crows on wire 2 cropped
“Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret.”
– Deuteronomy 27:24
Blue Line
Contents
1. A Brief Explanation of “Gang Stalking”
2. Introduction to the Full Explanation of Gang Stalking
3. Crimes by U.S. Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agencies
4. Oversight of Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agencies
5. Published News Reports
6. History: COINTELPRO, MK Ultra, Red Squads, & the Stasi
7. The National & International Scope of Gang Stalking
8. Investigation, Surveillance, & Harassment Tactics
9. Mobbing & Workplace Violence
10. Selection of Targeted Individuals
11. The Organizational Structure of Gang Stalking
12. Social Conformity & Obedience to Authority
13. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) & Gang Stalking
14. Disinformation
15. The Wall of Silence Which Surrounds Gang Stalking
16. Shining a Light on the Cockroaches
Blue Line
1. A Brief Explanation of “Gang Stalking”
Definitions
Counterintelligence is the assessment and countering of threats posed by enemy subversion, espionage, and sabotage. Counterintelligence operations include covert surveillance (spying on the enemy), sabotage (disruption of the enemy’s activities), and disinformation (efforts to deceive the enemy and – when it serves the objectives of the counterintelligence program – the public).
“Gang stalking” – also known as “organized stalking” – is a slang term for a set of tactics used in counterintelligence operations involving the covert surveillance and harassment of a targeted individual. The goal of such operations – in the parlance of counterintelligence personnel – is to “subvert” or “neutralize” an individual deemed by a government agency (or corporation) to be an enemy.
“Organized stalking” is probably a better term than “gang stalking” since it more accurately conveys the systematic nature of the crime, and it avoids creating the erroneous impression that the activity is connected with street gangs.
This much can be said in defense of the term “gang stalking” however:
it is accurate in the sense that the perpetrators – federal and local law enforcement agencies and security-intelligence contractors – do often function in the manner of criminal gangs. Although they conduct their operations under the color of law, many of their activities have neither moral nor constitutional legitimacy.
That is true of all of the major perpetrators of organized stalking in the US: the FBI, local Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs), security-intelligence contractors, and U.S. military counterintelligence agents. All of those groups – and other federal intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA – have histories of abusing their powers dating back to their inceptions.
History
Organized stalking methods were used extensively by communist East Germany’s Stasi (state police) as a means of maintaining political control over its citizens. The Stasi referred to the tactics as “Zersetzung” (German for “decomposition” or “corrosion” – a reference to the intended psychological, social, and financial effects upon the victim).
Although they are illegal in the U.S., the same covert tactics are quietly used by America’s local and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to suppress dissent, silence whistle-blowers, and get revenge against persons who have angered someone with connections to the public and private agencies involved.
Illegal counterintelligence operations have been perpetrated against Americans by urban police departments in the U.S. since the late 1800s. Traditionally, the groups of mostly-undercover police officers involved are called “red squads,” although the modern official term is “Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs).”
The most well-documented example of such operations was the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro (Counter-Intelligence Programs) under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. Those operations ran from 1956 until 1971 when they were exposed by political activists who broke into an FBI office and obtained secret documents which they handed over to the press.
Cointelpro’s official goal was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” individuals and groups deemed to be subversive.
Tactics
As the U.S. Senate’s investigation of Cointelpro found, tactics used by the FBI included many of the methods associated with gang stalking, such as overt surveillance (stalking for psychological operations purposes). The agency even perpetrated crimes such as blackmail and assassinations.
Organized stalking methods include warrantless electronic surveillance, slander, blacklisting, and a variety of psychological operations. The latter presumably exploit findings from studies such as the notorious MK Ultra experiments conducted on American and Canadian citizens by the CIA, as well as the aforementioned psychological torture tactics refined by the Stasi. In fact, as explained in the overview below, former CIA analyst and expert on the history of U.S. spying, George O’Toole wrote about a connection between the CIA and the aforementioned LEIUs.
An organized stalking victim is systematically isolated and harassed in a manner intended to cause sustained emotional torment while creating the least-possible amount of evidence of stalking that would be visible to others. The process is sometimes referred to as “no-touch torture.” Methods are specifically chosen for their lack of easily-captured objective evidence. Perpetrators use common annoyances such as constant noise by neighbors or rude comments and abusive behavior by strangers, but on a frequent ongoing long-term basis. The cumulative effects of relentless exposure to such tactics can amount to psychological torture for the victim.
Accomplices – such as neighbors, co-workers, and even friends or relatives of the victim in some cases – are recruited to participate (often unwittingly) by counterintelligence personnel using various means, such as by telling them that the target is a potential threat or that the target is the subject of an “investigation.”
A whole set of psychological operations are perpetrated against targeted individuals. These methods, described in detail in the overview below, include such things as threats, slander, vandalism, abusive phone calls, computer hacking, tormenting the victim with noise, and “mobbing” (orchestrated verbal harassment by strangers, neighbors, or co-workers).
Accounts by numerous victims of organized stalking share common specific details – suggesting that the perpetrators are following a well-tested and standardized playbook of methods that have proven to be easily kept off of the radar of potential witnesses and the mainstream news media.
News Reports
Note: The following published news reports are discussed in more detail later in this overview, and accompanied by links to the original sources.
Although Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 and 2014 generated a great deal of public discussion about mass surveillance, U.S. domestic counterintelligence activities receive relatively little attention. This is so despite reports – such as those which follow – from sources across the political spectrum.
Published articles and anecdotal reports have appeared with increasing frequency – especially in the past decade or so – alleging that something comparable to the FBI’s Cointelpro operations is still happening, although it naturally involves more advanced surveillance technology.
One of the first significant works of investigative journalism about U.S. domestic counterintelligence operations in the post-Cointelpro era appeared just 7 months after the U.S. Senate’s “Church Committee” issued its final report about Cointelpro and MK Ultra.
Pulitzer Prize nominee George O’Toole, a novelist and historian who specialized in the history of American espionage, and who had worked for the CIA as an analyst, wrote an article titled “America’s Secret Police Network.” The article, which was published in the December 1976 issue of Penthouse, exposed a secretive quasi-governmental organization called the Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIU).
Although LEIUs – or “Red Squads” – have existed in America since the late 1800s, the private national network of such intelligence units that was quietly formed in the 1950s had remained – and still remains – mostly unknown to the general public. O’Toole described the group this way:
“The organization forms a vast network of intelligence units that exchange dossiers and conduct investigations on a reciprocal basis. Several of the police departments belonging to the group have recently been caught in illegal wiretapping, burglary, and spying on the private lives of ordinary citizens. The LEIU is, in effect, a huge, private domestic-intelligence agency.”
A New York Times article published in April 1979 reviewed a three-and-a-half-year study of the LEIU association by the American Friends Service Committee. The study described the LEIU as “an old-boy network” whose illegal surveillance “of groups and individuals for political purposes is continuing on a vast scale in the nation.” According to the report, the widespread illegal spying posed “a grave threat to the constitutional rights of freedom of expression, due process and privacy.”
A Los Angeles Times article published in September 1979 under the headline “FBI Admits Spreading Lies About Jean Seberg” was the lead story on the paper’s front page. Seberg – a successful film actress and a political activist – had died the month before in Paris from an apparent suicide. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Seberg had been the target of a systematic campaign by the FBI to slander her. She had also apparently been blacklisted and terrorized by the FBI using tactics associated with counterintelligence operations intended to neutralize political dissidents, such as “black bag jobs,” illegal wiretapping, and overt stalking.
During the 1980s and 90s a trend toward militarization began in American police departments. For example, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were being created across the nation. However, relatively little news about U.S. counterintelligence operations emerged. This is not to say that illegal spying was not taking place; it just mostly stayed out of the media. A book published in 2014, L.A. Secret Police, exposed such spying in Los Angeles and explained how it was kept out of the news. Police Chief Daryl Gates apparently used threats and blackmail to scare city council members and the Los Angeles Times away from digging into his activities.
Here is an excerpt from a description of the book:
“L.A. cops ruined lives and reputations, inflicted mindless brutality, committed murder and engaged in massive cover-ups. In Los Angeles, police corruption was much more than unmarked envelopes stuffed with cash. It was a total corruption of power. For decades LAPD engaged in massive illegal spying and lied about it. Its spying targets included politicians, movie stars, professional athletes, news reporters and anyone wielding power or those of interest to Daryl Gates.”
An apparent case of organized stalking by federal agents which did appear in the news during that era was the high-profile case of a cancer research scientist named Arnold Lockshin, who fled with his family to the Soviet Union in 1986 and was granted political asylum. An article in the Gadsen Times – and other newspaper reports – in October 1986 brought national attention to the case. According to Lockshin, he and his family were being intensely harassed by agents because of the socialist political views of Lockshin and his wife. The harassment tactics included many of those associated with organized stalking: slander, spying, break-ins, threats, harassing phone calls, etc.
News reports about domestic spying and subversion in the U.S. and other Western nations became more frequent in the post-9/11 era.
In 2004 the PBS news program NOW and Newsweek magazine both reported that the Pentagon had quietly resumed its practice of domestic spying, and suggested that “something like Cointelpro may again be at hand.” Spying on civilians by the U.S. Army was one of the scandals which led to the famous Church Committee investigations by Congress in the mid-1970s.
In October 2004 the U.K newspaper The Sunday Times published an article about the use of Stasi-type psychological operations to punish whistle-blowers by MI5 – an intelligence agency with close ties to the U.S. intelligence community.
In December 2005 National Book Award winner Gloria Naylor, wrote a semi-autobiographical book in which she described her experiences as a target of organized stalking. The book’s title, 1996, was the year it became apparent to Naylor that she was being stalked. Apparently, her harassment began after she had a minor dispute with a neighbor whose brother worked for the National Security Agency (NSA).
The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, reported in May 2006 that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used organized stalking techniques (referred to as “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics) against terrorism suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute.
A cover article in The Washington Post Magazine in January 2007 by a journalist familiar with military policies and weapon systems portrayed self-proclaimed victims of gang stalking as intelligent and credible, and suggested that claims about exotic non-lethal weapons being used by the U.S. government to harass targeted individuals were plausible.
Former CIA division chief Melvin Goodman was quoted in a June 2008 article by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (America’s oldest continuously-published weekly magazine) on the vast private contractor element of the intelligence-security community:
“My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control.
It’s outrageous.”
A newspaper article in the Verona-Cedar Grove Times in March 2009 titled “Stalker Claims Unsettle Police” described how a self-proclaimed target of gang stalking had been distributing flyers in his former neighborhood in Verona, New Jersey, warning about organized stalking of targeted individuals. The flyers stated: “Their intention is to murder their target without getting their hands dirty. It’s the perfect hate crime.”
A post on the political blog Daily Kos in October 2010 alleged that intelligence agencies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada use gang stalking (zersetzung as East Germany’s Stasi called it) against targeted individuals.
A local TV news broadcast in California in January 2011 (on KION – Channel 46 and KCBA – Channel 35) featured a report about gang stalking – referred to as such by the reporters and by Lieutenant Larry Richard of the Santa Cruz Police Department.
In his February 2011 article for the Guardian, “The Dirty History of Corporate Spying,” investigative reporter James Ridgeway described how corporations target people with what is, in effect, a secret private law enforcement system:
“The private detective firms working for corporations can develop information against their own targets and find eager recipients among federal and local law enforcement agencies, some of whose employees end up retiring into private-sector detective work. The corporate spy business thus amounts to a shadow para-law enforcement system that basically can get around any of the safeguards set out in the American legal system; it ought to be subject first to transparency, and then to banning.”
A newspaper article in The Record and a TV report on KCRA Channel 3 in August 2011 reported that the city manager of Stockton, California was stalked by local police after a break-down in contract negotiations. The brazen tactics used by the police included purchasing the house next to that of the city manager and using it as a base for psychological operations of the sort used by counterintelligence personnel.
Florida’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun Sentinel reported in December 2012 on the organized stalking of a police officer by other police officers and sheriff’s deputies from multiple jurisdictions. The victim of the stalking had cited an off-duty police officer for reckless driving. The stalking – which included illegally snooping on the victim’s private data and efforts to harass and intimidate her – was apparently done in retaliation.
An article in CounterPunch magazine in January 2013 asserted that the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro operations have re-emerged in full force: “Cointelpro is alive and well.”
A June 2013 article in the Nation said this about activities by private security firms, the FBI, and the Department of Justice:
“One might think that what we are looking at is Cointelpro 2.0 – an outsourced surveillance state – but in fact it’s worse.”
Articles in the Washington Times and Wired magazine about the September 2013 mass shooting at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard included reports of speculation that the incident resulted from the shooter having been systematically tormented by gang stalking, including tactics such as constant noise harassment.
The cover article of Fortean Times magazine in October 2013 (U.S. edition) was about “state-sponsored gangstalking.” The author, a professor from California State University Long Beach, described in detail how a former military service member who stole some equipment from the U.S. military has been relentlessly stalked by undercover operatives and psychologically tortured.
A TV news broadcast in West Virginia on 14 November 2013 (on CBS affiliate WDTV) included a report about “organized stalking” which featured two individuals from Pennsylvania who appeared to be credible and sincere, discussing their constant harassment by perpetrators using gang stalking tactics.
In November 2013, a TV and radio broadcast of Democracy Now! featured an interview with the director of the Center for Corporate Policy in which he discussed the shadowy industry of spies employed by major U.S. corporations to conduct secret – and often illegal – counterintelligence operations against critics of those corporations.
Articles published by CBS, the Daily Mail, RT, Tech Dirt, and Courthouse News Service in December 2013 reported that a U.S. government contractor filed a lawsuit against multiple federal agencies for gang stalking him (the complaint refers to gang stalking as such). The plaintiff claims he was subjected to constant surveillance – including inside his residence and his vehicle – and constant psychological harassment from co-workers and strangers.
An article in The New Yorker in February 2014 gave a detailed account of an organized stalking campaign by a large corporation. Research biologist Tyrone Hayes discovered some disturbing effects from a pesticide made by the agribusiness corporation Syngenta. When he refused to keep quiet about it, the corporation’s goon squad began slandering him to discredit him. They also stalked him, hacked his emails, and threatened him for more than a decade.
A report on the ABC News TV program 20/20 – and an article in the Daily Mail – in May 2014 chronicled the ordeal of a couple in Hubbard, Ohio who were systematically harassed for 7 years in a vengeance campaign orchestrated by the town’s fire chief. Apparently, the fire chief was angry at the couple because of a real estate dispute, so he enlisted the help of other firefighters, police officers, and local residents to perpetrate a campaign of constant vehicle horn honking outside the couple’s home. The harassment – which the couple thoroughly documented on video – resulted in legal claims which were still pending at the time of the news reports.
Disinformation
In addition to the use of covert methods, another factor contributing to the low profile of organized stalking in the media is a disinformation campaign – a common tactic in counterintelligence operations. In the case of organized stalking, the disinformation is mainly intended to mitigate exposure of the program.
Toward that end the Internet has been flooded with websites and forum comments about gang stalking that falsely purport to be from self-proclaimed victims of organized stalking, making irrational claims – references to demons and such. The intended effect is to convey the impression that everyone who claims to be targeted by gang stalking is simply delusional.
An additional disinformation strategy has been the establishment of front groups – most notably, FFCHS (Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance) – ostensibly a gang stalking victims support group, but actually an organization run by counterintelligence operatives.
Scope of Operations
U.S. Department of Justice crime statistics from a 2006 survey indicated that an estimated 445,220 stalking victims reported being stalked by three or more perpetrators.
Such statistics suggest the existence of activities whose scope cannot be explained simply as stalking by criminals – especially given that the otherwise-comprehensive index of crime categories in the DOJ’s website conspicuously makes no mention of this type of stalking.
Another indication of how common organized stalking in the U.S. has become can be seen if you perform a search-engine query of the term “gang stalking.” You will get millions of results. The total silence of the DOJ and FBI on this crime is an obvious clue that it is sanctioned by those agencies.
