FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders
By Truthdig
01 July 13
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the
Washington, D.C.-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund yielded an FBI
document containing knowledge of a plot by an unnamed group or individual to
kill "leaders" of the Houston chapter of the nonviolent Occupy Wall
Street movement.
Here's what the document said, according to
WhoWhatWhy:
An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to
engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed
necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the
protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas,
San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against
the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan
to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles. (Note: protests continued
throughout the weekend with approximately 6000 persons in NYC. 'Occupy Wall
Street' protests have spread to about half of all states in the US, over a
dozen European and Asian cities, including protests in Cleveland (10/6-8/11) at
Willard Park which was initially attended by hundreds of protesters.)
Paul Kennedy of the National Lawyers Guild in Houston
and an attorney for a number of Occupy Houston activists arrested during the
protests said he did not hear of the sniper plot and expressed discontent with
the FBI's failure to share knowledge of the plan with the public. He believed
that the bureau would have acted if a "right-wing group" plotted the
assassinations, implying that the plan could have originated with law
enforcement.
"[I]f it is something law enforcement was
planning," Kennedy said, "then nothing would have been done. It might
seem hard to believe that a law enforcement agency would do such a thing, but I
wouldn't put it past them."
He added that the phrase "if deemed
necessary," which appeared in the bureau's report, further suggests the
possibility that some kind of official organization was involved in the plan.
Texas law officials have a history of extreme and
inappropriate violence. "Last October," Lindorff writes, "a
border patrol officer with the Texas Department of Public Safety, riding in a
helicopter, used a sniper rifle to fire at a fast-moving pickup truck carrying
nine illegal immigrants into the state from Mexico, killing two and wounding a
third, and causing the vehicle to crash and overturn."
Kennedy has seen law enforcement forces attempt to
secretly entrap Occupy activists and disrupt their activities in the city. He
represented seven people who were charged with felonies stemming from a protest
whose organizing group had been infiltrated by undercover officers from the
Austin Police department. The felony charges were dropped when police
involvement with a crucial part of that action was discovered.
A second document obtained in the same FOIA request
suggested the assassination plans might be on the plotters' back burner in case
Occupy re-emerges in the area.
When WhoWhatWhy sent an inquiry to FBI headquarters in
Washington, officials confirmed that the first document is genuine and that it
originated in the Houston FBI office. Asked why solid evidence of a plot never
led to exposure of the perpetrators' identity or arrest, Paul Bresson, head of
the FBI media office, deflected the question. According to WHoWhatWhy, he said:
The FOIA documents that you reference are redacted in
several places pursuant to FOIA and privacy laws that govern the release of
such information so therefore I am unable to help fill in the blanks that you
are seeking. Exemptions are cited in each place where a redaction is made. As
far as the question about the murder plot, I am unable to comment further, but
rest assured if the FBI was aware of credible and specific information
involving a murder plot, law enforcement would have responded with appropriate
action.
Lindorff wants us to note that "the privacy being
'protected' in this instance (by a government that we now know has so little
respect for our privacy) was of someone or some organization that was actively
contemplating violating other people's Constitutional rights-by murdering
them." He says "[t]hat should leave us less than confident about
Bresson's assertion that law enforcement would have responded appropriately to
a 'credible' threat."
When the Houston Police department was asked about its
knowledge of the plot, public affairs officer Keith Smith said it "hadn't
heard about it" and directed future questions to the Houston FBI office.
The obvious question to ask in attempting to determine
the identities of the planners is this: Who has sniper training? A number of
Texas law enforcement organizations received special training from Dallas-based
mercenary company Craft International, which has a contract for training
services with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The company was founded
by a celebrated Army sniper who was killed by a combat veteran he accompanied
to a shooting range.
Remington Alessi, an Occupy Houston activist who
played a prominent role in the protests and hails from a law enforcement
family, agrees with attorney Kennedy that the plot likely did not originate
with a right-wing group. "If it had been that, the FBI would have acted on
it," he said. "I believe the sniper attack was one strategy being
discussed for dealing with the occupation."
The grotesque irony here, Lindoff writes, is that
"while the Occupy Movement was actually peaceful, the FBI, at best, was
simply standing aside while some organization plotted to assassinate the
movement's prominent activists."
Lindorff concludes: "The FBI's stonewalling
response to inquiries about this story, and the agency's evident failure to
take any action regarding a known deadly threat to Occupy protesters in
Houston, will likely make protesters at future demonstrations look differently
at the sniper-rifle equipped law-enforcement personnel often seen on rooftops
during such events. What are they there for? Who are the threats they are
looking for and potentially targeting? Who are they protecting? And are they
using 'suppressed' sniper rifles? Would this indicate they have no plans to
take responsibility for any shots silently fired? Or
that they plan to frame someone else?"
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