Veteran New York Times Reporter : “This Is Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I’ve Ever Covered”

NYT reporter forgot to include "Criminal" and Obama's CIA role in smearing journalists

WASHINGTON'S BLOG
10/07/2013

Seasoned CBS News Anchor: “Whenever I’m Asked What Is The Most Manipulative And Secretive Administration I’ve Covered, I Always Say It’s The One In Office Now”

American constitutional experts say that Obama is worse than Nixon. 

 

 

American journalists have been assassinated in the U.S. and abroad

The government has taken to protecting criminal wrongdoing by attacking whistleblowers … and any journalists who have the nerve to report on the beans spilled by the whistleblowers. (The government has also repealed long-standing laws against using propaganda against Americans on U.S. soil, and the government is manipulating social media – more proof here and here).

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

And it goes out of its way to smear whistleblowers, threaten reporters who discuss whistleblower information and harass honest analysts.

Journalism is not only being criminalized in America, but investigative reporting is actually treated like terrorism. 

 

 

The government admits that journalists could be targeted with counter-terrorism laws (and here). For example, after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge

After the government’s spying on the Associated Press made it clear to everyone that the government is trying to put a chill journalism, the senior national-security correspondent for Newsweek tweeted:

Serious idea. Instead of calling it Obama’s war on whistleblowers, let’s just call it what it is: Obama’s war on journalism.

Moreover:

The Pentagon recently smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda;

Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest;

The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war;

 

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this);

And the American government has been instrumental in locking up journalists in America (and here),Yemen and elsewhere for the crime of embarrassing the U.S. government.
 

While the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever.

The Washington Post reports:

With the passage of the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a vast expansion of intelligence agencies and their powers, the aggressive exploitation of intrusive digital surveillance capabilities, the excessive classification of public documents and officials’ sophisticated control of the news media’s access to the workings of government, journalists who cover national security are facing vast and unprecedented challenges in their efforts to hold the government accountable to its citizens. 

 

The Snowden revelations effectively changed history

They find that government officials are increasingly fearful of talking to them, and they worry that their communications with sources can be monitored at any time.So what are they doing? Many reporters covering national security and government policy in Washington these days are taking precautions to keep their sources from becoming casualties in the Obama administration’s war on leaks. They and their remaining government sources often avoid telephone conversations and e-mail exchanges, arranging furtive one-on-one meetings instead. A few news organizations have even set up separate computer networks and safe rooms for journalists trained in encryption and other ways to thwart surveillance.

“I worry now about calling somebody because the contact can be found out through a check of phone records or e-mails,” said veteran national security journalist R. Jeffrey Smith of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit accountability news organization. “It leaves a digital trail that makes it easier for government to monitor those contacts.” 

 

 

“We have to think more about when we use cellphones, when we use e-mail and when we need to meet sources in person,” said Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of the Associated Press. “We need to be more and more aware that government can track our work without talking to our reporters, without letting us know.”

These concerns, expressed by numerous journalists I interviewed, are well-founded. 

 

Relying on the 1917 Espionage Act, which was rarely invoked before President Obama took office, this administration has secretly used the phone and e-mail records of government officials and reporters to identify and prosecute government sources for national security stories.

***

In addition to ongoing leak investigations, six government employees and two contractors, including fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have been prosecuted since 2009 under the Espionage Act for providing information to reporters about, among other subjects, the NSA’s communications surveillance, the CIA’s aggressive interrogation of terrorism suspects and, in the case of Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, diplomatic cables and Iraq and Afghanistan war documents.

***

The Obama administration has drawn a dubious distinction between whistleblowing that reveals bureaucratic waste or fraud, and leaks to the news media about unexamined secret government policies and activities; it punishes the latter as espionage.

***

Every disclosure to the press of classified information now triggers a leak investigation, said Washington Post national news editor Cameron Barr. “Investigations can be done electronically. They don’t need to compel journalists to reveal sources.” 

 

 

Snowden will eventually end Obama's smoke-blowing

The Post’s Justice Department reporter, Sari Horwitz, said a Justice official told her that “access to e-mail, phone records and cellphones make it easier to do now.”

After the New York Times published a 2012 story by David E. Sanger about covert cyberattacks by the United States and Israel against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, federal prosecutors and the FBI questioned scores of officials throughout the government who were identified in computer analyses of phone, text and e-mail records as having contact with Sanger.