Organizational Structure
Ted L. Gunderson was a high-level FBI official during the Cointelpro era. After he retired from the agency he asserted that a much more sophisticated version of Cointelpro began to re-emerge in the 1980s. A link to Gunderson’s affidavit on the subject is included in the overview below.
Based on news reports, accounts of self-proclaimed victims, and the DOJ statistics cited above, the apparent scope of current organized stalking operations would require the acquiescence of multiple federal and local government agencies (including the FBI and the Department of Justice, among others). Local and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies now share crime and national security information via a nationwide network of data “fusion centers” – an element of the extensive post-9/11 homeland security infrastructure.
America’s now-vast industry of intelligence-security contractors, federal intelligence agencies (there are 16 not including the Director of National Intelligence office), and the hundreds of local police department Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs) make it difficult to speculate about exactly how domestic counterintelligence operations are currently being administered.
Increasingly-common reports of illegal spying by corporations as well as reports of police officers and federal agents sometimes initiating gang stalking operations for personal vendettas further complicate the analysis.
Numerous job listings by intelligence/security contractor corporations for “surveillance role players” with active security clearances and training in counterintelligence (links and details in the overview below) strongly suggest that federal law enforcement agencies have largely outsourced these operations – which would be consistent with other security programs. A June 10, 2013 article in USA Today noted that about 1.4 million Americans had top-secret security clearances.
Federal and local law enforcement agencies also make extensive use of criminal informants (who are in large supply in America, with its extraordinary per capita incarceration rate). It would be natural for such informants to be used in a counterintelligence program. Indeed, the original Cointelpro was found by the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations to have delegated some activities to organized crime groups. First-hand accounts of self-proclaimed victims of gang stalking support this assumption: by their appearance and behavior, many street-level perpetrators appear to possibly be ex-convicts.
Regardless of the exact nature of organized stalking in the U.S., any national counterintelligence program would require at least passive acquiescence by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – just like the first version of Cointelpro did. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved some of the original Cointelpro operations. Because of the critical role of the DOJ in allowing organized stalking to occur, I devote an entire section of this overview to that agency.
Target Selection
Gang stalking apparently targets American citizens deemed to be dissidents or whistle-blowers (and perhaps potential dissidents and whistle-blowers), although others might be targeted for other reasons – such as for experimental or training purposes. For perspective, it should be remembered that for two decades the CIA performed secret illegal experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens (the infamous MK Ultra program). Those experiments included physical and psychological torture.
A lot of accounts by self-proclaimed targets of gang stalking suggest that people are often subjected to severe long-term harassment simply because they crossed someone connected with the agencies and security firms which perpetrate such operations.
An example of that type of abuse occurred in April 2012, when USA Today reported that one of its reporters and an editor were slandered by a secret disinformation campaign waged by an intelligence contractor firm to discredit them because the newspaper had investigated and reported on that contractor. The company involved conducted propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Similarly, in August 2013 it was reported that at least a dozen National Security Agency (NSA) employees had used their surveillance system access to spy on their current and former spouses and partners.
Implications
In addition to being morally reprehensible, gang stalking – just like the original version of the FBI’s Cointelpro operations – is illegal. It violates criminal laws in all fifty states against stalking, as well as grossly violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibitions against warrantless searches and extra-judicial punishment.
While the vast majority of Americans are never personally targeted by gang stalking, they should still be concerned about the existence of such operations. Even if such activities were constitutionally legitimate (clearly they are not), they would still have an enormous potential for abuse as a personal or political weapon by the practitioners.
Ending this cowardly and illegal practice by law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, and their parasitic corporate contractors will require exposing what is happening to the public. Anyone reading this can assist with that exposure by simply sharing this information with others.
Blue Line
2. Introduction to the Full Explanation of
Gang Stalking
I urge readers to consider the evidence presented here in its totality; the nature of organized stalking – by design – is such that it is difficult to comprehend and evaluate without considering it in its full context.
With the goal of providing some of that context, the first page of this website (“Gang Stalking News”) includes not only the relatively infrequent mainstream press articles specifically about gang stalking, but also news which is only indirectly related. Published news and analysis of subjects such as government secrecy, police corruption, privacy, surveillance, private investigators, and various government scandals are relevant to organized stalking in ways which I try to make clear.
I hope readers are not put-off by my sometimes harsh views on related political topics. I express my opinions here candidly, and the intensity of my rhetoric is partly a function of having been on the sharp end of gang stalking for years.
As for my analysis of organized stalking, I try to be as measured and cautious as possible while still confronting the reality that the subject requires a certain amount of speculation because of the secrecy and deception which surrounds it.
Given the current state of technologies and government policies concerning surveillance, the average American faces many potential and actual invasions of privacy. For individuals targeted for gang stalking, the situation is infinitely worse. Given all of that, this website is only nominally “anonymous.”
Anyone associated with the professional news media who is interested in additional information about my personal experiences with gang stalking can reach me at the email address I have provided.
Thank you for taking an interest in this material.
For victims of gang stalking, I hope that the information I post here will be helpful.
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Definitions
dictionary
Counterintelligence is the assessment and countering of threats posed by enemy subversion, espionage, and sabotage. Counterintelligence operations include covert surveillance (spying on the enemy), sabotage (disruption of the enemy’s activities), and disinformation (efforts to deceive the enemy and – when it serves the objectives of the counterintelligence program – the public).
Wikipedia’s entry on counterintelligence describes the organizational nature this way:
“In most countries the counterintelligence mission is spread over multiple organizations, though one usually predominates. There is usually a domestic counterintelligence service, usually part of a larger organization such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.”
COINTELPRO (short for “Counterintelligence Program”) was the name of a secret illegal counterintelligence program run by the FBI from 1956 until it was exposed by civilian activists in 1971 and subsequently investigated by Congress.
The U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations in the mid-1970s found that under Cointelpro U.S. law enforcement personnel and their various government and private citizen and criminal accomplices systematically spied on, slandered, terrorized, and committed acts of violence (including murder) against American citizens deemed to be dissidents.
Gang stalking (also known as “organized stalking”) is the covert organized surveillance and harassment of a targeted individual by multiple perpetrators. The goal is to systematically isolate and harass the victim using tactics whose cumulative effects amount to psychological torture.
As far as I know, the term “gang stalking” has not yet found its way into any major print publication dictionaries – which is not surprising for a subject residing in the grey area of counterintelligence. The term is however, much less obscure than it was, say a decade ago. For example, you can find it here in the (non-censored) popular online dictionary of slang terms: the Urban Dictionary.
Organized stalking of a targeted individual employs methods used in counterintelligence operations – such as electronic and human surveillance, slander, disinformation, and a variety of intensive long-term psychological operations (“psyops”) methods.
The Stasi – communist East Germany’s infamous secret police agency – monitored and terrorized citizens with the same tactics. They referred to the process of destroying targeted individuals as “zersetzung” which translates as “decomposition” or “corrosion.”
“Gang stalking” is an unfortunate term as it gives the erroneous impression that the activity is connected with street gangs. “Organized stalking” is a superior description; it avoids that confusion and it accurately conveys the systematic nature of the crime.
Other terms used to describe stalking by multiple perpetrators include “group stalking,” “vigilante stalking,” and “cause stalking.” The latter term refers to the fact that the activity is sometimes associated with political causes.
For example, in his book Stopping a Stalker, Robert L. Snow, a retired police captain from the Indianapolis Police Department, devoted a chapter to organized stalking by multiple perpetrators associated with causes – such as stalking of abortion clinic staff members by extreme anti-abortion activists, and stalking of workers who crossed picket lines by union members.
Arguably, the best term for the counterintelligence operations widely referred to as “gang stalking” would be the term “COINTELPRO Stalking” because that is exactly what it is.
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The Prevalence of Stalking by Multiple Perpetrators
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) crime statistics from a 2006 survey indicated that an estimated 445,220 stalking victims reported being stalked by 3 or more perpetrators. (Page 12 of the report has the relevant numbers: 13.1 percent of 3,398,630 victims reported such group stalking.)
DOJ Stalking Survey – 2006
Incidentally, that percentage is comparable to what appears in crime surveys in the U.K. – a nation with whom U.S. intelligence agencies have very close ties. A 1998 crime survey of England and Wales found that 12 percent of stalking victims reported being stalked by 3 perpetrators (page 25).
British Crime Survey – 1998
Possibly more relevant to organized stalking is the number of victims stalked by “four or more” perpetrators. In the British survey, that group was approximately 8 percent of all stalking victims (page 25). That would be approximately 1 percent (0.944 percent) of all adults aged 16 to 59.
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A Curiously Incurious Justice Department
An attorney, Keith Labella, contacted the National Center for Victims of Crime (which is funded by the DOJ) in October 2008 to inquire about the frequency of reports the center receives about organized stalking crimes. He was informed that they receive “thousands of calls per month.”
Notwithstanding the frequency of calls to their helpline, the center offered no guidance or referral to other agencies or organizations. Here is Mr. Labella’s affidavit about his inquiry.
Make of it what you will, but the U.S. Department of Justice never publicly discusses the issue of counterintelligence stalking – not even to dismiss it as nonsense.
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COINTELPRO Version 2.0
In a society as heavily-policed as America now is – a society whose National Security Agency is tracking everyone’s phone calls and Internet activity for example – it is inconceivable that tens of thousands or more cases of criminal stalking (as documented in the DOJ crime statistics) fail to appear on the radar of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Yet there is no mention of such crimes by the federal government anywhere except in those statistics.
The implication is inescapable: federal agencies are acquiescing in what is happening. Assuming the statistics are even roughly accurate, there is no other explanation; organized stalking (the monitoring and “disruption” of the activities of targeted individuals) is being perpetrated as part of a counterintelligence program.
And it is being done illegally – as it violates state laws (in every state) against stalking as well as the U.S. Constitution’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and punishment without a trial. Stalking is also a violation of federal law (U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2261A).
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Under the Radar
radar
How is it that the general public would not be aware of the re-emergence of Cointelpro operations?
I address this question in more detail in the section titled “The Wall of Silence Which Surrounds Gang Stalking,” but here are the main factors:
(1) Covert Methods
The most fundamental explanation for the low-profile of gang stalking is that counterintelligence operations – by definition – are performed covertly. The FBI’s original version of Cointelpro remained undetected by the public until stolen secret documents were leaked to the press.
(2) Security Clearances
Law enforcement and intelligence agency personnel involved in counterintelligence activities are bound by secrecy oaths. This is also true of the vast industry of private contractors employed by those agencies. For example, job ads posted by security-intelligence contractors for “surveillance role players” (domestic spies) all require an active security clearance in addition to counterintelligence training.
Similarly, judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court which reviews legal issues about secret federal policies are also bound by secrecy oaths. That is also true of members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
(3) Whistleblower Protection Act Exemptions
Agencies such as the FBI are exempt from the Whistleblower Protection Act. Consequently, an agent who tries to reveal unethical behavior by the agency faces potentially serious legal consequences. Contractors of intelligence agencies are also not protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act.
(4) Legal Restrictions on Witnesses
Almost certainly, when an individual is targeted for subversion (“gang stalking”), the operation is portrayed to witnesses (neighbors, co-workers, etc.) as an “investigation.” In an investigation, law enforcement personnel can order witnesses to keep silent. For example, when the FBI issues an administrative subpoena called a “National Security Letter” the document has a gag order attached which prohibits the recipient from discussing it.
(5) Tactics Which Create Minimal Evidence
Subversion tactics used by the FBI include many tactics from the original version of Cointelpro, and some which were futher refined by East Germany’s Stasi. For the most part, the tactics are all chosen because they are known to be effective forms of “no-touch torture.” The idea is to destroy the victim psychologically and socially and financially by forms of criminal harassment which create minimal objective evidence from the perspective of witnesses and courts.
Victims’ accounts tend to be dismissed since their experiences sound like commonplace occurrences – because that is indeed what they are: strangers who are rude, neighbors who are noisy, businesses which deliver bad service, drivers who cut-off the victim in traffic, pedestrians who bump them as they walk by, etc. These are things which happen to everyone. But for gang stalking victims, these things happen constantly – which becomes a form of real psychological torture, the intensity of which must be experienced to comprehend.
(6) Ignorance
Americans are largely unaware of the history of well-documented relevant programs, such as the FBI’s Cointelpro operations and the CIA’s MK Ultra program – even though both were thoroughly investigated and exposed by Congress in the 1970s. Similarly, although many people have heard of the Stasi (East Germany’s secret police agency), they are not specifically familiar with the Stasi’s use of Zersetzung – which was a set of methods virtually identical to current gang stalking in America.
This is not surprising; nearly three-quarters of Americans do not know what the Cold War was about, and 29 percent cannot even name the vice president. Counterintelligence operations can thrive in an environment of such widespread ignorance.
Of course, even well-educated individuals are unlikely to recognize the connections between a local situation in which they are told that a neighbor or co-worker or business patron is under investigation and historical phenomena like Cointelpro and East Germany’s Stasi.
Still, it can only make things easier for an agency such as the FBI to recruit vigilante citizen volunteers and to conduct illegal operations without detection when they are dealing with a society in which 64 percent of the public cannot name the three branches of their federal government and a fourth of the people do not even know that the earth revolves around the sun.
(7) Cowardice, Laziness, & Incompetence in the Mainstream News Media
Organized stalking goes mostly undiscussed in the mainstream news media. There are some notable exceptions – most frequently in the local and alternative press. I review those in detail throughout this website, but as a rule, major corporate news agencies avoid discussing matters which the intelligence and law enforcement community do not wish to have discussed.
This silence in the press is largely the result of the kinds of self-censorship documented in sources such as Kristina Borjesson’s Into the Buzzsaw, and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
Laziness in the news media should not be underestimated either. Often when the federal government is engaged in serious deception and crimes, the news media play no role in the disclosure until a whistle-blower drops a set of incriminating official documents about it in their laps – as happened with the Pentagon Papers, Cointelpro, and the NSA’s mass surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the news media’s cowardice as a factor in keeping modern Cointelpro operations off of the public’s radar. For perspective, one has to re-consider the reporting on crimes by U.S. intelligence agencies during the 1970s. A book by historian Kathryn S. Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government (1996), makes the case that Americans overestimate the boldness of the journalism during that period.
The following review of Olmsted’s book gives a sense of what really happened. With a few notable exceptions – such as reporters Seymour Hersh and Daniel Schorr – the news media generally had a loss of nerve at a critical moment in America’s history. As a result, we missed a golden opportunity to fully expose the deep corruption in the U.S. intelligence community, and implement serious reforms.
Conventional wisdom would have it that, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the nation’s press was emboldened to enter a new phase of investigative zeal. Olmsted, a lecturer in history at U.C.- Davis, provides an absorbing contrarian account of the extent to which, with a few singular exceptions, the press retreated from such zeal, in part intimidated by the discovery of their own potential power. Thus, four months after Nixon’s resignation, when New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh launched a series charging that the CIA, “forbidden by law from operating in the U.S.,” had engaged in massive domestic spying, his reports were greeted with skepticism and tentativeness in follow-ups by fellow journalists. (Hersh’s vindication came from CIA Director William Colby’s Senate testimony, in which he disputed only the characterization of wrongdoing as “massive.”)
Olmsted charts how Hersh’s story, along with a cautious but competitive exploration of FBI abuses by the Washington Post, resulted in two congressional investigations that also had the potential to break the code of deference previously accorded to organizations responsible for national security by both Congress and the press. Particularly compelling is the author’s account of how colleagues excoriated reporter Daniel Schorr when he went to the Village Voice with the confidential results of one of the investigations, after having been silenced by his own employers, CBS. This is a fascinating study of how, just months after Watergate, both press and Congress quietly retreated to the same silk-gloved handling of the CIA and FBI in the name of national security.
(8) Disinformation
Search results on the Internet’s largest search engine, Google, fluctuate wildly for particular words and phrases over time. Only people within Google know the exact policies and algorithms which determine those results, but the search results do provide a rough indication of the online presence of certain topics.
