Holder's FBI harrassing Manning's friend's friends on the West Coast.

[EFerrari]

from Greg Mitchell's blog:

8:25 David House, Bradley Manning's friend who has visited him often in prison, tweets today @lockean: "FBI sent two thugs to interrogate a West Coast friend at his place of work last Tuesday. The interrogation ended when my friend, who is not involved in computers or activism, repeatedly refused to sign a Non-disclosure Agreement. He was held for 4 hours after the interrogation, and was only released after repeatedly banging on the interrogation room's door. He took notes of the encounter and began drafting a blogpost on the back of a scrap of magazine paper during his four-hour detention...and was forced to surrender this piece of paper before being allowed to leave the facility.

"He related that the FBI agents were interested in what he knew about me, my beliefs, and my lifestyle. No questions were asked about Manning. FBI, stop the hamfisted attempts to make informants of my friends. This is the second in two weeks that has come to me, fuming."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/159651/wikileaks-news-views-blog-special-weekend-edition#node-159651

Let this be a lesson to anyone who has friends of friends. :patriot:

[Scuba]

1. Eric Holder is a disgrace...

Bradley Manning....

Busting medical marijuana growers...


Ignoring Wall Street crimes....




A disgrace.

[EFerrari]

2. And don't forget raiding the homes of anti-war activists in multiple states.

[Scuba]

5. Thank you. That point should NOT be overlooked! n/t

[readmoreoften]

22. I recall you and I discussing the disgrace that is Eric Holder before the 2008 elections.

Surprise, surprise, right? I wish people would wake the hell up.

[EFerrari]

23. Yeah, he was defending Chiquita against the claims of

the families of death squad victims.

Guess what? Colombia is heading up the Security Council at the moment. Awesome, isn't it?

[sabrina 1]

26. And the refusal to investigate the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

Protecting Rove from exposure as a criminal operative.

[BeFree]

3. Empire is threatened

Empire is deathly afraid of Manning-like subjects.

Their secrets revealed can destroy the Empire.

[Bluebear]

28. TOTALLY

[Gregorian]

4. War is a racket.

You can start an illegal war that kills a million people and pollutes the land with depleted Uranium, but don't dare try to expose the truth.

The corporations are angry. How dare we interfere.

[SDuderstadt]

6. Holder does not run the FBI...

and had nothing to do with Mueller being appointed Director of the FBI.

[Demit]

7. Yes, where in G Mitchell's story does he put Holder in charge of the FBI?

It's irritating to read posts that convey misinformation on DU. Please know your facts before you editorialize!

[EFerrari]

8. Is the FBI no longer in the Justice Department?

[SDuderstadt]

9. Did Holder appoint Mueller?

Hint: No.

[BeFree]

11. They do have a point, EF

That point is that it is Obama's FBI that is harassing citizens.

Will they pass the buck? Or will they hold Obama responsible?

[EFerrari]

12. My bad. n/t

[BeFree]

14. Obama will take your guns

So they say. Will he or won't he?

If they can harass your friends and get a pass, it does make ya wonder, eh?

[EFerrari]

16. Well, it would have to be my glue gun or my cookie gun.

But at least we know that in these strapped times, FBI has the resources to harass people from coast to coast to intimidate Brad Manning's sole visitor besides his lawyer.

[BeFree]

18. Cookie gun?

Well, sis, the day that your cookie gun becomes a threat to empire, they may have to pry it from your dead cold hands?

[CanonRay]

10. Considering he followed John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez

arguably two of the worst AG's in history (move over John Mitchell), he STILL looks like shit. Bobby Kennedy must be turning over in his grave.

[EFerrari]

13. It was pretty appalling to hear him speculate out loud

that he could find a crime to charge Assange with.

