Army Responds to its Own Spy Program–by Investigating Lynndie England
Well, not actually Lynddie England. They’re investigating the allegations that John Towery, a member of their Force Protection unit, infiltrated peace groups (which I discussed here and here). But in all their discussions of the investigation, they mention just Towery, or just one infiltration.
The Army says it has opened an inquiry into a claim that one of its employees spent more than two years infiltrating antiwar groups active near one of the nation’s largest military bases. The groups say the employee infiltrated their activities under an assumed name and gained access to their plans as well as names and e-mail addresses of some members.
[snip]
“Mr. John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media,” the Army said in written statement. “Fort Lewis is aware of the claim with regard to Mr. Towery. To ensure all regulatory guidelines were followed, the command has decided that an inquiry is prudent, and an officer is being appointed to conduct the inquiry.”
[snip]
He said Mr. Towery told them that the Army had reassigned him, at least temporarily, and that he was being investigated “for espionage.” [my emphasis]
That’s important because–at least according to what Towery told the group who discovered him–there are other people who have infiltrated their group.
And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
He also—one other thing he spoke of—I don’t know if this is true. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what to believe from John, but he said that the police in Tacoma and Olympia had been planning for a while on raiding the anarchist Pitch Pipe Infoshop and also the house I lived in with several other activists in Olympia. And they had approached John several times, saying, you know, “Do they have bombs and explosives and drugs and guns and things like that?” which is just disgusting to even think that they would suggest that. They’re just trying to silence us politically. They’re going after us for our politics and for our work, you know, around Port Militarization Resistance and around antiwar organizing. And, of course, John told them, no, we didn’t have any of those stuff. He told them the truth.
But he also mentioned that there were other informants that are amongst us.
[snip]
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask Brendan Dunn about the evidence of other spies in your organization. In fact, didn’t John—“John Jacob,” now known as John Towery, who worked at Fort Lewis—didn’t he tell you about others that he actually wanted out of the organization sometimes and called the military to get them out?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, that’s his story, at least. He admitted that there were a few other informants that were sent.
So while I’m absolutely confident that the Army will conduct a thorough investigation into the guy whose cover has been blown, I’m not sure that really gets to the heart of the problem.
Whenever I read a post on this issue, all I see in my head are a montage of broken legs…and dead people.
It has become increasingly clear that there is no level they would not go to, no line of morality they would not cross. No constitutional or legal boundary. None.
No more tin foil hats. We are not delusional or paranoid.We have to lose the idea that theorizing about some of these possibilities is silly. At this point it’s logical and rational.
OH, yeah. Investigation. Sure.
Much noise will be made, the fellow who got caught out will be permitted an honorable discharge as long as he admits in court he was doing it on his own. The folks who gave him the orders will be transfered to some spot inconvienent for the investigators with their identies redacted. ObamaCo will indicate that charges cannot be brought without exposing classifed information. A declassified report will be issued (if there’s enough pressure) supporting the governments claim that the fellow acted alone with everything else redacted.
Boxturtle (And ObamaCo will issue a statement about looking forward, not backward)
I don’t see what all the worry is.
We still have Congressional oversight, right? /s
Obamaco is floating their, “let’s close the old hell and open a new one” plans.
As if the Dept of Justice hasn’t been tainted enough, and as if “Homeland Security” isn’t creepy enough, he’s tossing them all in a military salad to come up with a military/doj/dhs “jointly run” facility to imprison and embed a courthouse in the prison, so that they don’t have to worry about transporting “detainees” from the prison to the court, get their pro forma “sentence” and return to their cell, all in one easy stop&shop experience.
The plans involve
So you round up all the livestock into one pen, then decide who gets to brand them, DOJ or DoD. Which isn’t, of course, to rule out the option of a Jawad, who gets run through one pen, but when they can’t brand him there, they run him through another one for giggles.
But what about the ones already branded, “no evidence of crimes and no evidence of enemy combatant status?” There’s a nifty set of solutions for that, too. They are going to be
Process that. Long term holding for people who are “too dangerous” to face a military or civilian court that might not convict them. And that’s a cooperative venture with the Dept of Justice? And that’s what Homeland Security is going to be doing? Providing long term maximum security cells for people “too dangerous” for a court OR commission to find not guilty?
And then we have an even more disturbing aspect. For those who aren’t all that dangerous – and who courts have ruled innocent and/or reguired via habeas or other mechanisms that they be released, well, they will be – released into OTHER CELLS in the same facility. Obamaco is planning on
Immigration detention? That’s what Obama is going to call kidnap victims who have been purchased for use in war crimes experimentation, then shipped around the world, from Bagram to GITMO to Camp Obamo? Illegal immigrants that he can put in detention cells?
