10/29 Update: Who's that girl?



"Call her the Mata Hari of cyberspace," Shaun Waterman reported in his July 18, 2010 Washington Times article "Fictitious femme fatale fooled cybersecurity."

"Robin Sage, according to her profiles on Facebook and other social-networking websites, was an attractive, flirtatious 25-year-old woman working as a 'cyber threat analyst' at the U.S. Navy's Network Warfare Command. Within less than a month, she amassed nearly 300 social-network connections among security specialists, military personnel and staff at intelligence agencies and defense contractors.

A handful of pictures on her Facebook page included one of her at a party posing in thigh-high knee socks and a skull-and-crossbones bikini captioned, 'doing what I do best.'

'Sorry to say, I’m not a Green Beret! Just a cute girl stopping by to say hey!' she rhymingly proclaimed on her Twitter page, concluding, 'My life is about info sec [information security] all the way!'

And so it apparently was. She was an avid user of LinkedIn - a social-networking site for professionals sometimes described as “Facebook for grown-ups.” Her connections on it included men working for the nation’s most senior military officer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for one of the most secret government agencies of all, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds, launches and runs U.S. spy satellites. Others included a senior intelligence official in the U.S. Marine Corps, the chief of staff for a U.S. congressman, and several senior executives at defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. Almost all were seasoned security professionals.

But Robin Sage did not exist.

Her profile was a ruse set up by security consultant Thomas Ryan as part of an effort to expose weaknesses in the nation’s defense and intelligence communities - what Mr. Ryan calls 'an independent ‘red team’ exercise'."

How come the real Robin Sage doesn't follow Provide Security's Tom Ryan on Twitter or Facebook?



Highlights [or high lowlights] from Old ReaperSec log /w Tom Ryan Lulz Nov 2011, posted on pastebin by former or still-current Project Vigilant "volunteer"/"hypertroll" Neal Rauhauser:

"Nov 21 20:46 wanna see Robin Sage's tits?
Nov 21 21:01 Only drug I have ever done was Ecstacy when going to raves
Nov 21 21:03 X is the shit !! A Few lady Gs , hot russian girls, some Deadmau5 or Armin Van Buuren
Nov 21 21:03 end up in numerous 3somes and 4somes
Nov 30 22:22 chif I feel like I need some drugs of somesort
Nov 30 22:24 we need them at a BlackHat Party

Nov 30 22:27 I hate the crash of MDMA
Nov 30 22:28 sleep 14 hours
Nov 30 22:28 I ended up in several 3somes and 4somes on MDMA
Nov 30 22:30 it's weird cause it takes like an hour to blow your load
Nov 30 22:31 One year at the DEFCON CDC Ninja Strike Force party they had nude hookers going around and these geeks paid them $20 to eat out hookers
Nov 30 22:32 I almost puked"

Developing...

10/28 Update: Has Fawkes Security Facebook administrator Jodie Rushforth been identified or is it just a woman that they took photos from? Or another Fawkes Security hoax?

Someone left a comment to a pastebin dox that contains a name, date of birth etc. but I'm not publishing it or linking to it. And the avatar for the account matches a photo from Rushforth's Facebook page, which has been moved to a new link: jodie.fawk3s.



There are 21 pictures at this woman's Facebook account (including some that weren't at Rushforth's), all uploaded on February 19, 2012, but there is nothing written on the wall, no comments on the photos, and no activity since that date. The pictures that also appear at Rushforth's account didn't go up until June. It smells like another red herring.

[Editor's Note: I deleted a paragraph referring to another woman who shares the same name as the person named in the dox, since she lives in a different country and a larger version of the avatar attached to her photo doesn't appear to match.}

10/28 Update: According to her bios and multiple social network accounts scattered all over the web, LulzMouse aka Emyylii Guest studied psychology and neuro-linguistic programming, but as I reported, she made a death threat a few days ago, and has traded joking tweets with a group that made a bomb threat. The Alex Jones fan who has many explicit videos online is now going on a scorched earth campaign to smear and go after me because I'm reporting on her disturbed past. Emyylii likes to pretend she isn't in Anonymous, and maybe she isn't anymore, but she weirdly brokered a phone call between Jake Davis aka Topiary (who was hit with unauthorized computer access and conspiracy charges on July 27, 2011, is currently under house arrest and banned from the internet, and may be working with UK police) and Barrett Brown days before his arrest.

Even though she has been heavily involved with Anonymous for over four years (her involvement seemed to have something to do with her ardor for NLP which is similar in many ways to Scientology teachings), she claimed that she didn't know who Barrett Brown was until last month, and told him so, as she detailed after his arrest in a bizarre pastebin called "Barrett Brown betrayed by Topiary". When I showed proof that Brown was discussed in an IRC chat she was in earlier this year, Emily still denied knowing who he was, and her answers to other questions about why she turned against her alleged pal Topiary were also contradictory, as I'll show in a future article (along with other tweets she deleted, including one to an account that adds followers to your Twitter account and strange accounts she owned such as one called "Th3Mol35st3r").

"Hey I'm lulzmouse, I predict it'll take less than a week after this hits the net that I'm v&, Anonops isn't safe either, people have reported that even the PMs on the server are available to law enforcement and I advise people to make loads of different IRCs and places to plan and network together, use Tor hidden services to speak to each other and spread information, it's a bitch for the feds to track down, that's the whole reason pedos use it for making sick CP chans."

Emyylii also told Brown, who seemed taken aback, "oh something you might find funny I just remembered a month or 2 ago, I was texting Topiary, and we got onto talking about his leg bracelet so I tell him all the specs for it and the tamper protections it has that I'd found on tor and he had a van parked outside all night, and the firm that does the tracking bracelets text him telling him they're gonna examine it on the same night he was freaking out about it."

"jesus," Brown responded.

Emyylii replied, "I like to keep them on their toes," and later claimed, "being monitored is fun sometimes, can troll the agents of control with long encrypted messages of sports scores or cooking recipes."

If Emyylii really gave specs to Topiary's leg bracelets while he was under house arrest, she probably would have been arrested, since that would be a crime. But she refused to answer questions about that part of her alleged conversation with Barrett Brown.

She sent me a disturbing email this morning, which referred to herself as a "massive troll," and that said, in part, "I'll tell you the truth, Topiary is my master now, and I am his sex slave - I must obey...I AM DEEPLY FUCKING OFFEND THAT YOU THINK I LOOK ANYTHING LIKE LAURELAI. Your blog post read like an Encyclopedia Dramatica page, but yes, now you have a new enemy. Me."

"I am a real person, and I have no affiliation to government agencies or corporations, I'm just a random anon that you have pissed off, Hell I'm not even an anon anymore, I left my mask at the door when I went to court and sat and watched the louuusesec mispronunciation. I am a random computer user who spends her time working on comical games and trolling people you should check THAT out. I will make sure I allow others to share in the lulz you bring."

Since last night, Emyylii - who tweeted that she is scared of being tied to FawkesSecurity who claims to belong to be the new LulzSec but may be an international security firm or feds trying to entrap Anons - has tweeted Adrian Lamo, who works at Project Vigilant, a security firm that menaced Barrett Brown before his arrest and has ties to Bradley Manning's arrest, FawkesSecurity, who made a bomb threat at the end of the last Obama-Romney debate; Patterico, a Deputy District Attorney who has smeared me as a criminal and had strange conversations with Brown that Barrett recently leaked; ZAPEM, who sent me emails using an e-dress from the hacked HBGary Federal rootkit.com database; Jennifer Emick @AsherahResearch, who Barrett Brown accused of working for HBGary Federal and claims to be an FBI informant and an account called @QualitySec which belongs to her friends from the 4chanesque d2k5 boards.



An IRC chat by @QualitySec set up by "erika!nazidomin@tr.ix" announced, "Topic is 'welcome to our reich, r to the gas chamber, take the second left, to the showers, take the second left also. your new friends in trenchcoats will escort you to your designated area of work.'" The names in the chat - which appeared to be a test of bots - all included a variation of "gorenigger" and the avatar for the twitter account is dressed up like a Nazi. QualitySec joined Twitter on February 12, 2012, which was 74 years - to the day - after Hitler took over Austria.

At a new Facebook account that LulzMouse opened today - in response to my reporting - she posted a picture of a Nazi looking at a computer as her avatar. My family and I have been harassed by anti-Semitic trolls sporting Nazi imagery, which Adrian Lamo and others refuse to condemn, but instead link to and joke with; it's unreal that so many people would find anti-Semitism directed at a Jewish reporter to be a laughing matter. Anyone exchanging tweets with LulzMouse should ask themselves why they would trade jokes with a person that believes Nazis are funny or cool.

Before today, @Quality Sec only had one tweet left on its account, but has become active again. On February 12, the same day they joined twitter, Emyylii and her friends tweeted about Facepunch.com being hacked and linked to a list of passwords.



A few weeks ago, LulzMouse traded tweets with @NewLulzSec, but deleted them. One of the tweets implied that she had spoken to someone affiliated with them privately.



Just before she temporarily left Twitter, LulzMouse liked a video by @FawkesSecurity which announced, "[t]he Arab Spring turns to The American Fall," and tweeted the link, too.



This morning, Emyylii Guest @LulzMouse and Jennifer Emick @AsherahResearch traded weird tweets about this article, and a self-confessed troll actually was the voice of reason. Oddly enough, Jaime Cochran outed herself as @Asshurtmacfags a month after smearing me when I revealed her name was "Richard Cochran" which she denied, at the time.

"Anyone thus compared would be outraged," Emick said about my article which asks if Emyylii belongs to the new LulzSec, works for a security firm or is a federal agent of some sort. "WTF, really."

Emyylii's tweets included, "@asherahresearch I know I was so fucking hurt. I was actually upset at that.... since my fucking porn videos are on xtube" and "that's what makes me feel like I'm getting set up."

In response, @asshurtmacfags tweeted "@LulzMouse @asherahresearch HOW DO YOU GET SET UP ON TWITTER?! FUCK JUST UNPLUG JESUS SHIT TIT."

I've been helping Barrett Brown behind the scenes since the day he was arrested, and I'll talk more about it, probably after his trial concludes. While others close to Brown have taken my advice and done things to help him, his girlfriend ElviraXMontana has done the complete opposite, and - in some ways - made things worse. She tweeted that I was helping Brown a few weeks ago, but she is now attacking me, just like she has smeared other activists working to free Bradley Manning, Barrett Brown and others, who have criticized her for spending so much time talking to informant/security firm adversary characterization expert Adrian Lamo. But Elvira apparently believes helping Emyylii smear me is more important than freeing Barrett Brown.

10/28 Update: LulzMouse returns to Twitter after scrubbing every significant tweet from her timeline, and Barrett Brown's girlfriend ElviraXMontana takes time off from flirting with Adrian Lamo and Tom Ryan, to tweet, "ron b please never come back to twitter thank you sincerely everyone."

I've refrained from mentioning ElviraXMontana on Twitter and this blog, because I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. But since she has done little-to-nothing to help Brown since his arrest, except attack friends of Barrett who criticize her nonsensical tweets to Lamo (LulzMouse has joined her in some of those attacks, as well), I'm about to drop some tidbits from Direct Messages we've exchanged. But only what I said to her.

I was kind of wary of Elvira since she oddly shut off Barrett's laptop during the raid, and then when she made weird video that joked about him having pot plants, but what really concerned me was her tumblr account of the raid and how Neal Rauhauser somehow got Part 4 of the Patterico/Barrett Brown chats (at his blog, Rauhauser claimed the log was in his "possession four or five weeks", but on September 21 he had complained that he "wanted him to post the final installment of the set of four logs, which he did not have time to do", which implied that he didn't have it, yet). I was also bothered by the fact that she was attacking friends of Brown who criticized her for talking to Lamo, her RT of "A Message to the US Government" by LulzMouse which said that "we shall fight on the streets", and that she - for some strange reason - tweeted screenshots of texts sent by Topiary.

Elvira's posting of the raid account was an incredibly stupid thing to do, since the prosecutor can use her words against Brown without even having to call her to the stand. It was strange that she didn't appear to be giving any interviews to the press, but told her story on her own like that. The most damaging part of her account was when she wrote that she heard what "sounded like two people wrestling or struggling in the hallway," and that Barrett "seemed to be struggling" after one of the agents apprehended him. Brown's best defense against the alleged threats he's accused of making is that he wasn't armed and didn't resist arrest, but Elvira's own words could hurt him.

I didn't understand why Elvira spoke to one of the agents for "approx 30 minutes", without asking for a lawyer or remaining quiet, either. Everything she said to the agent can be used in court against Brown, so telling her that he had "fixated on agent s, and that i wished he would not do that," certainly isn't helpful.

But I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, and I had been helping Barrett behind the scenes - believe it or not - since the day of his raid. More on that later. It also struck me odd that she was going through his emails, since it didn't seem to be a wise thing to do.

"thanks for unblocking and follow...sorry i mocked your video..but the reference to pot plants unnerved me even though i know it was a joke," I said to Elvira by DM, after someone else close to Barrett put us in contact, earlier this month, " also..when you said you saw barrett struggling...you gotta realize that the prosecutor can use your tweets or blogs against you without even calling you to testify."

I added, "i believe barrett was menaced, given misinfo and pushed to do shit by a security firm.... i was misled into thinking he worked with neal [rauhauser]...i'd rather just ask you questions now then have you look through barrett's emails"

I continued, "my number one question is what journos have even contacted you...since there is a media blackout .....the times and post haven't done one story yet....and those are the two biggest papers there are... it doesn't seem like the ap contacted you but spoke to trolls instead. getting the press to cover barrett is extremely important...and most of his friends seem to have ignored this story."

"lamo lies and uses social engineering and probably played some kind of role in pushing disinfo to bb and scaring him," I said. "remember that no matter what barrett did or said, he is guilty until proven innocent...so you really should try not to say stuff like he did this to himself....lol...im tired..i mean innoncent until proven guilty obviously..."

I told Elvira, that in my opinion, "entrapment is a reasonable defense...and his lawyer really needs to see all these bizarre anonymous accounts fucking with him." I added, "since he didn't resist the raid there's no intent....so i don't think a jury will convict on those counts if his lawyer argues that barret was on and off drugs, menaced, given disinfo and has history of satire such as writing jokes and hyping things...and if his mom can testify that she was threatened or harassed by the fbi it will help too."

I advised Elvira, "personally, i think you should be publicly tweeting liberal bloggers and journalists who haven't reported on this story...just beg them and guilt trip them... folks like glenn greenwald and justin elliott.... and any reporters barrett liked...but be nice to them.....and i think you will be able to get them to do stories....which will help barrett. he needs good PR."

