -- Brian Terry encountered the muzzle end of a Fast and Furious Kalashnikov in Peck Canyon.

Addendum: Just before I put this article up this morning, I received this comment from Mike Detty:

I looked at your draft this morning and it is 100% accurate.

I am convinced that Sari Horwitz was accurate when she said that Bill Newell gave her my name as someone who was cooperating with ATF on Wide Receiver. To my knowledge, at this time, there was no other way she could have found my name in association with this case unless she got it from Newell or another ATF agent. It really didn't surprise me since I was exposed as the CI on every other case I worked for ATF.

I first heard of Fast & Furious back in spring of 2010 - though its code name was not mentioned. A field agent told me, "I have no idea on why they are letting so many guns go to Mexico or what they are hoping to do with the information but it makes your case look like small fry," he said referring to the 450 guns that were allowed to walk over the border in Wide Receiver.

Addendum: Some folks are having technical problems accessing the audio file of the entire conversation posted at David's site. When we get those worked out, I will post a notice here and independently so you will be able to verify the transcript.

Finally, I think it is important to note for the record that I did not get the tape from Mike Detty, nor from his attorney, nor from any of his friends. I would, however, like to take this opportunity to thank the Dogtown Rangers, Wiredog Platoon, Communications Intercept Section, SSGT Ralph Aloysius Bear, commanding. (Ralph is Ramsey's first cousin on his daddy's side.) ;-)

Mike Vanderboegh



Posted by Dutchman6 at 7:37 AM

[Ed Jewett]

Gunwalker scandal broadens--the FBI connection

• Add a comment
  

Anthony Martin

, Conservative Examiner
November 21, 2011 - Like this? Subscribe to get instant updates.

• 21
  
• Share
  
• Print
  
• Email
  

Confidential informants who are participating in the Congressional probe of the Project Gunwalker (Operation Fast and Furious) scandal have now zeroed in on the FBI connection. Such a connection has been hinted at in the past, but information relayed today shows that FBI involvement was much deeper than anyone imagined.
The investigation into Gunwalker has revealed a scandal involving multiple departments of the Obama Administration--Justice, FBI, ATF, ICE, DEA, DHS, and State. These connections have been verified through previously hidden emails and documents, and sworn testimony of whistleblowers.
But the FBI connection is one that could be potentially the biggest one yet, indicating that the bureau not only was involved in Gunwalker but has been up to its neck in a scandal all its own--a program called 'PATCON,' or 'Patriot Conspiracy.'
A paid confidential informant enlisted under PATCON indicated a long history of the covert program spanning several decades which include such debacles as the Ruby Ridge murders, the Waco murders of a religious cult, the Oklahoma City bombing, and Project Gunwalker.

Advertisement

Newsweek Magazine had received this information which they had planned to include in a major story today, according to citizen investigative journalist Mike Vanderboegh. But before the story went to press, the facts were gutted out of the final copy. There is no mention of PATCON or its various tyrannical operations that have resulted in countless deaths.
Vanderboegh stated,

I also knew from sources, living and dead, that PATCON was the worst scandal that the FBI ever perpetrated. PATCON could sink the FBI, perhaps permanently, and along with the Gunwalker Scandal, totally discredit the teflon coating that the Bureau has excreted around its corrupt core and thoroughly debunk the myth that the FBI is anything but an agency of arsonists posing as firemen.
Finally, I knew that Newsweek would run the story tomorrow. I have been hinting about this story for weeks, and now it was about to happen.

But Newsweek editor Tina Brown nixed the heart of the story by removing key facts concerning the paid confidential informant, PATCON, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the OKC bombing, and the Clinton Administration.
Confidential sources who are cooperating with the Congressional probe of Gunwalker indicate that the FBI and the White House were so frightened by the prospects of this story getting out to the public that they used the authority and power of their government offices to pressure Newsweek to omit key facts. And that they did. The story, which was published today, makes no mention of the bombshell information that makes the story the story.
What we have, instead, is a non-story.
The Daily Beast, by the way, is now a part of the Washington Post-Newsweek family of 'news' organizations.
But what Newsweek wishes to hide is shouted from the housetops by Vanderboegh, who has a wealth of information about PATCON through his many undercover contacts in the government. That wealth of information includes the following:

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

This information has broad repercussions for the continuing investigation into the OKC bombing being conducted by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, whose brother was killed after the attack. There is evidence that the Clinton Administration used the FBI to squelch any talk of broader connections in the bombing in order to propagate the 'lone bomber' theory.
For more information into PATCON, consult this document, which was posted today by National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea.
This is a continually-developing story. More information will be provided as it becomes available.