“A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and the intelligence agencies that told people to freeze and retain any e-mail, and presumably phone logs, of communications with me,” Sanger said. As a result, longtime sources no longer talk to him. “They tell me: ‘David, I love you, but don’t e-mail me. Let’s don’t chat until this blows over.’ ”

Sanger, who has worked for the Times in Washington for two decades, said, “This is most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

***

A survey of government departments and agencies this summer by the Washington bureau of McClatchy newspapers found that they had wide latitude in defining what kinds of behavior constitute a threat. “Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material,” it reported in June. “They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for ‘high-risk persons or behaviors’ among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.”

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told me that the Insider Threat Program has already “created internal surveillance, heightened a degree of paranoia in government and made people conscious of contacts with the public, advocates and the press.”

***

“People think they’re looking at reporters’ records,” Post national security reporter Dana Priest told me. “I’m writing fewer things in e-mail. I’m even afraid to tell officials what I want to talk about because it’s all going into one giant computer.”

***

“Whenever I’m asked what is the most manipulative and secretive administration I’ve covered, I always say it’s the one in office now,” Bob Schieffer, CBS News anchor and chief Washington correspondent, told me.“Every administration learns from the previous administration. They become more secretive and put tighter clamps on information. This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The 5^th Estate.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Read more »

Martial Law And The Economy : Is Homeland Security Preparing For The Next Wall Street Collapse?

This will be the spark that sets off the military mutiny; U.S. active duty personnel and Veterans will never allow Americans to be fired upon or taken prisoner by any terrorist government occupying the White House, and will slaughter any civilian corporate pigs or DHS scum foolish enough to believe they can take us on and survive - they will be EXTERMINATED in the streets of America

GLOBAL RESEARCH
By Ellen Brown
10/07/2013

Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?

Coward NYPD pigs want no part of Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas

Recently revealed statements by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the height of the banking crisis in October 2008 could give some insights into that question. An article on BBC News on September 21, 2013, drew from an explosive autobiography called Power Trip by Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride, who said the prime minister was worried that law and order could collapse during
the financial crisis.


McBride quoted Brown as saying:

"If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco [a grocery chain] and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode.

If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves.

Coward Oakland CA pigs shot Marine Scott Olsen at Occupy protest

And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow. How to deal with that threat? Brown said, “We’d have to think: do we have curfews, do we put the Army on the streets, how do we get order back?”


McBride wrote in his book Power Trip, “It was extraordinary to see Gordon so totally gripped by the danger of what he was about to do, but equally convinced that decisive action had to be taken immediately.” He compared the threat to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fear of this threat was echoed in September 2008 by US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who reportedly warned that the US government might have to resort to martial law if Wall Street were not bailed out from the credit collapse.

Coward, feral pigs that prey on the disabled and homeless will be hunted down and exterminated by the mobs

In both countries, martial law was avoided when their legislatures succumbed to pressure and bailed out the banks. But many pundits are saying that another collapse is imminent; and this time, governments may not be so willing to step up to the plate.

The Next Time WILL Be Different

What triggered the 2008 crisis was a run, not in the conventional banking system, but in the “shadow” banking system, a collection of non-bank financial intermediaries that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but are unregulated. They include hedge funds, money market funds, credit investment funds, exchange-traded funds, private equity funds, securities broker dealers, securitization and finance companies. Investment banks and commercial banks may also conduct much of their business in the shadows of this unregulated system.

No amount of fancy new playtoys they don't know how to use will save coward pigs from active duty military, Veterans

The shadow financial casino has only grown larger since 2008; and in the next Lehman-style collapse, government bailouts may not be available. According to President Obama in his remarks on the Dodd-Frank Act on July 15, 2010, “Because of this reform, . . . there will be no more taxpayer funded bailouts – period.”

Governments in Europe are also shying away from further bailouts. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) in Switzerland has therefore required the systemically risky banks to devise “living wills” setting forth what they will do in the event of insolvency. The template established by the FSB requires them to “bail in” their creditors; and depositors, it turns out, are the largest class of bank creditor. (For fuller discussion, see my earlier article here.)

One well-placed RPG round would make short work of these idiot, coward feral pigs; Americans have nothing to fear

When depositors cannot access their bank accounts to get money for food for the kids, they could well start breaking store windows and helping themselves. Worse, they might plot to overthrow the financier-controlled government. Witness Greece, where increasing disillusionment with the ability of the government to rescue the citizens from the worst depression since 1929 has precipitated riots and threats of violent overthrow.

Fear of that result could explain the massive, government-authorized spying on American citizens, the domestic use of drones, and the elimination of due process and of “posse comitatus” (the federal law prohibiting the military from enforcing “law and order” on non-federal property). Constitutional protections are being thrown out the window in favor of protecting the elite class in power.