But, apparently, Elvira prefers spending her time having long conversations with Lamo, which have disturbed many Barrett Brown supporters, and appear to be an attempt to help him win back some cred from Anons, even though he still "volunteers" for Project Vigilant.

As I reported on Twitter, Project Vigilant Assistant Director Jeff Bardin sent many tweets mocking Barrett Brown about being paranoid, but claimed that he was "watching" him before deleting the tweets.



Elvira is apparently smearing me because I wrote about LulzMouse who is now laughing it up with Jennifer Emick. Again, somehow my asking questions is stranger than the stupid tweets and feuds they all seem to have with each other. LulzMouse is - apparently - so "afraid" of being raided for my reporting on how she applauded Fawkes Security for trolling other Anonymous accounts that she changed her name to "FawkesLulzMouse." How long before Elvira starts including Emick in her Lamo round robin chats? Something tells me that Barrett Brown might not be too forgiving of that.

This might be my last update for a few days. But there is much more to come...

10/27 Update: "Are you 12? Does your mom know your using the internet?" is an insufficient response to my questions, Laurelai Bailey. I apologize for distracting you from tweeting as @stuxnetsource.

My response: "So instead of answering one question, you're going to act stupid. You could have at least put some thought into your crack. That one's older than the Internet. Are you an informant, Laurelai? Do you work with Jennifer Emick? Why does at least one of Emily's pictures look exactly like you? You seem too stupid to be a fed. At least your pal or your doppelganger answered some questions..."

Let's add someone new to the mix.



And an interesting link: "AnonyMiss, the yin to the Anonymous yang."

Asking questions somehow makes me a conspiracy theorist, according to very serious-minded people like ru3d [w34p0n1z3d] ‏@ru3d_, Tom Ryan and Adrian Lamo.

Some observations: Laurelai and Neal Rauhauser are both from Iowa. Emily Guest and Emma A. are allegedly in England. LulzMouse uses socks to talk to herself like Neal. It sure is strange Laurelai wasn't charged with any crimes after she was allegedly raided by the FBI, and that she discussed LulzSec with Project Vigilant Intelligence Directorate James Smith who monitors #AntiSec in IRC chat rooms, as I recently reported.

And for added measure, it's kind of funny that "grown-ups" like convicted bomber turned voting activist Brett Kimberlin uses the name "Storm" in his fantasy rock band Op-Critical and Laurelai used "Storm", too (see Emily Guest's GooglePlus circle). I don't believe either one knows how to control the weather. But I could be wrong.

My key question to Bailey was, "Why do some pictures of LulzMouse - aka Emily Guest aka Th3Mol35t3r aka Emyylii aka Emmy Manson aka other names, the Hypnotist, NLP master Practicioner who is a big fan of Alex Jones and Ron Paul and who has been involved with Anonymous since Scientology (and I can barely tell the difference between NLP and Scientology), uses socks to talk to herself, and who probably had something to do with exploiting my Twitter account just before an election - look like you?" I have more questions, so that very serious people named GonzoPhD, Dr. Krypt3ia and DirkDigglerD0g ‏@p0rnoPuppy can make more tin foil jokes.

Who is Kayla?

Why is Emma_ A shyer than Patterico? At least Deputy District Attorney Patrick Frey showed his whole face in a picture posted at The Brad Blog. Now he ducks on camera requests from CBS and wouldn't turn on his camera when he joined a Romney, Ryan Buzz Rally chat online. Frey's absurd excuse is that his job demands it, but I assume he can be identified by gang members when he prosecutes them in a court room. What's Barrett Brown's ex-girlfriend's excuse for hiding her face?

If Laurelai Bailey, Emyylii Guest, Emma A and Neal Rauhauser were all in the same room together, how many chairs would they need?

Why did Emyylii talk with Jennifer Emick about the Jester?

Why did Laurelai help spread bullshit cover story that @FakeGreggHoush wasn't Jennifer Emick but a man named Donald Wasylyna?

Is everyone from LulzSec a fed or a security firm bozo, or do they just all act like that?

Is Fawkes Security a security firm, the feds or a resurrected LulzSec?

Laurelai's second response: "Your questions are based on incorrect assumptions and thus do not merit answers. Ive done some googling about you and I am not going to answer any of your questions."

Bailey included a link to a video that a Deputy District Attorney has been using to try to frame me - on the Internet - as a criminal: link. The caller sounds nothing like me, and Frey's told a pack of lies about what happened that night (My version vs. Patterico's). Read Qritiq's blog post which shows how Frey cherry picked his "audio expert's" report. That same expert helped Jesse Ventura morph his voice into a 9/11 victim to prove a 9/11 "Conspiracy Theory", but apparently only did it for the money, and isn't a truther.

Laurelai added, "I have some questions for you instead, do you have any plans on attempting to swat me? Or emily? Why were you fired from raw story?"

Strange how a person who only just did some "googling" on me would ask about Raw Story. It's kind of like how Adrian Lamo obsesses over that, instead of answering my questions. I've publicly told the story about what happened many times on my Twitter timeline. Google it, Laurelai.

"Have you considered getting therapy?" Laurelai concludes.

Come to think of it, expecting the truth from weird hackers and liars like Adrian Lamo, Neal Rauhauser, Jennifer Emick is fucking insane. Maybe "Dr." Kenneth Lipp does house calls.

And people wonder why serious journalists don't cover Bradley Manning, Barrett Brown, and Anonymous anymore.

Only the very serious-minded Adrian Chen handles the wackadoo beat.



If asking questions to unravel absurd conspiracies gets me smeared as a crazy conspiracy theorist who is falsely accused of crimes, so be it. I'm not going anywhere.

10/27 Update: Look Alikes?

Jennifer Emick @AsherahResearch, who infamously lied about being @FakeGreggHouse tweeted, "how the fuck can he think any of those pics are the same person?!" The top and bottom photos are attached to social network accounts belonging to the same person (who put explicit videos on the web that hide her face, so the first picture could be an old photograph taken years ago, which means she is lying about her present age), while the middle one is her friend or frenemy. Since Emick wears glasses, perhaps she has better eyesight, but the bottom two photos look alike to me.

If I'm wrong, then I apologize for the error, but I'm just trying to get to the truth by asking questions, and instead I'm smeared by liars who get off on trolling.

10/27 Update: After vowing to quit Twitter since Barrett Brown was arrested, @LulzMouse, who contacted the former Anonymous spokesman - allegedly - on behalf of Topiary - but then smeared the latter as an informant - suspended her account early in the morning (which would only last a day, see update up top). The eve before I was suspended by Twitter, I interviewed her - after she threatened to kill FawkesSecurity - and I'm going to be publishing a story in a few days or so related to that. The picture to the left was taken on the day LulzMouse allegedly first met Topiary, when she gave him a book written by conspiracy theorist David Ickes, who writes about "Illuminati lizards" secretly controlling the world.

It's not what you might expect.

Consider the following screenshots a teaser:



PS: If something happens to this blog, Emyylii, I'll start a new one. I don't know if you work for a security firm, an agency or a resurrected LulzSec. Yet. But you're not half as clever as you think. Feel free to email me before I publish, Emyylii, so I can shovel some more snow.

10/25 Update: Twitter sent me an automated message which, partially stated, "If your account was suspended for aggressive following behavior, you should have received an email notification to the address associated with your Twitter account. You'll need to confirm that you've removed all prohibited following automation from your account, and will stop any manual aggressive following behavior." Twitter's rules add, that you can be suspended "[i]f you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn)."

Of course, I've never used any "following automation" and I believe a similar tactic was used against two of Neal Rauhauser's "enemies": @FarRightOfLeft and @JamesOkeefeiii. On August 31, O'Keefe tweeted, "Clever tactic of whoever considers me an enemy to add 35K fake followers to my twitter over the last 48 hours."

I'm assuming this was done by Neal Rauhauser or by @Zapem and her friends who want me to blame him. Hopefully, Twitter will reinstate me soon, where I can continue to remind convicted felon Adrian Lamo @6 - who absurdly tweeted that I haven't "committed any major crimes" - that he was the one who committed crimes and was institutionalized by the police, not me.

Fawkes Security - who claimed, as ZDNet reported on March 26, that they were resurrecting LulzSec for April Fool's Day, which seemed unlikely since Sabu became an "FBI mole" and helped entrap other members - tweeted in response to this latest update, "#Lulz Did we hack @ronbryn and @ronbryn2 with a Twitter exploit script... Who knows? :P @AnonyOps @th3j35t3r @YourAnonNews."



Since my second twitter account was suspended within 15 minutes, and a few tweets mentioned @FawkesSecurity, it seems likely that they probably did play a role in both suspensions. But the Fawkes crew also claimed they managed to log 20,000 debit card details after taking credit for the HSBC site take down, that the Amanda Todd bullying story was a hoax before playing a role in naming the wrong culprit, and that they created a "Legion Exploit Kit" back in December 30, 2011, so they seem to mostly get off on playing hoaxes to make Anonymous look bad.

10/25 Update: My twitter account @ronbryn was suspended early this morning probably because of my reporting on @FawkesSecurity and a 2nd account @ronbryn2 was suspended within 15 minutes after I complained to Twitter and mentioned Fawkes again; My last tweet was to former HB Gary Federal CEO Aaron Barr @AaronBarr, asking him what US military group he bragged about "burrow[ing] into" (See 2/5/11 Financial Times article) and did his friend Tom Ryan @TomRyanBlog - who used social engineering to allegedly trick NSA and DoD employees in the Robin Sage hoax - help him; I recently reported that a troll named @ZAPEM sent me emails from an e-dress that was included in the hacked HB Gary rootkit database mi-chelle@comcast.net

Fawkes Security seems similar to Ryan's "Robin Sage" hoax and he stopped tweeting a few days ago but he recently favorited twotweets which link Fawkes to Anonymous (who have pretty much unanimously condemned Fawkes for making a bomb threat); The Jester @th3j35t3r, who as I reported below may have been hacked by Fawkes Security working with Jennifer Emick (who also has been suspected of working with HB Gary Federal's Team Themis) in July, exchanged DMs with Fawkes Security in which they joke that they may be law enforcement or a pro Muslim hacking group; I've also been reporting on convicted criminal hacker Adrian Lamo @6 - who has exchanged many tweets and DMs with @ZAPEM since September, and anti-Semitic trolls who have menaced my family - and he is exultingaboutmysuspension.

A troll called @AnonymousDown was the first to tweet - at around 9 AM EST - about my suspension, but then he/she deleted the tweet. He/she has gone after both The Jester and Barrett Brown, and appears to play both sides of Anonymous. His/her conspiracy blog contains many posts accusing Anons of being informants, and self-identifies him/her as a "[b]ehind the scenes e-hacktivist; Professional data miner; Engaged in cyber defenses of critical infrastructure & key resources. irc.reapersecurity.net #graveyard."



And before I posted this update specifically referring to AnonymousDown, he/she linked to my blog and tweeted, "heh cc: @tomryanblog @th3j35t3r @fawkesSecurity @AaronBarr @Zapem @AsherahResearch."



Emick and Fawkes Security responded quickly, as well. Emick, who changed her name not long ago to "Team Themis" perhaps as an ironic joke, tweeted, "@AnonymousDown It's like our own custom-written sitcom." And Fawkes Security - who made a fewseemingly-sarcastic tweets after the bomb threat which may have also been ironic about working with Emick - tweeted, "@AnonymousDown @TomRyanBlog @th3j35t3r @aaronbarr @ZAPEM @asherahresearch Lulz, That is all."



On Twitter @AnonymousDown only follows 39 accounts, including Tom Ryan, Ryan's security firm Provide Security, Adrian Lamo, Jennifer Emick @AsherahResearch, Emick's troll pal Sanguinarious, ReaperSecIRC, RevMagdalen (who I also mention in this article), Aaron Barr, ReaperSecIRC and many others related to Reaper Sec - who recently claimed Emick isn't a member. Emick claims that she filed a personal protection order against Ryan, but she makes lots of claims that she never backs up, and she may just be pretending to feud with Ryan, who has befriended many members of Anonymous and Operation Wall Street who dislike her. The "Team Themis" plan was to have Twitter accounts promote and attack each other to create convolution and to use the controversy to spread their attacks against Anonymous and liberal bloggers.

I'm liberal but I have always reported on both sides, and am not a member of Anonymous, and don't approve of hacking online or using trolls to menace. But many people on the left and right have been smearing me, and falsely accusing me of working with Lamo's former colleague, Neal Rauhauser, at Project Vigilant who hoaxed Barrett Brown and Anonymous, and uses sock trolls on Twitter to do similar things that "Team Themis" planned to do. Many of the people attacking me on the left work with or defend Rauhauser. Those same alleged liberals have ignored my reporting on Barrett Brown, Fawkes Security and Bradley Manning, even though I'm supported by people who knew both Brown and Manning in real life and respect my reporting. "Team Themis" was allegedly disbanded, but Barrett Brown and others believe that they are still around, and/or perhaps work for someone else now.

DEVELOPING... Fawkes Security is aligned with QT Security who were formed "to combat and disrupt the anonymous community". QT Security released a video in July threatening to release "names and addresses of 300 active anonymous members" and "data recently breached from the wikileaks website." However, since their targets include Anonymous, WikiLeaks and The Jester - who have all been targeted by Jennifer Emick and who claims that she knows who the administrator for the Fawkes Security Facebook page is - this might be another of her hoaxes.

This is a work in progress which I thought was important to publish as soon as possible. Check my Twitter timeline @ronbryn to see some other things I'll be incorporating into this article, with much more to come.

Just as the third Obama, Romney presidential debate was ending on October 22nd, an alleged Anonymous group called Fawkes Security released a video and pastebin ominously warning "200 kilograms of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives have effectively been concealed in a government building, situated in the united states of America," and that "on the 5th of November 2012 the device will detonate remotely via the transmission control protocol, leaving behind severe consiquences."



Transcript from YouTube page - with misspellings left intact - follows.

"@FawkesSecurity
Dear citizens of the world,
We are anonymous. As of today 200 kilograms of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives have effectively been concealed in a government building, situated in the united states of America. on the 5th of November 2012 the device will detonate remotely via the transmission control protocol, leaving behind severe consiquences. We would like to advise that the contraption is built inside a tamper proof apparatus sensitive to physical intrusions or attempted disarmament, thus resulting in the desired effect, if the military grade device is found before the 5th of November. there is no intention, risks or circumstances what so ever to cause harm to innocent people, but we can not, say the same for the people who are the real terrorists, oppressors and war creators.

we are anonymous
we are legion
we do not forget
we do not forgive
on the 5th of November, you will expect us."

The pastebin called the alleged operation #OpV.

Almost immediately, more established Anonymous accounts on Twitter began to disavow itself from the bomb threat and the group itself. Fawkes Security had only joined Twitter on December 17, 2011 and the Facebook account is locked to members.

