Klippenstein writes: "Days after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in
Orlando, FBI Director James Comey said there 'are strong indications of
radicalization by this killer, and a potential inspiration by foreign
terrorist organizations.' Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley disagrees; RSN got
in touch with her to find out why."
Anesha Collins leaves flowers at a cross honoring her friend Shane Evan
Tomlinson and the other victims at a makeshift memorial to those killed at
Pulse. (photo: David Goldman/AP)
FBI Pushing to Label Orlando Shooting 'Terrorism' for Funding, Whistleblower
Says
By Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News
23 June 16
Days after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FBI Director
James Comey said there "are strong indications of radicalization by this
killer, and a potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations."
Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley disagrees; RSN got in touch with her to find
out why.
Rowley made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle and exposed critical
FBI lapses regarding 9/11. (TIME magazine would later name her "Person of
the Year" for 2002.) Rowley also published an open letter to Robert Mueller,
warning him that invading Iraq would lead to an increase in terrorist
attacks. Her warning proved prophetic: as Rowley told me, "terrorism is
increasing-by some accounts it's increased by 6,000%", even as "our own
generals tell us we're radicalizing more people and making more enemies."
The terror attacks mostly occur in foreign countries. Here in the US, the
violence takes a different form: mass shootings. As Rowley pointed out to
me, "There's been nearly 1,000 mass shootings since Sandy Hook.most of those
are employee workplace things, hate crimes like Dylann Roof."
How many of these shootings could be characterized as jihadi terrorism?
"Very few," Rowley says; most of these she calls "senseless shootings" that
were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals lacking any coherent
motive - much less a political one typical of jihadi terror attacks.
Asked why she disagrees with Comey's rhetoric about the Orlando killer's
"radicalization", Rowley doesn't mince words: "When Comey came on and gave
his speech today he said, 'Oh, we're trying to find the motive' - they
didn't say that about the Aurora theater [killing]-these are senseless
shootings and they don't make much sense to normal people with rational
minds."
After the shooting, the media were quick to publicize allegations that the
shooter, Omar Mateen, professed allegiance to jihadi groups. Rowley
dismisses this, explaining, "he said he was Hezbollah but then he says he's
pledging allegiance to ISIS. None of that makes any sense." (Indeed,
Hezbollah and ISIS are hated enemies, suggesting Mateen had no comprehension
of the groups to which he claimed allegiance.) Therefore, Rowley considers
it "simplistic" to classify the Orlando shooting as terrorism.
Yet Mateen's incoherent pronouncements coupled with the overwhelming
frequency of non-jihadi mass shootings in the US evidently did nothing to
stop Comey from using the word "terrorist." Why? As Rowley put it to me, "to
the extent that they turn this into terrorism that's political-for funding."
"Many of the cases, many of these prosecutions are just tangentially related
to terrorism. There's visa frauds and things. They're grasping to try to
make this [about terror]. When they send in their statistics of prosecutions
and they can claim it's related to terrorism their office funding and their
office manpower goes up. I think the Minnesota office [Minnesota has a large
Muslim population] for instance has vastly increased.A lot of pressure on
the office to categorize things as terrorism that normally could fall into
other crimes".
"Certainly [Comey] does have an incentive to call it terrorism."
Setting aside what to label the attack, I asked Rowley what she made of the
fact that the FBI had investigated Mateen but failed to stop him. What might
have went wrong?
"This was the whole rational for vacuuming up trillions of pieces of data:
that it would somehow tell us who the terrorists were so we could prevent
terrorism. That's a colossal failure; it's always been a colossal failure."
She has a point: researchers found the NSA's entire dragnet surveillance
program only led to one single case, in which a cab driver was convicted of
sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Alternatively, a member of
the White House review panel on NSA's bulk collection program said that it
stopped no terror attacks whatsoever.
Far from assisting law enforcement, according to Rowley, in response to
NSA's 'collect-it-all' program, "some FBI agents actually muttered under
their breath, 'They're going on wild goose chases' because this all amounted
to nothing."
"How do you make sense of the data when you have all of this coming in?"