Typically, the list of websites generated by a search is the tip of an iceberg. Ten pages of website links will show the top 100 results, but the screen also displays a much larger number that indicates the number of references to the search term that were detected.
A Google query of the term “gang stalking” in October 2013 yielded over six million results.
As you begin to wade through the search results, you will mostly encounter websites filled with incoherent rubbish. Anyone even superficially familiar with counterintelligence will recognize this tactic; it is called disinformation.
This is another reason organized stalking has been able to remain mostly below the public’s radar. Disinformation is used to muddy the waters surrounding the topic wherever it is discussed online. The intent is to mitigate exposure of the operations.
Because of its central importance to counterintelligence generally – and organized stalking in particular – I explore the subject of disinformation at length in its own section of this overview and elsewhere in this website.
(9) Failure to Connect the Dots
If you view all of the mainstream press reports about domestic spying, counterintelligence activities, and gang stalking from the past decade, it is clear that something is going on. On the other hand, very few people see most of those reports – let alone all of them together and combined with the context provided by the analysis you are now reading.
If you browse through the “Published News Reports on Gang Stalking” section of this overview, you will see that the evidence grows every year that a government-sanctioned program of informants and domestic spying and organized stalking is an element of the current homeland security infrastructure. Unfortunately, very few civilians ever see that evidence all grouped together, and therefore they are very unlikely to realize what is happening.
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Lowering Requirements for Investigations
In 2008 the U.S. Department of Justice guidelines which govern FBI investigations were changed to create a new category of investigation called “assessments.” These investigations can be initiated with no evidence that any criminal activity has occurred, and the investigations can involve such intrusive measures as physical surveillance, recruitment of criminal informants, interviewing associates of the person being investigated and deploying undercover FBI agents.
The FBI’s internal rules were further relaxed in 2011 so that – without even opening an assessment – agents can begin searching commercial databases for information about the individual being investigated, and search through the subject’s trash.
Expansion of the powers wielded by the “surveillance state” – and the corresponding erosion of citizens’ civil liberties – has been occurring in the U.K. as well. Citizens of the U.S. should be mindful of that fact because a close relationship exists between the intelligence communities of both nations. Among the secret documents revealed by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, for example, were presentation slides about how the NSA assisted its British equivalent, GCHQ, in developing technology that was used to spy on citizens via their webcams.
In the same way that the U.S. government slashed some of Americans’ traditional rights by legislation such as the Patriot Act, in the U.K. the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) expanded the surveillance powers of the government in the name of national security. As far as I know, the members of Parliament did not hold much public discussion about how the U.K.’s intelligence agencies might want spy on a couple of million innocent citizens via their webcams.
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Exploiting a Government Program as a Private Weapon
The potential for abuse of power by members of private intelligence corporations and government agencies in all of this is enormous.
Here is an example of such abuse which was reported in the news media – partly because it was directed at members of the news media. One of the counterintelligence tactics which the federal government hires intelligence contractors to perform is spreading disinformation. Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that systematically spreading lies is even a government contractor job which their taxes are funding, but they underestimate – despite President Eisenhower’s famous warning – the extent to which the U.S. government’s defense budget has become a pig trough for shady contractors.
If you criticize a comedian, you will likely become the target of a joke. Similarly, when a reporter and editor at USA Today investigated and reported on the U.S. propaganda industry in 2012, they were anonymously slandered by those same contractors.
This was the opening paragraph of their first report that apparently did not go over well with the businesses they were exposing:
“ As the Pentagon has sought to sell wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to often-hostile populations there, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked marketing and propaganda campaigns that military leaders like to call “information operations,” the modern equivalent of psychological warfare.”
As a result of their reporting, this is what happened:
“Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names….”
“…Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company.”
The article notes that a proxy service was used to hide the identity of the owner of the websites, and a third website was registered to a non-existent address.
Slander is just one of the tactics used in organized stalking by counterintelligence operations. Any or all of the tactics – which are described in detail in a section of this overview – could be used as a weapon by people in the business.
In theory, an organized stalking operation against an individual could be initiated by anyone familiar with the tactics who has associates willing to participate. Perpetrators with financial resources could easily employ private investigators, for example, and others with relevant technical skills to wage a sophisticated operation against someone for revenge or intimidation.
Someone with connections to current or former law enforcement or intelligence agency personnel – or military personnel with a background in intelligence – could mount a very serious campaign against a victim without even (officially) involving government agencies in the initial stages of the investigation and harassment.
In a tactic called “baiting” a surveillance operation can selectively capture evidence of a targeted person responding to harassment. That evidence could then be used to justify the initiation of more formal scrutiny by a government agency.
At whatever point at which it becomes useful or necessary, the perpetrators can – officially or unofficially – turn over to the government counterintelligence personnel whatever they have gathered to have the individual targeted more formally. For example, they could contact a “Terrorism Liaison Officer” (TLO) – a government or civilian operative entrusted with hunting for “suspicious activity.” More on TLOs in section 10 below (“The Organizational Structure of Gang Stalking”).
In essence, organized stalking tactics (and a national counterintelligence program which uses such tacics) could easily be exploited – and probably are – as a weapon against individuals who are disliked for any reason by someone who is either a member of the community of intelligence/security firms, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence agencies. Similarly, being a member of the FBI-corporate alliance called InfraGard (discussed in detail below) could create a perfect opportunity to have someone blacklisted.
Being associated with the national counterintelligence program of organized stalking (“Cointelpro 2.0″) is like having a cousin who is in the Mafia.
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Allegations of Stalking by Private Organizations
KKK Georgia May 1946
Ku Klax Klan initiation ritual – Georgia, 1946
Deception is a major element of counterintelligence programs. Consequently, all discussion of Cointelpro-type stalking has to be viewed skeptically. Allegations that the ongoing criminal harassment of targeted individuals is simply an activity by one or more vigilante groups is a case in point.
It is inconceivable – especially with the modern surveillance state – that the Justice Department and the other federal intelligence agencies are unaware of exactly what is happening. Their silence about the issue means that they acquiesce in it, whatever the specific operational structure might be.
That said, it is also clear that there is a “snitch culture” element to organized stalking – not just a bureaucratic machine. Perpetrators of gang stalking crimes rely upon a degree of informal support from sadists and useful idiots. Also, there is a long history of non-governmental organizations perpetrating very serious crimes against their fellow citizens. In addition, such organizations – for example, the Ku Klux Klan – have historically included members of the political and law enforcement community. So the involvement of private groups in organized stalking cannot be categorically dismissed, even though the core of the activity has to be state-sanctioned.
Gang stalking tactics are sometimes alleged to be used by certain fraternal orders such as Freemasons, and by various religious groups such as Scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses – for example, to control or punish current or former members. See for example, this March 15, 2013 article in the Brisbane Times.
I have no first-hand knowledge of the use of organized stalking by religious groups, but it does seem plausible – especially if you agree with America’s second president, John Adams:
“There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.”
In the case of Scientologists, there is reportedly a policy called “Fair Game,” under which the church allegedly uses aggressive tactics toward individuals and groups it perceives as its enemies. The practices – as described in this 1990 Los Angeles Times article, apparently include some tactics associated with organized stalking: “psychological warfare,” “dirty tricks,” and “harassment.” Reportedly, the Fair Game policy also sometimes involves employing detectives, former police officers, and criminals:
“Teams of private detectives have been dispatched to the far corners of the world to spy on critics and rummage through their personal lives–and trash cans–for information to discredit them.
During one investigation, headed by a former Los Angeles police sergeant, the church paid tens of thousands of dollars to reputed organized crime figures and con men for information linking a leading church opponent to a crime that it turned out he did not commit.”
Instances of “cause stalking” and stalking by religious cults presumably account for only a very small portion of the numerous incidents in the aforementioned crime survey statistics. It is true however, that members of religious cults (and cult-like fraternal organizations) are – by definition – easily manipulated, so they could serve in some cases as “useful idiot” vigilantes for others whose motivations they don’t even comprehend.
That is perhaps true for most of the general public since most people are completely unaware of the existence of any domestic counterintelligence operations – past or present – and would be unlikely to suspect that what they are being told might be disinformation and manipulation as part of a modern American version of the Stasi.
One group which is sometimes mentioned as a source of organized stalking perpetrators – probably as disinformation in most cases – is
the ancient fraternal order of Freemasons. Mentioning the organization often brings to mind tin-foil hat conspiracy theories. It should be noted, however, that mainstream news reports also include allegations about the group. Specifically, there are claims that the Freemasons’ network
is exploited to abuse the power of its members.
This June 2013 article in The Independent revealed that a leaked secret report from British law enforcement authorities found that many law firms, wealthy individuals, and large corporations hire private investigators to conduct illegal spying for them. The article mentioned one of the ways sensitive information was obtained:
[The report] found private investigators to be experts at “developing
and cultivating useful relationships” through “socialising with law enforcement personnel.” One particular method identified was to become a member of the Freemasons, which has been repeatedly
linked to corruption in the police and judiciary.
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Rise of the Police State
Photog - Brendan Scherer
More than 5.1 million Americans had security clearances in 2013 according to a report by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 3.6 million of the clearances were confidential or secret, and 1.5 million clearances were top secret. Almost one-third of those top secret clearances belong to contractors rather than government employees.
Although the budget for U.S. intelligence activities is mostly kept secret, it is clear that the monitoring of American citizens is taken seriously by their government. This is especially clear after revelations in 2013 about the scope of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Equally clear is that the U.S. justice system aggressively polices and prosecutes its citizens: the U.S. has one of the very highest per capita incarceration rates in the world.
A common – and accurate – critique of the modern U.S. government is that it has become unbalanced by the massive expansion of power and secrecy in the executive branch.
A related problem is that the now-vast network of federal agencies (whose officials of course are non-elected) operate with minimal accountability. In many cases they effectively create their own laws.
This is true to some extent in all agencies since they issue and enforce regulations, but the potential to be corrupted by power is infinitely greater in law enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA – which operate mostly in secrecy.
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The Threat to American Democracy Posed by the Spying Industry
“In the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Even Eisenhower was corrupted by the kind of power he warned against. As President, he authorized CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala. In Iran, a democratically-elected prime minister was overthrown by the CIA (and its British counterpart MI6), and replaced by a monarchy. The CIA also trained the repressive police force used to maintain the dictatorship. Similarly, in Guatemala, the CIA overthrew a democratically-elected president and installed a military dictatorship. In both cases, the motives were corporate greed and the desire for U.S. government hegemony.
In addition to the extreme violations of the Constitutional and state rights of the particular individuals targeted for organized stalking, the current counterintelligence program poses a threat to democracy itself, since it can be used against anyone who dares to question the legitimacy of the government’s authority.
The FBI’s original COINTELPRO operations were illegal and disturbing abuses of power; the modern version is similarly corrupt, and it is supported by the now-vast network of powerful secretive agencies and contractors armed with much more powerful technology.
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Spying on Americans: a lucrative business for security contractors
pig trough
The huge (and largely secret) federal budget for intelligence activities and homeland security supports a large industry of private contractors who provide technology and services for surveillance, investigations, security, and varous intelligence functions. About 70 percent of America’s budget for intelligence activities goes to private contractors, according to a 2012 report from the Director of National Intelligence.
The collusion between corporations and the federal government in the area of domestic surveillance is inherently dangerous. This July 2013 article in the Atlantic posed the issue this way:
“Government and corporations are both capable of terrible things. To have them colluding with one another in secret, inexorably arranging things so that there’s disincentive for disagreement among them, is terrifying. The people can fight Big Government. The people can fight Big Finance. The people can fight Big Tech. Could the people fight them if they’re all working together with secret law on their side?
Booz Allen Hamilton is paid handsomely to spy on us for the government, then pours campaign contributions back into that same government, protecting their powerful financial incentive
to have the surveillance state expand, something that is already
a bipartisan cause.”
Political support for a Stasi Big Brother police state in the U.S. is partly rooted in hawkish views about law enforcement and anti-terrorism strategy, but it is mostly rooted in greed. There will always be a long line of contractors seeking to cash-in. They all want to be IG Farben (sort of the gold standard of war pigs).
When Congress voted in July 2013 on whether to rein-in the NSA’s domestic surveillance program which tracks Americans’ phone calls and emails, House members who voted to continue the surveillance received twice as much campaign finance money from the military and intelligence industry as those who voted to dismantle the program.
Americans are not normally permitted to know how much of their money the federal government spends on spying. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden changed that.
Among the secret documents he revealed was the 178-page “black budget” for the 2013 fiscal year. That year’s slush-fund contained $52.6 billion. You can buy a lot of traitorous Stasi rodents with that kind of money.
Also be aware that a lot more money is sloshing around in the federal pig trough which might be getting funneled into spying activities. Many U.S. intelligence operations are conducted under the authority of the Pentagon – for example, those of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Pentagon spending is notoriously difficult to keep track of. Even the U.S. Government Accounting Office says that U.S. Department of Defense spending is “unauditable.”
Defenders of Constitutional liberties are up against a powerful and well-financed industry of parasites. This May 2013 article in The New Yorker describes a “bureaucratic empire” of entities built around the homeland security industry:
“When the Washington Post surveyed that empire, in 2010, it counted more than three thousand government organizations
and associated private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, in ten thousand locations across the United States.”
Frontline produced a fascinating documentary in April 2013 about the secretive agencies and corporations which make up the modern military and law enforcement industrial complex. The program is called “Top Secret America – 9/11 to the Boston Bombings.”
The whole thing is interesting, but if nothing else, watch the set-up (minutes 3 to 6) and the five minutes or so in the middle (minutes 27 to 32) about journalists uncovering the massive shadowy industry of private intelligence firms.
The Washington Post articles upon which the documentary was based were the product of one of the most thorough investigations of the American police state. More than a dozen journalists spent two years investigating the vast network of agencies and corporations performing secret homeland security operations. This was their conclusion:
“The top-secret world the government created in response to
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
Tom Engelhardt, who teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, described the expansion of the national security complex this way:
“It has essentially merged with a set of crony outfits that now
do a significant part of its work. It has hired private contractors by the tens of thousands, creating corporate spies, corporate analysts, corporate mercenaries, corporate builders, and corporate providers for a structure that is increasingly becoming the profit-center of a state within a state.”
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Barrett Brown on the Role of Private Intelligence/Security Contractors
As I am updating this (in March 2014), journalist Barrett Brown is in jail facing charges related to his role in exposing information leaked by hackers who obtained internal emails from private intelligence firms, such as Stratfor and HB Gary.
Activities revealed in those leaked emails included things such as plotting to discredit journalist Glenn Greenwald and critics of the Chamber of Commerce by spreading lies about them.
In other words, at least some of these numerous secret firms engage in the kind of actions which the CIA might perform against foreign enemies – but they do so on behalf of corporate interests.
Here is an excellent article by Barrett Brown on this topic published in the Guardian in July 2013.
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Job Ads for Gang Stalkers?
On August 21, 2013 Drudge Report linked to a brief article posted the day before on InfoWars about a job announcement posted in San Diego. The job – advertised on Craigslist – was for a part-time position with an intelligence/security contractor firm as a “Surveillance Role Player.”
As I explain in detail in the “Organizational Structure” section of this overview, these job listings are numerous. They are mainly found on the websites of defense contractors. You can locate them easily by performing an online search for “surveillance role player job.”
Clearly these jobs are for some type of domestic spying (there are no foreign language requirements, for example). All of the job listings specify that applicants must have active secret clearances and counterintelligence training.
I have so far been unable to locate any mainstream news reports that might shed light on this issue, but multiple indications suggest that these could be jobs for gang stalkers. I re-visit this critical issue in section 11 of this overview (“The Organizational Structure of Gang Stalking”).
Here is an example of one such job listing:
Click on image to enlarge.
job ad for gang stalker
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Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agencies’ Support of
a Corporate Agenda
Collusion between corporations and the federal law enforcement/intelligence community is not limited to companies in the spying industry. This subject was explored in depth in a May 2013 report from the Center for Media and Democracy, called Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter-Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.