Continue reading on Examiner.com Gunwalker scandal broadens--the FBI connection - National Conservative | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-...z1eOozjMyX

[Ed Jewett]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2011

SSI EXCLUSIVE: The "Patriot Conspiracy" fix at Newsweak. Tina Brown guts a story to protect Democrats & the FBI. "PATCON will get you killed."

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence. Newsweek is published in four English language editions and 12 global editions written in the language of the circulation region.

Since 2008, Newsweek has undergone a series of internal and external contractions designed to shift the magazine's focus and audience while shoring up the title's finances. Instead, losses at the newsweekly accelerated: revenue dropped 38 percent from 2007 to 2009. The revenue freefall prompted an August 2010 sale by owner The Washington Post Company to 92-year-old audio pioneer Sidney Harman reportedly for a purchase price of $1.00 and an assumption of the magazine's liabilities. . .

In November 2010 Newsweek merged with the news and opinion website The Daily Beast after extensive negotiations between the proprietors of the respective publications. Tina Brown, The Daily Beast's editor-in-chief was expected to serve as the editor of both publications. Newsweek is jointly owned by Harman and IAC. -- Wikipedia.

"Can we write this story without even mentioning FBI complicity, PATCON, the Clinton Administration, Waco and Oklahoma City?" The answer, it seems, was 'yes.'

Going into this weekend, I knew these three things to be certain.

1. Newsweek had a story about a paid confidential informant enlisted under PATCON, an FBI program that spanned many years, including the years that Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma City Bombing happened. PATCON is shorthand for "Patriot Conspiracy."

2. I also knew from sources, living and dead, that PATCON was the worst scandal that the FBI ever perpetrated. PATCON could sink the FBI, perhaps permanently, and along with the Gunwalker Scandal, totally discredit the teflon coating that the Bureau has excreted around its corrupt core and thoroughly debunk the myth that the FBI is anything but an agency of arsonists posing as firemen.

3. Finally, I knew that Newsweek would run the story tomorrow. I have been hinting about this story for weeks, and now it was about to happen.

The only thing was, I heard yesterday, that there was a better than even chance that as a result of intervention by Tina Brown, Newsweek's editor, there might not even be any mention of PATCON, Waco or Oklahoma City -- no mention, in fact, of a lot of things.

Of course I also knew that it didn't mean that the PATCON story would end there. It won't. It will come out whether Tina Brown's troubled and cash-strapped magazine benefits from it or not. (Interesting, isn't it, how corrupt politics trumps fiduciary responsibility to the owners of Newsweek, Jane Harmon and the stockholders of IAC, and the public's right to know?

Staff members at Newsweek and The Daily Beast said the environment there had become difficult in recent weeks. People who work there, who did not want to publicly criticize their bosses, say morale in the newsroom has sunk as Ms. Brown has had more frequent outbursts in front of her employees. "It's all hell, it's agony," she has been overheard telling staff members about the quality of their work, according to one of them.

Executives at the magazine are extremely sensitive to perceptions that Newsweek is performing poorly and point to metrics like a 20 percent rise in newsstand sales and a 2.6 percent increase in subscription renewals (they had been in decline for five years) as proof that the turnaround efforts are gaining steam.

"We don't face financial difficulties," said Barry Diller, whose IAC/InterActiveCorp owns The Daily Beast. "The attempt has been to take The Beast and revive Newsweek, which we said at the beginning was going to be a two-year effort. We are actually ahead of schedule." -- New York Times, 14 November 2011.

So there, Diller explained, they don't need a blockbuster issue -- or even a stunning series of articles that everyone would be drawn to read -- because they are "ahead of schedule." Were they to take this monetarily self-destructive decision, I thought, it would certainly illustrate the political preferences of Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE, nee Christina Hambley Brown and the power of FBI blackmail to get what it wants.

Well, it is Monday and the article is out.

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. Jesse Trentadue must feel like puking."