It’s all too sad and depressing.
Don’t worry,they’re just trying to “bring the program within the law”.Sounds almost Downing Streetish
“And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.”
Ah, yet another white supremacist in the military trying out his new training. The SPLC and the Homeland Security Report warned us of people like him. If he wasn’t found out in time, do you think he would have recruited fellow racist bigots and maybe violence would ensue?
In ves ti gate.
Isn’t that what people who are looking back do? Didn’t the CIC, who apparently has godlike powers to round up and disappear people on whim, and have Presidential torturers torture them and their families and then bomb their neighbors homes and children – haven’t those powers been used to create a time block, where no one is allowed to “look back” at Executive branch crimes?
I’m not seeing racism here, just an extension of government power in a constitutionally questionable manner.
I don’t think ANYBODY believes that “John” acted alone. Wonder who was doing the recruiting for this operation. John? John’s boss? Somebody at the pentagon who could also make sure the recruit got to the right base?
Boxturtle (I used to read stories like this out of the Soviet Union. Now they read about us)
O/T. She’s baaaaaack. An article written by Lurita Doan, so be forewarned.
Well you did give fair warning. Since Luvly Lurita doesn’t say, what do you suppose the preferential treatment Gates was asking for was? To be freed after being illegally arrested?
You’re asking me to interpret Lurita? Alas, I’m only human.
Remember back when you had members of Congress in highly publicized hearings stating as an affirmative truth that, “a man’s home is his castle?”
It’s not going to make you friends, but you have a right to be impolite to someone who is in your house without your permission, especially once they know that they are in your house without your permission. If they are armed and in uniform in your house, without your permission, they have a GREATER obligation to defer to the king of the castle. When they got the right to wear the uniform and carry the state purchased weapon, they undertook that obligation. If they can’t handle a cranky old man, having a bad day, being snotty to them – they really aren’t up to the responsiblities of their position.
No kidding; Doan is completely full of shit on the Gates part. The story about her father is actually pretty interesting as a standalone; the forced and contrived juxtaposition with Gates is total BS though.
I guess really Obamaco’s plans for their new facility are kind of a fusion approach to government kidnapping. Send the kidnapped to a multijurisdictional facility, where the “Hope” will be for someone to successfully experiment on them by disappearing their life, one way or another.
The Goodman interview has a lot of info. Part of it is that it sounds like Towery also infiltrated the Iraq Veterans Agains The War (btw, bringing his child as a prop to the meetings was a really nice, fatherly touch).
But I was trying to follow the discussion on the 2007 trial. I’m not sure I’ve got it, but this is what it seems to me they are saying. You start with a guy in the USAttys office, Kipnis, who has a close relative “who runs a security firm that specializes in analysis of national security issues.” This is the guy who tried Ehren Watada, and who was already using the Obama gameplan of – after you lose in civilian courts, then try military commssions as a back up (or vice versa) – but just didn’t have acess to that nifty, all in one place, option that Obama is wanting to offer up. Even though the 9th circuit has told him he can’t go after Watada in a military commission proceeding bc of double jeopardy, he’s tight with the Obama approach that there’s no such thing as double jeopardy if the Executive branch anc Congress just choose to ignore the courts.
So this Kipnis guy is involved in a 2007 trial against some activists who sat in front of a gate. It’s not looking like a great case for them and early on this happens:
So the defense has a confidential jury analysis sheet, and the prosecution shows up with it in court, but says they have it bc its “all over the internet” and not bc they were engaged in any wrongdoing. So the prosecution gets what it wants at that stage, a mistrial.
If the spying went beyond “just” spying (way bad enough) and into snagging attorney client communications and sabotagin trials, then it’s not just the military that needs to be investigating.
BTW, most of what has come out here has come out, not from “Congressional oversight” but from foia requests. Which takes me back to my response to DiFi’s assertion that she’s thinking she might finally decide to actually do something *oversightful* as a Senator, after 8 years of wrack and ruin and after handing out amnesty to all the criminals run amok while she was doing her nails instead of paying attention.
Democrats in the Senate are like the tooth fairy. No one who is grown up believes in them and they only keep from slipping into oblivion by handing out money.
Agree with your points, but have a few questions about the facts to clarify my understanding.