________________________________________
Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on twitter
@kenklippenstein or via email: kenneth.klippenstein@xxxxxxxxx
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Anesha Collins leaves flowers at a cross honoring her friend Shane Evan
Tomlinson and the other victims at a makeshift memorial to those killed at
Pulse. (photo: David Goldman/AP)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
FBI Pushing to Label Orlando Shooting 'Terrorism' for Funding, Whistleblower
Says
By Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News
23 June 16
ays after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FBI Director
James Comey said there "are strong indications of radicalization by this
killer, and a potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations."
Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley disagrees; RSN got in touch with her to find
out why.
Rowley made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle and exposed critical
FBI lapses regarding 9/11. (TIME magazine would later name her "Person of
the Year" for 2002.) Rowley also published an open letter to Robert Mueller,
warning him that invading Iraq would lead to an increase in terrorist
attacks. Her warning proved prophetic: as Rowley told me, "terrorism is
increasing-by some accounts it's increased by 6,000%", even as "our own
generals tell us we're radicalizing more people and making more enemies."
The terror attacks mostly occur in foreign countries. Here in the US, the
violence takes a different form: mass shootings. As Rowley pointed out to
me, "There's been nearly 1,000 mass shootings since Sandy Hook.most of those
are employee workplace things, hate crimes like Dylann Roof."
How many of these shootings could be characterized as jihadi terrorism?
"Very few," Rowley says; most of these she calls "senseless shootings" that
were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals lacking any coherent
motive - much less a political one typical of jihadi terror attacks.
Asked why she disagrees with Comey's rhetoric about the Orlando killer's
"radicalization", Rowley doesn't mince words: "When Comey came on and gave
his speech today he said, 'Oh, we're trying to find the motive' - they
didn't say that about the Aurora theater [killing]-these are senseless
shootings and they don't make much sense to normal people with rational
minds."
After the shooting, the media were quick to publicize allegations that the
shooter, Omar Mateen, professed allegiance to jihadi groups. Rowley
dismisses this, explaining, "he said he was Hezbollah but then he says he's
pledging allegiance to ISIS. None of that makes any sense." (Indeed,
Hezbollah and ISIS are hated enemies, suggesting Mateen had no comprehension
of the groups to which he claimed allegiance.) Therefore, Rowley considers
it "simplistic" to classify the Orlando shooting as terrorism.
Yet Mateen's incoherent pronouncements coupled with the overwhelming
frequency of non-jihadi mass shootings in the US evidently did nothing to
stop Comey from using the word "terrorist." Why? As Rowley put it to me, "to
the extent that they turn this into terrorism that's political-for funding."
"Many of the cases, many of these prosecutions are just tangentially related
to terrorism. There's visa frauds and things. They're grasping to try to
make this [about terror]. When they send in their statistics of prosecutions
and they can claim it's related to terrorism their office funding and their
office manpower goes up. I think the Minnesota office [Minnesota has a large
Muslim population] for instance has vastly increased.A lot of pressure on
the office to categorize things as terrorism that normally could fall into
other crimes".
"Certainly [Comey] does have an incentive to call it terrorism."
Setting aside what to label the attack, I asked Rowley what she made of the
fact that the FBI had investigated Mateen but failed to stop him. What might
have went wrong?
"This was the whole rational for vacuuming up trillions of pieces of data:
that it would somehow tell us who the terrorists were so we could prevent
terrorism. That's a colossal failure; it's always been a colossal failure."
She has a point: researchers found the NSA's entire dragnet surveillance
program only led to one single case, in which a cab driver was convicted of
sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Alternatively, a member of
the White House review panel on NSA's bulk collection program said that it
stopped no terror attacks whatsoever.
Far from assisting law enforcement, according to Rowley, in response to
NSA's 'collect-it-all' program, "some FBI agents actually muttered under
their breath, 'They're going on wild goose chases' because this all amounted
to nothing."
"How do you make sense of the data when you have all of this coming in?"
Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on twitter
@kenklippenstein or via email: kenneth.klippenstein@xxxxxxxxx
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