I have not interviewed Mr. Trentadue for this article, but I rather suspect the source is right. For this was an article crafted out of documents, now part of the public record, that Trentadue -- a Salt Lake City lawyer who has been trying for 17 years to find out the true circumstances of the murder of his brother Kenney at the hands of government agents in an isolation cell at the federal lockup in El Reno Oklahoma a few months after the OKC bombing -- provided Newsweek. He even led them to the former PATCON confidential informant, John Matthews.

And what did Trentadue get for all his troubles, for putting his faith in Newsweek, for literally giving them the story on platter?

Here's what he got:

Trentadue believed that the FBI had confused Kenney for a member of a gang of white supremacist bank robbers called the Aryan Republican Army; though for years the FBI has claimed that McVeigh largely acted alone, Trentadue has uncovered evidence allegedly linking him to the ARA and the group to the bombing.

You will note that there is no mention of PATCON and so many modifiers that it merely makes Trentadue look like a conspiracy theorist loon.

Nice.

Well, that's all very well and good, Vanderboegh, you may say, but where's the proof that this CI was even involved in PATCON?

Take a look at this and you tell me.

Compare it to the Newsweek story.

The subject is John Matthews.

The heading is "PATCON" -- Patriot Conspiracy.

This will be the first document of many posted in these pages as we gradually explore the records related to PATCON and confidential sources who will explain its outline, scope and bloody consequences.

If the FBI thought they dodged a bullet by persuading Tina Brown to expunge PATCON and its details from this article they reckoned without the Sipsey Street Irregulars and the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians.

There are many more dark corners of PATCON that have yet to be explored and Mr. Matthews will certainly be an excellent tour guide for some enterprising reporter who doesn't work for Tina Brown and who is willing to get to the truth.

There are even links from PATCON to the Gunwalker Scandal.

After all, personnel, as I was taught in Business 101, is policy.

Future articles here at Sipsey Street will explore the details of the murder of Kenney Trentadue and Eric Holder's role in covering them up. It will also deal with the tale of how a U.S. Attorney in Arizona made the proffer to McVeigh associate Michael Fortier in order to flesh out the "lone bomber theory" and divert attention away from Elohim City, the Aryan Republican Army and federal undercover informant Andreas Carl Strassmeier.

The name of that United States Attorney was Janet Napolitano.

Posted by Dutchman6 at 4:24 AM

[Ed Jewett]

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2011

SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. . ."

So I wrote on Monday in this article which linked to a
published but gutted version of the original Newsweek story about the patriotic volunteer confidential informant John Matthews, who was recruited by the FBI under the secret program known as PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy).

"What was it, specifically," I was asked later in numerous emails and phone calls, "that Tina Brown cut out?" From sources I had a pretty good idea, not all of which I put in the first article. But that was only based on trusted but secondhand sources.

Well, now I can answer that question. Sipsey Street has obtained a copy of the unedited article written by R.M. Schneiderman.

It was -- as originally written -- a great story, an important, game-changing story, a story that couold have made the career and reputation of Ross Schneiderman for the rest of his life. It had been several months in the making, sources say, as Schneiderman and his immediate editor John Solomon put it together and almost instantly ran into resistance from editors higher up the Newsweek food chain including, ultimately, Tina Brown.

When the editors were finished, most of the startling revelations of what John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue had to say were in Tina Brown's waste basket. Nestled beside them, amid waste paper and used Starbucks' latte cups, was the golden opportunity of Ross Schneiderman's career.

However, sources tell Sipsey Street, that the FBI, the Obama DOJ and the White House were all reportedly quite happy -- as well they should be.

Until now.

(NOTE: The excerpts below contain typographical errors found in the original and I have left them as is.)

Among the items expunged from the story:

1. The missing paragraphs that presented evidence that Tom Posey, the supposed chief conspirator whose crazy talk about using weapons of mass destruction first prompted Matthews to go to the FBI, may himself have been a government asset. From the original story as written, before Tina Brown's felt tip marker excised it:

After Posey's arrest, the FBI had Matthews Social Security number changed, and paid for him and his family to move to Stockton , California . Yet the trial in Alabama proved frustrating for him. Despite hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, as well as video and personal surveillance, the Justice Department only chose to prosecute Posey and his cohorts for buying and selling the stolen night vision goggles. And in the end, Posey was sentenced to just two years in prison.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Birmingham said there simply wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Posey for the Brown's Ferry plot. Yet curiously, the TVA denied that the plot or the weapons cache even existed. Meanwhile, several of the men involved in the planned robbery were never arrested. At the time, two of the men, Matthews says, were planning to blow up a federal building in Birmingham .