First of all, I don’t see how the government was prejudiced by having a copy of the defense jury analysis sheet. The defense certainly could claim prejudice, but apparently didn’t.
Didn’t the defense attorneys set up a password protected site on a centrally located server computer hosting an email account for group members and searchable databases of documents obtained through discovery, legal pleadings filed in the case, and defense work product, including the jury analysis sheet you mentioned?
If so, how did the two Tacoma cops gain access? Did they purloin the jury analysis sheet by downloading it from the server, or did the AUSA get it some other way? Seems to me that the burden should be on the government to explain how it got the document. Saying “from the internet” is not an acceptable answer and claiming that “it’s all over the internet” is virtually meaningless and, as you pointed out, could not have been substantiated.
Sure looks like egregious prosecutorial misconduct by intentionally violating the attorney-client work product privilege to get the document and using it to provoke a mistrial when the AUSA realized the government probably was going to lose. Wouldn’t a retrial be barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause since double jeopardy attached after the jury was sworn and the prosecution intentionally provoked the mistrial to avoid losing? Or did the government move for the mistrial before the jury was sworn?
Or, how ’bout this? The government got your document without a warrant from the NSA in violation of the Title III electronic surveillance laws and the Fourth Amendment? NSA could have picked it up if anyone faxed it over a phone line or attached it to an email message.
Scary stuff!
The defense couldn’t complain, at least not in terms of a mistrial motion, because that would forfeit their argument that any mistrial dismissal has to be with prejudice, therefore creating a double jeopardy bar to retrial. The defense attorney has to preserve that position.
Yeah, I know, but I don’t understand how the government could show any prejudice to its case. If we tweak the facts and substitute a story in the news that one side or the other claims to have prejudiced their case, the usual solution is to voir dire the jury individually to determine if anyone read and was influenced by the story. Replace influenced jurors with alternates. Of course, you have to have alternates to do that unless the judge decides to proceed with less than 12 jurors, which I think might have happened in Libby’s trial.
Here, however, it appears to have been impossible for any juror to have seen the analysis since it wasn’t “all over the internet.” I’ve worked with jury selection experts, as I’m sure you have, and it’s an accepted and widely used tactic (if affordable) in all kinds of litigation. Documents prepared by the expert and the ruminations of counsel regarding tactics, given the final composition of the jury, are non-discoverable attorney-client work product.
How does the government get a mistrial on the basis of unauthorized possession of non-discoverable legitimate attorney-client work product about the composition of the jury that the jurors don’t even know exists?
I should have added that a lawyer risks waiving confidentiality as to communications via the internet unless a VPN is used, but even if we assume the government has a viable claim justifying its possession of the document, how is its case prejudiced by information the jury will never know about?
Yeah, good questions. It strikes me this is probably a state/local court, maybe even misdemeanor, so it may be a petit jury of only 6 or 8 jurors. That still doesn’t answer questions though other than my experience is there is usually only one or two, at most, alternates on the smaller panels. They had to have shown, you would think, that the defense engaged in some improper voir dire. If it wasn’t racial or other protected group based though (which doesn’t seem likely for this charge) I don’t see what it could have been. Whole thing sounds goofy.
I agree. If the defendants participated in a sit-in at the entrance to Fort Lewis, which is what it sounds like, they may have been charged with misdemeanors like trespassing on federal property or failing to disperse and the case would have been tried before one of the two magistrate judges in my favorite federal courthouse in the country.
The feds spent gazillions of dollars to renovate the old and abandoned train station in Tacoma that was built in the early 1900s, or possibly as late as the depression (not sure). Marble, marble everywhere and a huge domed ceiling a mini-gazillion feet high in the middle with recessed tiny lights in it that look like stars. A second story promenade rings the space with exhibits of colored blown glass of varied shapes and sizes made by the master, Dale Chihouly.
My favorite courtroom is shaped in the round with a second floor balcony for seating. And they have comfy cushy seating like like in movie theaters instead of those impossible to sit on hard benches.
Wow, wow, and wow again.
Wow, that is one fine looking building.
and Mason @ 29.
Tacoma Union Station
Nice history here.
Gorgeous pictures here.
Thanks, Fatster. Beautiful, isn’t it. Brings back a flood of fond memories and I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.
My pleasure! It’s a remarkable building and, being an old thing myself, so wonderful to know the care and involved of making it a gem once again. I’ve put it on my “wish list” to visit. Thank YOU for letting us know about it.