The Looming Debt Ceiling Crisis

The next crisis on the agenda appears to be the October 17th deadline for agreeing on a federal budget or risking default on the government’s loans. It may only be a coincidence, but two large-scale drills are scheduled to take place the same day, the “Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill” and the “Quantum Dawn 2 Cyber Attack Bank Drill.” According to a Bloomberg news clip on the bank drill, the attacks being prepared for are from hackers, state-sponsored espionage, and organized crime (financial fraud). One interviewee stated, “You might experience that your online banking is down . . . . You might experience that you can’t log in.” It sounds like a dress rehearsal for the Great American Bail-in.

DHS scum will be hunted down, executed by enraged patriots

Ominous as all this is, it has a bright side. Bail-ins and martial law can be seen as the last desperate thrashings of a dinosaur. The exploitative financial scheme responsible for turning millions out of their jobs and their homes has reached the end of the line. Crisis in the current scheme means opportunity for those more sustainable solutions waiting in the wings.


Other countries faced with a collapse in their debt-based borrowed currencies have survived and thrived by issuing their own. When the dollar-pegged currency collapsed in Argentina in 2001, the national government returned to issuing its own pesos; municipal governments paid with “debt-canceling bonds” that circulated as currency; and neighborhoods traded with community currencies. After the German currency collapsed in the 1920s, the government turned the economy around in the 1930s by issuing “MEFO” bills that circulated as currency. When England ran out of gold in 1914, the government issued “Bradbury pounds” similar to the Greenbacks issued by Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War.

Wall Street banks will be burned to the ground, bankers exterminated

Today our government could avoid the debt ceiling crisis by doing something similar: it could simply mint some trillion dollar coins and deposit them in an account. That alternative could be pursued by the Administration immediately, without going to Congress or changing the law, as discussed in my earlier article here. It need not be inflationary, since Congress could still spend only what it passed in its budget. And if Congress did expand its budget for infrastructure and job creation, that would actually be good for the economy, since hoarding cash and paying down loans have significantly shrunk the circulating money supply.

Peer-to-peer Trading and Public Banks

At the local level, we need to set up an alternative system that provides safety for depositors, funds small and medium-sized businesses, and serves the needs of the community.

Much progress has already been made on that front in the peer-to-peer economy. In a September 27th article titled “Peer-to-Peer Economy Thrives as Activists Vacate the System,” Eric Blair reports that the Occupy Movement is engaged in a peaceful revolution in which people are abandoning the established system in favor of a “sharing economy.” Trading occurs between individuals, without taxes, regulations or licenses, and in some cases without government-issued currency.

Even the elderly want a piece of this action following abuse from coward cops

Peer-to-peer trading happens largely on the Internet, where customer reviews rather than regulation keep sellers honest. It started with eBay and Craigslist and has grown exponentially since. Bitcoin is a private currency outside the prying eyes of regulators. Software is being devised that circumvents NSA spying. Bank loans are being shunned in favor of crowdfunding. Local food co-ops are also a form of opting out of the corporate-government system.

Peer-to-peer trading works for local exchange, but we also need a way to protect our dollars, both public and private. We need dollars to pay at least some of our bills, and businesses need them to acquire raw materials. We also need a way to protect our public revenues, which are currently deposited and invested in Wall Street banks that have heavy derivatives exposure.

To meet those needs, we can set up publicly-owned banks on the model of the Bank of North Dakota, currently our only state-owned depository bank. The BND is mandated by law to receive all the state’s deposits and to serve the public interest. Ideally, every state would have one of these “mini-Feds.” Counties and cities could have them as well. For more information, see http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

Preparations for martial law have been reported for decades, and it hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully, we can sidestep that danger by moving into a saner, more sustainable system that makes military action against American citizens unnecessary.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200-plus blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Read more »

CIA Activities In Syria : U.S. Never Stops To Step On Same Rake

Obama's murdering CIA scum already being targeted worldwide; it is high time these U.S. taxpayer-financed maniacs are COMPLETELY ERADICATED along with their apologists and enablers    

GLOBAL RESEARCH
By Andrei Akulov
10/07/2013

According to the Washington Post (CIA Ramping up Covert Training Program for Moderate Syrian Rebels, Oct.3), the CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition fighters in Syria, as U.S. officials said. The newspaper reports the CIA’s mission has been defined by the White House’s desire to seek a political settlement, a scenario that relies on an eventual stalemate among the warring factions rather than a clear victor. As a result, US officials said, limits on the agency’s authorities enable it to provide enough support to help ensure that politically moderate, U.S.-supported militias don’t lose but not enough for them to win.