"They were gonna take a truck filled with fertilizer," says Matthews. "You look at what Timothy McVeigh done, it's basically the same thing. "What happened in Oklahoma could have happened a couple of years earlier."

One possible explanation for how Posey's trial played out: In 1996, the year he was released from prison, Posey appears to have been issued a new Social Security number, according to a Lexis-Nexus search conducted by Newsweek. Tony Gooch, a friend and Posey's and a former CMA member, said that Posey was innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the whole Brown's Ferry plot had been cooked up by Matthews. "Tom was a good man," he says. "John did not endear himself to us with that story." Yet Gooch said that Posey may have felt forced to cut a deal with the Justice Department, and provide them with information on other groups in the movement, or agreed not to reveal what he knew about Iran Contra.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Gooch said. "Tom knew some people who were real hardcore."

Andreas Carl Strassmeier. John Matthews encountered him in company with Timothy McVeigh in San Saba, Texas. Sources say that Strassmeier was a joint operative of the German and U.S. governments.

2. There is mention that Matthews had encountered both Timothy McVeigh and Andreas Carl Strassmeier, widely thought to have been involved in the planning of the bombing, in Texas. From the original version of the story:

In the spring of 1995, Matthews was sitting on the couch with his father at his house in Stockton California when he heard the news: A truck bomb had exploded in front of a federal building in Oklahoma . Dozens had been killed, hundreds had been injured and the face of the building looked like it had been chewed off by an animal with a giant maw.

Matthews watched the coverage of the bombing with rapt attention. After all, this was the same sort of attack he had spent years trying to prevent. Days later, when McVeigh became the prime suspect and his photo flashed across the screen, Matthews realized he had seen him before. His mind drifted back to a weekend several years prior at a ranch in San Saba , Texas , where once a month, the TRM held paramilitary training.

It was a relatively warm Saturday morning. Matthews, who had spent the night on the ranch, was walking back from the woods where he had been setting up the evening's exercise, when he spotted a group of men in fatigues hanging around a shed where the TRM stored explosives. Some of them, Matthews could tell by their haircuts and bearing, were ex-military.

Matthews and a few of his cohorts walked over to the men and introduced themselves. One man had dark hair, slightly buck teeth and a foreign accent. His name was "Andy," and Matthews later learned that he was from Germany . Another man was tall and lanky, with short, buzzed hair. He said his name was "Tim."

"He [Tim] was a nobody," Matthews says. "Just another ex-soldier, but I remember his face. He was at one of the meetings, where a bunch of [stolen] ammunition was brought in from Fort Hood ."

Sitting in father's living room in California , watching the television, Matthews decided he should call Jarrett. He told them about "Tim" and "Andy the German." Yet Jarrett seemed blasé about the matter. "He said, We know, John. Don't worry about it. We got it covered."

Instead, he was more interested in whether Matthews had seen McVeigh in Arizona . At the time, Matthews was working for the bureau there, infiltrating militias and separatists, along with meth-cooking gangs of bikers. Apparently, Jarrett said, McVeigh had spent time with similar groups. But Matthews never ran across him in Arizona , he said. Only in Texas . Jarrett thanked him and said he'd keep him updated. But as Matthews recalls it, that was the last time they ever spoke about the bombing.

When the FBI and the Justice Department eventually determined that McVeigh had largely acted alone in the bombing, with minimal assistance from two men who eventually back out of the attack, Matthews was skeptical. He began to wonder if it wasn't a repeat of the Brown's Ferry incident all over again.

"I felt Don knew more about this, but he could never say something to me," Matthews says.

Jarrett passed away in 2009. . .

3. The story published also excised any mention of the Texas Light Infantry, a militia unit in the Lone Star State which contained constitutional militia, racist right and non-political elements. The racists and neoNazis, says one source who was familiar with TLI at the time, "kept a very low profile. Think of them as infiltrators that most TLI members knew nothing about."

Exactly why Newsweek found it necessary to delete mention of the TLI get-together in San Saba, and instead ascribe it to the Texas Reserve Militia, is curious. It was the TLI which is mentioned in FBI reports (called 302s) of this meeting where Matthews met men who he later discovered to be McVeigh and Strassmeier, sources say. Why, sources ask, is Newsweek (and presumably the FBI) allergic to mention of TLI?