I’m just looking at the Goodman interview EW linked, so I don’t have a lot of insight, but here’s what I am getting from the piece (which could be wrong)
Defense counsel set up a listserve list and somehow instead of just defendants getting distribution, there were 2 email addresses that got surreptitiously added to the listserve list and those were for the two policemen.
Then there was some kind of “leak” (even beyond the two policemen) of the defense jury analysis. I think once the prosecutors could argue publication of information on the jury by the defendants (via their analysis) then the prosecutors wouldn’t so much be claiming that they were prejudiced as that the proceedings were tainted once either side begins publishing analysis of jurors. It looks as if it was the prosecution who was wanting out at that point, so they just made a big splash over the *widespread dissemination* and how it affected the impartiality of the proceedings in general as opposed to a specific prejudice to one side or the other.
fwiw – I could very well have gone down some blind alleys from the references in the article.
That was in the Democracy Now transcript linked in EW’s first post on this topic. Seems fairly clear the government had additional moles, one or more of which were copied on the listserv. Sure sounds like prosecutorial misconduct once there are charges filed if you ask me.
If our OWN government is so scared of us, we must possess a whole lot more power than we realize,or certainly that we are not utilizing to its fullest extent.
If our OWN government is so scared of us, we must possess a whole lot more power than we realize, or certainly that we are not utilizing to its fullest extent.
That’s an excellent, important insight, G. I’m saving it for future use (will credit you).
May I recommend a superb essay by Gore Vidal over at Alternet.
Deals with issues Mary discusses upthread.
Note: Can somebody kindly fix the edit buttons?
@#9 Speaking of Downing Street-this JUST in:
Source: Guardian UK
Allegations that Britain colluded in torture of terror suspects reach European court
Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 August 2009 18.49 BST
Allegations that the UK’s intelligence agencies have colluded in the torture of British citizens during overseas counter-terrorism investigations have reached the European courts.
In what is expected to be first of a series of applications to the European court of human rights, lawyers representing Salahuddin Amin are arguing that he has been a victim of torture and was denied the right to a fair trial. The same legal team have also lodged proceedings on behalf of Amin at the high court in London, suing the director generals of MI5 and MI6, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the attorney general.
– snip –
Amin says that he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and threatened with an electric drill while being asked questions that would subsequently be put to him again during non-violent interviews by two MI5 officers. Before Amin went on trial, the judge ruled that his conditions in ISI custody had been “physically oppressive” but that he had exaggerated his mistreatment and that it fell short of torture.
Since then, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based NGO, has spoken to a number of Pakistani intelligence officers who they say corroborated the accounts of torture given by several British citizens alleging UK complicity.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..tor…
If the Brits handle this transparently, conclude that torture was committed in violation of the Geneva Convention, and refer the offenders and the matter to the International Court of Justice, Obama might have to give some thought to reconsidering his decision to obstruct justice by protecting the torture cabal from investigations and prosecution.
@Mary and Mason:
This is a more than casually interesting story, that I’ve heard nothing about before this; thanks.
Did I miss a link to further reporting (and/or the source of the blockquoted section in Mary’s post) about the Kipnis case? Maybe it’s a temporary FDL issue, but a number of passages in comments look as if they should have links aren’t showing them.
Sorry – here is the link:
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..l_military
It was the link EW gave in the second set of qoutes above (according to what Towery told the group) It is to an interview done by Amy Goodman on a “Democracy Now” broadcast.
If you scroll down to the Larry Hildes interview it goes into the case. Hildes is the atty representing some students who were protesting the use of a port for military shipments. They were protesting outside the gates to the port and Hildes says he was “arguing that these folks were not guilty of criminal violations for sitting at the gate, when they weren’t allowed into the port itself” Sounds like it might have been a pretty good technical argument. Then he starts getting hints from the prosecutors that they have info they “shouldn’t” have and:
This is where there’s a lot that fuzzy. As bmaz says – maybe the judge could have polled the jury and done a containment type of order, maybe this should have been bounced to the Def to see if they wanted the mistrial, maybe the judge was a bit innocent on the “all over the internet” assertions, etc. Hildes says they were floored at the trial, trying to figure it out, knowing they hadn’t dumped things on the internet
So this is all a bit confusing too. IMO, he’s saying that they found out later about the two policemen and have now, with email FOIA responses discovered even more (i.e., I think the “and we’ve now found” means the newer info, and it is in police emails speculationg on the doc, but there’s not really enough there to get a good handle on it)
When Hildes and Goodman start talking about Ehren Watada there are no additional links within the interview, but here is a general link, describing his court martial proceedings for refusing to go to Iraq, the mistrial, the attempt to retry, the civilian court stay, etc. Some of the same protestors who were protesting against the use of the port for the war were no doubt also protesting on behalf of Watada during his proceedings.
