Good stuff.
FBI’s Ideas on How to Mess with…the FBI
Another one of those fun little “sensitive” FBI docs that spill out stuff you suspect, but don’t quite know. This time it involves the so-called sovereign citizen movement.
To be clear, these folks are nuttier than a sack of Almond Joys and essentially reduce to debt refuseniks, but they seem to trouble the feds and the courts, so there’s that.
Here’s how the FBI describes some of their tactics:
5. IRS-8300
…IRS-8300 forms may be utilized by sovereign citizens attempting to damage the credit or financial history of a specific individual.
The IRS-8300 form is used to report cash payments over $10,000.00 received in a trade or business transaction. This form is required when a business receives a payment in excess of $10,000.00 from a single buyer as a result of a single transaction or if two or more related transactions exceed $10,000.00. Fraudulent submission of the form by a sovereign citizen can result in an artificial increase in the taxable income of the target being reported to the IRS.
6. CURRENCY TRANSACTION REPORTS (CTR)
Currency Transaction Reports (CTR) are legitimately used by US financial institutions to report currency transactions in excess of $10,000.00 as part of an effort to combat money laundering. Sovereign citizens may improperly use FinCEN Form 104 to report a target is engaged in structuring to trigger an investigation.
7. SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORT (SAR)
Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) are legitimately used by banks and other financial institutions to report known or suspected violations of law and banking regulations. Sovereign citizens may submit fraudulent SAR filings as part of their targeting schemes.
SAR and CTR paper reports may be downloaded by anyone from the FinCEN Web site. Paper copies may be mailed to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) computing center where they are entered into the FinCEN database. There is very little oversight to determine the legitimacy of paper SARs or CTRs. Sovereign citizens may use SARs in an illegitimate manner to generate a criminal investigation of the target by the IRS or law enforcement. …
I doubt most work-a-day citizens have a clue these sorts of willy-nilly federal investigative instruments exist, so there is some delicious irony in thinking they have been turned against their creators. Karma is a bitch.
TERROR FACTORY: Inside The FBI’s Manufactured War On Terrorism
Understand that when the FBI placed informants inside organized crime in the 1980s, there was actual crime happening without them. Sometimes the feds wound up protecting hitmen and really bad guys, but the really bad guys were not creations of the FBI. The parallel now would be a FBI asset walking into a Italian restaurant and talking the owner into housing a bookie operation, maybe launder for the local call girl ring too.
Howie Kurtz Goes Wobbly
His smoochy piece on Jill Kelley answers absolutely no outstanding questions about the Petraeus-Broadwell scandal. And that seems by design.
Occam’s Razor, Jill Kelley, and Agent Humphries
Let’s cut to the chase: Was Jill Kelley a counter-terrorism informant for FBI agent Fred Humphries?
An awful lot of smart people are tying themselves up in knots trying to explain what went on down in Tampa that led to the FBI reading the email of the CIA director. And, yes, it is always worth noting that the FBI — over the course of the past decade — has pretty much been handed carte blanche to investigate anything, anywhere. But that still does not quite close the circle. Not given the facts we have be given thus far.
For one Humphries is not just a garden variety FBI agent. He does counter terror work. He was brought to Tampa from Gitmo to do CT work. Tampa is a busy port, and home to both Central Command and Special Operations Command. All three are potential targets and sources of constant movement of people and material in and out of the country.
Several reports have placed Kelley close not just to CentCom and MacDill, but to the foreign military assets coming and going at the base. Specifically, the attractive Lebanese Catholic was described as being an ambassador of sorts to visiting Middle Eastern delegations, even to the point of hosting them in her home.
Humphries and his wife moved in the same CentCom social circle, meeting the Kelleys in the process. It is simply inconceivable that the potential for informal intelligence gathering in this milieu would not have occurred to Humphries, a former Army G2 captain and veteran terrorist hunter.
Of course, the great unknown is if he acted on this situation and if Kelley ever supplied Humphries with accounts of her conversations with foreign military elements. All we can go by at the moment is how Humphries reacted when Kelley told him that someone — unknown to her — was harassing her about her activities around CentCom and MacDill.
The agent reacted like he had something to protect and set about trying to ID the source of the emails. There are three possible reasons for this reaction:
- He would do the same for any friend.
- He was concerned that his informal and unauthorized use of Kelley as CT source would be — or had been — disclosed.
- Kelley was an “official” FBI CT asset who possibly had been compromised by persons unknown.
For further context, recall the case of FBI CT agent Robert Lustyik. We brought his case to your attention a little over a month ago as an example of how the FBI and the national security state really operate. (Which explains why the government attempted to suppress and seal the details of the case.)
For some number of months starting in 2011, Lustyik managed to sidetrack and deflect a federal criminal prosecution half-way across the country by claiming its target was a valued CT asset. This actually happened. Or at least the federal obstruction charges lodged against Lustyik claim it did.
The takeaway for our purposes here is that when a CT asset is involved, things happen. Quietly. The potential CT angle then explains why it is a fool’s errand to attempt to gauge the extent of the “threats” made by Paula Broadwell’s emails to Kelley. A criminal cyberstalking case requires threats. In the murky world of counter intel and CT mere knowledge is the offense.
Notice how we are being fed the totally absurd claim that Broadwell’s knowledge of David Petraeus’ comings and goings constituted some sort of grave security threat. I think this is a classic misdirect.
I believe that if Kelley did serve as an FBI CT asset in some capacity, it was Broadwell’s knowledge of Kelley’s comings and goings in Tampa’s military circles which set off alarm bells with Agent Humphries and the Bureau.
There is still a great deal left unknown about this case — precisely why Humphries was cut out from the case, why he went to Congress. The tin foil hat brigade is busy trying to backfill those holes with their pathologies while ascribing various motivations to both Kelley and Broadwell.
All that can be certain on that latter topic is that when Reuters is serving up such empty yet convenient fare as “[Kelley] may have been seen as a rival by Broadwell, who sent Kelley a series of anonymous, harassing e-mails,” the truth has yet to come out.
FBI's Assessment of Bitcoin
Semi-secret FBI report on the virtual money ecosystem Bitcoin. The feds are clearly worried about leakage from “real” money exchange systems.