A pastebin response stated,

"This message is to the media:

Earlier tonight, the Twitter account @FawkesSecurity posted a link to a pastebin and a YouTube video that stated the following:

"As of today 200 kilograms of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives have effectively been concealed in a government building"

Let us be perfectly clear: Anonymous is not a terrorist organization. Anonymous does not use bombs. Anonymous does not condone violence in any way. Anonymous supports justice and universal equal rights. We support peaceful protest.

At this time, we are not sure whether or not @FawkesSecurity is trying to troll, or if he's trying to discredit the name of Anonymous in the eyes of the world. Maybe @FawkesSecurity's twitter and YouTube account was hacked. Perhaps this is the FBI's way of trying to label Anonymous as terrorists so they can begin using the NDAA against us.

Either way, fuck whoever posted that threat.

We are Anonymous
We are legion
We do not forget
We do not forgive
Expect us"

Also, on December 17, 2011, Jodie Rushforth, who is listed as the administrator of Fawkes Security, joined Facebook, and three days later began posting sexy photographs - allegedly of herself and a girlfriend.

The Facebook profile contains few details other than claiming Rushforth allegedly lives in New York, New York and that her hometown is San Diego, California.



On July 8th, 2012 Fawkes Security administrator Jodie Rushforth shared a link of a video called "Message to Anonymous from QT Security" with The Security-Ray Facebook account [which joined Facebook on December 6, 2011].

The video was a message which stated that "an estimated 6 months ago, a hacker group was constructed amongst an array of like minded individuals, with the sole purpose to combat and disrupt the anonymous community for our own exsclusive entertainment."



Transcript from YouTube page - with misspellings left intact - follows.

"Friends around the globe, We are QT security. this video is a direct warning to the anonymous collective, regarding the fun we have planned for you and your future downfall. an estimated 6 months ago, a hacker group was constructed amongst an array of like minded individuals, with the sole purpose to combat and disrupt the anonymous community for our own exsclusive entertainment. before you assume that this is a fabricated notion, we would sincererly advise you to look past the words, the music, the name, and take us seriously. unlike other hacker groups that have targeted anonymous in the past, QT Security currently has genuine and accountable information leading to the names and addresses of 300 active anonymous members, including the real details of the your anon news twitter admin and the anon message who commonly broadcasts on youtube. we also have data recently breached from the wikileaks website that consists of listed financial transactions and emails between government organisations. q t security is presently operating on numerous social engineering attacks towards anonymous affiliated sites, which will inevitably lead to some defacements in the near future. we would like to take this time to inform other internet users and the media that during our online expedition against anonymous, q t security will display significant examples of corporate, financial and government breaches to show the world what we are capable of, in a bid to embarrass the idea that is anonymous. anonymous at one point had meaning and a direction, but now it's concept is purely persued by misguided people, who believe that hacking is actually a positive response to the causes that you agree are worth facing, at least we have the dignity to admit that by hacking in the name of freedom, will only cause more censorship for the citizens you say you support. on the other hand, QT security is going to systematically impair the anonymous collective in it's current online form, just because we can and we know how. to those who choose to ignore our statement and disregard the facts, then, you will expect us."

Also, on July 8, 2012, a video called "Anonymous - Message to QT Security" was released by AnonymousAmerica1776, who joined YouTube on May 1, and hasn't posted any videos since July. "Please realize the size of the pile of shit you have stepped in," is posted with its response video.



QT Security joined Twitter @QTSecurity on July 8, 2012, and issued tweets threatening Anonymous, WikiLeaks and 4chan. It also said "hai" to The Jester - who once hit WikiLeaks with a XerXeS DoS Attack - a day before his/her Twitter account @th3j35t3r was compromised.



"@wikileaks You think your website is secure, Think again #OntheQT," @QTSecurity tweeted on July 8, along with "Rumors are brewing about a DoS on 4chan, Should we or not?", and "@th3j35t3r Oh hai ;)."

On July 9, Fawkes Security tweeted "Thejester got PWND! by @FawkesSecurity it's been a long time waiting #Anonymous," and "Thejester HACKED! http://pastebin.com/h35HpfzZ" and "@th3j35t3r Umad? Lulz." Just prior to those tweets, Fawkes Security apparently released a "D0X of @crystalmcraven aka @th3j35t3r's e-girlfriend https://pastee.org/np8ec #stayfrosty #whoswidme."



Deputy District Attorney John Patrick Frey aka Patterico posted an article called "The Jester Hacked?" on July 9, which is kind of strange, since he normally doesn't post Anonymous articles. "'The Jester' is a fairly famous opponent of Anonymous; a 'Hacktivist for Good,'" Patterico blogged, "Looks like someone has gotten a hold of his Twitter password."

Fake @th3j35t3r included "To all my followers, I am sorry. I really am a fraud.: Please forgive me, I did it for the lulz bit.ly/NdPzlI #anonymous #wise," and "Anonymous: I am sorry for running my mouth all this time. Please spare me. @YourAnonNews @AnonymousIRC bit.ly/OonIxj #anonymous #wise," and "It’s been fun.: I am in for a LOAD of drama. Next my personal details are unleashed. #wise bit.ly/NBmJdQ #anonymous #wise."

On July 10, the Jester explained at his blog, "that a rather nice ‘sideways hack’ was deployed against my twitter. Aside from that no breaches or relevant information, 'personal' or otherwise has come out of this episode and my position remains uncompromised."

Two days later, in an update, the Jester appeared to blame Jennifer Emick aka @AsherahResearch.

"As we all know, this whole thing has been the work of the usual suspects, namely @asherahresearch (aka J.Emick), ReaperSec led by @cryptkper a newcomer and a few others. Those are the same core of folks who have spent the majority of their time over the last few months/years accusing all manner of people of being me, if you look you can see this for yourselves, while basing it on the most sporadic of circumstantial evidence"

The Jester added, "for those worried about @crystalmcraven, saying I left her to burn etc. Firstly yes the whole conversation was disinfo, secondly I didn’t hack my own abandoned email account and I didn’t dox her or persecute her. Thirdly you really think any of the shit in that email box is real?? Clue is in the name – ‘Crystal Meth Cravin’??? – (she’s gonna be just fine) – keep up trolls. Everything for a reason eh? And thats been sitting there over 2 years."

"So @asherahresearch and ReaperSec hacked a long abandoned decoy email account and a lot of folks put 2+2 together and got 9, causing everyone who wants a piece of me to target the one of the 120 people named CrystalMCraven in the United States who follows me on twitter.

I hope you can all leave the real woman alone now. But I see she is handling herself nicely.

To the real CrystalMCraven on Twitter: I apologize for not contacting you. I hope you understand, I did not think your twitter account was tied to a real person. Unfortunately, at this time, I do not know who originated impersonating you. I regret you were dragged into these attacks on me."

Earlier today, at its blog, Reaper Security wrote a post called "FawkesSecurity – Your Days Are Numbered" about the bomb threat, noting that "there are several things that stuck out about the pastebin that lead me to believe this is a hoax or some other sort of sick prank."

"Just an FYI, in the US we don’t commonly use the Metric system. Without getting all technical, you got somewhere around 441 pounds of nitroglycerin, which by its self is unstable, and commercial explosives into the US through customs? You have this ‘device’ that would have to be about the size of a refrigerator or drink machine, connected to the Internet? You couldn’t use something like a cellphone cause the battery would die maintaining a data connection that long, so you would have to have it plugged into a LAN or WiFi, inside a government building… wait a minute. Haven’t I seen this movie before? This sounds vaguely like the movies Sum of All Fears, and Die Hard with a Vengeance. Oh and by the way, you spelled consequences wrong.

....

Hoax or not, you’ve made a threat, a bomb threat against the United States Government. Not something they generally find funny. But you need not worry about us, here at ReaperSec, or those behind the Jester mask. Nope, neither will have anything to do with you being arrested. Like the recent demise of Barrett Brown, this you have done all by yourself. The FBI and/or Interpol will be picking you up soon enough, for a nice extended stay at one of their many luxurious facilities."

Emick tweeted today, "@raincoaster Heh- but tbh, that is no fed. That group's been around, and is kinda nuts. The girl's a massive attention whore, too." Later Emick - who has targeted Anonymous and The Jester - retweeted @RevMagdalen tweet warning, "#Anonymous all you can know for sure is that for 2 years straight you've been inciting every kook on the planet to revolution."

The Twitter profile for @QTSecurity states, "QTS Hacker group ---LulzSec on Steroids---- Email qtsecurity@hushmail.com" and its YouTube profile claims it hails from Germany. QT Security only released the one video, and hasn't tweeted since July 9, 2012.

Another Facebook group called Anonymous Occupy The White House [who joined Facebook on November 5, 2011] posted the "Message to Anonymous from QT Security" video on July 9, adding, "Lulz ;p have you seen this shit?? Anons watch out QTSecurity is coming..."

On October 1, 2012, the Anonymous Occupy The White House Facebook page shared a link to Fawkes Security Twitter account via administrator Jodie Rushforth, but her name was later scrubbed from their page, as this cache link originally shows.



The link was liked by Cody Fawkes and his Facebook page at "Purified.in.the.storm." claims that he lives in Alma, Michigan, attends Central Michigan University and that he is the "Head Public Relations Coordinator" for Anonymous and that he "coordinates, info, protest info, news and meetings to better inform the public of What is events are taking place in Government, and other country's, states and cities. ect." and that he has been a "Wicked Ninja Juggalo" since 2005.

Cody Fawkes might not have any connection to Fawkes Security, but he left a message on August 2, 2012 to Anonymous and BackTrace Security - a firm which Jennifer Emick used to belong to and that she used to out Anonymous members including FBI informant Sabu - at his Facebook page.

"THIS IS A MESSAGE TO ANONYMOUS AND BACK TRACE SECURITY:

PLEASE SHARE THIS SO THAT ALL MEMBERS OF ANONYMOUS AND BACK TRACE WILL SEE THIS FOR THE SAKE OF FREEDOM AND WHAT IS RIGHT

I am not in a position of power, i am not a leader in Anonymous or hacker, but i am Anonymous i do not hide myself per say but i do try to keep out of the site of the corrupt leaders that control our world. i have millions of idea's on how to make things better and one day i hope to be able to put these idea's tp the test. I have a dream of a better world where i do not look around and see people constantly miserable, crying, heart broken, worn out because of the struggles they face trying to stay alive in this failing economy. I believe our Government is to blame for the state in which our country is in. along with the major companies, and more to blame; the banks...

....

But now Sadly as i finally start to fall asleep and trust me its not easy for me to sleep anymore i scrolled through facebook to see whats new and i see that there is a war going on between people who all called themselves Anonymous, it makes me terribly sad to see this, i call my self Anonymous, and i coordinate efforts in my area to make it to occupy movements especially for November 5th but im also a member of the Zeitgeist Movement, i believe in a bigger and brighter future, but if we are at war with ourselves how can we make change, how can people take us seriously, How can the people trust us, if we continue fighting amongst ourselves how long will it take till we start to be seen as terrorists instead of hacktavists, or freedom fighters, or the small glimmer of hope that the world needs. this needs to stop i may be small in what i can do. i do not hack i refused to learn that from all the skills ive learned about computers i will not hack but instead i choose to speak my words are many yes, but my hope is my words speak loud, i hope that someone is reading this right now, because at this moment my eyes are poofed up burning my back aches my head is pounding and my ears are ringing but im am here writing this hoping that it is making it to someone higher up, someone who can stop all this stupidity, i hope that this spreads like a wild fire to every corner of the web, ....

Anonymous, Back trace Security it is time for this war to end and the real war to truely start you've lost your focus, get your heads right. for the sake of the people who need us most i ask you to stand strong unite once more, because there is no former members of Anonymous, because we are all Anonymous no matter age race color or faith.

With Peace of Mind, Body, and Soul, while being true in my words and to myself, with Love for the people the earth and the animals, my actions and words are Respectful with respect to the people the planet and myself i so hear do swear to fight for what is right and speak the truth for the sake of truth, i will stick by the Values of PEACE. TRUTH. LOVE. and RESPECT
Signed Cody Fawkes of Michigan"

At Daily Dot, Lorraine Murphy - aka @RainCoaster on Twitter - noted that Fawkes Security had "recently...somewhat implausibly, claimed responsibility for attacks against HSBC, the largest retail bank in the world."

On twitter, @Asher_Wolf noted that "Jodie Rushforth says she's 'right wing' in her bio" at Facebook. Just over a week ago, on October 15, the same day she changed her profile picture, Jodie Rushforth added dubious claim to her profilethat she studied at West Virginia University and that she "went from being 'in a relationship' to 'it's complicated.'"

DEVELOPING...

Update 12/3: The Pre-General report for Romney For President Covering Period 10/01/2012 Through 10/17/2012 shows that Bill Murphy received $5,541.66, so he was not "quietly fired" as I speculated might have have happened in September. The Social Media Director stopped tweeting @BillMurphy a day before Mitt Romney gave his speech at the RNC in late August, a few days after I reported he had made some controversial tweets about race. On August 26 I tweeted, "Fact @BillMurphy used 'race war' to link to Buchanan op-ed that never even uses that term should concern @TeamRomney" link. He also had been using the account to hype @Ali Akbar, his colleague in many political related ventures over the last few years, a convicted felon who just got off probation in May.(Editor's note: I also updated this article's original title "Did Team Romney Quietly Fire Social Media Director Bill Murphy?" which is why the title is what it is, if this is your first time reading it. Mr. Murphy took his personal blog off the Internet and removed his resume from LinkedIn and replaced it with a slightly edited one, after I first asked him if he was working for Team Romney in early August. Other than blocking me on Twitter and mysteriously not tweeting @BillMurphy for the campaign from August 29 to November 6, Murphy and the rest of his former colleagues on the losing side have ignored all my questions.)Update 11/10: Just after MSNBC called the election for Obama on November 6, Bill Murphy began tweeting again at his eponymous Twitter account, pretending like his radio silence for nearly three months wasn't bizarre. "What a team. Great job tonight. #RomneyRyan2012," Murphy tweeted after Romney lost. And his sycophantic buddy, Ali Akbar, oddly tweeted the next morning, "@billmurphy You built THAT!"

On November 9, the Social Media Director who stopped tweeting after I reported his tweets about a "black-on-white race war", then announced, "Just got off the phone with @JWBritten, @MattLira and @KarlRove. Stay tuned. @tvuljaj: @billmurphy is back!"

October FEC filing indicates Murphy may have been terminated after I reported he used same Twitter account he was getting paid to promote Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to tweet about "black-on-white race war"; Salary dropped from $8,294.76 in September to $2,770.83 in latest filing.



