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2022-11-12 Government Corruption
The FBI's Transformation, from National Police to Domestic Spy Agency. Part One:
[TK News] A Florida FBI agent blows the whistle on a Bureau that's stopped worrying about making cases, shifting resources to a vast new mission: domestic spying without predicate. Part one of a series.

Part one of a series.

Late on an October morning in a quiet neighborhood near Daytona Beach, Florida. FBI agent Steve Friend sits in his kitchen, fidgeting. He’s a wiry, energetic man, built like a marathoner, not muscled up but exuding fitness, not a sitter. This is not a person meant for desk work, much less staying home all day. But as a whistleblower whose name has been all over media after a complaint about statistical manipulation and other problems in the January 6th investigations, this will be his lot for a while.

By that morning, the first rush of news stories about Friend’s case already passed. CNN and MSNBC demonized him, Fox hailed him as a hero, but the furor was beginning to die down. What a whistleblower talks about in this inevitable moment will say a lot about his or her motivation. Looking out a window into the stillness of his suburban neighborhood, Friend shook his head.

"I love my job," he said, sighing. "I was living my best life as an FBI agent. I was coming home every day, and my kids were my biggest fan club. Like, ’Daddy, did you put the bad guy in jail?’ And I thought, ’Man, this is it.’"

It’s not the tone of a disgruntled malcontent, but someone who made a reluctant journey to whistleblower status, beginning with a whirlwind series of events that brought him and his family out of the Midwest to north Florida less than two years ago. He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.

Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of "terrorism" cases "opening" in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.

As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.

"They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work," Friend says. "Now a defense lawyer can say, ’Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution."
Posted by Besoeker 2022-11-12 04:58|| || Front Page|| [9 views ]  Top

#1 Just started reading Dream Room: Tales of the Dixie Mafia. A reminder that once upon a time the FBI went after actual bad people.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-11-12 07:48||   2022-11-12 07:48|| Front Page Top

#2 Just finished Thom Nicholson's 15 Months in SOG: A Warrior's Tour

"When we cross the border: no ID, and it's kiss yourself good-bye if Charlie gets ahold of you."

In Vietnam, the Military Assistance Command's Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) fielded small recon teams in areas infested with VC and NVA. Because SOG operations suffered extraordinary casualties, they required extraordinary soldiers. So when Capt. Thom Nicholson arrived at Command and Control North (CCN) in Da Nang, SOG's northernmost base camp, he knew he was going to be working with the cream of the crop.

As commander of Company B, CCN's Raider Company, Nicholson commanded four platoons, comprising nearly two hundred men, in some of the war's most deadly missions, including ready-reaction missions for patrols in contact with the enemy, patrol extractions under fire, and top-secret expeditions "over the fence" into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Colonel Nicholson spares no one, including himself, as he provides a rare glimpse into the workings of one of the military's most carefully concealed reconnaissance campaigns.
Posted by Besoeker 2022-11-12 08:38||   2022-11-12 08:38|| Front Page Top

#3 It’s probably been said here before, but Jocko’s podcast has amazing interviews with former SOG vets.
Posted by Jefe101 2022-11-12 11:19||   2022-11-12 11:19|| Front Page Top

#4 It wasn’t just Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam
Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom  2022-11-12 11:44||   2022-11-12 11:44|| Front Page Top

08:16 Procopius2k
08:14 NN2N1
07:56 M. Murcek
07:55 NN2N1
07:46 Frank G
07:45 NN2N1
07:42 NN2N1
07:33 Super Hose
07:20 Whiskey Mike
07:15 M. Murcek
07:13 Whiskey Mike
07:05 Nero Bucket4425
07:03 Anon1
06:55 Anon1
06:54 Anon1
06:54 Anon1
05:40 Grom the reflective
05:25 Grom the reflective
05:17 Grom the reflective
04:28 Skidmark
04:24 Skidmark
04:07 badanov
04:01 Besoeker
03:40 Besoeker









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