An astonishing admission was made by the FBI this week. That it passed so unnoticed is equally amazing. In sum, the FBI told us that it reserves for itself what facts it will tell the American people about an investigation it is conducting. It does not feel bound by the truth but by its determination as to what the American people can handle.
The revelation is pushed to the almost unbelievable level when we understand the FBI is willing to manipulate the facts involving the murder of 49 people; the worst mass execution by one gunman in our nation’s history. Why it is so astonishing is because it gives credence to all those people who we think of as “crazy conspiracy theorists.”
The first thought that comes to mind is its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. J. Edgar Hoover its director with his well-known hatred of JFK on the day of the assassination settled on Lee Harvey Oswald as the one who did the murder. and worked with Attorney General Katzenbach by the time of JFK’s funeral to put to rest in public’s mind any idea of others working with him. It simply would withhold any evidence of that as it did planned to do in the Omar Mateen case..
I’ve pointed out how frightened Congress is of the FBI. The other day NC reminded us how it refused to appear before Congress to answer questions about the Boston Marathon Terrorist attack and Congress did nothing. Imagine, then, my surprise when I saw the headlines in the NY Post about Speaker Ryan having the intestinal fortitude to speak out in criticism of the FBI to demand it tell the whole truth.
We would expect that we the people would be told the whole truth about the greatest mass shooting by one man in our history. We would hope not to be maneuvered by half-truths that the FBI decides to dribble out to us. Who gave the FBI the power to decide how much of the truth will be served to the Americans public?
This is scary stuff. The FBI feels such impunity that it had no second thoughts in announcing it is altering and hiding the truth and misleading the American people by its selective editing. J. Edgar Hoover did it but never admitted it. Now it boldly tells us it will know the truth but we will only know what it decides we should know.
This is not how things are supposed to work. A legitimate investigative agency is supposed to find out the facts and accurately report them. It is not supposed to hand-pick what it will release based on subjective evaluations of the effect of the evidence will have on others.
Speaker Ryan complained that the FBI in releasing the transcript of Omar Mateen’s 911 calls redacted anything to do with ISIS. He called on President Obama to require it to release the full transcript. The Obama administration would make the FBI back down and release the full transcripts after much criticism.
It was when the matter first arose the FBI showed its true colors. It defended its actions in not telling the whole truth by stating: “Part of the redacting is meant to not give credence to individuals who have done terrorist acts in the past. We’re not going to propagate their rhetoric, their violent rhetoric, and we see no value in putting their names back out there. We’re trying to prevent future acts from happening again, and for cowards like this one, people like that influence them so we’re not going to continue to put their names out front.” (my emphasis)
Read that again. He is saying this mass killer said he was following in the footprints of other Muslim or ISIS terrorists but the FBI does not want you to know that. It decided that because it may motivate some other people to follow him. This is an offshoot of the screwy idea of FBI Director Comey not to mention Mateen’s name. Perhaps in the past the FBI saw no value in disclosing who else was involved in the JFK assassination. The statement tells us that the FBI believes it can decide how much of the truth to tell Americans.
What now are we to believe about its investigation of the Hillary Clinton emails.
In the Mateen matter the FBI knew President Obama has been trying to downplay the ISIS connection to the slaughter. It altered its report to satisfy his desires. The president has other desires that the FBI may seek to accommodate.
President Obama supports Hillary Clinton for president. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of Clinton. How independent do you believe the FBI is of the president after seeing what it tried to do with respect to Mateen?
Politics not facts run the FBI. When that happens you have corruption. The FBI may “see no value” in bringing charges against Hillary at this time. It may withhold the damaging facts; it may just tell us of those justifying its decision not to bring charges or not to end its investigation.
By doing that Director Comey would please President Obama. When Hillary and Bill get to the White House they will owe him big. Does Director Comey want to become another J. Edgar Hoover and have the job for life? How willing will he be to provide altered truths to the American people about the Clintons activities?
Sadly, the FBI’s open admission of falsifying matters for a political end taints all of its work. How can we believe in anything it does in the future? It needs a house cleaning.
Ugh!
The JFK assassintion ,MLK assassination access to
the truth and evidence
had more FBI firewalls built into those FBI created
terrorist events than San Bernadino, Boston
Marathon and Orlando FBI terrorist events.
Remember the MC Irregulars Mantra:
” when you are the law enforcement agency
investigating the crime you just committed….”