This piece says that Kipnis actually affirmatively ordered that the Army suppress surveillance information in the case that Hildes was handling.
This is a link to a piece (I had to use cache to get it to pull up, so things are highlighted) on Hamdan and some earlier allegations of torture/coercion involving his detention and towards the end of the article, the lawyer arguing that the evidence of torture is all classified is Kipnis.
Hope that fills in some of the missing links.
This relies on the judge being uninformed:
“The internet” is made up of many parts – the world wide web, email, listservs, bbs, gopher, ftp, news groups, IRC, and on and on. Some parts are public and some parts are private, password protected, etc., but ALL of it has electronic paper trails.
Just saying that something is “all over the internet” is so loose, I can’t believe any well-informed person, especially a judge, would accept this. The judge should require proof of this claim, and details on where the “all over” actually is. The judge can hire a technical expert, if he/she is uneducated in this field. Let me repeat, all of the public internet has paper trails through backups, the Wayback machine, and legal requirements of ISPs. It’s not that hard, at least in concept. And technical details are what technical experts are for!
For you who are attorneys, could an attorney say to a judge, “It’s all over the newspapers,” and get away with that? Wouldn’t the judge at least say, “Show me an example.” Why throw up one’s hands just because it’s the internet, and not the newspaper?
Exactly. Even if the information is “all over the newspapers,” judges always warn jurors before jury selection starts to avoid reading articles in the news or watching TV shows about the case to avoid being influenced by information that isn’t evidence admitted in court. Judges repeat the warning before every recess along with another warning to not discuss the case until the jury retires to the jury room to begin deliberating on a verdict.
During the trial, if something suddenly appears all over the newspapers, internet, and TV, the judge doesn’t (or shouldn’t) assume that any jurors read anything, so the judge will question each juror out of the presence of the others without spilling the beans to find out what, if anything they know. Counsel usually are permitted to ask follow-up questions. The juror is excused to return to the jury room with an admonishment not to discuss what happened and either lawyer can move to disqualify the juror and replace the juror with an alternate. The judge grants or denies the motion and then moves on to repeat the process. If less than 12 jurors are left at the end, the judge has to decide whether to proceed or declare a mistrial. As I mentioned before, I think something like this happened in Scooter Libby’s trial, although I don’t remember the reason, and the judge decided to continue the trial with only 11 jurors.
The relevant issue is whether a juror’s ability to remain impartial has been compromised by exposure to information in the media.
Meh, as long as the jurors were not aware of the analysis, how could it have tainted their “impartiality of the proceedings”? Looks to me to have had have been some argument the prosecution made that they were slighted. But I have no clue what that could have been. It is a fascinating question what really occurred here though.
as long as the jurors were not aware of the analysis
I think that was the point of the “all over the internet” argument that the prosecutors framed up. That jurors could already know about it or their families and friends or that they would know about it shortly because of the “all over the internet” aspect. I don’t think it looks like it actually was “all over the internet” or that, if it was, it was possibly bc of the efforts of the gov plants, in which case there should have been sanctions against the prosecution. That was pretty much what I was getting at with the comment that not just the army needs to be investigated. If it now looks like something was “published” to the detriment of a pending trial,and that info that was published was atty-client privilege info that was wrongfully acquired by gov and wrongfully used by gov, then I think the judge who dismissed this case to start with, based on reps that things had just mysteriously appeared on the internet, needs to haul some lawyers back in and get to the bottom of what went on.
Wouldn’t that be cured by the judge polling them individually (or together I guess) to see if any have heard of or seen anything on the internet about the trial and then telling them to stay off the internet and not talk to others about the trial? I just do not see how it could be that simple potential unless the judge was in the tank for the prosecution (always a relevant possibility I guess).
I’m a law professor now, but I used to practice in Seattle for many years and still have many contacts there, so I’m going to check into this and report back. Seattle and Tacoma are in the western district of WA, so I also handled quite a few cases in Tacoma. The Federal Public Defender’s main office is in Seattle, but they also have a smaller branch office in Tacoma and I’ll bet one of their lawyers represented a client in the case.
Hell Lyndie England was all ready sacrificed by the torture criminals up line. What the hell are they trying to pin on her now. She all ready did some of the Bush thugs prison time.
It’s the Army. You can be sure that it won’t get to the heart of the problem.