4. The published story also expunged mention of an FBI undercover operative named Dave Rossi.

In January 1992, Matthews and Posey traveled to Austin Texas to meet with Neal Payne, a member of the Texas Reserve Militia, an Austin-based paramilitary group. Years earlier, Payne, a chiropractor who had been married in a church in which swastikas were frequently displayed, had been arrested for harboring Louis Beam, then a fugitive former Klan leader, who was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government. (He was later acquitted). Now, the FBI was investigating Payne, Beam and the TRM for allegedly laundering money through a Texas gun shop, paying off local law enforcement, purchasing stolen weapons from a Texas military base, smuggling arms from Central America, attempting to blow up a National Guard convoy in Alabama and threatening to kill two FBI agents in response to Beam's arrest.

It was evening when they met at a small hotel room, on the outskirts of the city. The weather was cold and the sky was darkening. It had rained earlier that day, and inside the hotel room, the smell of must lingered in the air. Portraits of cowboys hung on the walls, as did old photos of the Alamo . Payne had wanted Matthews and Posey to meet a friend of his, an Austin-based Vietnam veteran named Dave Rossi. Rossi was about average height and build. He sported a shock of silver hair, a gray moustache and a green bomber jacket, which was fashionable among skinheads at the time.

For the next few hours, they kicked back on the beds and in the chairs and talked about the movement, how if they were ever going to stop the Jewish-led New World Order, they would have to band together, trading knowledge and weapons and making sure the government didn't infiltrate them in the process. Fashioning his group after the Order, an infamous white supremacist gang of bank robbers from the 1980s, Rossi told Matthews and Posey that he and his cohorts were robbing armored cars, and using the proceeds to fund the movement. "He let us know that there was money available," says Matthews. "We were feeling each other out."

Posey, on his part, touted his access to weapons, and his history with the Contras. And as they left the hotel and drove to a local restaurant for dinner, Posey said could supply Rossi with C-4, a military grade explosive, as well as Stinger missiles, deadly heat-seeking devices, which when strapped to your shoulder, can bring down an aircraft with one shot.

Matthews recalls Posey leaving the meeting and feeling good about the future of the movement. "We really didn't know where we were going with it at the time," Matthews says. "But if they showed up with money then we could believe what they were telling us."

In September of 1992, on a brisk morning in Benton , Tennessee , Matthews met Rossi and Posey at the annual convention of the American Pistol and Rifle Association, a gun rights group to the right of the NRA. Guards dressed in a camouflage uniforms, and armed with semi-automatic pistols patrolled the compound. Children and adults fired pistols and rifles at targets shaped like police cars a nearby range, and later, the group's head of security, a police officer, taught a class on how to disarm law enforcement officials and kill them with their own guns.

As the day progressed, Matthews did his best to keep his distance from the undercover agent. For months, he and Posey had been travelling across the country, meeting a who's who in the movementfrom the Klan to the Aryan Nations--and linking them up with Rossi. Each time, Rossi introduced himself as a leader of a gang of armored car robbers with lots of money on his hands and a desire to fund the movement.

Eventually, however, Matthews began to wonder: If this guy has all this cash at his disposal, and he's robbing all these banks, why haven't I heard about the robberies? Matthews asked Jarrett and several of his other handlers at the bureau and they demurred. But eventually, after Matthews continued harping on the issue, Jarrett admitted what Matthews had begun to suspect: That Rossi was an undercover agent, posing as the leader of a white supremacist group. And the hotel they had initially met at in Texas had been bugged.

At first, Matthews felt betrayed; it was as if the bureau didn't trust him. But then the knowledge that Rossi had been with him along the way was validating; Jarrett told him that he had earned their trust, and so Matthews continued his work, knowing that his handlers were behind him. Now, when they arrived on a scene, they often split up and had separate targets.

Matthews' job for the weekend was to film. And that evening, as roughly 150 men and womenmany of them in flannel shirts and baseball caps--gathered into an old barn to listen various speakers, Matthews sat in the back with the video camera rolling, while Posey and Rossi sat nearby, chatting amicably.