That report describes two organizations which facilitate that partnership:
“There are two primary domestic public-private intelligence sharing partnerships at work at the federal level: InfraGard and the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC).
InfraGard is a public-private intelligence sharing partnership managed by the FBI Cyber Division Public/Private Alliance Unit (PPAU). As described by the FBI, Infragard is an “association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States.” There are 86 Infragard chapters nationwide. These Infragard chapters serve as representatives of private sector “stakeholders” in many of the nation’s fusion centers.
DSAC is a public-private intelligence sharing partnership between the FBI, U.S. DHS I&A and several of the nation’s leading corporate/financial interests. Some of these corporate/financial interests comprise the DSAC Leadership Board. The DSAC Leadership Board consists of 29 corporations and banks, including several entities that have been the subject of OWS protests/criticism. Corporate/financial interests active in the DSAC Leadership Board include: Bank of America, MasterCard, Citigroup, American Express, Barclays, RBS Citizens, 3M, Archer Daniels Midland, ConocoPhillips, Time Warner and Wal-Mart. Along with DSAC chairmen from the FBI and U.S. DHS I&A, DSAC is co-chaired by a representative of these private sector interests– currently Grant Ashley, vice president of global security for pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.”
excellent
Artist’s rendering of an InfraGard member
The March 2008 issue of The Progressive featured an article about this creepy corporate spy club. It seems that InfraGard’s communications with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security can be kept hidden from the public, as they are covered by the “trade secrets” exemption of the Freedom of Information Act.
Apparently mindful that the public will be naturally suspicious of the organization’s legitimacy, InfraGard’s website explains that members must carefully manage the image presented to the public:
“The interests of InfraGard must be protected whenever presented to non-InfraGard members,” the website states. “During interviews with members of the press, controlling the image of InfraGard being presented can be difficult. Proper preparation for the interview will minimize the risk of embarrassment. . . . The InfraGard leadership and the local FBI representative should review the submitted questions, agree on the predilection of the answers, and identify the appropriate interviewee. . . . Tailor answers to the expected audience. . . . Questions concerning sensitive information should be avoided.”
For those wishing to join this elite secretive alliance between the FBI and the corporate sector – to learn their secret handshake and to gain the power of being able to name an employee as a suspicious person to be targeted by federal goons, you “must be sponsored by an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.”
Those who are deemed worthy of membership in the InfraGard partnership are given ID cards and enjoy privileged access to information and direct communication with the FBI.
In a 2009 TV program, Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, interviewed Matthew Rothschild, senior editor of the Progressive about InfraGard. Ventura also confronted a member of InfraGard regarding the partnership’s obvious potential for abuse of power. The relevant section begins 25 minutes into this video clip.
Note: if the video becomes unavailable at the above link, and you want to search for it, this is the information: Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, Episode #4, “Big Brother” – originally broadcast on December 23, 2009.
The existence of programs like InfraGard, along with the FBI’s infiltration of groups like Occupy Wall Street, and the plotting by intelligence firms to wage a disinformation-slander campaign against critics of the Chamber of Commerce (also discussed in this overview), all suggest that activist and hacker Jeremy Hammond is correct in his assessment of the current U.S. law enforcement industry personnel – namely, that they are “the boot boys of the 1 percent, paid to protect the rich and powerful.”
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Power in the United States: the “Deep State” analysis
Deep State
To understand organized stalking, it is necessary to understand the power structure which sanctions it. Gang stalking is a weapon for people with connections to the government’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and their contractors. The fact that counterintelligence subversion could theoretically be used against someone who poses an actual threat to society presumably makes it easy to rationalize the existence of such a program – for example, within the Justice Department. Since such operations are covert, they are subject to no real oversight. Outsourcing most of the work to the now-vast industry of private contractor firms (who in turn, can delegate the operations), creates plausible deniability for those at the top of the food chain.
Mike Lofgren on the deep state
So who are the people with such connections? In the TV interview and essay linked below, Mike Lofgren, a former congressional staff member, offers a sort of unified theory of the current U.S. power structure which attempts to explain the connections between Washington, Wall Street, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley, the intelligence community and law enforcement. This big picture view is helpful to understand U.S. national security and law enforcement policy – of which domestic counterintelligence operations are an element.
Other observers – for example, Peter Dale Scott – have written about the distinction between the formal elected government and the informal “shadow government” or “deep state” which shapes policies, so Lofgren’s views on this subject are not entirely unique, but he does an excellent job of explaining the concept. He also speaks with Washington insider experience, having spent nearly three decades as a congressional staffer, including serving on the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees.
Lofgren refers to “the deep state” as a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state.
“There is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight.”
Mike Lofgren appeared on Moyers and Company in February 2014 to discuss his views on the deep state. Here is the video.
This webpage features an essay by Lofgren on the same topic.
Here is a webpage of reactions to Lofgren’s portrayal of the deep rot in Washington. They include comments such as this one by Heidi Boghosian, director of the National Lawyers Guild.
“The term Deep State aptly conveys how the private security industry has melded with government. It is soldered by plutocracy, perpetual war, reduction of industrial capacity, US exceptionalism and political malfunction. Lofgren is a credible
and welcome interpreter of how these factors combine to exert control over us.”
For more on the issue of who really calls the shots in the U.S. government, you might want to also consider the very credible observations expressed by NSA whistle-blower Russ Tice in this article and interview from September 2013.
For a quick look at some of the elite members of the U.S. oligarchy, you might want to visit the website LittleSis. Many of the individuals and organizations who make up America’s “shadow government” are listed there – along with explanations of their connections and political influence. The name “Little Sis” is a play on the Orwellian term “Big Brother.”
Noam Chomsky on the deep state
Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, is deservedly one of the most influential analysts of the nature of political power in America. His books, articles, speeches, and debates on the subject are so numerous that it can be difficult to know where to begin for someone who wants to become familiar with his views.
A speech Chomsky gave in Bonn, Germany on June 17, 2013 is a good place to start. In that speech, he explained that the standard view of capitalist democracy taught to American schoolchildren is essentially fictional.
“….Roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.”
Chomsky notes that this arrangement is not unique to America:
“Europe, incidentally, is much worse….[The general public has voted against the European Union’s economic model,] yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat after another.”
According to Chomsky, America is essentially a one-party state, and the one party is the business party. He argues that this general power structure has been the same since the nation’s founding.
Chomsky’s conclusion:
“The general picture is pretty grim, I think. But there are shafts of light. As always through history, there are two trajectories. One leads towards oppression and destruction. The other leads towards freedom and justice. And as always – to adapt Martin Luther King’s famous phrase – there are ways to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice and freedom…”
Michael J. Glennon on the deep state
In October 2014, The Boston Globe published an article on the views of Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon regarding the deep state. If you think that things like voting and writing letters to your political representatives might help slow America’s mutation into a police state, you might want to re-evaluate how far things have already deteriorated.
Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked.
Asked whether there was any hope of reining in the rogue elements of America’s national security apparatus, Glennon said this:
“The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government. Government is very much the problem here. The people have to take the bull by the horns.”
George Carlin on the deep state
This 3-minute rant by comedian George Carlin pretty well summarizes the core points about the deep state.
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A Gang Stalking Organization Chart
Victims of organized stalking can only speculate about the exact nature of the shadowy network of perpetrators arrayed against them.
That speculation is made more difficult by the fact that the people who are overtly and covertly watching them and perpetrating various acts of harassment are of different classes of perpetrators with different motivations and have different connections (and often no connection) to the victim.
For example, the street-level perpetrator (“perp” as cops say) is typically someone who appears to be a rough-looking homeless or near-homeless ex-con type.
Their interactions with the target require no technical skills; the perp is just following some simple instruction – for example, to bump into the victim, or to make some specific creepy comment, or to harass the victim at his or her residence by making various noises.
Such participants in the stalking of course would not be told anything about who they are ultimately working for; in some cases perhaps they are simply paid a small sum of cash by a person who approached them on the street to perform a single act of harassment. In other cases, they might be ex-con’s who have been recruited/coerced/paid to function – technically – as “criminal informants.”
At a slightly higher level in the stalker food-chain (among those who interact with the victims) are people who appear more clean-cut and are often carrying a cell phone – presumably to communicate with their handlers.
Some of the intermediate-level participants are apparently recruited because of their relevant technical skills or because their jobs afford them access to facilities and information relevant to the operation – such as phone technicians, security guards, and landlords.
At the level above them are the people who actually orchestrate the operation. Based on my own observations, analysis, speculation, and various material I’ve read (which is included or linked in this website), these people are presumably employed by various intelligence contractors who are ultimately overseen by federal law enforcement and/or intelligence agency personnel.
The active support – or at least approval – of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies would be necessary for such activities to occur without attracting interference from the massive homeland security infrastructure now in place.
The agencies, corporations, & individuals involved in organized stalking
Historically, counterintelligence crimes against Americans in the U.S. have been perpetrated by three main entities: (1) “red squads” (Law Enforcement Intelligence Units of local police departments), (2) Private Intelligence-security firms such as Pinkerton (now Securitas), and (3) the FBI.
Today, you can probably add the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the list. The most authoritative journalism on the subject – such as that of George O’Toole in the late 1970s – also shows connections between LEIUs and the CIA. Technically of course, the CIA is not supposed to be preying on Americans, but anyone who has read about MK Ultra knows that is a purely theoretical boundary.
Similarly, anyone who has not been living in a cave since June 2013 knows that the NSA is deeply involved in unconstitutional domestic spying. And all those agencies – plus others – have access to the nationwide system of data “Fusion Centers,” so there is no way that everyone from local cops (especially those in LEIUs) to the U.S. Attorney General is not in the know about organized stalking.
Other players in the overall process include Terrorism Liaison Officers (TLOs) who help choose some of the targets, corporate partners such as members of InfraGard and DSAC, and Threat Assessment Teams in various civilian organizations.
Lastly, the perps include a type of person famously used by East Germany’s Stasi – the civilian snitch. Stasi agents referred to such a person as an Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter – unofficial collaborator. Although the street-level thugs used in gang stalking harassment are sometimes apparently recruited from the ranks of criminal informants, many are just un-paid civilian minions who will do almost anything to please someone in a position of authority – for example, under the guise of assisting a “neighborhood watch” program or an “investigation.”
Who sanctions all of this? In the case of the FBI’s Cointelpro crimes under J. Edgar Hoover, some of the operations were approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Presumably, the DOJ signs-off on everything today also (or at least knowingly acquiesces in it). The same might be true of the U.S. judiciary’s “Star Chamber” – the secret FISA Court.
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Precedence for Organized Stalking of Dissidents
The conspiratorial criminality involved in organized stalking might seem far-fetched if not for the fact that the U.S. government has been caught doing such things before. Context provided by an awareness of documented crimes – past and present – by government agencies is critical for evaluating the plausibility of claims about ongoing counterintelligence operations in the U.S.
Blue Line
3. Crimes by U.S. Law Enforcement and
. Intelligence Agencies
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“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
– Richard Nixon in a 1977 interview with David Frost
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Attitudes of Government Officials About the Law
Although scandals such as Watergate and Iran-Contra occasionally break into the public’s consciousness, most Americans are unaware of the criminality which routinely occurs at the upper levels of government.
The same government officials who oversee America’s domestic surveillance and law enforcement programs often have a very casual attitude about their own obligation to obey the law.
In a Senate hearing in March 2013 the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was asked “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper said they did not.
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s subsequent revelations proved that Clapper was lying to Congress – which Clapper himself was forced to acknowledge. A typical American citizen would be prosecuted for perjury if he or she lied to Congress; Clapper obviously has no such concerns.
As a practical matter, intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement agencies exist in a mostly secret and politically-protected realm outside of the laws that bind the rest of us. They know they won’t be punished for their crimes.
The political establishment is similarly unconcerned. Since the intelligence and law enforcement community enjoys virtually unconditional support from both major parties, neither party has to worry about negative political consequences for its role in creating domestic surveillance programs which violate the Fourth Amendment.
In April 2013 WikiLeaks published a searchable database of more than 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from the mid-1970s which had been declassified. The documents included a revealing transcript of a discussion involving then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
When a Turkish official suggested that the U.S. arrange to supply military hardware to Turkey – in violation of a U.S. Congressional arms embargo – Kissinger joked about the illegality:
Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.
We’ll make a major effort.
For the average American, violating federal laws would be a serious matter; for government officials like Kissinger it is literally a joke.
In an August 2013 National Review article, conservative columnist John Fund quoted an intelligence official who alluded to the pervasiveness of such arrogance and deception:
A veteran intelligence official with decades of experience at various agencies identified to me what he sees as the real problem with the current NSA: “It’s increasingly become a culture of arrogance. They tell Congress what they want to tell them. Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein at the Intelligence Committees don’t know what they don’t know about the programs.” He himself was asked to skew the data an intelligence agency submitted to Congress, in an effort to get a bigger piece of the intelligence budget. He refused and was promptly replaced in his job, presumably by someone who would do as told.
Such behavior at the federal level sets the tone for law enforcement agencies lower down the food chain. I address this issue also in the section of this overview about the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
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The Erosion of Trust in the U.S. Government
Obama
“Turns out I’m really good at killing people.”
Comment by President Obama – from Double Down
– a behind-the-scenes account of the 2012 presidential
race by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilmann
An April 2014 Rasmussen poll found that more than twice as many American voters regard the federal government as a threat to their rights than those who view the federal government as a protector of their rights.
The poll found that 54 percent of voters considered the federal government to be a threat to individual liberties. Only 22 percent viewed the government as a source of protection of individual liberties. The remaining 24 percent were undecided.
Two of the major reasons trust in U.S. government officials has eroded are: (1) the massive expansion of power and secrecy of the federal government – especially the executive branch – has predictably led to abuses of authority, and (2) access to information via the Internet has made it harder to keep such abuses secret.
That’s the good news for targets of organized stalking. The bad news is that – as a practical matter – many people still naïvely assume that anyone who seems to be associated with law enforcement should be absolutely trusted – as seen in this ABC TV show segment.
Organized stalkers (and other criminals) can easily exploit that fact to recruit accomplices by persuading them that they are assisting an investigation or a neighborhood watch surveillance program. This common tendency of blind obedience toward authority figures is such an important element of organized stalking that I address it in detail in its own section of this overview.
Evidence of this sheep-like deference to law enforcement authority figures was on display in January 2014 a jury in the southern California city of Fullerton decided that it was OK with them that their local police department beat to death an unarmed mentally-ill homeless man who posed no risk to anyone. They were not persuaded by the mere fact that the murder had been captured on surveillance camera video.
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The Prevalence of Government Corruption in the U.S.
A 2013 Gallup poll found that 79 percent of U.S. residents believed that corruption was widespread throughout the government in America.
Govt Corruption Poll
Admittedly, this is a measurement of the perception of corruption, rather than corruption itself, but corruption is inherently difficult to measure, and public perception is an important indicator.
Now imagine the depth of corruption in those corners of America’s government which operate mostly in secret with minimal oversight, such as the intelligence and law enforcement industry.
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The Frequency of Crimes Perpetrated by U.S. Government Agencies
You don’t have to visit an obscure blog these days to find complaints that America is becoming something of a police state. But America’s government doesn’t just engage in secret invasive surveillance and aggressive policing – it also engages in crimes.
That’s not my opinion – that’s what the federal government itself says. For example, the CIA constantly commits crimes according to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, IC 21 (April 9, 1996) – as explained in chapter 6 of Into the Buzzsaw.
The Congressional report cited therein by John Kelly (whose book Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize) states that “several hundred times every day” officers of the Clandestine Service (CS) of the CIA “engage in highly illegal activities.”
Part of the blame for the American public’s ignorance of crimes by federal agencies lies with the mainstream media, which routinely avoids or downplays news that would upset the political establishment. On the other hand, even when good reporting does occur, it often fails to penetrate the public’s consciousness.