The Washington Post informs that US officials spoke on the condition of anonymity and said the agency has sent additional paramilitary teams to secret bases in Jordan in recent weeks in a push to double the number of rebel fighters getting CIA instruction and weapons before being sent back to Syria. The effort led by the CIA was described as an urgent bid to bolster moderate Syrian militias, which have been unable to mount a serious challenge to Assad. The CIA is "ramping up and expanding its efforts", said a U.S. official familiar with operations in Syria, because «it was clear that the opposition was losing, and not only losing tactically but on a more strategic level.

Back in June the US deployed Patriot air defense systems F-16 fighter jet aircraft to Jordan as part of the annual military exercise called Eager Lion leaving 700 combat-equipped troops and 200 military planners in Jordan to assist in long-term planning with Jordanian forces in case of a chemical weapons crisis or a large-scale humanitarian relief mission.

Then the US announced that it would send light arms to the rebels. In September the New York Times ran an interesting article called President Gains McCain’s Backing on Syria Attack saying, "Officials said that in the same conversation, which included Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, Mr. Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to arm and train Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, who have been trained by the C.I.A., was beginning to sneak into Syria."

Back in May there had been reports that this training program had already been underway for some time and the LA Times caught up with it in June, disclosing that the program began at least as far back as November 2012 on US bases in Jordan and Turkey.

Obama, CIA scum responsible for Benghazigate murders

On August 23 French Le Figaro reported that CIA-trained rebels crossed the Syrian border from Jordan. They had been trained for several months in a training camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border by CIA operatives, as well as Jordanian and Israeli commandos, the paper said. The first group of 300 handpicked Free Syrian Army soldiers crossed the border on August 17 into the Deraa region, and a second group was deployed on August 19, the paper reported. The paper quoted a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis as saying the trained rebels group was passing through Ghouta, on their way to Damascus.

CIA activities today

The CIA training effort is centered in Jordan. The program is aimed at shoring up the fighting power of units aligned with the Supreme Military Council, an umbrella organization led by General Idris, that is the main recipient of U.S. support. The training is led by small teams of operatives from the CIA’s Special Activities Division, a paramilitary branch that relies heavily on contractors and former members of U.S. Special Operations forces. Officials said the instruction is rudimentary and typically spans four to six weeks.

Obama's fake "king" will see his fantasy "country" destroyed

The Obama administration has explored the idea of using the U.S. military to expand the training program to what some officials have described as «industrial strength». It is unclear whether Jordan would welcome such a large U.S. military footprint, which would mean converting a covert program into one officially acknowledged by the United States.

There are also legal impediments, including a measure known as the Leahy Law that would require a determination that no recipients of U.S. military assistance had committed human rights abuses. The officials said the agency had sent more paramilitary teams to secret bases in Jordan in recent weeks in a push to double the number of rebel fighters getting CIA instruction and weapons before being sent back to Syria. The CIA was "ramping up and expanding its effort", said a US official familiar with operations in Syria, because “it was clear that the opposition was losing, and not only losing tactically but on a more strategic level”. The CIA declined to comment. The latest setback came last month, when the largest armed factions in Syria, including some backed by the US, announced the formation of an alliance with a goal of creating an Islamic state.

Trends in the ranks of Syrian "opposition"

On Sept. 24, 2013 the death bell rang for the West-supported Syrian armed opposition. 13 of the leading armed opposition organizations inside Syria decided to unite their efforts under an Islamist-jihadist banner as the «Islamist Alliance» claiming to represent more than 75 percent the rebels fighting the Assad administration. The Alliance is to spread sharia laws throughout Syria formally rejecting the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) as its legitimate representative. Significantly, the group includes some of the largest ostensibly moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) elements as well as Al Qaida affiliated organizations. The supreme leadership of Al Qaida warmly endorsed the new alliance in a special communiqué. A group of powerful mujahedin units rejected the authority of the pro-Western Syrian opposition leadership abroad and called for it to be reorganized under an Islamic framework.

CIA scum past and present will be hunted down, exterminated

It is not just a serious set-back, but rather the total and absolute failure of the US and the West in general to influence the opposition, as well as the whole Syria policy and a challenge to those who presented the view that the majority of the Syrian opposition is liberal and moderate, like US Stare Secretary John Kerry did. 

The US administration officials were misleading the public and Congress about the composition of Syrian rebel forces deliberately minimizing the role of Islamist groups in the opposition.

