1. You have said that anger is necessary for those Americans the FBI has wrongfully designated as "targets of interest."
Answer: Anger privately expressed, yes.
2. Why is this necessary?
Answer: Outrage is an appropriate response to the FBI's violations of fundamental civil liberties and human rights toward law-abiding American citizens. In the absence of that outrage, it's not possible to survive very long as a "target of interest."
3. Why not?
Answer: The FBI's unconstitutional assaults against "targets of interest" are too wide-ranging and aggressive otherwise. The slander and defamation, the deprivation of rights under color of law, the myriad physical assaults, the attempt to destroy all meaningful social contacts -- if "targets" come to understand the full extent of the predation to which they have been subjected, they will, quite understandably, react with some distress.
4. Unfortunately, the FBI is waiting to unlawfully record that reaction and use it against "targets" in the future to falsely claim that they are dangerous or unstable.
Answer: True. The FBI gathers up any emotional response it can document from "targets of interest", and, like the Borg, assimilates it into an arsenal of disinformation. So, I think it's necessary to see the ways in which the FBI tries to rob its "targets" of their right to disapprove, their right to free speech, and, ultimately, their right to view the FBI as a fundamentally corrupt and lawless organization that stands opposed to democracy.
5. And yet, you have said that many FBI agents disagree with the very harms they are perpetrating.
Answer: Yes, that's true. It's necessary to recognize that the FBI is a deeply divided organization, as I will restate at the end of this dialogue. Many FBI agents lament the predations in which they are asked to engage by FBI leadership.
6. How much does the regret of predators matter?
Answer: That's a question for a court process, frankly. Stanley Milgram said that only behavior mattered when it came to systematic programs of harm. He was interested in the strength of character that allowed good people to say no to the dictates of unjust authority.
7. Unfortunately, he came to the conclusion that most people do not possess sufficient strength of character to say no.
Answer: Exactly so. The reaction of the vast majority of people, when faced with an unjust and powerful authority such as that represented by the current FBI leadership, is to keep their heads down. They are horrified by the actions and directives of far right FBI agents, but they don't want to be targeted next. And on the basis of that fear, they comply with unlawful directives to cause harm.
8. But it's important to state that the FBI also compensates witnesses and informants to cooperate with a corrupt agenda.
Answer: The agency does engage in that crime, and primarily through Infragard.
9. And this represents a Fascist social architecture, in which dictators compensate others to support a select few.
Answer: An unelected few, it must be said.
10. Do you fault Christopher Wray for these abuses of the Constitution?
Answer: I will simply say that the most dangerous predators are those who can convince the public of their benevolence, while actually perpetrating an agenda that unmakes citizens' access to their rights. When the USA gymnasts testified before Congress about the FBI agents who falsified their victim statements, Christopher Wray responded by saying that the reprehensible failures of Agents Langeman and Abbott did not represent the 36,000 employees of the FBI.
11. Do you have a copy of his public remarks?
Answer: I do. And I quote:
I'm deeply and profoundly sorry to each and every one of you. I'm sorry for what you and your families have been through. I'm sorry so many people let you down over and over again. And I'm especially sorry there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed, and that is inexcusable. It never should have happened and we're doing everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.
12. Is it your belief that Christopher Wray's words belie the manner in which the FBI is routinely falsifying victim statements within the agency?
Answer: Yes, it is. FBI Director Christopher Wray has chosen to conceal from our Commander-in-Chief, the Congress, and the American public the FBI's engagement in falsified law enforcement reporting for anti-democratic objectives.
13. Why has he made that choice, in your view?
Answer: It is necessary to understand that the "target of interest" program, and programs affiliated with it, draw many billions of dollars to the FBI, other three-letter agencies, and their contractors, in Congressional budget appropriations every year. And these programs are growing from one budget cycle to the next. Together with those budgets comes the tacit permission for the FBI to surveil, harass and harm increasing numbers of American citizens, many of them entirely law-abiding.
14. What is the FBI's objective?
Answer: The objective, ultimately, is to surveil everyone, and from that privileged position, to extend social and economic control to the American public in its entirety. Surveillance technology has developed to the point that not only calls and text messages are documented, but everyday conversations within one's own home are recorded, often. (The fact that the FBI engages in slicing and dicing these dialogues to create conversations that never occurred is another matter altogether.). For now, it is sufficient to focus on the fact that the privacy violations committed by the FBI and its contractors are unconstitutional.
15. But to get back to your point about the FBI's falsified victim statements, what's going on here?
Answer: Basically, the FBI is pushing to aggregate names of "targets of interest" in order to justify increasing budgets. Agents are instructed to undermine the credibility of victims by suggesting that they are psychologically unstable and perhaps even predatory. Once that falsified reporting occurs, the FBI is justifying surveillance of these people on the basis of lies.
16. So the FBI is re-victimizing those who have trustingly turned to the agency for help?
Answer: Yes, it is. And this becomes the easiest way for the agency to keep "target of interest" lists growing while funding this totalitarian invasion into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens. Victims come to the FBI. The agency doesn't have to go out searching for them. They are easy prey for this particular scheme.
17. But you believe that there may be a political agenda concealed within the "target of interest" program as well. Isn't that right?
Answer: I have been told that the "target of interest" program disproportionately harms Democrats, journalists, women and people of color within the United States. It seems that there is a definitive political agenda present within a far right initiative such as this one.
18. And that agenda is?
Answer: That agenda is anti-democratic and it is anti-Democratic Party, both. We're seeing signs that the intelligence agencies are withholding information from the January 6 Committee in not supplying the missing texts from Secret Service agents, Capitol Police, DHS, DOD and others to Congress.
19. Does the NSA possess that material?
Answer: The NSA most certainly does. And it is an outrage that the national security agencies possess this information while it is being actively withheld from the January 6 Committee and the American people.
20. Does this call to mind the FBI's handling of your Freedom of Information Act request?
Answer: Most certainly. The FBI needs to be reminded that its vows to the Constitution are enforceable, urgent, and necessary to the mission of its personnel.
21. What evidence do you require to call for that accountability from the FBI?
Answer: Materials responsive to my FOIA request without omission or redaction.
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At the end of my posts regarding the unlawful actions of far-right personnel within the FBI, I will be adding the following statement. The FBI is a deeply divided agency. There are many FBI employees who view their vows to the Constitution with the utmost seriousness and honor, and who strive to defend the fundamentals of our democracy with courage, fortitude and commitment. The fact that some segments of the FBI appear to have embraced a lawless course is not a justification to assail the FBI in general. The safety of FBI agents should be protected, just as the safety of the American citizenry should be protected. As President Joseph R. Biden has so rightly expressed, violence is never justified in any circumstance. The rule of law must always be honored and upheld. It is our shared determination to preserve the civil liberties and human rights of ALL AMERICANS that renders the United States a democracy. We must never abandon this promise. All of our most cherished freedoms depend upon it.
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