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(photo of section of DHS bulletin)
The independent news website Truthout obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Occupy Wall Street. They were requested by the website’s investigative reporter Jason Leopold.
The news outlet was the first to request the records. The request was made in October of last year. “All records, including emails, memoranda, letters, audio/video, transcripts, reports, including Threat Assessments, related to the protest movement known as ‘Occupy Wall Street,’” were requested.
DHS had Truthout limit the request to “responsive records from DHS senior officials only.” Truthout agreed to limit the scope of the request.
According to Leopold, the documents show DHS “closely” monitored Twitter about OWS protests and activities. They were monitoring the moves of organizers too. The agency was “very hands on.”
The documents show how DHS fixated on the role of hacktivist group “Anonymous” in Occupy Wall Street. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis put out a bulletin on the upcoming US operations by “Anonymous” on September 17, 2011 (the kickoff date for Occupy Wall Street). The bulletin highlighted the call to action put out by Adbusters and the ideology within the call.
The bulletin concluded:
The ideologies set forth by Adbusters seem to align at a basic level with the stated intent of Anonymous’ newly adopted Hacktivist agenda. The protests are likely to occur due to the high level of media attention garnered by the partnership between Adbusters and Anonymous. Though the protests will likely be peaceful in nature, like any protest, malicious individuals may use the large crowds as cover to conduct illegal activity such as vandalism. Judging based on past behaviors by the group, Anonymous’ participation in these protests may include malicious cyber activity, likely in the form of distributed denial of service attacks targeting the computers of financial institutions and government agencies.
Another bulletin previously released and posted to Cryptocomb.org features identical content, but the format of the bulletin is different. This version, however, was put out by the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which is where the Office of Intelligence and Analysis got the material for their bulletin.
DHS was particularly concerned with the possible threat to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). A bulletin noted a supposed threat made by “Anonymous” to “erase” the NYSE and suggested the group might go beyond typical DDoS attacks and ”attempt to disable actual trading on the exchange.” But, it also included a mention of the possibility that law enforcement had planted this threat against the NYSE as a way to “step up action against the group and turn public opinion against their cause.”
This all affirms the idea that Homeland Security’s chief interest in controlling Occupy may have been how it could inspire cyber attacks from “Anonymous.” Recall, a report WikiLeaks published in the Stratfor emails release showed the concern about the involvement of “Anonymous” members.
This bulletin included the comments:
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has notified the FBI, Treasury and Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center of the threat and remains in contact with law enforcement and private sector partners to ensure any additional threat information is disseminated in a prompt manner. To date, US-CERT has not received additional information concerning this threat from law enforcement channels.
The section is noteworthy because it calls into question the FBI’s claim that they “cannot locate any OWS records responsive to a FOIA request.”
Obtained email correspondence on Occupy Wall Street shows that a month after Occupy Wall Street began DHS still considered the protests to be peaceful. In response to a Wall Street Journal inquiry, a senior official named Robert M. Davis said, “We are treating all of these protests nationwide as peaceful demonstrations.”
The correspondence also suggests Federal Protective Services (FPS) only helped remove protesters once and that was in Portland, Oregon. The FPS helped the Portland police arrest people at the federally-owned Terry Schrunk Plaza.
DHS was getting multiple inquiries from CBS, AP, Reuters, Daily Caller, Salon and others on an “un-sourced Examiner.com piece” that said the DHS and FBI were “collaborating with cities by providing tactics and information on removing Occupy protestors.” Matthew Chandler, a senior official with DHS, did a check and found this was not going on “in any wholesale manner.”
In response to the inquiries, the following clarification consisting of multiple talking points was fed to media:
Any decisions on how to handle specific situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, and they make a decision to evacuate participants, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of everyone involved.
Richard K. Cline provided details to CBS on the nature of FPS’ cooperation with Portland Police:
On Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at approximately 4:30 am FPS and Portland Police Bureau officers moved into Terry Shrunk Park in downtown Portland to evict a number of “Occupy Portland” protesters who had set up tents in the federal park. Approximately 12 tents had been set up and about 20 protesters were present. FPS personnel ordered the protesters to depart since overnight camping is not allowed in the park and about half of the people present complied and departed. 10 protesters refused to leave and were arrested for failure to comply with the lawful order of a Federal police officer. [emphasis not added]
On the issue of fusion centers possibly being involved, it appears the centers tried to either cover their tracks or keep a distance so that they didn’t attract scrutiny. Senior official Andrew Lluberes, director of communications for the Intelligence and Analysis Office of Public Affairs wrote in an email on November 16, 2011:
As I thought, I&A scrupulously avoided any connection with the Occupy movement/protests/dismantlings. We cannot speak for any individual fusion center or other departmental component, but we issued no product to our customers and held no conf call with our field IOs on the subject.
An IP contractor posted an uncleared Tripwire product to the website, but it was pulled down. A recipient of that product then had it posted to the DSAC website—which I’ll forward separately—and DUS Scalici had it pulled down.
It appears they are referring to an intelligence product posted that was titled, “DHS Special Coverage: Occupy Wall Street.” That product was available for a period of time to anyone with access to the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) portal.