On August 13, I reported an exclusive story called "Former Leadership Institute operative linked to a convicted felon now works for Romney campaign" about Social Media Director Bill Murphy, a day after he scrubbed his blog and temporarily took down his LinkedIn resume after I tweeted him. Aside from a few bloggers seemingly tied to Democratic consultant Neal Rauhauser - who now has a blog devoted to "Hypertrolling The Wingnutosphere" - the media completely ignored my reporting. I contacted a handful of reporters during the RNC, and tweeted links to many others, but my reporting was largely ignored.

Even after I reported that Mitt Romney's Social Media Director Bill Murphy had used the same Twitter account @BillMurphy to tweet about "black-on-white race war", not one reporter would touch my story.

But my reporting evidently produced results, regardless.

Early in the morning on August 29 at 12:39 AM, Bill Murphy stopped tweeting at his eponymous Twitter account. It was a day before Mitt Romney delivered his speech at the RNC.



"A July 20th tweet by the official @TeamRomney twitter account (http://twitter.com/TeamRomney/status/226361975628767232) indicates that Bill Murphy is the Social Media Director for Mitt Romney, even though he has ducked questions, blocked me on twitter, scrubbed his resume, and deleted his blog since I started reporting on him August 12," I reported in August.



My story continued, "The latest monthly filing by the Romney for President campaign to the Federal Election Committee reveals that a William Murphy was paid $2,770.83 for his work in July (http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2012/M7/C00431171/B_PAYEE_C00431171.html). Since another Team Romney member - who was just recently hired in June - has been earning precisely double that amount, the FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy joined the campaign in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month."

The August filing did indeed show that Murphy was getting paid $5,541.66 a month, and the September filing indicates that his salary was boosted to $8,312.49.

However, the October filing shows that Mitt Romney's Social Media Director Bill Murphy only received $2,770.83 for - assumingly - the month of September. This might mean that he was fired in late August, but received a few weeks severance pay. Hopefully, a reporter for a major media outlet will contact Team Romney and find out if it's true, since the campaign officials ducked all my questions and blocked me on Twitter.

In an August 16 update I asked, "Did @TeamRomney even know @BillMurphy worked for 'charlatans' at American Liberty Alliance since he left it off his resume?"



More from my August article:

"Aside from working for years with a convicted felon who was on probation until May, Mr. Murphy has been closely involved with Tea Party lawyers involved with Super PACs who are working with the RNC to overturn donation limits. (See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-lawsuit-challenges-campaign-contribution-caps/2012/06/27/gJQAqtVf7V_story.html and http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/03/15/8416/gop-super-pac-men-seek-overturn-donation-limits ) Murphy also is linked to sketchy charities and groups that skirt FEC regulations.

Mr. Murphy and his colleague Ali Akbar also worked for the American Liberty Alliance when it was founded in June of 2009. ALA launched a Liberty Tour in late 2009 which sought to teach conservative activists to use deception and commit dirty tricks on the Internet in order to "control the dialogue," as I will soon be reporting.

Together, Murphy and Akbar have worked for at least five groups over the last three years, four of them while straddling opposite sides of the Mitt Romney for President debate. In 2012, New Jerseyite Murphy worked in Akbar's Texas-based Vice and Victory firm, and also with a group called Blog Bash that organizes parties at conservative conventions, while serving as Director for the National Bloggers Club and the National Finance Director for the Breitbart Scholarship Fund, all alongside Akbar who was on probation until May.

On Tuesday, Romney Digital Director Zac Moffatt blocked me on Twitter - even before Murphy did - rather than reply to simple questions about Team Romney's Social Media Director, such as when he was hired and how much he is paid.

After discovering tweets between Moffatt and Akbar, and Murphy before he joined Team Romney, I tweeted, "No wonder @MittRomney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt ignores my tweets. He apparently is pals with @BillMurphy and convicted felon @Ali Akbar!"

"MT @billmurphy: @ali save us all the trouble and come on board tonight. we have a lot of work to do. cc @justin_hart," Moffatt tweeted on January 29, 2012 ( http://twitter.com/ZacMoffatt/status/163832573561274368 ). This was in reference to Akbar's leadership in the NotMittRomney protest campaign, at the time.

Moffatt blocked me immediately after I tweeted, "Why did convicted felon @Ali MT Romney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt plea for resumes days before forming NotMittRomney?" On March 11, at a blog he purchased last October, Akbar wrote, "I lead the most prominent and largest contiengent of “Not Mitt” folks over at NotMittRomney.com" before declaring, "It’s over though." Akbar also paid "special thanks to "some Romney supporters: Bill Murphy, Austin James, Zac Moffatt, Saul Anuzis, and Chandler Epp for keeping your heads screwed on tight while [Akbar] lobbed cannon balls at [their] castle." As others have observed, the www.notmittromney.com website now goes to the official campaign site, and some speculate there may have been a "pay-off" involved.

I tweeted, "More tweets between Romney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt and convicted felon @Ali Akbar: http://topsy.com/twitter.com/zacmoffatt/status/177261205273067521 … How long have they been pals?"and "Convicted felon @Ali Akbar was psyched 441 days ago when @MittRomney campaign hired @ZacMoffatt to be Digital Director."

The latest monthly filing by the Romney for President campaign to the Federal Election Committee reveals that a William Murphy was paid $2,770.83 for his work in July (http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2012/M7/C00431171/B_PAYEE_C00431171.html). Since another Team Romney member - who was just recently hired in June - has been earning precisely double that amount, the FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy joined the campaign in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month."

An August 17 update added, "Team Romney still ducking questions about their Social Media Director, but FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy was hired in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month. Digital Director Zac Moffatt avoids questions about his relationship to both Murphy and his frequent colleague, convicted felon Ali Akbar, who just got off probation in May." Murphy has been working since at least 2009 with Ali Akbar, who Slate recently reported was "convicted of credit card fraud in 2007", and just got off of probation in May for a reported "crime spree," which he has lied about. (More to come on Akbar's crimes, which are alluded to in the Slate article on the battle between convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin and right wing bloggers: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/10/brett_kimberlin_versus_right_wing_bloggers/ )

On August 26 I tweeted, "Fact @BillMurphy used 'race war' to link to Buchanan op-ed that never even uses that term should concern @TeamRomney" link.

"4/24/12 @BillMurphy 'joked' it's 'obviously racist' to note 'blacks don't score as well as whites' on firefighter test https://t.co/Pl3fAdHm," I tweeted that same day.



Other tweets I made included, "Does @TeamRomney agree with @BillMurphy who linked to @RushLimbaugh "Jared Loughner Has Full Support Of Dems" story? https://t.co/GTp8EOun" and "@EWErickson contacts FEC & blasts ALA - which @BillMurphy & @Ali Akbar helped raise cash for - as "charlatans" http://t.co/CUY7anpm."

In May, Pat Dollard tweeted a link to a copy-and-paste of the first ten paragraphs from a commentary published at Townhall called "A Censored Race War?" which he renamed "Thomas Sowell: Those Who Deny The Black-On-White Race War Do So At The Nation’s Peril" at his blog.

Sowell's article didn't even include the word "peril" or suggest that the nation was at risk. At worst, his strongest sentence suggested an "explosion of white backlash."

"If and when that pressure leads to an explosion of white backlash, things could be a lot worse than if the truth had come out earlier, and steps taken by both black and white leaders to deal with the hoodlums and with those who inflame the hoodlums."

Bill Murphy was one of 18 to retweet the 5/15/12 PatDollard tweet, and he added hashmarks #TCOT (top conservatives on Twitter) #P2 (progressives 2.0) and #GOP.



However, he must have changed his mind - before or after being hired by the Romney campaign a few months later - because Bill Murphy scrubbed that tweet when I first discovered it at Topsy.com in August.

A few days before that tweet, Murphy retweeted a tweet by Michelle Malkin's TwitchyTeam, "Race-baiting Al Sharpton @TheRevAl: GOP has 'war on blacks, time to fire back.'"



On April 1, Bill Murphy tweeted, "Trayvon: Race war over justice http://j.mp/H24hrU," and on Jan 1, he tweeted, "If a conservative made a racial comment about a heavily minority region imagine the backlash http://t.co/OPhM7Lpx #CrackerCountry #FLprimary," which linked to a Rush Limbaugh article, about how Politico's Jonathan Martin said on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown, "As you know, Chuck, a lot of those counties in the Panhandle, in north Florida, the "cracker counties" more resemble Georgia and Alabama than they do Florida" (Martin was one of the reporters who ignored my tweets about Murphy). Murphy's tweet - ironically, I presume - included the hashmark #CrackerCountry even though Martin was only talking about counties in Florida.

This is a cache of one page from the blog Bill Murphy took offline the first day I began reporting on him:



This March 2, 2011 response to a tweet by Ali Akbar, who would start a group called NotMittRomney months later before redirecting it to the official Mitt Romney campaign site at some point this year, is interesting, since it shows that Murphy evidently changed his mind, too.

"Romney is the guy no one wants to touch twice," Ali Akbar tweeted, referring to Romney's unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid. "Noticing that?"

Future Social Media Director Bill Murphy responded, "More people coming to that conclusion every day."



On June 1, 2011, Murphy tweeted - and Ali Akbar retweeted - a link to an article called "Democrats admit Herman Cain is for real," so Cain might have been his chosen candidate at the time. However, he scrubbed that tweet before I found it on Topsy in August.

Much more on Bill Murphy can be found at my original article, "Former Leadership Institute operative linked to a convicted felon now works for Romney campaign."

Last October, I left some comments at the Kid Kenoma blog which referred to Jason Leopold, a former colleague of mine at RAW STORY who infamously published a bogus story at TruthOut in May of 2006 about Karl Rove being indicted after he stopped reporting for us. I didn't get promoted to an editorial position at RAW STORY until January of 2007, but because there were obvious flaws in his story, I refused to link to it, and - after arguing strenuously - we never did.

Unfortunately, for many years after, the albatross of Leopold's much maligned story hung around our necks, and we probably should have done more to distance ourselves from him than the December 15, 2005 Editor's Note called "Examining Raw Story's leak reporting."

Along with plagiarism, making up stories, and drug issues which he confessed to in his autobiography, Leopold also has a history of using "socks" to smear critics and pimp links to his stories. Conservatives and liberals have busted him for sock puppetry to promote his work or attack bloggers and journalists who criticize it, and some links to articles about Leopold's socks include "Jason Leopold, Sockpuppet Extraordinaire" at The Last Hurrah, "Because You Can Never Read Too Much About Sock-Puppetry" at Patterico's Pontifications and "Leftist Hate Campaign Against Blogger Gets Deadly Serious" at Newsbusters.

In March of 2006, Leopold admitted that he used at least one sock, and apologized for it:

"I might as well out myself and say that, yes, I am the 'harry shep' that posted comments here that were inflammatory and rude and obnoxious and mean and crude and were directed toward some of the people who run this site. It was a cowardly thing to do and I apologize. I acted impulsively because I had interpreted some of the analysis to be a direct "hit" on one of my stories. However, it became obvious to the people who run this site that my pseudonym was not a good cover because the IP address revealed my true identity. It was a total immature reaction and there was truly no excuse for it. So to the people who run this site I sincerely apologize for being such an immature, thin-skinned prick. I hope you can forgive me."

Not long after that confession, Leopold attempted to blame me as his sock, even though I had once refused his request to post a comment at Daily Kos attacking liberal blogger Empty Wheel for criticizing a story he wrote.

"I'm investigating the recent campaign to discredit Jason Leopold, and whether or not people were impersonating other people," a blogger emailed me in July of 2006. So I called that blogger, answered his questions, and we argued a bit, but he ended up deleting a story based on Leopold's lies.

That same blogger wrote other people at RAW STORY claiming I "had posted all this stuff as Jason," and one editor told me, he "looked at it, and said, '1. Where is the proof? I'm not seeing any., and 2. How did Ron's name even get brought into this?'"

"Upon re-examination, he had no proof, and Jason was a liar," the editor told me in late 2006. "And, he never answered the second question."

A couple days ago, on November 13, after I tweeted that I could prove Leopold smeared me using a sock a year ago, he denied it: "I don't need a 'sock' to smear you. I can and will and have done so easily under my own name. You're pathetic and also a lunatic."



I wrote some harsh stuff about Leopold at the Kid Kenoma blog last October, partly because I'd been getting smeared by conservative bloggers and accused of absurd crimes, and a few bloggers I knew refused to help me, but strangely defended Leopold instead.

However, I used my own name when I left the harsh words about Leopold, and I didn't lie.

On October 3, 2011, someone left the following comments at the Kid Kenoma blog using the name "siouxZ":

"Ron Brynaert is a lunatic who was fired from Raw Story because he is a lunatic and a conspiracy theorist. One only need to read his tweets from the past six months to arrive at that conclusion. No one will ever hire Ron to work for any news organization EVER."

"Ron Brynaert used to work at Kim’s Video in Manhattan and was caught in the bathroom smoking crack and masturbating. He was fired from there too. He’s actually one of the shittiest 'reporters' out there.There’s a reason he doesn’t have friends."

"I am not joking. There’s a reason Ron does not step foot in Kim’s or walks around St. Marks. Guy is a laughingstock. And a raging prick. You will not meet a bigger asshole than Ron Brynaert."

I've never smoked crack and I've never been caught in the bathroom masturbating, and I didn't leave RAW STORY or Kim's Video for any of the reasons "siouxZ" claimed. At times, I can be a "raging prick", and I acted like one when I mentioned Leopold in that same comment section, which I do apologize for.

I got mad at Leopold the other day because he gave a hat tip to another former colleague at RAW STORY for something she obviously saw on my Twitter timeline. And I was probably behaving like a "raging prick" when I did so, but Leopold just won't stop smearing me. And I think it's shameful that a person who has been fired for plagiarism, drug abuse and making up stories still is trusted by many liberal bloggers, who ignore work I do, because I go after both sides.

I have no idea who is behind the Kid Kenoma blog - but whomever it is - was kind enough to send me the IP address attached to the defamatory comments left under the name "siouxZ", after I sent him or her links to other posts on the web that suggested it was Leopold's sock.

On March 2, 2011, siouxZ left a comment at Cafe Whispers noting, "No one here in Australia seems to realize that David Hicks gave an exclusive interview to Jason Leopold to weeks ago," and left links to the interview and the story, with a short excerpt.

On March 23, 2011, siouxZ complained at the American Everyday blog, "Please IMMEDIATELY remove the pictures you re-posted without permission from the TO article," after a blogger criticized a story by Leopold.

