The FBI Kills a Boston Bombing Witness

RINF (Audio)
Via This Can’t Be Happening
by  Dave Lindorff

Just after midnight on May 22, 2013, after 4 and a half hours of interrogation, and shortly after a potential witness was ordered from the scene by a second FBI agent, the FBI agent investigating a critical witness in the Boston Marathon bombing case shot and killed Ibragim Todashev in his own apartment in Orlando, Florida.

The agent fired three bullets into Todashev’s back, apparently as he was trying to flee a brutal interview, and then, when he turned, possibly to surrender, he was shot in the arm and the heart, and hit with a coup de gras into the top of the head. Host Dave Lindorff reports on this story of an apparent FBI rub-out, and guest Elena Teyer, Todashev’s mother-in-law, offers her theory on why the Bureau may have arranged this killing.

Shep Smith And Judge Napolitano Eviscerate Obama's 'Reprehensible' Drone Strike Policy

XRepuplic TV



Less than 24 hours after Senator Rand Paul's filibuster of John Brennan's appointment to the CIA over to White House's policy on droning American citizens, Judge Napolitano and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith railed against the controversial policy saying that even the discussion of its legality was "the craziest thing in the world."

Shortly after speaking with a Fox News reporter on Capitol Hill, Smith brought Napolitano, a Fox News libertarian contributor, onto his show to get his take on the president's drone policy. Napolitano explained to Smith that this fight began when the Bob Mueller, the head of the FBI couldn't explain if an American could be killed by a drone on American soil. Mueller said that they should "ask the White House" according to Napolitano.

Napolitano proceeded to walk Smith through the mixed messages administration officials provided on the question of whether or not the president has the authority to kill Americans on American soil without trial, specifically with a drone.

"There's many a slip between the cup and the lip," the judge said explaining the confusing response on this.

Smith suggested that all the confusion on what the actual official drone policy is has created a ripe breeding ground for conspiracy theorists to charge the administration with all kinds of things. He then went on to trash the growing surveillance culture in America.

"It's bad enough that they're putting the things up watching us. It's bad enough they have cameras on every corner, and stopping us, you know, if your car runs a redlight. Now all we're sure of is if I'm engaged in combat -- unless I am -- they can't kill me while I am sitting at the cafe down the street. I'm not sure they can't look in my window," Smith said.

The judge then explained the case of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year-old that were both American citizens and killed by drones without any trial. Smith expressed outrage over an incident where former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs was pressed on this at the 2012 presidential debates he said that al-Awlaki should have had a more responsible father.

"It's reprehensible," said Napolitano.

"Now you understand why this question came about. If a government thinks it can do this and speak glibly about it and they can do it because he was in Yemen, can they do it he is in Greenwich Village.

Smith noted it's a slippery slope and said "If we have to ask this question even then we've gone so far beyond what that document has to say then we really need some mirror work."

Related: Nobel Committee Asks Obama “Nicely” To Return Peace Prize

Thousands of military drones to be deployed over US mainland

World Socialist Website
by Tom Carter

A recent Department of Defense report to Congress as well as a number of media investigations have exposed government plans to deploy tens of thousands of drones over the US mainland in the coming years.

An investigative report published over the weekend by the Christian Science Monitor cited the government’s own estimates that “as many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in the United States within the next ten years.”

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as “drones,” are extremely sophisticated remotely-operated aircraft, developed and manufactured by the military-industrial complex in recent years at a cost of billions of dollars.

Drones vary in size from the four-pound RQ-11B Raven surveillance drone, which can be launched by hand, to the giant MQ-9 Reaper combat drone, manufactured by Northrup Grumman. The Reaper has a maximum take-off weight of 7,000 pounds, including up to 3,000 pounds of bombs, missiles and other armaments. The infamous MQ-1 Predator drone, armed with 100-pound Hellfire missiles, is the Obama administration’s favored weapon in its illegal assassination program. A Predator drone was used in the unprecedented assassination of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen last September.