On the November 21, 1993 episode of the CBS news show 60 Minutes, a former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) stated that the CIA had colluded with the Venezuelan National Guard to smuggle a ton of pure cocaine into the U.S. That revelation – and other reports of CIA involvement in the illicit drug trade – seems to have minimal impact on the assumption that Americans should trust the nation’s intelligence community.
By the way, if you want to see that moment of the 60 Minutes episode, it is included in this documentary by WhoWhatWhy on counterintelligence. That segment begins at minute 29.
In an August 2013 article, Reuters revealed that – as a matter of official policy – a secretive unit within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) instructs law enforcement officers in various agencies to lie about the origins of their investigations.
Some cops don’t need to be told to lie. The subject of crimes by police officers is generally under-reported in the mainstream corporate news media – especially on national TV news, but to evaluate the plausibility of widespread acquiescence in gang stalking by local police officers it is helpful to consider criminality by police generally.
This review of crimes by Chicago police officers published by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Political Science is illuminating. Browse through the list of convictions of police officers on pages 24 to 47 of this report. The list is in alphabetical order by the officers’ names, and covers the past half-century. Keep in mind: these were just the crimes that were discovered and prosecuted.
The crimes range from bribery and extortion to torture and murder. Gang stalking would be like jay-walking for the cops on this list.
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Crimes Perpetrated Under Authority of the FBI
Law enforcement agencies in America make extensive use of criminal informants in their investigations, and in many cases authorize criminals to commit crimes when an agency believes it furthers its goals, as reported for example in this August 2013 article in USA Today.
“The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at
least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly-disclosed documents that show just how often the nation’s top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.”
The FBI report from 2011 which USA Today obtained via the Freedom of Information Act does not reveal the nature of the crimes:
“The report does not spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were. It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau’s sources were known to have committed without the government’s permission.”
A document released in December 2013 showed that informant crimes authorized by the FBI increased another 5 percent in 2012 to 5,939 crimes.
Sometimes the FBI uses cops to perpetrate crimes too. During the original Cointelpro era, for example, they arranged for police to assassinate two young members of the Black Power movement. On December 4, 1969 in Chicago 14 police officers raided an apartment and killed two members of the Black Panther Party – Fred Hampton and Mark Clark – while they were sleeping.
Noam Chomsky in an interview on Democracy Now! in February 2011 noted that the assassination barely showed up on the radar of the American public:
“…one of the events was a straight Gestapo-style assassination
of two black organizers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, literally.
I mean, the FBI set up the assassination. The Chicago police actually carried it out, broke into the apartment at 4:00 in the morning and murdered them. Fake information that came from the FBI about arms stores and so on. There was almost nothing about it. In fact, the information about this, remarkably, was released at about the same time as Watergate. I mean, as compared with this, Watergate was a tea party. There was nothing, you know?”
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Illegal Spying by the FBI
Of course, the most well-known and well-documented crimes by the FBI occurred during the COINTELPRO era, and I devote an entire section to that later in this overview. I will just point out here that despite the extreme secrecy in which the agency operates, evidence continues to emerge of ongoing criminality. No doubt these reports represent the tip of an iceberg.
A report released in January 2011 by the non-profit watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) revealed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which suggested widespread civil rights violations in FBI investigations.
“[The documents show] serious misconduct by FBI agents including lying in declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain grand jury subpoenas, and accessing password-protected files without a warrant.”
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FBI Whistle-Blowers
Most Americans are unaware that the FBI is exempt from the Whistleblower Protection Act. If anything, the agency deserves extra scrutiny because of its history of domestic spying done for political reasons.
An October 2013 article in Reason described the FBI as a “dangerous” domestic spy agency. The author, J.D. Tucille, explains not only how the FBI is able to mostly keep its agents from revealing the agency’s crimes, but also why the abuses tend not to be investigated very aggressively by the press:
“Never hesitant about flexing its muscles to target dissenters and whistleblowers, the FBI….is more dangerous than ever.”
“Exempted from the Whistleblower Protection Act, the FBI freely retaliates against employees who attempt to call out wrongdoing. As a result, it’s rare for FBI employees to speak out. That culture lends itself to a willingness to target whistleblowers in other agencies—and journalists.”
Tucille quoted from the September 2013 report by the ACLU – Unleashed and Unaccountable: the FBI’s Unchecked Abuse of Authority. That report noted examples of the FBI spying on journalists, such as this:
“In 2010 the Inspector General reported the FBI used an illegal ‘exigent letter’ to obtain the telephone records of 7 New York Times and Washington Post reporters.”
A more high-profile case of spying on journalists was reported in May 2013, when it was revealed that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors of the Associated Press.
Famous Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein said on May 14, 2013 on MSNBC that he believed that the intention of the AP records seizure was “to intimidate people who talk to reporters.”
Mike German
Mike German was a decorated FBI agent who specialized in counter-terrorism. He left the agency after 16 years, when he became a whistle-blower. He had discovered that fellow officers were violating wiretapping regulations. When he reported that to his supervisors, his accusations were ignored, and his career was effectively frozen. Apparently, his experience was not unique in an agency which values secrecy more than ethics.
After leaving the FBI, German served as a senior policy counsel at the ACLU. He is now with the Brennan Center for Justice.
Mike German is one of the guests on this Democracy Now! interview together with an individual who was targeted by the FBI for being a political dissident. The individual was subjected to intense investigation for years – despite having no criminal record, apart from trespassing incidents related to political protests.
At 2:06 in the video of this interview journalist Amy Goodman asks Mike German to explain the FBI’s legal authority to perform the “assessments” which, as I mentioned in the introduction above, are essentially investigations that can now be launched against an individual without any evidence that the individual has committed a crime.
This April 2014 interview with Mike German is also worth watching. He suggests that much of the FBI’s threat assessment role should be taken over by Congress, since the agency has a natural tendency to exaggerate the threat of terrorism. German also states that the FBI is now more powerful than at any time since the Cointelpro era.
Ted Gunderson
A high-level FBI official who retired after a full career with the bureau, the late Ted Gunderson, claimed that the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO operations, which lasted from 1956 to 1971, re-emerged in a more sophisticated form a decade or so later, as what is now commonly referred to as “gang stalking.” Gunderson’s testimony is complicated however, for several reasons, as I explain here in my full discussion of COINTELPRO.
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War Crimes by Sociopaths in U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Journalist Douglas Valentine has written extensively about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including a book called The Phoenix Program which details the CIA’s Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam war. That program, which is largely unknown to the American public even today, involved torture, assassinations, and the murder of civilians – including women and children – on a large scale.
For anyone who is curious about Operation Phoenix, I recommend this article which Valentine wrote for CounterPunch magazine in May of 2001 in which he explains both the nature of the war crimes committed and how those crimes were whitewashed by the establishment press.
Writing for that same magazine in September 2013, Douglas Valentine made the following observation about the CIA. No doubt this also applies to many agents in other U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies as well.
“Despite the popular portrayal of the CIA as patriotic guys and girls risking everything to do a dirty job, the typical CIA officer is a sociopath without the guts to go it alone in the underworld. They gravitate to the CIA because they are protected there by the all-powerful Cult of Death that rules America.”
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How Far Will U.S. Officials Go in their Criminality?
An instructive example of the extremes to which federal agencies sometimes go is the CIA’s secret MK Ultra program. I describe MK Ultra in some detail in section 6 below, so I will just note here that it involved performing experiments (including psychological and physical torture) on American citizens. No one was punished for his participation in that program – which lasted two decades, and the head of the CIA destroyed most of the records about it when it was discovered.
In September 1970 the leftists in Chile won a plurality of that country’s democratic election, as a result of which, their representative would have soon been confirmed as the next president. Right-wing political leaders in Chile, some major U.S. corporations which did business in the country (including Pepsi Cola and Chase Manhattan Bank), and the CIA were not pleased with this development and communicated that to then-president Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and they plotted to arrange for a military coup instead.
An obstacle they faced was that the chief of the Chilean General Staff, General René Schnieder did not believe in interfering with the democratic process. So Nixon and Kissinger had him murdered.
The incident – and other very serious transgressions – did not prevent Kissinger from generally being treated with great respect and adulation by the American news media over the rest of his career. That kind of sycophancy and complacency by mainstream journalists obviously makes it difficult to expose and punish the bad behavior done in secret by the U.S. government.
Operation Northwoods
High-level U.S. officials are sometimes willing to perpetrate very serious crimes against their own citizens when they believe it could further their agendas. A perfect example of this was the proposed “false flag operation” called “Operation Northwoods.”
The following description of the plan is an excerpt from an ABC News article in May 2001 by David Ruppe:
In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
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Lying About Killing
A thorough review of disturbing crimes and conspiracies by the U.S. government is beyond the scope of this website. My goal here is simply to cite a few examples to make the general case that acts and programs involving serious deception and criminality are not aberrations. Here is a final example from a few years ago.
When a U.S. cruise missile struck a village in Yemen in December 2009 killing 41 people – including 14 women and 21 children – the U.S. government and the Yemeni government conspired to lie about the incident, saying that the Yemeni government had launched the attack rather than the U.S., and that the victims were members of an al-Qaeda training camp.
The truth about who launched the attack and the identity of the victims was later revealed by two sources: cables released by Wikileaks and evidence gathered and reported by a young Yemini journalist named Abdulelah Haider Shaye.
After exposing what really happened in the missile strike, Shaye was arrested on apparently trumped-up charges and given a sham trial that was criticized by major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and sentenced to five years in prison.
In 2011 the president of Yemen announced that he was going to pardon Shaye, but apparently decided against it “because of a phone call from Obama.”
According to Amnesty International, the unexploded cluster bomblet in the photo below was found at the location of the missile strike in Yemen. It would have been one of the 166 bomblets carried by the Tomahawk cruise missile.
Each bomblet explodes “into over 200 sharp steel fragments that can cause injuries up to 150m away. An incendiary material inside the bomblet also spreads fragments of burning zirconium designed to set fire to nearby flammable objects.”
U.S. Cluster Bomb
To review: In an incident which barely registered on the radar of the news media and the American public, U.S. government officials killed a bunch of women and children. Then they lied about it to cover it up. Then, when they got caught lying about it, they arranged to have the journalist who exposed all the killing and lying kept in prison for reporting it.
If you think that a government which routinely does that kind of stuff (without any negative career consequences or political consequences or legal consequences for those involved) – and which was previously caught waging an illegal counterintelligence war against its own citizens (COINTELPRO) – could not possibly be acquiescing in an illegal program of organized surveillance and harassment of targeted citizens, then you’re not skeptical – you’re just naïve.
Blue Line
4. Oversight of Law Enforcement and
. Intelligence Agencies
monkees cropped
Lawlessness in the U.S. intelligence community
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies currently operate with essentially the same lack of accountability that existed during the days of COINTELPRO and MK Ultra.
Following the Church Committee investigations in the 1970s efforts were made to implement policies to protect Americans from crimes by the federal government. Unfortunately, those protections have been thoroughly undone – especially by policies such as the Patriot Act enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The FBI – and even the IRS – now assert the right to have warrantless access to the email communication of all Americans, to cite just one example.
Arguably, even the Church Committee reforms aimed at outlawing assassinations of foreign leaders have been undermined. The government now orders drone assassinations in places like Yemen and launches wars without the approval of Congress – such as the “military intervention” against Libya launched in March 2011.
It’s difficult to even assess the extent to which America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies have returned to being rogue entities, given that they now routinely invoke “national security” as a justification for keeping American citizens from knowing their business. Political cowardice by members of Congress – as well as laziness, group-think, and careerism among many journalists at major news outlets has resulted in a lack of oversight of America’s most secretive government agencies.
Fortunately, there are some exceptions; some journalists do report that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have slipped the leash. A Forbes magazine writer – to cite just one example – has suggested that we probably need another Church Committee investigation. The Forbes article quotes a former senior NSA official, William H. Binney, who said we seem to be headed “toward an Orwellian state.”
A November 2013 article in the New York Times on spying by the NSA quoted Binney on the danger of the intelligence community’s powers being used as a weapon against Americans:
Mr. Binney said that without new leadership, new laws and top-to-bottom reform, the agency will represent a threat of “turnkey totalitarianism” — the capability to turn its awesome power, now directed mainly against other countries, on the American public. “I think it’s already starting to happen,” he said. “That’s what we have to stop.”
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Congress members’ fear of the intelligence community
Oversight of the U.S. intelligence agencies is the responsibility of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Those committees are unlikely to provide much real oversight though if they are afraid of the people they are supposed to be monitoring. Unfortunately, that is very likely the case.
In March 2014, two members of Congress made comments which strongly implied that such fears exist. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said this of his fellow senators:
“I think I perceive fear of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant, and uninclined to relinquish power.”
The next day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said this about disagreeing with the intelligence community:
On April 10, 2014, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) gave a speech about the Whistleblower Protection Act. According to Grassley, President Obama’s Insider Threat detection program fails to adequately distinguish true insider threats – such as spies and terrorists – from whistle-blowers.
As Senator Grassley explained in his speech, when he and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) had a briefing with the FBI the week before, the head of the FBI’s Insider Threat Program did not bring the program’s training materials as the senators had requested so they could review them. About ten minutes into the briefing, after the senators began raising questions about whether the bureau was fairly distinguishing between threats and whistle-blowers, the FBI officials “abruptly walked out.”
Senator Grassley described the FBI’s attitude this way:
“The FBI fiercely resists any efforts at Congressional oversight, especially on whistle-blower matters.”
Victims of organized stalking by corrupt law enforcement and intelligence agencies sometimes try to gain the attention of members of Congress so they might intervene to stop such criminal behavior. I encourage such efforts, but I would caution targeted individuals to be realistic. Senator Leahy is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the FBI officials simply walked out of his briefing when he and Senator Grassley tried to question them about how they target individuals as potential threats.
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Lawlessness in the private spying industry
Concerns that the spy industry in the U.S. has slipped the leash have been voiced by many people who know the profession from first-hand experience. Former CIA division chief Melvin Goodman said this of the vast private contractor element of the intelligence community:
“My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It’s outrageous.”
Concerns about the lack of oversight of U.S. intelligence community contractors have also been expressed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). A report released by the GAO in February 2014 indicated that over a third of the personnel records for intelligence contractors lacked the documentation needed to validate the number of personnel employed or the reasons core intelligence functions were being assigned to them.
GAO – Civilian Intelligence Community
The lack of oversight for private spooks does not just apply to those working for government agencies as contractors; it also applies to a large shadowy industry of corporate spies who work for intelligence-security firms.
A November 2013 report on corporate spying by Gary Ruskin, director of the Center for Corporate Policy, used the word “lawlessness” to describe the nature of the industry. His report – “Spooky Business” – concluded that the private intelligence and law enforcement industry functions with virtually no oversight.
“[The industry] appears to enjoy near impunity, is a threat to democracy and the rule of law. In essence, corporations are now able to hire a private law enforcement capacity – which is barely constrained by legal and ethical norms….”
Spooky Business
In his February 2011 article for the Guardian, “The Dirty History of Corporate Spying,” investigative reporter James Ridgeway described how corporations target people with what is, in effect, a secret private law enforcement system:
“The private detective firms working for corporations can develop information against their own targets and find eager recipients among federal and local law enforcement agencies, some of whose employees end up retiring into private-sector detective work. The corporate spy business thus amounts to a shadow para-law enforcement system that basically can get around any of the safeguards set out in the American legal system; it ought to be subject first to transparency, and then to banning.”
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Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Who will guard the guards
DHS is America’s third-largest government agency, with a massive $39 billion budget and 225,000 employees in 2014. (Americans require a lot of monitoring by Big Brother to make the political class feel safe.)
With all those federal employees and private contractors feeding at that giant pig trough – in an area of government which operates largely in secrecy – oversight is critical. Here is the Washington Post’s description of the April 2014 report about the U.S. Senate’s investigations into the oversight being provided:
“Charles K. Edwards, who served as acting DHS inspector general from 2011 through 2013, routinely shared drinks and dinner with department leaders and gave them inside information about the timing and findings of investigations…”
Here is a comment from the report by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the subcommittee on financial and contracting oversight, which conducted the investigation:
“We found that Mr. Edwards was a compromised inspector general…who was not exercising real oversight….Any report generated out of his office would be suspect.”