The blogger "Willy Loman" aka Scott Creighton argued back that "there are NO pictures taken from the TO article without permission," and added "sioxZ, if you want to claim you have sole rights to a photo handed over by your Manchurian candidate, I would suggest you tell the guy to take it off his open sourced information sharing Wikipage…"

"See these stories by Leopold that the Australian mainstream media ignored, which inspired the SMH reports," siouxZ wrote at Neil's Final Decade on August 23, 2011 and included links to three of Jason's articles.

All those comments were left on blog posts that mentioned Jason Leopold, and the IP address Kid Kenoma sent me is from where he lives in Los Angeles, California.

But the most damning proof that Jason Leopold is "siouxZ" can be found on his own Wikipedia page, where he has apparently broken the rule against self-editing.

There were only 4 contributions attached to that IP address, and all were done on November 7. 2011 to Leopold's Wikipedia entry.

The first contribution was the subtraction of the following two sentences:

"According to a Washington Post report, the press release for Leopold's unpublished book 'Off the Record' stated that 'He says he was fired by the Los Angeles Times 'for threatening to rip a reporter's head off.' Leopold says he quit Dow Jones Newswires in a dispute over his beat but later learned the news service was planning to fire him because of a correction to one of his Enron stories: 'Seems I got all of the facts wrong.'"

The second contribution centered on two paragraphs referring to Leopold's book:

"Prior to the publication of 'News Junkie', Leopold's book was titled 'Off the Record'. The book's publisher, according to the Washington Post report, said the book has been dropped for 'business reasons.' The Post wrote that it was canceled following reported legal threats from Steven Maviglio, the press secretary to former Governor [[Gray Davis]], who, according to the manuscript, invested in energy companies using inside information. The author of the Washington Post story about Leopold's book, Howard Kurtz, was featured in News Junkie. Leopold called him 'lazy.'

In the book, Leopold also revealed many secrets about his life such as a prior [[drug addiction]], bouts with mental illness and suicide attempts. He also disclosed how he lied to employers about a criminal conviction for larceny that took place when Leopold was in his 20s and working in the record business."

Those two paragraphs were edited into a single, shorter one:

"Prior to the publication of 'News Junkie', Leopold's book was titled 'Off the Record'. In the book, Leopold also revealed many secrets about his life such as a prior [[drug addiction]], bouts with mental illness and suicide attempts. He also disclosed how he lied to employers about a criminal conviction for larceny that took place when Leopold was in his 20s and working in the record business."

The third contribution just cleaned up a section dealing which referred to him "as a senior editor and reporter" who had "returned to 'Truthout' as Deputy Managing Editor."

The fourth contribution was related to an article written by Leopold that Salon removed from its website after accusations that it had been plagiarized. Originally, the Wikipedia entry stated,

"According to Salon, Leopold's article 'used seven full paragraphs amounting to 480 words, virtually verbatim, from the FT. There were two attributions to the FT within the passage, but they appeared to apply only to the specific sentences that contained them, not to the full passage.' Leopold later admitted that he had been careless by not providing the 'FT' with additional credit, but insisted that Salon's editors had all the relevant documents, including the disputed White email, before the story was published.'"

But it was changed to:

"According to Salon, Leopold's article 'used seven full paragraphs about a specific contract amounting to 480 words, virtually verbatim, from the FT. There were two clear attributions to the FT within the passage.' Leopold later admitted that he had been careless by not providing the 'FT' with additional credit even though he had already credited the publication twice. He insisted that Salon's editors had all the relevant documents, including the disputed White email, which he later posted online on the New Zealand website Scoop, before the story was published."

The following lines were also removed:

"Commenting on the case, Kerry Lauerman of 'Salon' said that 'Leopold definitely represents the dark side of the web ... he became this sort of hero for throngs people online.' {{cite book|last=Russell|first=Adrienne|editor=S. Elizabeth Bird|title=The anthropology of news & journalism: global perspectives|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J6-dXBf76RkC&pg=PA278|chapter=Salon.com and New-Media Professional Journalism Culture|year=2010|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=0253221269|pages=278-€“9}}"

"Reverting possible vandalism," a Wikipedia editor wrote in response to the edits on November 7, 2011, and added some of the deleted parts back to Leopold's entry.

There are other interesting things at Wikipedia's revision history page for "Jason Leopold" connected to California IP addresses including the July 1, 2010 claim, "I am Mr. Leopold's attorney and Wikipedia has a complaint citing recurring defamation in this article with regards to the stated claims about Salon. A show cause order was issued as well."

Another comment by that same IP on June 21, 2010:

"I am Mr. Leopold's attorney. The passage BONEWAH included on Salon contains defamatory and libelous information. The context of this passage is wholly taken out of context. Mr. Leopold sued Salon in 2003 for false statements the organization made about this episode. It is covered in great detail in his book, News Junkie, as well as a legal letter to Columbia Journalism Review on this discussion page. Mr. Leopold ultimately prevailed and Salon apologized. In fact, a simple lexis search will show this article is still available from Salon. User BONEWAH has waged a war against Mr. Leopold extending several years now and have gone above and beyond to malign my client. You state that Mr. Leopold is only known for the Karl Rove episode. Perhaps that is true for you but not for the tens of thousands of people who read Mr. Leopold's work on a daily basis and invite him on television and radio to discuss his work. Your commentary is evidence of bias and in cherry picking passages to fit your agenda you have defamed Mr. Leopold and in doing so caused him serious harm. I demand this passage immediately be removed as it does not state the true nature of the facts. Moreover, this entire article is nothing short of a hit job by a select group of individuals who have made a career of sorts of defaming and libeling my client. There is absolutely no balance to this entry and the authors seem to have knowingly avoided including the accolades, particularly on issues related to Mr. Leopold's work in other areas as well as an award he received from The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization nominated for a Nobel Peace prize for 2010. A simple search of this organization's website will provide you with the information you need. By continuing to keep this passage intact wikipedia is now a party to defamation. I would advise all interested parties to read the letter on the discussion page. My contact information can be found on the letter cited above to Columbia Journalism Review."

But on July 29, 2010, the same IP address argued, "I am not a representative nor associated with Mr. Leopold and you have no basis to suggest that I am. I am simply trying to add balance to this article that has long been biased and the neutrality questionable. The village voice story is relevant and must be included, particularly the quote from Paul Krugman."

In August of 2010, that IP address was blocked for "Block evasion: Disruptive editing: and long-term edit-warring on Jason Leopold."

Normally, I don't allow anonymous smear comments on my blog, but since they might be left by Jason Leopold, I'll make an exception for this article.

PS: "Cities in Dust" is the best song ever released by Siouxsie & The Banshees, and these lines sound appropriate: "We found you hiding we found you lying/Choking on the dirt and sand/Your former glories and all the stories/Dragged and washed with eager hands."

Last fall, I tweeted that Mike Allen, the chief White House correspondent for Politico, leaked Washington Post articles to RAW STORY, while he was working for Time Magazine.

Even though Mike Allen is one of America's most famous journalists, and has done many exclusive interviews with politicians such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, not one blogger or media organization reported on my tweets.

One of my tweets from November of 2011 - which convicted hacker Adrian Lamo claims may have resulted in a $500,000 judgment against me over the summer, even though I was never told about it - was "thanks @mikeallen for helping us scoop @washingtonpost on their own reporting."

I haven't heard from RAW STORY or any of its lawyers since February, when the judge ruled against them, initially. So I have no clue if they really obtained a default judgment against me for $500,000 without even sending me an email. And I fail to see how they can show cause that they lost even a nickel for tweets that no one in the media ever reported on.

I'm a reporter and my main focus has always been on propaganda and media criticism, even before I was hired by RAW STORY in 2005, and was promoted to Managing Editor and then Executive Editor from January of 2007 to October of 2010.

Earlier today, ABC News reporter Jason Ryan thanked me for notifying them about key information they left out of an article related to - an ongoing story that some are calling - PetraeusGate. "Petraeus Affair: Shirtless FBI Pic Appears to Be Playful" now includes the fact that "Youssef Megahed was acquitted by a jury in 2009," which "Veteran FBI Agent Frederick Humphries Got Ball Rolling on Petraeus Probe" failed to note.

Also, Daily Dot's Kevin Morris credited me for tipping him on a story he published today: "Gen. John Allen didn't troll Jill Kelley on Wikipedia."

In October of 2005, I wrote an article called "Does the New York Times Have a Learning Disability?" which ran at New York University Professor Jay Rosen's highly regarded media criticism blog Press Think. The subtitle was "Why-the-heck-is-it that after six years, at least four major controversies, and two we’re-gonna-fix-it committees--each coughing up its lessons--the editors of The New York Times haven’t seemed to learn a blasted thing?"

Here are some of my tweets from May of 2012:



DEVELOPING...

(Note: I'll be adding to this story over the weekend, but I probably won't finish it until Monday. I'm having trouble finding my tweets online, so it will take some time to continue this story.)

Although Orca Project infamously failed on Election Day, its stated intent may have been in violation of election laws in Ohio - and, perhaps other states, as well.

Days before the election, Deborah Charles reported for Reuters on November 2nd, how poll watchers were "becoming as much a part of elections as voters and precinct workers."

State laws permit poll watchers "to ensure a fair election," but the intent behind the secretive "Orca Project" seemed to be a multi-state effort to spy on voters in order to inform "get out the vote" teams in the places where Republican candidates were in danger of losing on Election Day. In other words, instead of just watching, Orca Project volunteers may have been working to influence it.

The Reuters article noted that "some voting-rights advocates and others are questioning whether such monitors could become an intimidating presence that leads some people - namely minorities and the elderly - not to vote, and slows down the voting process for others."

"Some of the observers are credentialed by local governments to monitor the election from inside polling sites and will be allowed to challenge the right of people to vote. Some are lawyers representing the presidential campaigns and their parties, looking out for any irregularities that could be cited in a legal challenge of election results.

...

'You can be just as harmful outside as inside by creating disruptions,' said Eric Marshall, of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under Law. 'We shouldn't be having bullies creating disruptions or intimidating voters at the polling place.'"

"For months now, the Romney campaign has been putting together a high-tech voter monitoring operation to use on Election Day that will identify which of their committed supporters have voted -- and then corral those who haven't," Margaret Warner reported for PBS on November 5th, a day before Election Day 2012.

In a column titled "Romney's fail whale: ORCA the vote-tracker left team 'flying blind'," Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns reported for Politico on November 8, that the "mega-app for smartphones that would link the more than 30,000 operatives and volunteers involved in get-out-the-vote efforts" had been "created and managed by the Romney campaign and was kept a secret among a close circle in Boston, according to POLITICO sources."

"It was supposed to be incredibly efficient and allow the campaign to streamline, from its War Room at the Garden in Boston, the efforts to maximize turnout of Romney backers," Haberman and Burns noted. "State officials were kept in the dark about exactly how it would work in the lead-up to Election Day, and there was never a dry run that included early voting, said one of the sources."

Politico linked to a November 8th post at the Ace of Spades HQ blog written by John Ekdahl, Jr., a conservative who signed up with the Orca Project.

"The entire purpose of this project was to digitize the decades-old practice of strike lists. The old way was to sit with your paper and mark off people that have voted and every hour or so, someone from the campaign would come get your list and take it back to local headquarters. Then, they'd begin contacting people that hadn't voted yet and encourage them to head to the polls. It's worked for years."

At Breitbart.com, Joel B. Pollack wrote, "As Republicans try to explain their Election Day losses in terms of policy, tactics, and strategy, one factor is emerging as the essential difference between the Obama and Romney campaigns on November 6: the absolute failure of Romney’s get-out-the-vote effort, which underperformed even John McCain’s lackluster 2008 turnout. One culprit appears to be 'Orca,' the Romney’s massive technology effort, which failed completely."

"A source within the Romney campaign," told Pollack that "Project Orca was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smartphones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this."

Referring to the blog post at Ace Of Spades HQ, Pollack added that "Ekdahl describes how volunteers were expected to print their own materials, and were mistakenly not told to bring their poll watching credentials to polling places."

"Romney volunteers in Virginia confirmed that the campaign had relied entirely on Project Orca to turn out the vote in key areas such as Roanoke, where Romney and Ryan had made appearances. Volunteers who had driven to Virginia from safely-Republican Tennessee were shocked at the disorganization they encountered.

While the Romney campaign waited for Orca to function as planned, the Obama campaign had placed signs outside every one of the city's thirty-three polling places, and was fully staffed with two volunteers outside each polling place, and a strike list volunteer inside, all day long from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. The best that the short-handed Tennessee volunteers could manage was 40% coverage of polling places; the local GOP, they said, had relied entirely on the campaign's centralized Orca system in Boston to turn out the local vote."

In recent years, especially since the controversial 2000 presidential election, both parties have been using poll watchers to do more than watch, but the Orca Project seems like it was intended to go even further.

"There was, in fact, massive suppression of the Republican vote--by the Romney campaign, through the diversion of nearly 40,000 volunteers to a failing computer program," Pollack concluded.

On November 16, Wonkette's Rebecca Schoenkopf blogged about an unsubstantiated claim that "Anonymous had stopped Karl Rove from hacking the election by hacking Orca," and added "we think" to the headline.

Although anyone can claim membership in Anonymous, the "Anon2Rove" video which "warned" Karl Rove before the election wasn't released by any of the unofficial but recognized sub-factions. It was uploaded to YouTube by someone using the name "Charlene Zooz" who opened the account on October 22nd, and hasn't even signed back in since that date.

"Oh cool, Anonymous (we think it is Anonymous?) says Karl Rove was gonna vote fraud all the Machines, and that’s why he was so flabbergasted and refused to believe it when Fox called Ohio for Bamz, but they stopped him from stealing all the Machines by jamming up ORCA, because it was not actually a GOTV system but a 'steal the vote' system, but they stopped him, we are pretty sure that is what the following letter, which we guess is from Anonymous probably, says. Seems legit! But here is our question! If Anonymous hacked ORCA and caused it to explode miserably on Election Day, how could Anonymous ever prove that ORCA was actually a vote-thieving program? If they hacked in, couldn’t they have planted code to make it look like Rove was gonna fraud the election? (Not that we believe for a second that Rove wasn’t trying to fraud the election, we are just saying, it seems like 'logic.')"

Former Democratic operative Neal Rauhauser - who has spent the last two years trolling and harassing conservatives and even liberal critics [including me] - has claimed responsibility for many political hoaxes, in the past, and appears to be one of the driving forces behind this one.

But whether or not the Orca Project failed, its intention may have been in violation of laws in many states regarding elections and regulating poll watchers.

Ohio Election Law 3599.24 [A][4] Interference with conduct of election states that, "No person shall...[l]oiter in or about a registration or polling place during registration or the casting and counting of ballots so as to hinder, delay, or interfere with the conduct of the registration or election." "Whoever violates division (A)(1) or (2) of this section is guilty of a felony of the fifth degree. Whoever violates division (A)(3), (4),(5), or (6) of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree," Ohio Election Law 3599.24 adds.