Until you watch the documentary Sirius
you will strut and fret your hour upon
the FBI stage……
in other news
occurrencesforeigndomestic. dot com/2016/06/20/alleged/
The spin, the whole spin, and nothing but the spin.
The dishonesty that pervaded the Boston Marathon (pretending not to know who Tamerlan Tsarnaev was) and the dishonesty that pervaded the persecution of John Connolly, John Obrien, Aaron Schwartz, Turner, Rico, etc, etc, infest the DOJ/FBI Obama Administration even more so today.
Bill C.,
How could you forget to mention Salvati, Limone, Greco and Tameleo.
Their murder case started the whole thing.
Four innocent (at the moment?) men who’s lives were robbed and/or ruined .
They wanted to protect their very first “protected witness,” who had a best buddy who was their first TEI who was the real shooter, whom they naturally also wanted to protect, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Look up Ted Harrington to see the lengths that were gone to on that one.
It’s ironically comical, because it seems like they used the reversal of this play to go after Whitey. Use four liars to go after one innocent man, instead of one liar to go after four innocent men.
Rather:
Tameleo was clearly guilty. Jimmy the Bear and Joe the Animal were told by Raymond Patriaca to clear the hit with him. That is what the evidence was. Limone was the guy in Boston who also had to clear the hit and that was what the evidence established. Greco allegedly had an alibi that he was in Florida which the jury did not believe. Salvati according to Flemmi was part of the group and part of the plan. He was not in the car with the bald wig on; that was Jimmy the Bear; but he had something to do with it. The Deegan case involved several defendants. Did you ever wonder why two of them never had their cases reversed or receive any money from the government? The Mafia lawyers did a good job putting a shine on this sneaker. Keep in mind Barboza was on the stand for a couple of days under intense cross-examination. The lawyers had all the information to use against him that came out later.
Remember, the DOJ/FBI still withholds the transcripts of two 911 calls where the Tsarnaev brother were mentioned. They still withhold the transcripts of the 29 minutes of calls between Orlando police negotiators and Mateen. They lie to the American public and claim they are “transparent.” They are not transparent; they are deceitful. As deceitful as they were with Benghazi when they sent Rice out for two weeks blaming a video for the attacks.
Even with the one transcript released, they substitute the word “God” for “Allah”, they mentioned “Arabic” phrases, but wouldn’t translate them for the public. The DOJ/FBI deliberately deceives by leaving the American people in the dark. Our government deliberately without cause withholds the truth from the American people.
Imagine if the DOJ ordered no further videos of planes crashing into the twin towers or people leaping to their deaths on 9/11 lest “victims be re-traumatized.”? Who would stand for it?
Congress must order the entire unedited transcripts be released to the public and the Arabic phrases accurately translated.
The
Hi Matt,
This is a little off topic, but thinking about the FBI got me to thinking about John Morris (again). Morris was offered a sweetheart deal by the government. OK. But I’ve always operated on the assumption that a prosecutor would offer such a deal to a criminal only in order to get somebody higher up the food chain. But Morris was given a lifetime meal ticket (no criminal charges, full pension) for ratting out a subordinate, John Connelly. I understand how neatly the government’s bullshit “rogue agent” claim fits into this scenario: Connelly was out there on his own. committing crimes that nobody in the hierarchy (save Morris) knew anything about. No need to look any higher! Still, please tell me that somebody in the Justice Department objected to this approach.
Dan:
Morris was clearly the most culpable as being the supervisor of Connolly. Morris not only admitted taking money and gifts from Whitey but also took five thousand dollars and vacations to Florida from his only other top echelon informant a guy named Berkowitz. Connolly never admitted taking anything. Connolly had over a dozen top echelon informants and the only ones who accused him of taking something are Flemmi and Whitey.
Morris had friends at the Boston Globe in O’Neill and Lehr who were able to intercede with the prosecutors on his behalf. You have to keep in mind the goal of the prosecutor and the Globe guys was not to get Connolly but to pressure Connolly into giving up something on Bill Bulger. Morris had no connection with Bill. The only way the prosecutor could pressure Connolly was to have Morris testify against Connolly and tell of the gifts he received and put it on Connolly. Connolly’s problem was he had nothing to give against Bill. He could have lied and saved himself but unlike the others in this sad saga he had too much integrity to do that. You can see the reward he got for that. You can also see how if he refused to do that it is unlikely he was taking money from these guys for if he were corrupt and doing that he would have no trouble saying anything to save his butt.