[G_j]

15. +1000

[WillyT]

17. K & R !!!

:kick:

[defendandprotect]

19. Holder's FBI is so unsounding a lot like Hoover's FBI ... !!

[starroute]

20. So maybe Mueller is blackmailing everybody in DC like Hoover did

I think I'm joking about that -- or maybe not. There have been a lot of strange lapses at the FBI during Mueller's tenure (starting with the anthrax attacks), and Mueller himself previously had some sort of association with the bCCI coverup.

There are certainly more questions than answers here, but the names I saw floated for Mueller's successor don't inspire confidence either.

For that matter, neither does the seemingly permanent failure to upgrade the FBI's computers. That billion-dollar boondoggle has been dragging on for close to a decade without doing anything more than line SAIC's and Lockheed Martin's pockets.

I don't know if they're actually trying to hide stuff or just being corrupt and incompetent -- but if you did want to keep the lid on something explosive, the FBI would be a great place to start.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701485.html

August 18, 2006

As far as Zalmai Azmi was concerned, the FBI's technological revolution was only weeks away.

It was late 2003, and a contractor, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), had spent months writing 730,000 lines of computer code for the Virtual Case File (VCF), a networked system for tracking criminal cases that was designed to replace the bureau's antiquated paper files and, finally, shove J. Edgar Hoover's FBI into the 21st century.

It appeared to work beautifully. Until Azmi, now the FBI's technology chief, asked about the error rate.

Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds, Azmi recalled in an interview. The problems were multiplying as engineers continued to run tests. Scores of basic functions had yet to be analyzed.


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060315/0232250.shtml

Mar 15th 2006

It's been nearly two years since the FBI admitted that the new computer system they'd spent hundreds of millions of dollars and three years building wasn't just late and over-budget, but also useless at fighting terrorism. Of course, like any good bureaucracy, the FBI then sat around for seven months before deciding that maybe it should scrap the system and start again from scratch. Sounds like a plan, right? Well, it's been well over a year since then, and the FBI has just now gotten around to picking a vendor for the new system, while admitting that this time, it should cost about $500 million and take another four years to fully implement.


http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-20/fbi-computer-system-behind-schedule-over-budget.html

October 20, 2010

A new FBI computer system for managing cases is $100 million over budget and two years behind schedule, according to a report by the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general.

As of August, after spending about $405 million of the $451 million budgeted for the program, only two of the four phases of the project had been completed, according to the report released today.

The case management system, called Sentinel, hasn’t delivered much of what was intended, though it has provided some improvements, according to the report. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assuming direct management of Sentinel, reducing the role of contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Because the FBI has not finished the third and fourth phases of Sentinel, FBI agents and analysts do not have the planned expanded capabilities to search the FBI’s case files,” according to the report. “Nor can they use Sentinel to manage evidence, as originally intended.”

[CanonRay]

21. Sounds more like Khrushchev's KGB

[Ramulux]

24. Lets hear the excuses

According to many on this site, everything that has happened in regards to Bradley Manning has been perfectly legitimate, so how does this make sense?

Is this really where we have come to as democrats where we support an attorney general who sends out FBI goons to harass and detain friends of friends of possible criminals? Bradley manning hasn't been convicted or tried of anything, David House has done nothing but visit Manning and write about what Manning tells him, this guy on the west coast has nothing to do with anything, yet the FBI thinks they can intimidate him into slandering David House.

Our government is a fucking joke and Obama is aware of all this and doesn't give a shit. I am so sick of hearing apologists bending over backwards to defend everything this administration has done, especially when we hear about inexcusable things like this.

[sabrina 1]

25. And we criticize the tactics of the old Soviet Union.

I remember someone who used to be part of the Soviet Union being on TV here stating that the only difference between them and us is that most Russians knew what was going on, whereas here people believe they are free.

[autorank]

27. k*r Good Gawd!

Thanks Liz, what a bunch of goof balls. Doesn't it occur to at least one of them to just say, "Fuck it, I'm not doing this." Really, really bad.

[Mnemosyne]

29. K&R for more visibility and disgust. n/t