One speaker, a burly man with silver hair and a commanding Southern drawl drew considerable applause as he excoriated then President George H.W. Bush, and his opponent, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

"It is no longer the lesser of two evils, but the evil of two lesser that threatens the United States of America today!" the man said. "We have more of a good reason for a second American revolution than ever before."

The speaker, James Gordon "Bo" Gritz, was the leading candidate for the extreme right wing Populist Party in the 1992 election. Four years earlier he had been on the party's ticket as the running mate of former Klan leader David Duke. In recent months, Gritz had been in the headlines for his role in trying to negotiate an 18-month standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist and former ATF informant, who had links to the Aryan Nation. The standoff ended after an FBI sniper, who was authorized to use lethal force, shot and kicked Weaver's wife Vicki, who was holding her new-born child.

The news quickly galvanized the radical right like never before. Men like Poseywho already worried that their right to bear arms was eroding--suddenly feared that the government would soon come for them, too. And while months prior, various white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and anti-government groups had talked about joining forces, after the Weaver shooting, that talk quickly turned to action.

The audience stood and applauded as Gritz decried the bureau's handling of the Weaver standoff. And after Gritz's speech ended, Matthews, Rossi and Posey slipped out of the back of the barn and walked through the grass over to where Posey had parked his blue Ford Bronco. For months they had been trying to hash out a weapons deal. Posey had told Rossi that he could get him as many as six Stinger missiles, priced at $40,000 a piece. The FBI had allocated the money for the purchase, apparently not to bust Posey, but to further embed the undercover into the world of hate and extremism. Days before the sale was to take place, however, Posey said he had sold the missiles to a group in Minnesota for $45,000 a piece, though it's not clear if he was telling the truth.

That evening in Tennessee , however, Posey had several pairs of military night-vision goggles in his SUV. All were in green canvas cases and the serial numbers had been removed. Rossi tried out several pairs of goggles, and they worked. He then pulled out $7,500 in cash and handed it to Posey. Before they parted that evening, Rossi asked Posey when he could get more goggles, and where they came from. Posey said he'd have them in about a week along with some TNT and C-4 explosives. The goggles, he said, came from "the black market."

Rossi, my sources say, may have been the ultimate PATCON operative, serving the FBI in a number of operations. If true, it is understandable that the FBI would be happy that Rossi's role ended up in Tina Brown's waste basket.


The body of Baylee Almon is carried from the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building.

5. Also excised was mention that Jesse Trentadue had more than just a suspicion that his brother Kenney had been beaten to death as part of the OKBOMB investigation:

After his latest stint in the emergency room this year, Matthews says he kept thinking more and more about what his family knew about him and what he sacrificed over the years. Wondering if anyone had ever tied his name to the FBI, at a whim that morning this past summer, he began searching around online.

What he found was an article about Trentadue, the Salt Lake City attorney. For the past 15 years, the West Virginia-born lawyer has been shuffling across the street from his office in downtown Salt Lake City , and filing profanity-laced letters and Freedom of Information Act Requests to various federal agencies.

His goal? To prove that the agency killed his brother, Kenney, during a botched interrogation at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in 1995, shortly after McVeigh's attack. The bureau claims Kenney hung himself in his cell, but Trentadue says--and provided pictures indicatingthat Kenney's throat was slit and his body was covered in bruises.

Trentadue and his family were awarded $1.1 million for emotional distress after a federal judge found that the FBI and Bureau of Prisons had lied in court and destroyed evidence during the investigation. But Trentadue wasn't satisfied. And not long after, he received an anonymous phone call from someone who said that his brother had been killed in a case of mistaken identity. The FBI, the caller said, believed that Kenney was actually a member of the Aryan Republican Army, a notorious gang of white supremacist bandits who robbed 22 banks across the Midwest in the early to mid 90s.

6. Gone, too, were the links between McVeigh and Strassmeier:

For years the FBI has insisted that McVeigh was essentially a lone wolf terrorist. Yet through his FOIA requests, Trentadue learned that the bureau had long possessed evidence linking McVeigh to the ARA, and several of the gang's members to the bombing in Oklahoma City .