The unification of radicals has become a clear trend. The Army of Islam has been established as another Islamist actor. Rebel brigades operating in and around Damascus announced by the end of September that they had united under a single command comprising 50 groups and numbering some thousands of fighters. The formation of the Army of Islam strengthens Salafist jihadis under the influence of Saudi Arabia another radical group – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda branch which has in recent weeks taken control of territory from other Islamist forces in parts of northern and eastern Syria.

CIA owned and operated "media" will suffer the same fate

All of these groups formally commit themselves to sharia as the «sole source of legislation». Bottom line, they were all Islamist from the start. Something Russia had many times warned the West about.

The US-led Western myopic policy in Syria has resulted in radical Islam gaining the upper hand inside the Syria opposition to endanger Europe and the entire Mideast. A new safe haven for al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and local radicals is being established in the north and east of Syria threatening neighboring Iraq. The goal is a Sunni emirate on the Mediterranean shore and Turkish border. The seasoned fighters will one day go or return to the countries of Western Europe or former Soviet space. Within Iraq, they are trying to revive the Sunni-Shiite civil war with a wave of suicide bombs, something that has become a routine daily news on TV. 

They are also stirring up tensions inside neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. This is a universal problem, a threat posed for the USA, NATO, the EU, Russia and a lot of other states. And this is the time the CIA is involved in activities aimed at making Syria an al-Qaeda safe haven and base camp. Like it or not, but there is a reality – the government of President Assad now is the only force capable of standing up to the radicals offensive in Syria. Russia and the US will discuss the issue at the level of foreign chiefs on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit next week in Bali.

Hilarious gang of loser criminals attempting to appear relevant

They have a lot to talk about. I wonder what the US State Secretary will say about his previous affirmations the Syrian opposition is predominantly moderate or the CIA activities to enhance Islamists capabilities in the country.

There is also one more issue to discuss and one more threat to United Nations activities against the background revelations about what the CIA is doing. On October 3 Russian president’s Middle East envoy Mikhail Bogdanov said that Russia fears that radical opposition in Syria may stage provocations in the process to eliminate chemical weapons. "Objectively speaking this cannot be ruled out, and we have certain understanding with our western partners in this respect that there are real risks and different kind of provocations because terrorists and extremists who are not interested in a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis might put different obstacles, quite serious, in the process to eliminate chemical weapons," said Bogdanov, who is Deputy Foreign Minister.

He explained that, «one can get to the depots that are controlled by the government only in crossing regions that are controlled by the opposition. "That is why the question arises how to cross these regions and ensure the safety of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who will work there," Bogdanov added. "The CIA is aiding those who pose this threat."

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The 5^th Estate.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

 

Read more »

PA Prison Guards Make Inmates Fight For Snacks

Another reason for Americans to never allow themselves to be taken alive to be thrown into these gladiator prisons - and many are now staffed with Bush/Obama reject "moral waiver" military scum that can't make it on the outside    

PRESS TV
10/07/2013

Three correctional officers in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania have been accused of organizing inmate fights, rewarding the winners with food and coffee.

 

Prison guard scum will be hunted down and exterminated

York County Prison correctional officers David Whitcomb, 28, Mark Haynes, 26 and Daniel Graff, 37, were charged with official oppression and harassment on Friday, according to Pennsylvania State Police.

The guards encouraged inmates to drink a gallon of milk in one hour, take punches in the arm without falling and allow themselves to be sprayed in the face with pepper foam, authorities said.

Investigators say the guards, in return, would reward the inmates with food and coffee.

The arranged fights were found when state police were investigating an unrelated graffiti incident at the prison. A video footage was found showing Haynes grabbing an inmate by the neck.

"Earlier this year, while conducting an unrelated investigation into pen/marker graffiti and other minor vandalism inside an area of the facility, prison administration learned of possible unprofessional conduct by three corrections officers. Management immediately began an internal investigation," said a York County news release on Friday.

Better to die fighting on the street than wind up HERE

David Wright, 27, an inmate, told police that he had taken part in a wrestling game with James Hicks, 27, another inmate, arranged by the guards. He was rewarded with extra lounge food and coffee.

The police report also said that Graff sprayed pepper-foam in Wright’s face in exchange for coffee. However, Wright said, he never received more lounge food or coffee.

Another inmate said he had agreed to do “stupid stuff for food and coffee,” including snorting crushed-up candy, drinking water with pepper foam in it and eating fruit with the peels still on them.

“Even though it was consensual, correctional officers were still using the power of their position. They controlled the distribution of the food and the coffee, and they were using them to entice the inmates to engage in these activities,” Pennsylvania State Trooper Robert Hicks told CNN.

All of the officers have denied the allegations. They have been put on unpaid administrative leave.

AN/ARA

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The 5^th Estate.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Read more »