Editorial Note – Hollywood thrillers often comprised of witness protection programs, Congressional hearings, dead bodies, missing weapons, trafficking in RPG’s and grenades, money laundering, corrupt attorneys and nefarious relationships, fires, lies under oath. They make the old Perry Mason television shows look like child’s play when it comes to Fast and Furious. Whistleblowers do the right thing and all they get are threats of death and career destruction, harassment, and much more. Justice and truth have a new definition in the Department of Justice and body counts continue to climb.
The ‘thin blue line’ now separates not only the public from the criminals, but now, its the line between fellow judicial employees.
Retaliation has always been a problem when doing the right thing, but when you have an agency that no longer operates under the rule-of-law, its the rule-of-man that is in control. When these people pick and choose which laws to enforce, or make them up as they go along, or worse; allegedly commit the crimes themselves, is it surprising retaliation occurs. The current Department of Justice under Eric Holder is an embarrassing example of the later. This is what they call Homeland Security? Read the following two articles on just what that means:
Dangerous and deadly-ATF retaliates
Anthony Martin, Conservative Examiner
In response to whistleblowers and reporters who have revealed significant corruption within the agency, the ATF has apparently undertaken a systematic effort to retaliate against anyone who has shone the light on the agency’s illegal activity, particularly with regard to Operation Fast and Furious, also known as Project Gunwalker. Within the last 24 hours information has come to light indicating a dangerous and deadly pattern on the part of ATF supervisors to punish agents who talk and to intimidate reporters who put the pressure on Congress to reign in an agency that is obviously out of control.
According to veteran ATF agents who post at the site CleanUpATF.org, agency supervisors have retaliated against whistleblower agents in a variety of ways. First, supervisors have made it clear that their goal is to fire such agents. Working under such a threat is in itself a heavy load to bear. Second, supervisors have attempted to frame whistleblower agents for crimes they did not commit. And third, supervisors have refused to grant added protection to whistleblowers whose cover was blown once they went public, leaving them vulnerable to death threats and actions aimed at killing them and their families.
One whistleblower, Peter Forcelli, had to be reassigned to protect him from retaliation by the Phoenix field office once he testified before Congress. John Dodson, the agent who became the face of the whistleblowers due to his now-infamous interviews on CBS and Fox News, has suffered having his name dragged through the mud, along with various and sundry other actions to make him pay for his ‘crime’ of going public.
And then, there is the case of agent Jay Dobyns, a decorated 25-year veteran of the ATF who was singularly responsible for infiltrating and exposing criminal activity associated with the gang ‘Hell’s Angels.’ Dobyns was one of the agents who spoke out about the corruption within the ATF.
At the conclusion of Dobyns’ undercover work in 2008, he began receiving credible death threats associated with his work in putting behind bars the most notorious of the Hell’s Angels. It so happened that Dobyns worked out of the Phoenix field division office, and his immediate supervisors were William Newell, George Gillett, and William McMahon, all of whom have been identified as the alleged key perpetrators of the Fast and Furious scheme.
Dobyns took all of the threats directly to Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell, who proceeded to do absolutely nothing. All of the threats aimed directly at Dobyns and his family were ignored by the supervisory team in Phoenix.
Then, Dobyns’ house was set on fire at 3 A.M. while his wife, son, and daughter were asleep inside. There was strong evidence that members of the Hell’s Angels were responsible, but once again, Newell refused to investigate. Instead, Newell allowed at least one member of his supervisory team, along with other agents in the Phoenix office, to attempt to frame Dobyns himself for the fire.
According to a report filed by Katie Pavlich on October 21, 2011, Newell and others in the Phoenix office ‘conspired to destroy and fabricate evidence’ in order to ‘prove’ that Agent Dobyns had set his own house on fire with his entire family inside.
Further, Pavlich asserts that the attempt to destroy Agent Dobyns was a ‘test run’ for William Newell who was already anticipating the lengths to which he would have to go in order to perpetrate and then cover up the Gunwalker scheme.
The dangerous and deadly scheming of ATF supervisors against agents who dare tell the truth has spilled over to include reporters. Yesterday Mike Vanderboegh reported this intriguing piece of information concerning a suspicious series of events that happened to him.