Morris testifies he was called Machiavellian by Whitey on two occasions. That he certainly was walking away from outing an informant knowing that he might be murdered, lying to FBI investigators about leaking things to the Globe, taking money for tipping off the gangsters, making a deal to avoid charges and keeping his pension. He was the worst one who lives a nice life selling wine in Florida while a less culpable guy will die in prison in Florida having been there for 13 years now. No one objected to the approach since it served everyone’s purpose.
One further point. Connolly was not committing crimes. He was operating within the FBI’s Top Echelon Informant Program which is one where the FBI keeps known criminals on the street and protects them so that it can get information back. To protect them it has to tell them who is ratting them out. It is unclear Connolly even did that. What we do know is that when Morris’s group was going to do a wiretap on a guy named Baharian who worked for Flemmi and Bulger, Morris tipped them off about the wiretap. He got $5,000 for doing that. He also tipped them off about the Angiulo and Zannino wiretaps. He testified that it is usual for the FBI to do that so that its informants will not get intercepted. The Top Echelon program still exists and other FBI agents are doing today what Connolly is imprisoned for doing. The reason they are not in prison is that the FBI hides the program and does not disclose which of their informants are murdering people and there is no way to penetrate behind that shield. As you can see there is so much more that should be objected to than the impunity given to Morris since no one has looked at the other 55 FBI offices to see what they have done.
Thanks, Matt. I appreciate your passion, and I think Connolly is fortunate to have an advocate such as yourself. I’d like to jump on board, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, I just can’t get around the idea that Connolly disclosed the identity of FBI informants to Bulger et al. This was passing a death sentence, and can’t be forgiven, as I see the situation. As for the rest of it, Connolly has already suffered more than enough. And he’s suffered in the place of folks who are at least as guilty as he was ….
Dan:
Try this. Who were the informants who Connolly allegedly identified to Whitey. Castucci was supposed to be one. Martorano is the only witness on that (possibly Flemmi) but a Boston jury did not believe he did it; there are better reasons for Castucci to be murdered as I have spelled out; and there is no showing Connolly knew Castucci was an informant.
Halloran was the second informant attributed to Connolly. If Connolly tipped him off about that why didn’t he tell Whitey that the FBI knew the identity of the car that he used during the hit? It was obvious to everyone on the street that Halloran was an informant as FBI reports made clear at the time. Weeks, Whitey’s girlfriend, and others have said Whitey always had an idea what was happening. There has been no evidence Connolly told Whitey about Halloran. Morris, who did tip off that the car was known and who did tip off that there was a tap on Baharian, said he told Connolly that Halloran was informing on Whitey and Connolly told him he told Whitey. Is that believable or did Morris tell Whitey about Halloran for shortly after that he asked Connolly to get him a thousand dollars from Whitey so he could fly his girlfriend down to Georgia to be with him. Why is Whitey so willing to give Morris the money.
That leaves Callahan. Callahan was not an informant. In fact, he had been interviewed by Connolly and told him nothing. The best that can be said that Connolly did with respect to Callahan was to tell the hoodlums that the FBI was looking at him and he may not stand up to the pressure. Again, like with Halloran the word on the street was that Callahan was being targeted by the FBI. He knew it because when Halloran tried to get him to talk both on the telephone and when he was wired Callahan would change the subject. Agent Montinari testified that the knowledge of Halloran being wired was well known since to cover him they had to bring in another squad from the FBI office. Then you have to understand how gangsters think. Martorano knew that there was only one person who could finger him in the Wheeler murder. That was Callahan. He would know he was in danger if the focus of the investigation turned to Boston. But again, Callahan was not an informant and there are many ways Martorano could have learned he was being looked at by the FBI.
Overriding all of this is the job Connolly had in the FBI. He was an informant handler. He had over a dozen top echelon informants. His job as one FBI agent told Rossetti was to keep the informants safe. How was that to be done – Morris told us – by tipping them off about any investigations that could entrap them so they could avoid them.
Consider the alternative explanations and there is as much if not more to show that Connolly never disclosed the identity of an informant to Whitey as there is to show that he did. That’s why I wrote about Beck’s Beer. The theory of Connolly totally protecting Whitey is smashed when it is clear he did not disclose to him that the FBI had the car in the Halloran hit identified.