With a push of a button, thousands of pounds of high explosives can be dropped on anyone, anywhere in the world, with startling precision. Safe behind video screens at military bases within the US, military drone operators refer to their victims as “bug splats.” Thousands of innocent civilians have already been murdered in this way in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

An April Department of Defense report, titled “Future Unmanned Aircraft Systems Training, Operations, and Sustainability,” reveals that a massive drone infrastructure is already being erected within the US, with billions of dollars being allocated, bases being erected, thousands of pilots and crews being trained, and inventories being stockpiled.

The report identifies 110 military bases that will serve as drone launch sites. The deadly Predator and Reaper drones will operate out of Creech Air Force Base (AFB) in Nevada, Holloman AFB and Cannon AFB in New Mexico, Fort Drum in New York, Grand Forks in North Dakota, Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota, Whiteman AFB in Missouri, and the Southern California Logistics Airport, among others.

The accompanying map, from an Air Force power-point presentation released this month, shows current and projected locations for drone bases within the US.

The Department of Defense report argues for lifting the current framework of restrictions on drone flights over the US on the grounds that it “does not provide the level of airspace access necessary to accomplish the wide range of DoD UAS missions at current and projected operational tempos (OPTEMPOs).”

The language of the report is revealing and ominous. “This constraint will only be exacerbated as combat operations shift from abroad and systems return to US locations,” the report states. It expressly refers to plans to “conduct continental United States (CONUS)-based missions.”

In January, Congress passed HR 658, which requires the Federal Aviation Administration to take steps to facilitate the integration of drones “into the national airspace system.” President Obama signed the bill on February 14 with no public discussion or comment. (See “Drones come to the US”)

Since Obama signed the bill, hundreds of drones have already begun flying over the US to spy on and monitor the population. A recent ABC News investigative report entitled “UAVs: Will Our Civil Liberties Be Droned Out?” outlined the possibility of drones buzzing overhead becoming “a fact of daily life.”

ABC News reported: “Drones can carry facial recognition cameras, license plate scanners, thermal imaging cameras, open WiFi sniffers, and other sensors. And they can be armed.”

“Among the most eager to fly domestic drones are America’s police departments,” the report stated. “In Texas, a Montgomery county sheriff’s office recently said it would deploy a drone bought with money from a Department of Homeland Security grant and was contemplating arming the drone with non-lethal weapons like tear gas, rubber bullets or Taser-style rounds.”

The ABC News report identified “political protests” as one of the activities that can be monitored by drones. In December, the American Civil Liberties Union published a detailed report on the dangers of a massive build-up of surveillance drones within the US, warning that “our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values.”

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, described last month a “nightmare scenario” of widespread drone spying leading “to an oppressive atmosphere where people learn to think twice about everything they do, knowing that it will be recorded, charted, scrutinized by increasingly intelligent computers, and possibly used to target them.”

According to a Los Angeles Times article in December of last year, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) are already using Predator drones for operations within the US. Last week, a huge Global Hawk drone being operated by the US Navy for an unknown purpose crashed in Maryland.

The deployment of tens of thousands of surveillance drones over the mainland US takes on special significance in light of recent revelations that the Obama administration is secretly constructing “bottomless” databases to house information gathered about US citizens. (See “Obama administration expands illegal surveillance of Americans”)

The build-up of drone bases within the US is one component of preparations by the US government for a confrontation with its own population. Like everything else associated with the so-called “war on terror”—including torture, detention without trial, warrantless spying, assassinations, military tribunals, and expanded executive and intelligence powers—the use of drones for spying and assassination in the Middle East is a prelude to the development of systems that will ultimately be used against the American people in the event of social upheavals.

On “Terror Tuesdays” at the White House, President Obama helps draw up a list of opponents of US policy overseas who are to be illegally assassinated by drone-fired missiles. These “kill lists” have already included US citizens. With tens of thousands of drones flying overhead, and with the US mainland designated as a “battleground” in the never-ending and geographically unlimited “war on terror,” the US ruling class hopes one day soon to be able to eliminate its domestic opponents with similar ease.