Although there is no proof as of yet, this stunt has ‘federal agents’ written all over it.
Behind the Scenes, the Cover-up Games Continue.
“If they can’t kill you. . . they’ll make you crazy.” Keep the whistleblowers in your prayers.
A week ago Friday, I decided to have some new business cards made up at Staples. Dropping off the image, I was told that they would be ready Saturday morning. So, after I left the AGCA gun show early to visit with my daughter Zoe before she returned to college, about mid-day on the way home I stopped by to pick them up.
I observed to the counter guy that it looked like the whole order wasn’t there. He told me that someone had asked to see the order earlier representing himself as my “business partner” and had taken a few, saying that I wouldn’t mind.
Uh, huh. Of course, I have no business partner and no one knew that I had ordered the cards but me and Staples. The description of the “guy in a suit and sunglasses” was sufficiently vague and I had to get going to see my daughter off so I didn’t immediately demand to see the manager and the surveillance tapes. In retrospect, David Codrea, among others, has beat me up about this and he and they are probably right.
In any case, there are a couple of explanations for this latest nudge of the elbow from the secret police, one more innocent than the other. The least threatening one is that some gestapoman either got bored enough (or was told) to “count coup” on me to rattle my cage. The other is that they were looking for “evidence” to plant somewhere later on somebody — at a crime scene or on a dead criminal for example.
Paranoia comes easy when you have real and powerful enemies, but I learned in the 90s that you can’t succumb to it for if you do they have won already. It is in the enemies’ interest to make the opposition paranoid. I know, I do it myself back at them. Just ask Ramsey A. Bear. All’s fair on the cold war battlefield we play on.
So, the only immediate countermeasure I took was to tell some trusted friends about it. All of them took me to task, especially David, for missed opportunities to turn it around, and I will be exploring some possibilities of that today with Staples and the local police. It was David who insisted last week that I write about it, however, and thus I am doing so now.
I suppose I am guilty of nonchalance with stuff like this. After all, it has been happening to me off and one since the 90s. I no longer watch for multi-car tails — that sort of thing is so 20th Century — and always assume everything about me is known to the servants of the Federal Leviathan. That way you just don’t have to worry about it and you can have much more fun than they do.
(I actually can’t wait for the next administration to get here so I can get a real FOIA document dump on me so I can check my entire multi-agency Stasi file. It should be very instructive.)
However, there is no doubt that this kind of crap has an effect on people unused to being on the receiving end, especially many of my sources and especially the whistleblowers. Folks will call me, and immediately get a ring-back from “Restricted Number” after they hang up, usually with a female voice asking pardon for a wrong number. Black bag jobs on homes and businesses with no alarms going off and video surveillance mysteriously interrupted or missing are commonplace, often with something taken or a familiar object placed in some manner that cannot be accidental, just to let the victim know that they were there.
The Lone Wold Trading Company, for example, according to federal sources familiar with the incident, was broken into and 30 firearms were taken without the alarm being tripped. ATF supervisor Hope MacAllister later told owner Andre Howard, according to those same federal sources, that the ever vigilant ATF video surveillance system didn’t recover the images of the intruders because the system was, she claimed, turned off at the end of the business day and restarted every morning. “Howard didn’t believe it,” said one source, “and he shouldn’t. None of the thirty firearms stolen that night have ever been traced in the system.” They just . . . disappeared.
The ATF whistleblowers, to a man, are under constant pressure from their supervisors and some, but not all, of their fellow agents. This has effects on their lives, their relationships, their health — all of which it is designed to do by the Gunwalker plotters. “If they can’t kill you,” said one federal source, “they’ll make you crazy. And if they can’t make you crazy, they’ll make your life a living hell.”
Think of this, too. Y’all think that this has been going on far too long already, with the ten months since the death of Brian Terry and the first report of the whistleblowers. Well, the whistleblowers like John Dodson, had been fighting in that trench for almost a year before YOU ever heard about it. And they are fighting there still, largely alone, isolated, subject to all the fears that you would have about safety, family, economic security, etc.
Keep them in your prayers, folks. And don’t forget to write your Congresscritters to demand something better for them while they wait, still twisting in the wind, for them to call the Gunwalker plotters to the bar of justice. For only then can they get on with their lives after having done a great service for their country.