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Oversight of the Justice Department
Because of its critical role at the top of the U.S. law enforcement system, I devote an entire section of this overview to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). For now, I will just mention this for perspective:
A January 1993 Washington Post article quoted a government auditor describing the secretive and dysfunctional nature of the DOJ’s internal affairs office this way:
“The system they have in place could not be better for sweeping things under the rug.”
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Oversight of an inherently corrupt system
Regardless of the integrity of the oversight, if the true nature of the programs themselves is illegitimate, the public’s rights and interests will not be protected. Unfortunately, that is precisely the situation.
Declaring an endless “war on terror” – just like declaring an endless “war on drugs” – guarantees as a practical matter that civil rights will always be a low priority, and that other agendas – such as political control, corporate profits, and career interests associated with enforcement and surveillance will drive government policy.
“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
– from 1984 by George Orwell
In December 2013, NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden posted an open letter to the people of Brazil regarding U.S. spying. In that letter he explained that the ostensible purpose of America’s massive surveillance system – protecting Americans from terrorism – is essentially a lie:
“These programs were never about terrorism:
they’re about economic spying, social control, and
diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”
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Blue Line
5. Published News Reports
stack of newspapers
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In the absence of leaked official documents, analysis of domestic counterintelligence operations often requires speculation based on information from open sources, such as those which follow. Journalist Dan Froomkin mentioned this strategy of uncovering abuses of power
in a blog entry at The Intercept in September 2014:
“Reading copiously is one approach. Even in a flawed press climate, a pretty compelling picture emerges when you connect the dots.”
For perspective, it is important to keep something in mind about the following news reports. When a criminal is caught perpetrating a crime, often the transgression is one of a large number of crimes, most of which went undetected. That also applies to crimes perpetrated by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. What follows are just glimpses
of activities which mostly stay off of the public’s radar.
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December 1976
A Penthouse article published in December 1976 exposed a secretive quasi-governmental organization called the Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIU). The reporter was Pulitzer Prize nominee George O’Toole, a novelist and historian who specialized in the history of American espionage and who had worked for the CIA. The article, “America’s Secret Police Network,” revealed the modern system of what are traditionally referred to as “Red Squads” – intelligence units within urban police departments that conduct spying and counterintelligence activities, such as infiltrating and disrupting groups deemed to be subversive. Despite having received government funding and despite the group’s management of a sensitive intelligence database, LEIU is a private organization, and therefore mostly free of any oversight. O’Toole described the group this way:
“The organization forms a vast network of intelligence units that exchange dossiers and conduct investigations on a reciprocal basis. Several of the police departments belonging to the group have recently been caught in illegal wiretapping, burglary, and spying on the private lives of ordinary citizens. The LEIU is, in effect, a huge, private domestic-intelligence agency.”
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April 1979
A New York Times article reviewed a three-and-a-half-year study of the aforementioned LEIU association by the American Friends Service Committee. The study described the LEIU as “an old-boy network” whose illegal surveillance “of groups and individuals for political purposes is continuing on a vast scale in the nation.” According to the report, the widespread illegal spying posed “a grave threat to the constitutional rights of freedom of expression, due process and privacy.”
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September 1979
A Los Angeles Times article under the headline “FBI Admits Spreading Lies About Jean Seberg” was the lead story on the paper’s front page. Seberg – a successful film actress and a political activist – had died the month before in Paris from an apparent suicide. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Seberg had been the target of a systematic campaign by the FBI to slander her. She had also apparently been blacklisted and terrorized by the FBI using tactics associated with counterintelligence operations intended to neutralize political dissidents, such as “black bag jobs,” illegal wiretapping, and overt stalking.
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October 1986
An article in the Gadsen Times – and other news reports – brought national attention to the case of Arnold Lockshin, an American cancer research scientist who fled with his family to the Soviet Union in 1986 and was granted political asylum. According to Lockshin, he and his family were being intensely harassed by federal agents because of their socialist political views. The alleged harassment tactics included many of those associated with other cases of organized stalking: slander, spying, break-ins, threats, harassing phone calls, etc. A book – Silent Terror – by Arnold Lockshin about the organized stalking campaign against his family was published in 1988.
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August 2000
An article in Newsweek/Daily Beast was among the first mainstream U.S. news reports about a trend of intense systematic harassment in the workplace. The process, known as “mobbing,” involves multiple perpetrators engaging in the coordinated psychological abuse of an individual employee. Although the article does not link the reports of such organized harassment to a larger phenomenon, that form of abuse is a common element of victim accounts in organized stalking cases.
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March 2004
An episode of the PBS News show NOW addressed the possible re-emergence of the FBI’s Cointelpro operations. NOW is an Emmy-winning weekly TV newsmagazine on PBS. Tom Brokaw described NOW as “fearless about challenging conventional wisdom.” The Austin American-Statesman called NOW “one of the last bastions of serious journalism on TV.”
While the video of the program is not posted on the PBS website, there is a synopsis of the show under the title “COINTELPRO Again?”
Here is the relevant passage:
“Some fear that something like COINTELPRO may again be at hand. There are undercover agents infiltrating peaceful protests in America. Pretending to be political activists, local law enforcement officials are monitoring the activities of advocacy and protest groups based on what one judge calls those organizations’ “political philosophies and conduct protected under the First Amendment.” The tactic has come about as a result of the relaxation of guidelines first put into place after the COINTELPRO scandal investigation.”
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June 2004
An article in Newsweek noted that the Pentagon was quietly re-entering the business of domestic spying. One of the scandals (along with Watergate, COINTELPRO, and other crimes) which led to the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations during the 1970s was the spying on Americans by U.S. Army intelligence agents. In the years following the 9/11 attacks, as this article noted, the military sneaked
back into that role:
“Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon’s ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants.”
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October 2004
An article in The Sunday Times, a major newspaper in the U.K., reported that the intelligence agency MI5 uses gang stalking tactics to punish whistle-blowers. In the article the tactics are referred to as
“Zersetzung” – as the process was called by the Stasi (the state police of communist East Germany).
Note: Most of this article is behind a subscription pay wall at the link posted here; however, you can see the full text of the article in my October 10, 2004 post on the “Cointelpro News (2013)” page of this website.
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December 2005
A semi-autobiographical book by Gloria Naylor – winner of the National Book Award for her novel The Women of Brewster Place – was published in 2005. In the book, Naylor described her experiences as a target of organized stalking. The book’s title, 1996, was the year Naylor realized that she was being stalked. (Presumably, it is also a reference to Orwell’s 1984.) Apparently, her harassment began after she had a dispute with a neighbor whose brother worked for the National Security Agency (NSA).
Some of Naylor’s comments in an interview on National Public Radio, January 23, 2006:
“I think I just ran into the wrong people at the wrong time, and like the book shows, what starts from a very innocent dispute with a neighbor cascades and cascades and cascades into a whole production.”
“…these cars began to surveil me. People began to follow me around, and it did, it was very disrupting to think that your privacy was being violated, and for no reason that I could come up with.”
On the possible skepticism some people might have of her account:
“…what I can say to them is this: it’s the same thing that happens when a child is abused by a trusted adult. Now, that child will go to some parents and tell them these things. They will be believed by some of the parents. Some of the parents will never believe that Uncle George could be doing these things to their little girl.”
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May 2006
An article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used gang stalking techniques (referred to as “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics) against suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. A criminal defense attorney stated that many of her clients complained of harassment by authorities, although they were never arrested.
“Both CSIS and the RCMP are now under scrutiny in judicial inquiries and civil courts, with a series of men jailed overseas accusing the agencies of making end runs around the justice system.”
A CSIS official told a Canadian Senate committee: “if prosecution is not viable, there are other techniques.”
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November 2006
A New York Times article reported that the federal government agreed to pay a $2 million settlement to an Oregon man who was wrongly accused of terrorism. As the Christian Science Monitor reported in November 2010, the harassment of the man by federal law enforcement agents included performing black bag operations on his residence, exactly like those described by victims of organized stalking:
“Federal authorities planted listening devices in his office, throughout his house – including in his bedroom – and tapped his phones. He and his family were kept under surveillance. Agents conducted “sneak and peak” searches, entering the home when the family was away.”
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January 2007
A cover article in The Washington Post Magazine by a journalist familiar with military policies and weapon systems portrayed self-proclaimed victims of “gang stalking” as intelligent and credible, and suggested that claims about exotic non-lethal weapons being used by the U.S. government to harass targeted individuals were plausible.
“If Harlan Girard is crazy, he doesn’t act the part….Girard appears intelligent and coherent.”
“…given the history of America’s clandestine research, it’s reasonable to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be categorically dismissed.”
The Washington Post reporter, Sharon Weinberger, described her efforts to obtain information about the defense deparrment technology known to be associated with some of the experiences described by self-proclaimed victims of organized stalking:
“Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the research laboratory’s directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab’s policy not to comment on its microwave work.”
“…Research appeared to continue at least through 2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear — the research laboratory, citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials.”
Regarding the numerous comments generated by her article, for example, Weinberger again noted the apparently rational nature of many of the self-proclaimed victims of gang stalking:
“….for anyone who thinks that all TIs are mentally ill people in need of forced medication, I suggest you check out some of the extremely sane tactics they employ. For example, their organized response to the article would make some political campaigns jealous. As one mind control blog advises:
We must write the Washington Post in high numbers to show that this story merits a follow up. We must get our side of the story out, before the perps start inundating them with letters that we are crazy. Please take part in this to give the accurate side of what is really happening and remember to forward any supporting evidence.”
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June 2008
An article in the Nation quoted former CIA division chief Melvin Goodman on his views of the vast private contractor element of the intelligence-security community:
“My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control.
It’s outrageous.”
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March 2009
A newspaper article in the Verona-Cedar Grove Times titled “Stalker Claims Unsettle Police” described how a self-proclaimed target of gang stalking “has been handing out fliers claiming a large, organized group of stalkers is targeting residents and business owners with the objective of destroying their lives.”
The flyers stated: “Their intention is to murder their target without getting their hands dirty. It’s the perfect hate crime.”
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October 2010
A post on the political blog Daily Kos alleged that intelligence agencies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada use “Zersetzung” – as East Germany’s Stasi referred to gang stalking – against targeted individuals. Although the article did not provide sourced details, it might have helped raised awareness of this form of state-sponsored criminal harassment since Daily Kos receives several hundred thousand visits per day.
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November 2010
A classified U.S. diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks documented a discussion between a U.S. State Department official and the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in which the CSIS director said the agency was “vigorously harassing” members of Hezbollah – an apparent reference to organized stalking (which the Canadian intelligence community sometimes calls “diffuse and disrupt” tactics).
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January 2011
A local TV news broadcast in California (on KION – Channel 46 and KCBA – Channel 35) featured a report about “gang stalking” – referred to as such by the reporters and by Lieutenant Larry Richard of the Santa Cruz Police Department.
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February 2011
An article for the Guardian titled “The Dirty History of Corporate Spying,” by investigative reporter James Ridgeway, described how corporations target people with what is, in effect, a secret private law enforcement system:
“The private detective firms working for corporations can develop information against their own targets and find eager recipients among federal and local law enforcement agencies, some of whose employees end up retiring into private-sector detective work. The corporate spy business thus amounts to a shadow para-law enforcement system that basically can get around any of the safeguards set out in the American legal system; it ought to be subject first to transparency, and then to banning.”
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August 2011
A newspaper article in The Record and a TV report on KCRA Channel 3 described an organized stalking case in which the city manager of Stockton, California was stalked by local police after a break-down in contract negotiations. The brazen tactics used by the police included purchasing the house next to the the city manager’s home and using it as a base for psychological operations. Stockton’s mayor was quoted in the Record as saying that the city manager had been “targeted for harassment at home.” KCRA 3 News reported that the police department would not return its calls about the matter.
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December 2012
An article in the Sun Sentinel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in Florida, reported the organized stalking of a police officer by other police officers and sheriff’s deputies from multiple jurisdictions. The victim of the stalking had cited an off-duty police officer for reckless driving (he was later fired). The stalking – which included illegaly snooping on the victim’s private data and efforts to harass and intimidate her – was apparently done in retaliation. The Sun Sentinal later won a Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism for its series of articles on deaths and injuries caused by reckless driving by Florida police officers.
“…officers looked up information such as her home address, picture, Social Security number, date of birth, and detailed vehicle description in a database available to police officers, according to her lawsuit.”
“Watts said after the incident she received random calls on her home and cell phones, some threatening.”
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January 2013
An article in CounterPunch asserted that the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro operations had re-emerged in full force: “Cointelpro is alive and well.”
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June 2013
An article in the Nation titled “The Strange Case of Barrett Brown,” by Northwestern University professor Peter Ludlow, stated – in reference to actions by private security firms, the FBI, and the Department of Justice: “One might think that what we are looking at is Cointelpro 2.0 – an outsourced surveillance state – but in fact it’s worse.”
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September 2013
An article in the Washington Times and an article in Wired both discussed the speculation that a mass shooting at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard resulted from the shooter being “gang stalked” in
an MK Ultra-type operation using electronic weapons and noise harassment.
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September 2013
The cover article of Fortean Times in September 2013 (U.K. edition) was about “state-sponsored gangstalking.” The author – Robert Guffey, a faculty member of the English department at California State University Long Beach – gave a detailed account of a gang stalking case which involved the U.S. military.
A marine had gone AWOL after stealing some sensitive military property – including night vision goggles and a laptop containing classfied information. Apparently the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) initiated an organized stalking campaign against the suspect and his associates as well as an investigation. Various psychological operations tactics were used, such as overt stalking, in addition to some far more exotic methods. Possibly the operations were intended to serve as both a form of extra-judicial punishment and as experimentation.
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November 2013
A local TV news broadcast in West Virginia (on WDTV – local CBS News affiliate Channel 5) featured a report about “organized stalking.” The broadcast featured testimony by two individuals from Pennsylvania who appeared to be credible and sincere, discussing their constant harassment by perpetrators using gang stalking tactics.
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November 2013
A TV and radio broadcast of Democracy Now! featured an interview with Gary Ruskin, director of the Center for Corporate Policy, in which he discussed the shadowy industry of spies employed by major U.S. corporations to conduct secret – and often illegal – counterintelligence operations against critics of those corporations.
Journalist Amy Goodman:
“According to the report, these corporations employ former CIA, National Security Agency and FBI agents to engage in private surveillance work, which is often illegal in nature but rarely — if ever — prosecuted.”
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December 2013
Articles published by CBS, the Daily Mail, RT, Tech Dirt, and Courthouse News Service reported that a U.S. government contractor, Jeffrey Kantor, filed a lawsuit against multiple federal agencies for orchestrating what the complaint describes as “group stalking attacks (aka gang-stalking) against him.” Kantor claimed that his stalking began after he made a Google search for information about how to build a radio-controlled airplane. While typing his query, Google’s auto-complete function finished his “How to build a radio-controlled…” query with the word “bomb.” The individual was then subjected to constant surveillance – including inside his residence and his vehicle – and constant psychological harassment from co-workers and strangers. In addition to his claim against the U.S. government, Mr. Kantor sued the federal contractors for which he worked, because of the orchestrated harassment (“mobbing”) he was forced to endure at his workplace.
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January 2014
The Winnipeg Free Press reported that in July of 2013 a 56-year-old man named Gerald Chudy stabbed a man in Manitoba, Canada, in retaliation for what Chudy said was years of “gang stalking.” The reporter did not elaborate in the article on the term “gang stalking,” and he did not reply to my email to him about the issue. The article does not mention the name of the man Chudy accused of being a stalker. Apparently, the man’s injuries were not serious.