Since both major political parties use poll watchers and also operate and regulate the elections at state levels, alleged violations are usually routinely winked at, and hardly ever investigated. Even the FEC and FBI tiptoe around alleged violations, since it's a political mine field. While many supporters of losing candidates grumble and blame voting fraud by the winning side, the Democratic and Republican parties generally try to keep their distance, and only push for investigations if out-and-out violations can be proven.

The media is always quick to mock grumblers, and conservative SuperPAC honcho Karl Rove was ridiculed for what was referred to as a "melt down" during the Fox News 2012 Election Day coverage. The LA Times called it "sublimely weird television," but many conspiracy theorists on the Internet point to it as proof that the Orca Project may have been subverted by the so-called "Protectors."

An article at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, written by Director Mike Shecket notes that, "An examination of the laws in the 28 most competitive states in this year's election reveals a wide variety of approaches to the question of who may observe the voting process on Election Day."

"...Some state statutes are quite permissive in that they allow virtually any member of the public to enter a polling place to observe as long as they are not engaging in certain prohibited activities. For example, Section 7.41 of the Wisconsin Statutes is entitled 'Public's right to access' and provides that '[a]ny member of the public may be present at any polling place for the purpose of observation of an election, except a candidate at that election.' Other statutes are highly restrictive, listing only specific persons who may be present, generally the voters (sometimes for a limited period of time), election officials, and possibly law enforcement officers. An example from this restrictive end of the spectrum is Section 3-1-37(a) of the West Virginia Code, which reads in part: 'Except as otherwise provided in this section, no person, other than the election officers and voters going to the election room to vote and returning therefrom, may be or remain within three hundred feet of the outside entrance to the building housing the polling place while the polls are open.'

In Ohio, other than voters casting their ballots, only election officials, employees, witnesses, challengers and police officers are permitted to enter the polling place. Ohio Rev. Stat. § 3501.35. In Ohio, a challenger is a person selected by a political party or group of five or more candidates who is allowed to observe all election proceedings while the polls are open. Witnesses, on the other hand, are only allowed to be present for the counting of votes after the polls close. Both challengers and watchers are required to take an oath of office. Ohio Rev. Stat. § 3505.21"

Ohio Election Law 3501.35 No loitering or congregating near polling places [A] [1] states, "During an election and the counting of the ballots, no person shall...[l]oiter, congregate, or engage in any kind of election campaigning within the area between the polling place and the small flags of the United States placed on the thoroughfares and walkways leading to the polling place, and if the line of electors waiting to vote extends beyond those small flags, within ten feet of any elector in that line."

"Except as otherwise provided in division (C) of section 3503.23 of the Revised Code, no person who is not an election official, employee, observer, or police officer shall be allowed to enter the polling place during the election, except for the purpose of voting or assisting another person to vote as provided in section 3505.24 of the Revised Code," Ohio Election Law 3501.35 [B] adds.

Poll watchers working for the Orca Project may have violated Ohio election laws - and perhaps laws on the books in other states, as well - since they seemed to be focused on affecting the national and state election results, instead of just watching for fraud.

During his sworn in testimony on December 20, 2011, at the US v Pfc. Bradley Manning, Article 32 Pretrial, Adrian Lamo - who was convicted of computer crimes in 2004 - was asked about his institutionalization in April of 2010, weeks before he chatted with the former Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq who allegedly leaked documents and a video to the controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

On the same day Manning is said to have first emailed Lamo, Kevin Poulsen reported for Wired.com on May 20, 2010, "Last month Adrian Lamo, a man once hunted by the FBI, did something contrary to his nature. He says he picked up a payphone outside a Northern California supermarket and called the cops."

"Someone, Lamo says, had grabbed his backpack containing the prescription anti-depressants he’d been on since 2004, the year he pleaded guilty to hacking The New York Times. He wanted his medication back. But when the police arrived at the Safeway parking lot it was Lamo, not the missing backpack, that interested them. Something about his halting, monotone speech, perhaps slowed by his medication, got the officers’ attention.

An ambulance arrived. 'After a few moments of conversation, they just kind of exchanged a look and told me to get on the stretcher,' says Lamo."

At his blog, Bailey Carlson argued on June 16, 2011, that "Adrian knowingly included falsifications in his story."

"To put an end to wild speculation I decided to try to obtain a police report. I got in contact with Adrian (@6) on twitter and eventually had a short phone call with him about the incident. He provided me with very little and stalled when pressed about what led officers to authorize his detainment under a involuntary psychiatric hold law. He also dumbfounded me with circular logic on twitter when explaining why he didn’t remember the events leading up to his forcible hospitalization. Adrian was willing to give me the location and the sheriffs office to contact for further information – so I did.

...

I contacted the public records office of the Sacramento Sheriffs office and they were able to confirm that they had a record of the incident I described, however they were not able to release the police report due to HIPAA privacy laws. After some research online I had found enough evidence to convince me that HIPAA applicability to police reports were questionable at best so I contacted the Public Information Officer at the Sheriff’s Office and outlined my case.

...

The Sacramento Sheriff PIO told me that on April 27, 2010 at 3:40pm the Sheriff’s Office received a call from Adrian’s father who notified officers that his son had been over-medicating on his prescription medications and that Adrian had threatened to phone the police if his father were to take his meds away. He told the officers that Adrian was at the Safeway on 4040 Manzanita Avenue in Carmichael, CA just blocks from his home, and had been slurring his words and acting erratically. The officers were dispatched and looked for Adrian near the Safeway, however they did not find him and instead Adrian was picked up at 4:09pm by an ambulance belonging to American Medical Response. It is likely he was detained under Section 5150 of California Law which allows psychiatric hold for 72 hours, although it is unclear who authorized it and what happened after it expired and apparently Adrian was transferred to another psychiatric hospital. Sacramento Country Sheriffs office did not authorize a 5150 and can’t verify that that was the reason he was hospitalized. Paramedics and the fire department were also likely involved and could have made the decision"

On July 29, 2011 - fourteen months after publishing Poulsen's exclusive on Lamo's institutionalization - Wired added an update which attributed some of the "details" in the first three paragraphs to Adrian, and noted that the Sacramento County "Sheriff's office was unable to find a record of Lamo phoning the police himself."

"[Update 7/29/11: We've clarified the headline of this story, and modified the text to clearly attribute the above details to Lamo. Since reporting this story, we've learned from police that Lamo's initial hospitalization in April 2010 came after Lamo's father phoned the Sacramento County Sheriff's department three times in as many days to report that Lamo was over-medicating with his prescription drugs, which may have had a profound impact on his speech and coordination. The Sheriff's office was unable to find a record of Lamo phoning the police himself. Lamo stands by his original explanation of the incident.]"

On May 23, 2010, as a search at archive.org reveals, the first two paragraphs of the Wired story appeared as follows, under the headline "Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized for Asperger’s" which was later changed to "Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized, Diagnosed with Asperger’s":

"Last month Adrian Lamo, a man once hunted by the FBI, did something contrary to his nature. He picked up a payphone outside a Northern California supermarket and called the cops.

Someone had grabbed Lamo’s backpack containing the prescription anti-depressants he’d been on since 2004, the year he pleaded guilty to hacking The New York Times. He wanted his medication back. But when the police arrived at the Safeway parking lot it was Lamo, not the missing backpack, that interested them. Something about his halting, monotone speech, perhaps slowed by his medication, got the officers’ attention."

"Your parents became concerned and called the cops numerous times about your drug usage?" Lamo was asked at the December 20, 2011 pretrial by Manning's civilian defense attorney David Coombs, according to journalist Alexa O'Brien's transcription.

Lamo answered, "That took place, yes."

"In April 2010, you were involuntarily institutionalized after you called the police?" Coombs asked, and Lamo replied, "That is correct."

Defense (Coombs): Remember why you called the police?

Lamo: Due to dispute over the possession of my medications.

Defense (Coombs): Thought someone stole it out of your backpack? In fact, you thought someone stole your backpack?

Lamo: Yes.

Defense (Coombs): Police did show up?

Lamo: There was an officer response.

Defense (Coombs): You were arrested?

Lamo: That is consistent with the course of events.

Defense (Coombs): You were institutionalized?

Lamo: As is usual in the state of California.

Defense (Coombs): May 7, 2010 you were discharged?

Lamo: That should tend to be correct.

Lamo seemed to have trouble answering questions with a simple "yes" or "no" at the pretrial, and his response "[t]hat should tend to be correct" stands out since it isn't a firm affirmative reply.

Since there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Lamo ever called the police, it's possible that he lied under oath, which at a civilian trial could be considered perjury, a felony offense. However, Lamo - a civilian - had volunteered to testify at a military hearing for the prosecution, and I'm uncertain about the possible ramifications or potential penalties, if a military judge agrees he lied.

There are other answers that Lamo provided while sworn in at the December of 2011 Article 32 pretrial, along with responses in press interviews - before and after Manning - and in an interview he conducted with a friend of Brad's which may be considered mendacious or deceptive.

As I noted in my October 4, 2012 article, "Bradley Manning Facebook friend was a security and risk management expert", Lamo interviewed Manning's friend Danny Clark, while he might have been working as a CID informant, and he appears to have misled him about the privacy of their chat.

"According to the December 20, 2011 Article 32 Pretrial hearing in U.S. v Pfc. Manning transcript, published by Alexa O'Brien - which she wrote 'was obtained from a respected journalist in attendance that day at Fort Meade' who 'wished to remain anonymous, but wanted the transcript to be made public - Bradley Manning defense attorney, military-appointed JAG Captain Paul Bouchard asked Special Agent Edwards, 'Anyone from law enforcement direct Lamo to have communications with Clark? Suggest it?'

'No,' Special Agent Edwards replied. 'No. We said he has no specific guidance to search, but if he does collect information, he should let us know. I think he knew there were other individuals involved and opportunities in that community with other hackers. If he was to discover anything, he should share that information.'

Captain Bouchard then asked, 'Was Mr. Lamo encouraged [to speak to Danny Clark, while acting as a confidential informant for the Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) in late July of 2010]?'

'If he found something, yes of course we're interested,' Edwards responded. 'But tread lightly. Do not be deceptive. Don't do anything illegal.'

However, since Lamo later admitted while under oath that he had told Clark on July 21, 2010, 'Let's agree neither of us is gonna share these logs,' Lamo was deceptive, and, yet the Army CID retained him as a confidential informant for a year."

In a commentary The Guardian published on January 3, 2013, Lamo oddly wrote about "truths" as if it varied in the eyes of its beholders: "As with most things, there's more to it than the facts: I write this with the intent that you factor this into your narratives and truths on this issue as you best see fit."

Lamo bizarrely added that he couldn't necessarily "tell [the public] the truth."

"It wasn't that I didn't want people to know the truth. It was that I couldn't tell them the truth. I could only tell them facts, and facts without meaning are the very enemy of truth. I said once that lies have no rights against truth. I was wrong. In daily life, it's the truth that's disenfranchised. What fits the popular narrative, what makes an observer happy with the consistency of events, is what is believed.

I could give people facts, but only in a disjointed, abrupt way that would be absorbed by their perception as they best validated their respective storyline – for I had no better one to give them. Against that kind of validation, the truth is only ever a fringe theory. More convenient beliefs are the incumbent."

As I noted in my article, "Adrian Lamo and FBI Cyber Squad computer scientist Russell Handorf," Lamo wrote in a December 1, 2001 comment at Geek.com, using the header "i'm not a preacher or a traveling salesman," that "[t]wo people can look at the same event or person and come away with different conclusions without either having to be wrong — as long as this is the case, the world is probably still ticking."

In his 2013 commentary, Lamo claims that he "developed a disclaimer for conversations that might be entering dubious territory, involving elements of legal privilege available to the clergy and to the press."

"On its face, it is understandable that such a disclaimer, if not adhered to, would be overtly duplicitous. But when it was offered, there was no reasonable expectation that merely sentences later, I would be faced with the choice between interdicting the freedom of the man in the IM window, or gambling that no part of literally hundreds of thousands of classified documents would intersect harmfully with the life of any person affected by their contents."

In an accompanying Q and A, Guardian interviewer Ed Pilkington asked Lamo, "Early on in your chat with Manning you reassured him about your trustworthiness, telling him you were a journalist and a church minister and that either way he'd have legal protection against his identity being revealed. That was clearly misleading, as things transpired, and your critics have accused you of lying to Manning by promising him protection. Do you regret having done that?"

In his initial response, Lamo kind of ducked Pilkington's question:

"Professionally and personally speaking, it's not my function to have people arrested. That's something that would ideally fall to law enforcement. In this matter, the harm from the subject's continued freedom appeared to objectively be greater than the harm of interdicting him. The offer was never meant to be construed as a suicide pact, and no one had ever mistaken it for one.

In the specific context of the logs, it's also relevant to note that the offer was never affirmatively accepted – it proposed two possible conditions, and one was never chosen."

Pilkington then tried again: "I want to press you on this point. If a priest, or a journalist, promises to protect someone's identity or confession, they can't then turn round and say: 'Oh, you've told me something bad, therefore I'm going to turn you in.' By telling Manning you would protect him (whether or not he accepted your offer) didn't you make pact, a vow, that couldn't be broken? If I tell a source of mine that I will protect his or her identity, I mean it.""The two choices aren't fungible," Lamo argued. "They're distinct things, each with their own set of boundaries."

Lamo again used the term "suicide pact" to explain his choice to leak the chats with Manning to the authorities and the media.

"In each case the law relating to privilege has exemption for exigent situations as the conscience sees them. Assuming the offer had been taken up and we'd gone forward – if I'd been a doctor or a counselor, the same would have been true – the law recognizes that privilege is not, as I said, a suicide pact. Meaning that once you enter into it, you're not bound to it no matter how much harm will arise. I'd have a much harder time saying with a straight face: 'Well, he told me about the largest classified material breach in the history of western intelligence, but I wasn't supposed to tell anyone.'"

Random House - via Dictionary.com - defines"suicide pact" as "an agreement between two or more people to commit suicide together," which - at the very least - seems to be an exaggeration of events, since Lamo's life wouldn't have been at peril if he - for example - leaked the conversations to the media, but kept Manning's name secret.

It's not the first time Lamo has used "suicide pact" when interviewed about Manning. In June of 2010, a blog called "Adrian Lamo – And ye shall know the truth" at www.adrianlamolies.wordpress.com referred to a BBC interview where he also deployed it.

