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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=dlj725@hughes.net
href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net">dlj725@hughes.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:46 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Fwd: Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on
Occupy?</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2><A
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/14/did-the-white-house-direct-the-police-crackdown-on-occupy/"
target=_blank>http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/14/did-the-white-house-direct-the-police-crackdown-on-occupy/</A><BR><FONT
size=4>Documents Show How White House and Democrats Worked to Protect the Banks
Against Protests </FONT><BR></FONT>
<H1>Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?</H1><FONT
size=2>by DAVE LINDORFF <BR>A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided
by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
(PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes
it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign
to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.<BR>The new documents, which PCJF
National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists "are likely only a subset of
responsive materials," in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies,
only "scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion
Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of
local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social
justice movement."<BR>Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she
says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus
on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last
September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City.<BR>The latest documents,
reveal "intense involvement" by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center
(NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as "the primary
national-level hub for domestic situational <IMG alt=""
src="http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/hopelesscov.jpeg"
width=175 height=256>awareness, common operational picture, information fusion,
information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the
prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management."<BR>The DHS
says that the NOC is "the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room"
and that it also "facilitates information sharing and operational coordination
with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and
the private sector."<BR>A better description for a fascist police state network
could not be written.<BR>Remember, this vast yet centralized operation — what
Verheyden-Hilliard describes as "a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and
domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own
people" — was in this case deployed not against some terrorist organization or
even mob or drug cartel, but rather against a loose-knit band of protesters, all
conscientiously and publicly committed to nonviolence, who were exercising their
Constitutionally-protected right to gather in public places and to speak out
against the crimes and abuses of the corporate elite and the politicians who are
bought and paid by that elite.<BR>Among the documents obtained by the PCJF in
this second batch of responses to its FOIA filing is one from the NOC Fusion
Center Desk dated Nov. 5, 2011, which collects at the federal level and then
distributes the names and contact information of a group of Occupy protesters
who were arrested during a demonstration in Dallas, TX against Bank of America,
one of the nation’s biggest predatory lenders. Although none of the seven
arrested were charged with any serious crime (six were charged with "using the
sidewalk!"), their names and contact information were widely disseminated by the
DHS.<BR>Fusion Centers, a post-9-11 creation, are a federally-funded joint
project of the DHS and the US Justice Department which are designed to share
intelligence information among such federal agencies as the DHS, the FBI, the
CIA and the US Military, as well as state and local police agencies. By their
nature they are designed to circumvent legal constraints on various agencies,
for example the ban on CIA domestic spying, or the Posse Comitatus Act, which
bars active military activity within the borders of the US. There are currently
72 Fusion Centers around the US.<BR>Another group of documents shows that on
November 9, two days after a demonstration by 1000 Occupy activists in Chicago
protesting social service cuts in that city, the NOC Fusion Desk relayed a
request from Chicago Police asking other local police agencies what kind of
tactics they were using against Occupy activists. They specifically requested
that information be sought from police departments in New York, Oakland,
Atlanta, Washington, D.C. Denver, Boston, Portland OR, and Seattle — all the
scene of major Occupation actions and of violent police repression.<BR>Realizing
that it would look bad if it assisted in such coordination overtly, higher
officials in the DHS ordered the recall of the request but then simply rerouted
it through "law enforcement channels," where presumably it would be harder for
anyone to spot a federal role in the coordination of local police responses. In
response to that order, the documents show that the duty director of the NOC
wrote that he would "reach out" to "LEO LNOs (liaison officer) on the floor" to
assist. Verheyden-Hilliard explains that LEO is FBI’s nationally integrated law
enforcement, intelligence and military network.<BR>On December 12, when Occupy
planned anti-war protests at various US ports, Verheyden-Hilliard says the new
documents show that the NOC "went into high gear" seeking information from local
field offices of the Department of Homeland Security about what actions police
in Houston, Portland, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles planned to
deal with Occupy movement actions.<BR>Another document shows that earlier, in
advance of a planned Occupy action at the Oakland, CA port facility on Nov. 2,
DHS "went so far as to keep the Pentagon’s Northcom (Northern Command) in the
intelligence loop."<BR>Given the subterfuge revealed in these documents that
went into trying to create the illusion that the DHS was and is not coordinating
a national campaign of spying, disruption and repression against Occupy
activists, it is almost comical to find documents that show the DHS was in
"direct communication with the White House" to obtain advance approval of public
statements by DHS officials denying any DHS involvement in anti-Occupy
actions.<BR>These documents show that both DHS and one of that department’s
police arms, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) were in direct contact with
Portland, Oregon’s police chief and mayor, discussing how to deal with
protesters who were in part on federal property. The coordination between the
feds and the local police and political authorities were intense. Yet the
approved statement sent to DHS from the White House read:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are
dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located
on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General
Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, and they make a decision to
evacuate participants — the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with
those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of
everyone involved.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>There was, comically, also a White
House-approved DHS "background" statement, too! (Typically background statements
by federal officials are supposed to be used when they want to tell a journalist
the true situation but don’t want to have that statement attributed to them or
their department. Having it pre-approved by the White House defeats that purpose
and is simply a manipulation of the media.)<BR>The faux "background" information
included the following–a flat-out lie:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement
agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy
encampments writ large.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>Tellingly, the documents also
include a Dec. 5 copy of the "Weekly Informant, " an intelligence report
published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement. The issue
includes an update from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) concerning
the activities of the Occupy Movement. PERF, Verheyden-Hilliard notes, is the
group that the federal government claims organized a series of multi-city law
enforcement calls to coordinate the police response to Occupy, which led
immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that
police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive
tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove
journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.<BR>The overall sense from
these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, was
the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to
cover its tracks.<BR>The documents among other things expose the massive
hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this
election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme
of the "We are the 99%"-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the
interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying
to crush the movement itself.<BR><I>To see all the new FOIA documents, go to the
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>PJIF
website</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>.<BR><B>Dave Lindorff</B> is a founder of
This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of
Illusion</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also
available in a </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>Kindle edition</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>. He lives in Philadelphia.
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