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February 2014
An article in The New Yorker gave a detailed account of a stalking campaign by a large corporation. Research biologist Tyrone Hayes discovered some disturbing effects from a pesticide made by the agribusiness corporation Syngenta. When he refused to keep quiet about it, the corporation’s goon squad began slandering him to discredit him. They also stalked him, hacked his emails, and threatened him for more than a decade. This was not a case of “gang stalking,” (government-run counterintelligence subversion), but it is an example of the increasingly common thuggish tactics of a rogue industry of corporate spooks in America that mostly operates with impunity.
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May 2014
A report on the ABC News TV program 20/20 – and an article in the Daily Mail – chronicled the ordeal of a couple in Hubbard, Ohio who were systematically harassed for 7 years in a vengeance campaign orchestrated by the town’s fire chief. Apparently, the fire chief was angry at the couple because of a real estate dispute, so he enlisted the help of other firefighters, police officers, and local residents to perpetrate a campaign of constant vehicle horn honking outside the couple’s home. The harassment – which the couple thoroughly documented on video – resulted in legal claims which were still pending at the time of the news reports.
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July 2014
A local TV news report on WTNH News 8 in Connecticut and a local TV news report on an NBC News affiliate, and an article in the Connecticut newspaper, The Courant, reported that hundreds of “suspicious flyers” about “gang stalking” were being distributed in Guilford, CT. The flyers made reference to this website (Fight Gang Stalking), and alleged that organized counterintelligence stalking was being perpetrated in Guilford. A statement by the Guilford Police Department about the matter was also posted in The Day newspaper. A copy of one of the flyers was posted on this page of The Courant’s website.
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November 2014
NBC News reported – along with numerous other media outlets – that 31-year-old lawyer, Myron May, shot three people at Florida State University, after informing a number of people – in writing – prior to the incident, that “government ‘stalkers’ were harassing him.” Two of the persons he shot sustained minor injuries; the third was left paralyzed from the waist down. Prior to the shooting, the self-proclaimed “targeted individual,” Myron May, left a voice message for an acquaintance in which he said “I do not want to die in vain.” He also made other phone calls – and sent emails and text messages – about what was being done to him. In addition, May sent ten packages of information to various people to “expose” what was happening. The FBI intercepted the ten packages in the mail.
Blue Line
6. Historical Origins of Gang Stalking: COINTELPRO, MK Ultra, Red Squads, & the Stasi
History
American high school and college students would be well-served by a deeper study of government conspiracies such as the Teapot Dome scandal, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Iran-Contra. No one can participate intelligently in America’s republic without such an historical background.
The strategies and tactics used in organized stalking have their roots in earlier programs and agencies in America and elsewhere. Among the subjects of particular relevance to contemporary counterintelligence crimes in the U.S. are the following:
Cointelpro was a secret program of FBI counterintelligence operations against American citizens orchestrated under the leadership of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Project MK Ultra was a secret program run by the CIA from the early 1950s until the early 1970s, in which mind control and interrogation experiments were performed on U.S. and Canadian citizens.
“Red Squads” – now called “Law Enforcement Intelligence Units” (LEIUs), are elements of local police departments. They spy on criminals, but they also conduct counterintelligence activities – including infiltrating and disrupting organizations deemed to be subversive, such as labor groups and civil rights groups. Red Squads have been used – especially by urban police departments – since the late 1800s. Historically, Red Squads have taken very seriously the protection of business interests and the disruption of political movements. They have been rather more casual in their attitudes about complying with the law and principles of morality.
The Stasi – communist East Germany’s secret police agency – enforced the political control over East Germany’s citizens through a combination of surveillance and psychological terrorism. Core elements of that system of spying and psychological torture, called zersetzung, are used in gang stalking in the U.S. today.
Anyone who doubts that the U.S. government could be sanctioning a widespread conspiracy involving illegal surveillance and harassment of targeted citizens should read the basic facts about these programs. You don’t even need to explore obscure sources of information; simply read the established mainstream accounts of the undisputed facts.
Blue Line
COINTELPRO
A4490-20
J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director from 1924 to 1972
COINTELPRO was a secret illegal program in which U.S. law enforcement personnel and their various government and private citizen accomplices systematically spied on, slandered, terrorized, and committed acts of violence (including murder) against American citizens. The program ended after being exposed in 1971 by civilian activists who obtained information about it and leaked it to the news media.
It would be difficult to overstate the relevance of the COINTELPRO operations to modern gang stalking in the U.S. By all available evidence, current organized stalking crimes in the U.S. are not similar to COINTELPRO; they are a continuation of COINTELPRO.
Significantly, COINTELPRO was not exposed by insider whistle-blowers; the FBI agents and their civilian minions dutifully perpetrated their assigned crimes until the operations were derailed by civilian outsiders.
Exposure of the program required those civilians to break into an FBI office and steal documents about the program and give them to the news media.
Also bear in mind: J. Edgar Hoover’s name is still on the FBI headquarters building.
As noted in the introduction above, a January 21, 2013 article in CounterPunch magazine asserted that COINTELPRO is now secretly being used again on a wide scale. In that article, “The Return of COINTELPRO?” Tom McNamara describes the original program – and its re-emergence – as follows:
For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.
The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.
The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.
Or did it?
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat.
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat.
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Retired FBI official from the COINTELPRO era on “gang stalking”
Among the most interesting testimony about the current version of COINTELPRO (“gang stalking”) came from a man who was familiar with the original COINTELPRO operations – because he participated in them as an FBI official. The late Ted L. Gunderson served as the head of the FBI field offices in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Memphis. After retiring from the FBI in 1979, he became a private investigator. His investigations included working for the defense in the famous murder case involving former U.S. Army physician, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald.
In a series of public appearances (and in an affidavit linked below) Gunderson stated that “rogue” military intelligence and law enforcement units of the federal government oversee a nationwide network of community-based gang stalkers who monitor, harass, and intimidate thousands of American citizens who have been extrajudicially targeted as dissidents or undesirables. Gunderson also claimed that his efforts to expose gang stalking resulted in him becoming a victim himself, as efforts were made to silence him.
Here is an audio clip from a presentation Gunderson gave in which he described how organized stalking tactics – such as electronic surveillance and “gas lighting” – were used against him.
According to Gunderson, gang stalking had been operational since the early 1980s (i.e., it began only a few years after the U.S. Senate thought they had pulled the plug on COINTELPRO following the Church Committee investigations). Gunderson said that the scope, intensity, and sophistication of gang stalking increased since its inception, as it exploited new surveillance and communication technologies.
Analysis of Ted Gunderson’s claims about gang stalking is complicated for several reasons. On one hand, as a former high-level FBI official who worked in the agency during the era of COINTELPRO, he had professional expertise and first-hand experience with that agency’s counterintelligence operations. On the other hand, his public statements about gang stalking – in his affidavit which you can view below, as well as in his public discussions of the matter, which can be found on YouTube, include references to various fringe topics, such as Satanism, child sex rings, and such.
Those claims – along with the fact that he is no longer around to clarify or defend them – raise several questions that might never be answered. Gunderson never provided any documentation or other evidence to support what he said. One possible explanation for the more bizarre things he discussed is that he could have simply been nuts. That explanation, however, begs a serious question for anyone who is skeptical that COINTELPRO and MK Ultra have essentially continued as what is now called “gang stalking.” How is it that a high-level official in the FBI managed to work for the bureau for three decades – during which he handled high-profile cases and received glowing performance evaluations (which you can view here) – without anyone inside or outside the FBI noticing that he was crazy?
The most plausible explanation for Gunderson’s bizarre claims is that he was continuing to work for the FBI – at least informally – after he officially retired, and he was spreading disinformation. That explanation is consistent with Gunderson’s FBI career – in which he participated in the original COINTELPRO, and in which he was never perceived by anyone as crazy. A common disinformation tactic used in counterintelligence operations is to discredit a person or idea by associating the person or idea with craziness, and that is very likely what he was doing.
Note this: if one insists upon interpreting Gunderson’s public statements as being delusions rather than disinformation, that analysis would seem to imply that the FBI is even more of a rogue agency than its harshest critics allege, since it would mean that the bureau is run by lunatics.
Gunderson’s affidavit
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FBI’s Gang Stalking Campaign Against Actress Jean Seberg
For a sense of the evil nature of gang stalking, take a look at one of the most high-profile well-documented cases of it perpetrated by the FBI in the days of the original COINTELPRO operations.
My November 23, 2013 post on the “COINTELPRO News (2013)” page of this website is on a documentary about the well-known film actress, Jean Seberg, who was systematically terrorized by the FBI for her support of the civil rights movement.
This was a case with explicitly incriminating “smoking gun” FBI memos and mainstream news reports documenting what the feds did to their victim. (Those documents are included in my post.)
FBI agents blacklisted Seberg, slandered her by planting false stories about her in the news media, monitored her with covert surveillance (wiretaps), and terrorized her with overt surveillance (stalking) and black bag jobs (break-ins).
Emotional distress from the FBI’s operations against Ms. Seberg – while she was pregnant – apparently caused her to give birth prematurely (her baby died), and ultimately led her to commit suicide. Ms. Seberg was just one of many victims targeted by the FBI’s secret police program.
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The Break-in
A fascinating but under-reported aspect of COINTELPRO is the break-in which led to the program’s exposure.
In his March 8, 2006 Los Angeles Times article on the subject, Allan M. Jalon described the event:
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.
The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.
Within a few weeks, the documents began to show up — mailed anonymously in manila envelopes with no return address — in the newsrooms of major American newspapers. When the Washington Post received copies, Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell asked Executive Editor Ben Bradlee not to publish them because disclosure, he said, could “endanger the lives” of people involved in investigations on behalf of the United States.
Nevertheless, the Post broke the first story on March 24, 1971, after receiving an envelope with 14 FBI documents detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, letter carriers and a switchboard operator at Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.
More documents went to other reporters — Tom Wicker received copies at his New York Times office; so did reporters at the Los Angeles Times — and to politicians including Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and Rep. Parren J. Mitchell of Maryland.
To this day, no individual has claimed responsibility for the break-in. The FBI, after building up a six-year, 33,000-page file on the case, couldn’t solve it. But it remains one of the most lastingly consequential (although underemphasized) watersheds of political awareness in recent American history…
Updates:
An article in the January 7, 2014 New York Times revealed the identities of the activists who exposed COINTELPRO by breaking into that FBI office to obtain the secret documents.
A documentary film about the break-in, 1971, was released in April 2014.
1971 Poster
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The Official Reports
Since the FBI committed so many crimes against Americans during this era, there are thousands of pages of documents in the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee reports.
Most Congressional reports are boring – but not these. Among the most interesting documents (and the most relevant to gang stalking) are the three which you can view or download below.
Just browsing through the contents pages gives a sense of the scope of the FBI’s crimes. Here are some of the topic headings:
Use of illegal or improper means, Mail opening, Political abuse, Ignoring the law, Efforts to discredit, Media manipulation, Distorting data to influence government policy and public perception, Congress declines to confront the issue, “Infiltration,” Investigations, Wiretaps, Bugging, FBI political intelligence for the White House, Exaggeration of communist influence, “Black Bag”jobs, Misuse of the IRS by the FBI and CIA, Targeting of ideological groups, NSA monitoring, Warrantless electronic surveillance, Domestic intelligence network, Violent and illegal activities of informants, Targeting law-abiding citizens, Targeting critics and political figures, Attorneys general failure to limit and control FBI intelligence activities, Efforts to promote enmity and factionalism within groups or between groups, Encouraging violence between groups, Efforts to prevent speaking/teaching/writing and publishing, Propaganda, Fictitious organizations, Disseminating derogatory information to family, friends, and associates, Contacts with employers, Interference with the judicial process, Blurred distinction between counterintelligence and investigation.
These reports are filled with interesting stuff. For example, Volume 6 of the hearings contains, among other items, a letter about “black bag jobs” (referred to as such). Book 2 of the final reports refers to an apparent attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. and encourage him to commit suicide (pages 220-221).
Final Report – Book 2
Final Report – Book 3
Hearings – Volume 6
This U.S. Senate webpage has all the Church Committee reports:
http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/churchcommittee.html
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A few of the high-profile individuals deemed “subversives” by the FBI and targeted under the original COINTELPRO operations: Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, and Jean Seberg.
Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
john-lennon
Jean Seberg photo
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Accounts of Organized Stalking from the COINTELPRO Era
Robert Guffey – author of the October 2013 Fortean Times magazine cover article on “state-sponsored gangstalking” – posted a reference to the following material on his blog, Cryptoscatology on January 26, 2014.
These are unpublished notes written by the late John A. Keel (1930—2009), a journalist whom Guffey describes as “without a doubt the preeminent investigator of the paranormal in the 20th century.”
Guffey says this of the origins of gang stalking:
“Of course, at this point one can’t be certain of the phenomenon’s true origins; however, it appears that such organized harassment was indeed operative at least as far back as the 1960s and ‘70s when John A. Keel was at the peak of his investigative prowess.”
These accounts of organized stalking – apparently perpetrated by U.S. government agents – are from the same period as the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities, which of course took place during the Cold War. Consequently, it does not seem far-fetched that federal agents might have investigated and intimidated individuals who were closely monitoring unusual aircraft activity (UFOs).
Here are the notes. Since they were apparently not intended for publication, and since they are posted in a somewhat confusing format regarding sequence, I recommend that you disregard the entry numbers and part numbers and section numbers, and just read through them in this order:
Webpage #1
Webpage #2
Webpage #3
Blue Line
MK Ultra
CIA Insignia
The CIA’s official mission statement refers to spying on America’s “adversaries” – which generally refers to foreign adversaries. On the other hand, the mission statement also proclaims that the CIA “upholds the highest standards of conduct” – even though the agency has a well-documented history of involvement with things like torture, assassinations, drug trafficking, and orchestrating coups against democratically-elected governments.
Despite its mission statement, the long list of moral and legal transgressions by the CIA includes spying on Americans based on their political beliefs (in the past and recently), and – in the case of Project MK Ultra – performing secret unethical experiments on Americans.
As described in the section which follows this one, the CIA reportedly also has a role in the training of local Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs).
Whatever your assessment of the possible nature and scope of illegal counterintelligence activities currently taking place in the U.S., it is worth considering the implications of the CIA’s history of performing secret mind-control experiments on American (and Canadian) citizens.
In Project MK Ultra, which ran from the early 1950s until the early 1970s, the CIA secretly conducted mind-control and interrogation experiments. Many of the experiments were performed without the consent of the subjects, and in some cases without the subjects even being aware that they were being used for experimentation.
Methods that were tested included sensory deprivation, isolation, hypnosis, verbal and sexual abuse, electrical shocks, and the administration of drugs and substances which caused confusion, brain damage, blistering, and paralysis.
That might explain why there are no MK Ultra tribute floats in America’s parades.
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“In all, the agency conducted 149 separate mind-control experiments, and as many as 25 involved unwitting subjects. First-hand testimony, fragmentary government documents and court records show that at least one participant died, others went mad, and still others suffered psychological damage after participating in the project, known as MK Ultra.”
– New York Times, March 10, 1999
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The above summary of MK Ultra from The Times should be viewed as
a conservative estimate of the scope of the program. The clue is the phrase “fragmentary government documents.” This is a vague reference to the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms – by his own admission – ordered the destruction of the program’s records in 1973.
Another reason to suspect that The Times’ account of MK Ultra might
be understating the CIA’s crimes is that the newspaper has a history of sometimes functioning as a conveyor belt for that agency’s lies.
Experiments were performed at dozens of colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and Canada. Front organizations were used by the CIA to operate the program through those institutions, although in some cases the top officials at the institutions knew about the CIA’s involvement.
Keep that in mind when you evaluate the plausibility that a widespread program of organized stalking could exist without being compromised by various officials at private and public institutions and organizations.
In the mid-1970s the program was exposed by the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations. Those investigations (which also examined Cointelpro) were a response to a series of revelations about crimes by the U.S. government, including the attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, the U.S. Army’s spying on civilians, Cointelpro, and the Watergate scandal.