According to DSAC’s website, the Council is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector, enhances communications and promotes the timely and bidirectional effective exchange of information keeping the nation’s critical infrastructure safe, secure and resilient.” Members of Stratfor apparently had connections to people in this “strategic partnership” because the intelligence product being discussed here in this email is what WikiLeaks uncovered when it began to release the Stratfor emails.
With the exception of Occupy Portland, the records do not exactly confirm the suspicions that DHS was conspiring with law enforcement to squash the Occupy movement. But, this information reported is from all non-intelligence related documents.
There may be more to report on DHS’ involvement in the crackdown, as Truthout is waiting on a batch of records that DHS “forgot” to send.
Stay tuned.
21 Comments
That says a lot, actually.
That won’t stop from pursuing that avenue, it any way just another look at the slow moving Fascism headed to Main Street.
(As an aside, IMO any document in the Stratfor Wikileaks release is not credible. We do not know if or to what extent the Stratfor emails may have been tampered with by the government before they were received by WL).
Fair enough. But, the report was a DHS report. What I wrote has nothing to do with what Stratfor employees said or didn’t say and whether what they said was accurate. (Just to clarify.)
I wonder if Homeland Security ever did a study of the threat Tea Bagger protests poised to America? A simple check of license plate numbers in the parking lot and matching them to members of anti government militia groups, racist groups and just plain nut jobs like the Moonies would surely have shown a threat to America when you consider all these groups start working together.
A rise in hate crimes against Minorities, Gays, Muslims etc could also be reasonably expected after the members of these groups get pumped up listening to Glen Beck and Sarah Palin.
What we need is information about triggers like higher gas prices, another bank bailout, more cuts to SS and Medicare, higher food prices thanks to global warming drought that Homeland security would reasonably think might happen.
We need to know which possibilities they think are most likely. What does Homeland security with their access to government data thinks is more likely another financial crisis thus causing more cuts to SS and Medicare, Higher gas prices which are more likely if we attack Iran or higher food prices because of drought the high today in Chicago is 87 Freakin degrees!
Any bets Homeland security is not doing squat to look at Right Wingers with guns threatening America or Obama?
“Frog boil”. “They came for……” Domestic drones. The Fascism is already firmly ensconced as policy for the 99%. We’re just becoming aware of the extent of its insidious reach as, little by little, more is being revealed.
Right wing domestic terrorism will never be called for what it really is because the perpetrators of it don’t fit into the corporate media mold and rational persons remain too afraid to speak up. This has become evident when the Department of Homeland Security was basically forced by the right wing to apologize for the wording of a chilling and so far accurate report on the rise of right wing violence back in April of 2009. Since then we have had Hutaree, A New York cab driver slashed in the neck for being Muslim, an IRS building destroyed by a plane, guns being brought to political rallies, a man bent on destroying the Tides foundation who was in a shoot out with police in the middle of a California freeway, a mosque burned down, a shootout at the national holocaust museum.
The Obama Administration is promoting the police state. Obama already stated that Manning was guilty, signed the NDAA, convened a secret Grand Jury to indict Assange, prosecuted more whistle blowers than any administration in US history, etc. By the way, the concept of DHS was the idea of and promoted by the congressman whom Obama chose as his mentor, Sen. Joe “Israel” Lieberman. Obama is not our friend.
Agreed but its hard not to feel sorry for a guy who thinks that the Right is his friend when they are working hand in hand with the very people who will create a climate or actually try and hurt Obama if he were to get reelected.
Obama is a chump.
Left you a comment I assumed it was modded.
I guess so.
That would only be accurate if you assumed that Obama’s rhetoric matched his true beliefs, rather than being used for political expediency. He did have a teaching position at the University of Chicago, which is the home of Milton Friedman, the Chicago Boys, and the “Shock Doctrine/Disaster Capitalism”. Hard to feel sorry for the Wall Street/MIC Puppet-in-Chief when his future is secure as part of the 1%.
If only they had the ability to freeze all trading on Wall Street. Even for a couple days this would cost the big leaches billions. Just a pipe dream tho.
Heh. My @3 was a tourette’s-ish comment blurted out as much to see myself write it as anything.
So far it is looking like local governments (possibly motivated by local police departments) coordinated with FPS and then with each other. Which tells me that the FOIA requests at the FBI and with NYPD likely will have more critical information. It turns out that Mueller in a 2010 appearance before Congress characterized the state of al Quaeda in this way:
But what is most interesting is the characterization of the evolution of al Quaeda into a network of autonomous groups.
Therefore, it is easy to see that the worst-case-scenario defenders of the 1% over at FBI would see any network of autonomous groups as potentially fronts for al Quaeda.
I think that just like in the case of the civil rights movement and anti-war movement, it is the FBI that is driven the effort to suppress Occupy and likely at the insistent of FBI director wanna-be NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly.
DHS did something about right-wing domestic terrorism. It had Republicans in Congress on the warpath at the beginning of 2011.
Another driver for the suspicion of networked autonomous individuals is this from a Congressional Research Service study on terrorism published January 2011 (on the eve of the Arab Awakening, which is one of the movements that sparked Occupy):
The breathtaking executive order of a couple of days ago seems to just expand the Clinton era executive order by adding “any system whether physical or cyber-based” pretty much everywhere it occurs.
No not “fair enough”. Wikileaks didn’t get the copy that was uploaded to the FBI server in NYC. They got an untampered copy that was straight from #Antisec.