As Matthews read on he ran across a name that stopped him cold: Andy Strassmeir. A mysterious German national, a member of the country's army and son of an advisor to Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, Strassmeir moved to the U.S. in the late 1980s. Over the next few years, he began palling around with ARA members and other white supremacists in Oklahoma . But according to the FBI files released by Trentadue, Strassmeir also conducted paramilitary training with the TRM in Texas . And Matthews believes he is the same man that he encountered, along with McVeigh, in San Saba.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said he had indeed trained with the TRM, but he did not recall training with McVeigh. Instead, he said that he and McVeigh had only met once at a gun show in Tulsa , Oklahoma in the spring of 1993a meeting that McVeigh confirmed before he was put to death roughly a decade ago.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said that he and McVeigh had never been friends. Phone records discovered by the FBI show that McVeigh called Strassmeir two weeks before the bombing. The German-native says he wasn't home, and has no idea why McVeigh was calling. Roughly a year later, he slipped out of the country through Mexico , after a private investigator working for McVeigh's defense attorney attempted to have him summoned to court. He had never been interviewed by the FBI until he was already safe and sound in Germany .

Speaking by way of phone from Berlin , Strassmeir told Newsweek that he was neither an informant nor a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. A FOIA by Trentadue sent to the CIA about Strassmeir came up with 26 documents. Yet the National Geospatial Agency, part of the Department of Defense, would not allow Langley to release the documents, citing national security concerns.

Chase and Colton Smith. Collateral damage to the unintended consequences of PATCON, 19 April 1995. They would be young men now if not for McVeigh and Strassmeier. They never got the chance.

There is one thing that the heavily-edited article did, however, which makes these edits so much more important now that we know about them.

Both the FBI and Newsweek have validated Mr. Matthews service, his accounts and the quality of his memory. From the FBI plaque given to John Matthews:

"John W. Matthews: In appreciation and recognition for your outstanding efforts in assisting the FBI to combat domestic terrorism throughout the United States : March 28, 1991 May 30, 1998."

And Newsweek added this paragraph:

Matthews' story, which Newsweek verified through hundreds of FBI documents and several dozen interviews, including conversations with current and former FBI officials, offers a rare glimpse into the murky world of domestic intelligence, and the bureau's struggles to combat right-wing extremism.

When you take the gutted version of the story and combine it with the critical information Tina Brown cut out and then compare it to these glowing character references, there is one thing that leaps out at any independent observer -- the full truth about the FBI's involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma City bombing has yet to be even scratched.

John Matthews, a dying man, a patriotic man, a man who tried above all to do right and protect the country that he swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, has come forward to tell his story.

Then let him tell the WHOLE story about PATCON.

The cause of simple justice for the victims of Oklahoma City demands it.

Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.

It remains to be seen if there are any other "mainstream media" outlets who can, or will.

But at least, gentle readers, you know now the extent of Newsweek's perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano -- both of whom were knee deep in PATCON and the cover-up of the true circumstances behind the deaths of 176 men, women and children in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995.

Blows of truth against the Empire.

Posted by Dutchman6 at 4:32 PM

[Magda Hassan]

The case against the alleged killers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has disappeared from federal court records, apparently sealed by a federal judge.

In May, federal prosecutors won an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and others, and they announced it with a press release. Only Osorio-Arellanes' name was visible in the indictment, but there were blacked-out words where other defendants' names go.
Osorio-Arellanes was charged with second-degree murder and was not considered the likely shooter. He had been wounded during the gunfight that left Terry dead.
But in the ensuing months, the case disappeared from court records.
Why? Nobody is saying.
Asked about the case, Debra Hartman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego, which is prosecuting the case, said by email: "Yes, our office is handling the case and can't comment further."
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council's Local 2544, said agents have grown frustrated with the lack of transparency in the case.
First, he said, there was the long silence surrounding the origins of the assault rifles discovered at the scene, eventually revealed to have been set loose into the community as part of a federal firearms investigation. Now there's this: a criminal investigation that has disappeared from public view.
Terry and fellow members of the Border Patrol's tactical unit were patrolling an area west of Rio Rico on Dec. 14, looking for bandits who prey on illegal border-crossers, when gunfire broke out.
In the months that followed, it emerged that two assault-style rifles left at the scene had been sold in the Phoenix area and allowed into the community as part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive investigation into gun smugglers. The investigation, called Operation Fast and Furious, is the subject of a congressional investigation and a Justice Department internal investigation.
Terry's parents have hired attorneys and are considering a wrongful-death suit against the U.S. government.
Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/c...z1enhfYF3K