"Still, now, Adrian is leaving us with quotes to the media that indicate he is tangled in his own web of lies. Specifically, as seen in a recent article by the BBC, after pitying himself and trying to defend his actions, he goes on to say 'I did tell him that I worked as a journalist. I would have been happy to write about him myself, but we just decided that it would be too unethical.' OF COURSE Adrian would be happy to write about Manning himself. It shows clear disregard for the seriousness of this case. It shows Adrian is instead too caught up with his own profiteering to realize the degree of severity that his selfish actions could result in. Adrian said himself that as soon as Bradley Manning gave him the information, that it was a 'suicide pact.' And yet he is quoted elsewhere saying that the decision was agonizing. Come on. Adrian has been so deep in his own shit for such a long time, that he can’t smell it anymore. The hacker community knows this.

Adrian says he feels bad and that he agonized over the decision to out Manning. But the truth is, he doesn’t feel bad and he knew right away what he was going to do with this opportunity. And, among other reasons, he says he went public with it because he felt Manning should know who flipped him? Come on, come up with something better. Manning would have known this straight away anyway- whether through logic or Adrian’s testimony in future court hearings. Adrian is a pathological liar."

"At the moment he gave me the information, it was basically a suicide pact," Mr Lamo told the BBC.

"He handed his name to US authorities because of concerns over US national security and because he did not want to be found to have been 'obstructing justice' in the course of any investigation.

'I didn't want any more FBI agents knocking at the door,' he said."

At her blog, O'Brien observed, "Lamo admitted in his sworn testimony that while he told bradass87 that none of their conversation was for print, he had already reached out to law enforcement on 21 May 2010."

On Twitter Pilkington told me that "Lamo was not paid for his commentary published by The Guardian or for the IM chat that I had with him,"and that he"offered us his commentary, & we suggested an additional IM in which we could put direct questions."

In July of 2012, I asked Lamo some questions over Twitter about Neal Rauhauser, a Democratic operative who claims to have ties to the FBI, and who is notorious for spreading disinfo and outright lying. Rauhauser once "volunteered" for a security firm called Project Vigilant and told me in an email, "Lamo I have seen a couple of times in text chats hosted by PV. Never met him, never talked on the phone, we occasionally exchange sly insults via Twitter."

"After a search, it appears my NDA prevents me from confirming or denying whether any party has been CC'd on any PV e-mail," Adrian Lamo told me on Twitter, after first claiming otherwise, when asked about communications with Rauhauser regarding working on projects together, based upon his "general memory."

Lamo added, "I can say with authority that I have never received an e-mail concerning or addressed to that individual, with the exception of replies to queries concerning him from third-parties, spurred by this kind of inquiry."

"Lamo also told me, prior to checking his email account, 'I've never collaborated with Mr. Rauhauser directly or by proxy on any issue insofar as I'm aware.'

In another tweet, Adrian Lamo told me, '@ronbryn You can deny anything when you focus on explaining what you don't say at the expense of actually saying anything you'll back.'"

On September 27, 2012, when asked about inconsistencies in interviews, Project Vigilant director Chet Uber told me in a Direct Message, "SPIN THE MEDIA OR THEY WILL SPIN YOU."


Before the "whole, unedited"[Editor's note: Many journalists and bloggers have argued that there appear to be sections missing.] chat logs were finally published by Wired.com, Lamo told Elinor Mills in a story published on June 7, 2010 at CNET.com - as I noted in my article, "More members from secretive, oddball Project Vigilant group revealed" - that, as she paraphrased, "sensitive information" Manning gave him "had to do with code words," and in his own words was "top-secret sensitive, compartmentalized information."

However, as O'Brien reported at her blog, "none of the charged documents in US v Pfc. Manning are TOP SECRET/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information."

"The logs are not in dispute," Lamo told The Guardian's Ed Pilkington in the recent Q & A.

As Lily Kuo reported for Reuters in December of 2011, "Investigator David Shaver said the chat logs from the computers of Manning and Lamo were identical except for occasional network drops that affected one computer and not the other. One set of chat logs had been modified slightly and may have been those leaked to the media, he said."

"Yes, at some point, chat log had been enabled, and they basically matched," Shaver testified - according to O'Brien's transcript - but it's unclear when exactly the log was "enabled" on Manning's end, and Lamo does have a history of hacking AOL.

As O'Brien noted, Special Agent Antonio Patrick Edwards, CCIU testified on December 20, 2011 that he was provided two thumb drives by an individual named George W. Shreik or Street [Editor's Note: I asked O'Brien a few months ago if any one knew the correct spelling of this "individual" but a year later she still hadn't learned it.] because "[c]hat logs provided during earlier interviews with Mr. Lamo were not the complete record."

O'Brien reported at her blog, "Adrian Lamo testified that he gave two thumb drives to SA Edwards, CCIU, which contradicted SA Edward's, CCIU, own testimony. When the military prosecutor examined Lamo, Lamo testified that he could not answer the military prosecutor about who he gave the two thumb drives containing the alleged chat logs."

Yesterday - on January 8, 2013 - Ed Pilkington reported for The Guardian, "Coombs said that the defense would be calling as a witness Adrian Lamo, the hacker who alerted military authorities to Manning's WikiLeaks activities, to give evidence about the web chat he had with Manning shortly before the soldier's arrest in Iraq in March 2010. The content of the web chat, Coombs suggested, would be used by the defense to show that Manning selected information to leak that 'could not be used to harm the US or advantage any foreign nation.'"

Avatar for alleged "Provide Security" Senior Research Analyst "Anna Ferreira" was taken from porn site, just like "Robin Sage": Tom Ryan's infamous and "fictitious femme fatale"

Thomas Ryan sells himself on the Internet as a "20-year security veteran" but in real life he seems to do little else but pull pranks and make up fictitious agents using pictures from porn sites.

"Call her the Mata Hari of cyberspace," Shaun Waterman reported in his July 18, 2010 Washington Times article "Fictitious femme fatale fooled cybersecurity."

"Robin Sage, according to her profiles on Facebook and other social-networking websites, was an attractive, flirtatious 25-year-old woman working as a 'cyber threat analyst' at the U.S. Navy's Network Warfare Command. Within less than a month, she amassed nearly 300 social-network connections among security specialists, military personnel and staff at intelligence agencies and defense contractors.

A handful of pictures on her Facebook page included one of her at a party posing in thigh-high knee socks and a skull-and-crossbones bikini captioned, 'doing what I do best.'"

"'Sorry to say, I’m not a Green Beret! Just a cute girl stopping by to say hey!' she rhymingly proclaimed on her Twitter page, concluding, 'My life is about info sec [information security] all the way!'

And so it apparently was. She was an avid user of LinkedIn - a social-networking site for professionals sometimes described as 'Facebook for grown-ups.' Her connections on it included men working for the nation’s most senior military officer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for one of the most secret government agencies of all, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds, launches and runs U.S. spy satellites. Others included a senior intelligence official in the U.S. Marine Corps, the chief of staff for a U.S. congressman, and several senior executives at defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. Almost all were seasoned security professionals.

But Robin Sage did not exist.

Her profile was a ruse set up by security consultant Thomas Ryan as part of an effort to expose weaknesses in the nation’s defense and intelligence communities - what Mr. Ryan calls 'an independent ‘red team’ exercise'."

At DEFCON's Black Hat Technical Security Conference - held in Las Vegas during July of 2010 - Ryan gave a presentation called "Getting in bed with Robin Sage."

His bio at the Black Hat website claims,

"Thomas Ryan: A 20-year security veteran, Thomas Ryan is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Cyber Operations and Threat Intelligence for Provide Security. The company was formed with the concept of the convergence of both physical and cyber techniques for Executive Protection, Advanced Red Teaming, Crisis Management, Threat Profiling, Threat Assessments and Penetration Testing. In his role, Mr. Ryan leads a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world. Prior to founding Provide Security, Mr. Ryan had functioned as a security instructor for US Army INSCOM, USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM and several other military and government agencies. His corporate experience has evolved from working at numerous security consulting companies. Mr. Ryan's passion for information security had him elected as the Chapter Vice President for OWASP NY in 2004, Board Member for NJ Chapter in 2005, then merging the two chapters in 2007 while still retaining his Board Member role in 2010. His contributions include participating as a co-author's of the OWASP Test Guide v2, and speaking at several industry events including the OWASP, INFRAGARD, ICCS, and ISSA."

The briefing for Ryan's July presentation states,

Given the vast number of security breaches via the internet, the experiment seeks to exploit the fundamental levels of information leakage—the outflow of information as a result of people’s hap-hazard and unquestioned trust. The experiment was conducted by creating a blatantly false identity and enrolling on various social networking websites. By joining networks, registering on mailing lists, and listing false credentials, the conditions were then set to research people’s decisions to trust and share information with the false identity. The main factors observed were: the exploitation of trust based on gender, occupation, education/credentials, and friends (connections).

By the end of this Experiment, Robin finished the month having accumulated 100’s connections through various social networking sites. Contacts included executives at government entities such as the NSA, DOD and Military Intelligence groups. Other friends came from Global 500 corporations. Throughout the experiment Robin was offered gifts, government and corporate jobs, and options to speak at a variety of security conferences.

Through this 28 day experiment, it became evident that the propagation of a false identity via social networking websites is rampant and viral. Much of the information revealed to Robin Sage violated OPSEC procedures. The deliberate choice of an attractive young female exposed the role that sex and appearance plays in trust and people’s eagerness to connect with someone. In conjunction with her look, Robin Sage’s credentials listed on her profile resulted in selection perception; people’s tendency to draw unwarranted conclusions in their attempt to make a quick decision. By acquiring a large number of connections, Robin had the ability to identify the individual who was positioned to provide the most intelligence based on their involvement in multiple government agencies. The false identity combined with carefully chosen false credentials led to a false trust that could have resulted in the breach of multiple security protocols.

Video of the hour-long presentation:



In July of 2010, Kelly Jackson Higgins reported at Dark Reading,

"Meanwhile, the real woman in the Robin Sage LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profile photos has agreed to show up at Black Hat USA later this month to introduce Ryan for his presentation. Ryan says he confirmed that using her photo for the social network accounts was legal, as long as none of her personally identifiable information was used, and it was not. The woman apparently posed for photo shoots for a pornographic site, according to Ryan. He found the woman's photo by searching 'emo chick' via Google, a reference to the punk/indie style and music."

Ryan told a slightly different version of how he found the photos to Forbes reporter Kashmir Hill, who reported in November of 2011 that he "grabbed photos of a ­Lisbeth Salander-type from a pornography site after a Google image search for 'Goth girl.'"

In another article for Dark Reading - "Would 'Robin Sage' Have Made So Many Friends Without The Hot Pics?" - Higgins wrote, "In reality, the pictures were actually of a woman who posed on pornographic websites (but those who fell for her didn't know that part)."

Highlights [or high lowlights] from Old ReaperSec log /w Tom Ryan Lulz Nov 2011, posted on pastebin by former or still-current Project Vigilant "volunteer"/"hypertroll"Neal Rauhauser:

"Nov 21 20:46 wanna see Robin Sage's tits?
Nov 21 21:01 Only drug I have ever done was Ecstacy when going to raves
Nov 21 21:03 X is the shit !! A Few lady Gs , hot russian girls, some Deadmau5 or Armin Van Buuren
Nov 21 21:03 end up in numerous 3somes and 4somes
Nov 30 22:22 chif I feel like I need some drugs of somesort
Nov 30 22:24 we need them at a BlackHat Party

Nov 30 22:27 I hate the crash of MDMA
Nov 30 22:28 sleep 14 hours
Nov 30 22:28 I ended up in several 3somes and 4somes on MDMA
Nov 30 22:30 it's weird cause it takes like an hour to blow your load
Nov 30 22:31 One year at the DEFCON CDC Ninja Strike Force party they had nude hookers going around and these geeks paid them $20 to eat out hookers
Nov 30 22:32 I almost puked"

Ryan posted a link to a profile of "Katya" at an alt porn site called Gods Girls. The @robinsage avatar can be found on her Personal Photos page.

I tried contacting the real "Robin Sage" on her real social media accounts, but she didn't respond. This is a more current photo of what she looks like today:



"Can you email me so I can ask you questions about Tom Ryan from Provide Security and your portrayal of Robin Sage for article that I'm working on?" I wrote the real Robin Sage, who never responded after I tried contacting her via Facebook and Twitter. "It's strange that no one seems to have actually reported on the woman whose photos were used to allegedly hoax Dept. of Defense and NSA employees...and I was surprised to see you protested Prop. 8 and would love to hear more about you."

In July of 2010, the pornographic model was asked, "[H]ow does it feel to be Robin Sage's alter-ego?"

"[T]otally kick ass! :)", Kat Karver aka "meeeowkat" responded in the July 7, 2010 formspring chat which linked to a myspace account called teez_bunny.

Kat Karver's real name is Katharine Cole, and her Facebook account claims she was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The infamous Robin Sage avatar can also be seen on her Facebook account [Editor's Note: I removed the link because my blog post was mysteriously scrubbed. Mike Stack tweeted that Tom Ryan "reported" me. I also removed a picture taken from a public site of Jen Emick, since she might have "reported" me, too] and Cole wrote that it was from her "dready days...", and one of her friends implies it was taken when she attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Cole's resume indicates that - when she's not posing - she currently works in retail, and volunteers at a homeless shelter.

A few weeks ago, Ryan "disappeared" from Twitter @tomryanblog, but his @providesecurity and @robinsage accounts - which are mostly automated - are still active.

"@LeidermanDevine sometimes I think a witch cast a drama spell on me @backtracesec," was Ryan's penultimate tweet which was sent to a law firm known for representing hackers and a sketchy security firm that Jennifer Emick @AsherahResearch worked with to out Anonymous hacktivists. Emick is an aficiando on Paganism and calls herself an "occultist." Ryan, Emick and a woman known as Mi-chelle - who used to tweet @ZAPEM - all appear to be "working" together to "social engineer" and chase Anonymous activists, but they spread "convolution" and many Twitterers believe they engage in fake feuds.

In August of 2012, Emick sent a tweet to blogger Seth Allen aka "Socrates" @Prepostericity claiming she had filed a personal protection order against Ryan, but then deleted it. She has referred to the PPO on other occasions, but gave strange reasons, at the time, for why she scrubbed it, and then she made her public @asherahresearch Twitter account private for a few months. Emick was with Anonymous in the early Scientology battles before seemingly turning against them; Ryan "infiltrated" an Occupy Wall Street mail archive, but now is friendly with many OWS activists; Mi-chelle allegedly told Andrew Breitbart in an email dated February 29, 2012 hours after his fatal collapse that she wanted to infiltrate Anonymous and "cause a rift" by "provid[ing] them with enough information to ultimately attack the left," and may be a source for the emails and phone calls regarding InfraGard leaked to http://par-anoia.net.



A few days before his last tweets, @TomRyanBlog cryptically tweeted, "I wonder what the record is for the most amount of people and most amount of women trying to SE a person at one time."