This passage from Andrew Goliszek’s book In the Name of Science (2003) gives a sense of what was involved in MK Ultra. These are descriptions of some of the of the experiments performed by Dr. Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist paid by the CIA to study brainwashing:
In 1957, a young girl was led to a small room at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institiute, her arms and legs strapped to a bed and electrodes from a Page-Russell electroconvulsive therapy machine attached to her head. When the signal was given, a switch was thrown, causing her frail body to stiffen then convulse uncontrollably from electroshock forty times more intense than was considered safe. Over the next few weeks, she was awakened three times a day and subjected to these multiple shocking sessions known as “depatterning.”
Another patient, this one an older man, was kept in a drug-induced state for several months while being forced to listen to an audiotaped message twelve to sixteeen hours per day. The purpose of this experiment, as well as the electroshock treatment, was to see how long it would take before repeated messages, physical shock, drugs, or a combination of all three would destroy a person’s personality…
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Collateral Damage from MK Ultra – The Unabomber
A series of bombings perpetrated from 1978 to 1995 killed three people and injured 23 others. The bomber, a mathematician named Theodore Kaczynski, was referred to as “the Unabomber” by the FBI before they discovered his identity.
Kaczynski had been one of the subjects of the CIA’s mind-control experiments while he was a student at Harvard University. An article in the June 2000 issue of the Atlantic suggested that the experiments could possibly have been a factor in Kaczynski’s later acts of violence.
Some excerpts from the article:
“As Sally Johnson, the forensic psychiatrist, reported, Kaczynski clearly began to experience emotional distress…”
“When, soon after, Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions…..The university and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that had treated human beings as unwitting guinea pigs, and had treated them brutally.”
“Kaczynski felt that justice demanded that he take revenge on society.”
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Books about MK Ultra
One of the best books on MK Ultra is The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” by John D. Marks, a former Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department. Seymour Hersh – the famous investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai Massacre and Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war – said this of Marks’ book:
“A wonderful piece of investigative reporting. The best account we’ll
ever get of one of the seamiest episodes of American intelligence.”
Here are some examples of the book’s accounts of the CIA’s experiments:
“The frequent screams of patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to ‘depattern’ their subjects completely.”
“Sometimes, as in the case of Lauren G., patients would try to escape when the sedatives wore thin, and the staff would have
to chase after them.”
Another widely-praised book on MK Ultra is Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart (1978). An updated and expanded “researcher’s edition” published in 1994 can be viewed and downloaded for free as a pdf document here.
Here is the Congressional report on Project MK Ultra.
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In October 2014, it was reported that ABC is planning to produce a TV mini-series about MK Ultra.
Blue Line
Calls for a new Church Committee
Frank Church & Pres. Carter (1977)
President Carter and Senator Frank Church (1977)
If there are reasons to think that the FBI, CIA, and NSA stopped secretly perpetrating crimes against Americans at some point after the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations in the 1970s, I am unaware of them. Although the investigations succeeded in shining a light on the extreme abuses of power by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the reforms which followed were nowhere close to being serious enough to rein in the rogue tendencies of those agencies.
Arguably, the situation today is much worse than it was in the era of
J. Edgar Hoover. Surveillance technologies are now vastly more sophisticated, and there has been an enormous expansion of both the size and power of the public and private sectors of the spying industry. Oversight of domestic covert operations is minimal.
Because of such concerns – and scandals such as the NSA’s secret mass surveillance programs – many individuals, publications, and organizations have called for another Church Committee-type investigation. Here is a partial list of those calling for new hearings and/or alleging that a new version of Cointelpro is happening:
Forbes September 20, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jodywestby/2012/09/20/the-sheep-stop-here-another-church-committee-or-full-review-of-privacy-laws-needed/
CounterPunch January 21, 2013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/21/the-return-of-cointelpro/
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) June 7, 2013
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/response-nsa-we-need-new-church-commission-and-we-need-it-now
New Republic June 11, 2013
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113433/nsa-scandal-requires-new-church-committee
Daniel Ellsberg July 1, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/01/daniel-ellsberg-issues-call-for-a-new-church-committee-to-probe-nsa.html
The Atlantic August 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/lawbreaking-at-the-nsa-bring-on-a-new-church-committee/278750/
truthout February 25, 2014
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/22103-is-it-time-for-a-new-church-committee
The Nation March 12, 2014
http://www.thenation.com/article/178813/why-we-need-new-church-committee-fix-our-broken-intelligence-system
Members of the original Church Committee March 17, 2014
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/ex-church-committee-staffers-call-congress-create-modern-day-church-committee
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) March 19, 2014
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/rand-paul-calls-new-church-committee-stop-surveillance-video/#axzz3Aoa9eJDJ
Michael German (former FBI agent) December 11, 2014
http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/us-needs-new-church-committee
Blue Line
Red Squads – a.k.a. Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs)
Philadelphia Intel Unit Patch
A “red squad” is a police intelligence unit. Since the late 1800s they have been used by urban police departments in the U.S. for spying and counterintelligence activities, such as infiltrating and disrupting groups deemed to be subversive.
The most famous example of red squad activity was in Chicago in 1886 when police officers and private security agents working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency used spying and violence to suppress a labor rights movement. That culminated in a violent riot at a labor rally in the Haymarket Square.
When it was over, 7 policemen and at least 4 workers were dead. As many as 70 people were injured (approximately 60 of them police officers). After a trial – which was widely viewed as unfair – 8 labor activists were convicted for their alleged role in the violence. Of the 8 laborers, 4 were executed by hanging, 1 committed suicide, and 3 received prison sentences. The riot and the violence which preceded it – police had killed two laborers the day before – gave rise to the annual celebration of International Workers’ Day or May Day.
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The Haymarket Riot – Harper’s Weekly, May 15, 1886
Police officers killed for being perps?
Historical information about the Haymarket affair is insufficient to make any assessment of how many – if any – of the seven police officers killed in the Haymarket Riot, or how many of the approximately 60 police officers injured, were corrupt goons terrorizing laborers on behalf of the Chicago political establishment.
There is no way to say, in other words, to what extent the officers who were injured and killed might have been what gang stalking victims in the U.S. today refer to as “perps” (perpetrators of counterintelligence crimes).
Click image to enlarge
Perps
Police officers killed in the Haymarket Riot
Well-researched studies of red squads – most notably, Protectors of Privilege (1990) by civil rights lawyer Frank Donner – show that the federal government, local governments, and the business community have often used red squads as political enforcers and corporate mercenaries. In many cases the targets are labor unions, leftists, and other dissidents.
Here, for example, is Donner’s description (on page 12) of the role of law enforcement personnel and private intelligence contractors in Chicago during the 1880s:
“The reliance by the Chicago business community on repressive police tactics to deal with labor unrest was unconcealed. Indeed, the Chicago police were as much the minions of the business community as hired Pinkertons.”
A Los Angeles Times review of Donner’s book explains why police officers would want to participate in red squads:
“The cops love these free-wheeling, elite units. They were ostensibly created to combat terrorism, but have been used mostly to infiltrate and suppress liberal and radical political organizations and civil rights groups. They lift their members out of the routine of police work into something of a James Bond life….
….The elite Red squads work on their own, usually reporting directly to the chief, operating outside normal department procedures.”
Ostensibly, the role of red squads has been to keep the public safe from criminal and terrorist organizations, although historically red squads have often been more involved in dishing out terror than preventing it.
Although many individuals targeted by organized stalking in the U.S. today are apparently unaware of the history of red squads, some activists in the past were very much aware of the legacy of such law enforcement units and the ongoing threat to civil liberties and democracy they presented (and still present).
A commemorative statue of a policeman was erected in Haymarket Square in 1889. On the 41st anniversary of the Haymarket affair – in 1927 – a streetcar driver apparently crashed into the monument intentionally. The statue was restored and eventually re-located. In 1969 the statue was destroyed by a bomb. In 1970, after it was re-built, it was blown up again. Apparently, not everyone is a fan of cops who serve as corporate thugs. The current version of the statue resides at the Chicago Police Department headquarters.
Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units
LEIU Paper Weight
“Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit” (LEIU) is the modern term for “red squad.”
Origin of the Association of LEIUs
In 1956, the same year the FBI initiated its COINTELPRO program, 26 red squads gathered in San Francisco and formed an organization for sharing confidential intelligence about crime. They adopted the name Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit. In 2008, the organization changed its name to the “Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units” but they retained the original acronym, LEIU.
In addition to maintaining a system of sharing criminal intelligence, LEIU provides training and technical assistance to its members.
Here is LEIU’s official website.
The Connection between LEIUs and Organized Stalking
Organized stalking is a set of counterintelligence tactics rather than a specific program. News articles, books, anecdotal accounts, and government reports cited throughout the Fight Gang Stalking website suggest that the tactics are used by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, and by U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as by private security-intelligence firms. Many of those reports about organized stalking also make clear that the operations are sometimes initiated for corporate or political agendas, and for purely personal vendettas.
Regardless of exactly how the majority of organized stalking operations are perpetrated, it is inconceivable that members of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs) would not be aware of those operations – if not participating in them or even orchestrating them.
A major red flag is the fact that the LEIU association is a quasi-governmental entity. Although the group received federal funding to create a networked database of criminal intelligence to share among its members, it is a private, tax-exempt organization, and therefore mostly independent of any real oversight.
“America’s Secret Police Network”
The LEIU maintains a very low profile outside the law enforcement community; few people in the general public are even aware of its existence. Civil liberties groups familiar with the LEIU have expressed serious concerns about the lack of any external accountability for its activities, such as its handling of sensitive intelligence.
Media reports about the LEIU began to emerge in the 1970s. Pulitzer Prize nominee George O’Toole, a novelist and historian who specialized in the history of American espionage and who had worked for the CIA, wrote an article about the LEIU. “America’s Secret Police Network” was published in the December 1976 issue of Penthouse. The article – a copy of which is posted at the end of this section – is a remarkable piece of journalism.
Over the 5 or 6 years preceding the publication of the article Americans had become aware of a whole set of major conspiracies perpetrated by their government, including Cointelpro, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, MK Ultra, and the CIA’s domestic spying program Operation CHAOS. Yet the existence of the LEIU and the nature of its activities remained – and still remains – mostly below the radar of the press and the American public.
Here – in O’Toole’s words – is a description of the LEIU network. For anyone familiar with reports of organized stalking in the U.S., this ought to ring a few bells:
“The organization forms a vast network of intelligence units that exchange dossiers and conduct investigations on a reciprocal basis. Several of the police departments belonging to the group have recently been caught in illegal wiretapping, burglary, and spying on the private lives of ordinary citizens. The LEIU is, in effect, a huge, private domestic-intelligence agency.”
Extreme Secrecy
O’Toole’s article emphasized the extreme secrecy of the LEIU. He noted that in many cases, even other police officers were often unaware of the nature of the intelligence units:
“In Baltimore many veteran officers were completely unaware of the existence of the Inspectional Services Division….In fact, the Baltimore cops were themselves targets of ISD spying when they went out on strike in 1974; undercover officers from the unit photographed policemen as they walked picket lines outside their station houses….”
“….In Chicago, too, the Red Squad’s activities were shrouded from the rest of the police department. Recruits selected to serve in the unit bypassed training in the police academy so that former classmates couldn’t identify them later.”
Reportedly, when LEIUs are in danger of having their crimes exposed by state investigations and grand juries, they apparently make sure that attorneys, reporters, and witnesses are controlled and intimidated – including even their own members:
In Chicago a state’s attorney investigating the police received a report that his own phone had been tapped. A Baltimore newspaper reporter critical of the police was the target of surveillance and other harassment; on three occasions when he returned to his car parked in the police department’s parking lot, he found that the tire lugs had been loosened….
….In Chicago many officers who were called in the grand jury investigation of the Red Squad received the same anonymous telephone message: “We know you have seen the state’s attorney. If you want to stay healthy, you’d better not talk before the grand jury.”
O’Toole also reported that LEIUs burned their files to avoid having them seen by investigators.
Use of Civilian Spies
One of the elements of LEIU operations which is consistent with contemporary accounts of organized stalking – and with accounts of operations conducted by communist East Germany’s Stasi – is the use of civilian spies.
From the perspective of police intelligence units, the most useful civilians are those who share the police officers’ contempt for the United States Constitution:
A Chicago grandmother who was paid twenty-five dollars per month by the Red Squad to infiltrate church and community groups told reporters from the Chicago Daily News, “I am a police spy, and I am proud of it. I do police-spy work because, as far as I’m concerned, God and Country come first….You guys are so busy worrying about constitutional rights, along with the Communists, that they are going to take us over.”
Illegal Electronic Surveillance
Another practice of LEIUs reported by George O’Toole which is a common element of most or all organized stalking accounts is the use of illegal electronic surveillance:
“The most common type of criminality among LEIU intelligence squads is illegal wiretapping, which is almost always done with some degree of cooperation from the local telephone company. A former Baltimore vice-squad officer told the Maryland Senate investigating committee that the intelligence squad routinely installed illegal telephone taps with the aid of an ex-cop who worked for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.”
In another incident mentioned in the article, Chicago police intelligence officers used blackmail to coerce employees of Illinois Bell to cooperate in illegal wiretapping.
Corporations “Surrendering Information About Their Clients”
Telephone company cooperation in illegal wiretapping is just one example of a long history of complicity of American corporations in government programs involving spying and lying. Famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein reported, for example, that CBS News was essentially a puppet of the CIA during the 1950s and ‘60s. That kind
of unethical collusion continues today: the NSA documents leaked in 2013 by Edward Snowden revealed that U.S. tech companies cooperated with the NSA’s data collection scheme called PRISM.
Apparently, LEIUs have long exploited American corporations’ willingness to violate the rights of their customers:
“A police textbook on [LEIU spying] advises intelligence officers to cultivate contacts in utility companies, airlines, banks, newspapers, bonding companies, private detective agencies, and credit bureaus. The Federal Privacy Protection Study Commission recently heard testimony from such companies as American Express and Sheraton Hotels, in which they admitted that they routinely surrendered information about their clients and guests to law-enforcement officers on a simple oral request, without requiring a court order.”
LEIU as a Weapon for Personal Vendettas
The nature of the LEIU was – and still is – a perfect design for the abuse of power: a secretive private organization with government funding, police powers and secret files on citizens across the country. The group has essentially no civilian oversight because it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
LEIU is a perfect weapon to use against an individual who crosses anyone with connections to it. Here is O’Toole’s description of how a dossier can be opened on a targeted individual:
“Any LEIU member can open a file on an individual simply by filling out a form and obtaining the approval of the local LEIU regional chairman.”
Some of the organizational structure and procedures have no doubt changed in the past few decades, although the group is still shrouded in secrecy, so it is difficult to know exactly how it might differ now – apart from its use of digital databases and more technologically advanced spy gear. The group’s fundamental nature is still ideal for perpetrating acts of extra-judicial punishment by goon squads of corrupt police officers:
“In setting up the LEIU, the cops have created the skeleton of a national police force that is also, in essence, a vigilante organization.”
Connections between the LEIU, FBI, U.S. Military, & CIA
LEIU Paper Weight
FBI Logo
Army Intelligence InsigniaCIA Insignia
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Agencies at all levels of government often have tribal attitudes toward other agencies. Each branch of the military, for example, tends to pursue its own agenda to a certain extent while simultaneously working to support a common goal of national security. The federal intelligence community also has well-known rivalries between agencies, each of which desires to see its relative prestige and influence maximized.
Those turf battles exist in the law enforcement community as well of course; sometimes there are tensions between the FBI and local police for example. In fact, O’Toole explains in his article that one of the motivations for establishhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbJFH5RCD6IzvBcjN6NUhOging the LEIU association was to enable national intelligence sharing among police in a system which was independent from the FBI.
On the other hand, all of America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies now have access to enormous amounts of information – for example, through the national network of data fusion centers. It would be impossible for the feds to be unaware of widespread use of organized stalking by local police – and vice versa.
Their silence on the issue implies that the feds approve of what is happening. The material in the Published News Reports section of this overview indicates that federal agencies use the same tactics against targeted individuals themselves – just as they were caught doing in the Cointelpro era.