Avatar for alleged Provide Security Senior Research Analyst was taken from porn site

According to her Linked In profile - which was just recently scrubbed but can still be viewed at this cache link - "Senior Research Analyst" Anna Ferreira began working at Tom Ryan's Provide Security in June of 2012.



Ferreira's profile claims she was a Crypto Tech - short for Cryptologic Technician - in the US Navy for 6 years and 1 month from May of 2006 to May of 2012, and attended the American Public University System. According to its website, APUS is a private online university, which "consists of two online universities: American Public University (APU) and American Military University (AMU)."

"APUS’ origins reach back to 1991, when James P. Etter, a Marine Corps officer who taught at Marine Corps Base Quantico, retired from active service and launched one of the first 100% online universities, American Military University. AMU was designed to meet the unique educational needs of the military – transient, working adults needing a range of program offerings from traditional courses such as criminal justice to unique courses such as counterterrorism and military intelligence, which are not readily available at most institutions.

In 2002, after ten years of growth and service to thousands of students and hundreds of graduates, AMU expanded into the American Public University System, adding American Public University. APU is designed to extend the system’s outreach to better meet the needs of those interested in public service related programs, such as criminal justice, public safety, national security and other adult learners seeking to advance their education through a robust, online curriculum."

Ferreira's LinkedIn profile also claimed that Anna spoke four other languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Persian and Russian.

According to a January 2008 European Union brochure, Anna Ferreira was a member of the Portuguese Permanent Representation or Portuguese Presidency, but it most probably is not the same Anna Ferreira, provided the one at Tom Ryan's security firm even exists.

"Cryptologic Technician (CT) is a United States Navy enlisted rating or job specialty,"an article at Wikipedia notes. "he CT community performs a wide range of tasks in support of the national intelligence effort, with an emphasis on cryptology and signal intelligence related products."

"Most CT personnel are required to obtain and maintain security clearances. Due to the highly classified work environment, it is not always possible to share resources with other commands, leading to their shipboard nickname, 'spooks'. Almost every detail surrounding the CT world from administration to operations to repair requires dedicated technicians with appropriate security clearances"

The LinkedIn profile also claimed that Anna Ferreira resided in McLean, Virginia, and a search on Google turned up a document posted under that name and location called "The Queen v. Julian Paul Assange," which was posted on July 7, 2012. Assange is the founder and editor-in-chief for the whisteblower website WikiLeaks, and Ryan frequently bashed both at his Twitter account.

The document is the transcript of a December of 1996 Melbourne, Australia hearing where Assange pleaded guilty to 24 computer-related hacking charges. "Justice Ross said he was satisfied Mr Assange had not used his skills for personal gain and so he would not hand down a jail sentence, instead ordering him to pay a reparation order of $2100," the Herald Sun reported in January of 2011.

A Google image search on the avatar on Ferreira's scrubbed LinkedIn profile reveals that it belongs to another porn model who calls herself "Bashful Brittany."

The photo was a crop of this picture of "Bashful Brittany" taken from the adult website hottystop.com or from her eponymous website:



The short bio for "Bashful Brittany" says nothing about working for Provide Security or serving as a Crypto Tech in the US Navy:

"Hey guys, glad you found me! Let me tell you a little about myself. I turned 18 six months ago, i'm only 5 feet tall and weigh 97 pounds!! I'm a true socal girl who loves the sun, shopping, hiking, and partying with my friends whenever I get the chance. I also LOVE modeling, it's fun to get dressed up, dressed down, and as you can see not dressed at all!"

More risque photos of "Bashful Brittany" can be viewed at her website - where she claims to be 19 years old - provided you become a member and trust her security enough to pay with a credit card.

Another LinkedIn profile for an "Anna Ferreira" appears to be taken from the same "Bashful Brittany" photo shoot, and can presently be seen at this link. This "Anna Ferreira" also appears to be wearing the same top, same earrings and posing in front of the same colored background.

The second "Anna Ferreira" LinkedIn page claims she currently works as a recruiter at Express Employment Professionals in the London, Canada area, and that she was formerly the Website and Social Media Manager for London Therapeutic Massage Clinic, but the only language she speaks is English. This profile is more detailed than the scrubbed one for Provide Security, and doesn't include anything that matches it.

Perhaps if Tom Ryan returns to Twitter under his name, he can provide a reasonable explanation for why the "Senior Research Analyst" for his security firm filched her photo from a pornographic website.

A week ago, on March 15, I received the following fundraising email from 'Democracy News, a service of the Liberty Tree Foundation,' a non-governmental organization incorporated in Wisconsin. The subject header was "The Chamber spied on us," and the senders were listed as Sarah, Adam, Dave and Ben.





"We’ve never told you this before, but thanks to Wikileaks and Anonymous, we have evidence that the Chamber of Commerce spied on us," the email states. "We’re not intimidated."

"Some things just have to be done. it may be that the task is big, and you are small - but the task has to be done. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has to be removed from American politics.

As you know, we here at Liberty Tree are raising money to launch a campaign to Shut the Chamber. Liberty Tree is a small organization. Compared to the Chamber, we’re tiny. But together with our allies - with you - we can and will succeed.

Three years ago, we thought about taking on the Chamber. But we didn’t because we didn’t have the resources. We talked with friends and potential partners. And that’s all we did; talk."

On February 10, 2011, Lee Fang and Scott Keyes reported for the liberal blog ThinkProgress - which is a "project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund" - that "a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of 'private security' companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign."

"According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com."

The Liberty Tree Foundation email continues, "It turns out that even then, the Chamber was listening. They hired private security firms made up of former military intelligence specialists to spy on our friends, and to spy on us. These firms, HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — developed tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, produced a report that revealed that our executive director, Ben Manski, had met with another pro-democracy activist named Brett Kimberlin."

"Here’s the kicker," the March 15 email adds. "When Ben and Brett met, the Chamber’s spies were watching. Ben and Brett had never met before and had never even heard of each other until that day. And they didn’t have contact with one another afterward either."

Curiously, the fundraising letter doesn't mention that Brett Kimberlin was convicted of bombings in Speedway, Indiana that were committed in 1978, or anything at all about his past, which also includes being convicted of a "conspiracy to distribute marijuana." There is nothing in the email explaining why recipients should care that Liberty Tree executive director Ben Manski was being linked to Kimberlin. It only refers to Kimberlin as a "pro-democracy activist," which is oddly how Manski describes himself, according to his Wikipedia entry.

After ThinkProgress published its exclusives in February of 2011 - based on emails purloined from HBGary Federal by Anonymous hackers in a group called LulzSec - Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Frey, who blogs under the name "Patterico", wrote a blog post complaining that they were "censoring any mention" of Brett Kimberlin.

"Think Progress is making Brad Friedman into a martyr by pretending that the Chamber of Commerce is targeting Friedman and his 'family," Frey was referring to the owner of "The Brad Blog", who often writes about voting and voter fraud issues, and who has been at odds with Patterico and reporters from Breitbart.com for close to four years. "But what Think Progress isn’t telling you: the Chamber of Commerce was far more interested in Friedman’s business partner, convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin."

"Think Progress published parts of internal Chamber of Commerce e-mails talking about Friedman. But what Think Progress hides from you is that the Chamber was actually primarily interested in Kimberlin. They described Kimberlin as having 'a bit of a checkered past and has been associated with some more radical and violent activities.' That’s a pretty mild description of a guy who set off several bombs, one of which blew off a man’s leg. Meanwhile, they were very kind to Friedman, describing him as 'much more mainstream' and someone who 'can often be seen on many of the political talk shows.'

Their focus was Kimberlin. But Think Progress cut out any mention of Kimberlin. Entirely."

Frey added, "The left has been covering up Kimberlin for years. Friedman himself is deathly afraid that people will learn about Kimberlin’s past — so much so that he censors mention of Kimberlin in his comments. For my efforts in shining the spotlight on this violent and dishonest man, Kimberlin has threatened to sue me, and has written numerous letters to my bosses at my office, accusing me of stalking him and the like. It is guaranteed that this post, which makes a legitimate point about a site’s censoring of important information on a topic of public interest, will lead to another e-mail to my boss."

A week before being arrested by the FBI, Barrett Brown - a satirist/journalist who "spent several months studying" the hacked HBGary emails - published a conversation he had with Frey in early 2011. "This is the kind of thing that interests this fucking prosecutor after HBGary caught going after journalists, me, Anonymous, Greenwald, etc.," Brown complained before posting the chat.

"How is it that Think Progress is reporting that the Chamber of Commerce dug up info on Velvet Revolution -- yet we only see e-mails about Brad Friedman and not about his partner, convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin?" Frey had asked Brown, who claimed not to know anything about either Kimberlin or his group, but suggested that there were other things uncovered in the hacking that might be worth investigating.

Brown complained that HBGary Federal was doing "illegal shit...to those who've done nothing except for present opinions," and, alluding to Anonymous in general, added, "whereas we do it to people who try to wrongly accuse people to the FBI."

"The only thing that got my attention about all this was the angle having to do with the convicted bomber," Frey responded.

Brown said, "I'll bet."

Later in the conversation, Frey argues, "Friedman's association with Kimberlin discredits him when people find out who Kimberlin is [s]o they try to squash it."

Frey asked Brown for a link to "some place on the Web where all this shit is" so that the Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney acting as a blogger whose day job had been threatened could look through the hacked emails to see if "they looked into Kimberlin if they looked into Friedman." Brown tells Frey that "anonleaks.ru is shaky" and "was up all week but been up and down depending on one's location today," but "if you have problems, let me know and I'll see what else is available."

After finding what he's looking for, Frey tells Brown that Kimberlin "set off bombs and blew off a guy's leg" and the "guy later killed himself." Brown - who is not a fan of Republicans or Democrats, and has long reported on propaganda - tells him, "frankly, I can see why as an editorial decision they would keep the info out of the story even without knowing who the guy is."

"Sure," Frey responds. "Doesn't help their cause."

Brown asks, "your background is in law, I guess? [N]ot media or it could be what you're saying" but that "there's not going to be any way to prove it by seeing the e-mails unless I'm missing something."

Frey fires back, "They want to make the Chamber look bad. If the Chamber was gathering info on one of these people being a convicted bomber, that doesn't help."

DEVELOPING...LINKS BETWEEN BRETT KIMBERLIN'S "STOP THE CHAMBER" CAMPAIGN AND LIBERTY TREE'S "SHUT THE CHAMBER" EXAMINED...TO BE CONTINUED...

I'm hoping to hear back from Liberty Tree Foundation and Ben Manski, so I'm giving them another day to respond to some emailed questions before reporting on the links between Brett Kimberlin's "Stop the Chamber" campaign and the new "Shut the Chamber" effort. I'm also hoping former Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich gets back to me, since he appears to be working with "Shut the Chamber." Finally, Kevin B. Zeese - an attorney affiliated with Velvet Revolution - is also involved with "No More Stolen Elections", which is "[a] Project of the Liberty Tree Foundation," so I'm waiting for him to respond to a request to chat about his ties to Kimberlin and Manski.

(Editor's Note: For the last twenty-one months, I've been falsely accused by some conservatives of being in some kind of elaborate criminal conspiracy with Brett Kimberlin, that would take at least 100,000 words to somehow explain. Meanwhile, Kimberlin and allies of a former security firm volunteer who worked on progressive Democratic campaigns - Neal Rauhauser - have smeared me from the other side. There are other stories at this blog which attempt to unravel why both sides have come after me, and I've been accused of absurd crimes, sued in a crazy conspiracy theory lawsuit and private information about my family and my past has been leaked. Even though there have been countless blogs from the left and the right, and Congressional letters to DoJ, and stories in the mainstream media, not one journalist has ever reported my side of the story.)

On June 29, 2011, a month after - oddly - being the only Twitterer in the world who happened to see former New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner's infamous underwear tweet to a young Seattle co-ed, Dan Wolfe aka @patriotusa76 aka @dwp6776 began following me.

Dan Wolfe mysteriously vanished from Twitter after speaking to me for about a week. LA County Deputy District Attorney Pat Frey @Patterico claims to have exchanged DMs with him afterwards, but - if he did - it didn't sound like the same person I interviewed. Multiple users might have controlled the @dwp6776 account, but the one I spoke to had a consistent voice.

"I saw you requested to follow me," @dwp6776 told me in his first Direct Messages. "I just want to say, I know you won't believe me but I'll try anyway, I did not ask Artist or Razor to defend me. That was their decision. I did not pull strings as you suggest. You seem like a fair person who got a raw deal. I just wanted to try and let you know that. I'm sorry for any misunderstanding. I never asked anyone to harass you. I've been trying to lay low."

Wolfe was referring to two of his most ardent defenders at the time: @Artist_R and @Razor419. I exchanged many - mostly friendly - Direct Messages with @Artist_R aka @Clay_Arts in the days before @dwp6776 followed me, but after an argument about whether or not she could also be Dan Wolfe, she claimed she was going to file a complaint with the FBI against me. LA County Deputy District Attorney Pat Frey @Patterico claims that she sent him "proof" that she did file such a complaint, but he's never shared that alleged "proof" with me.

"I have not been tweeting," @dwp6776 continued. "I don't know why so many people have so much wrath for me. I'm sorry for any misunderstandings. I meant no harm. I have no interest in games people are playing. I just want to be left alone. I thought I had friends but many who I thought turned out not to be friends. I am not a sock puppet or a puppet master. I am not even tweeting anymore and have not been for a while."

Things had changed dramatically for Dan Wolfe since he RT'd @RepWeiner's 5/27/11 underwear tweet. He had two of his friends in the #BornFreeCrew send information they had gathered on Weiner to Andrew Breitbart, but while he was initially lionized by most of the right as a hero, Andrew Breitbart and one of his reporters Lee Stranahan - who used to be a liberal blogger but has changed his ideology a few times back-and-forth throughout his career - began to question him. Stranahan theorized that Dan Wolfe was actually a woman - a jilted ex-girlfriend (or sexter) of Weiner's - and Breitbart was disturbed that he refused to call him on the telephone.

Then Mike Stack aka RedGoat aka @Goatsred aka @CryingWolfeBlog, Wolfe's longest and closest friend on Twitter since he joined in January of 2011, sent some of their private emails to The Smoking Gun. Stack claims that he was "blackmailed" by The Smoking Gun's owner William Bastone into giving up intel, but then double-crossed when TSG later published intel they had on Stack on June 6. Stack blamed Wolfe for the June 6 article, and turned against him, as well.

"You seem like a very reasonable person and I hope you can understand I mean what I'm saying," @dwp6776 added. "I won't bother you after these messages. I just wanted to let you know that since I saw your request to follow me. That's all. Thank you for your time."

Another Breitbart reporter, Mandy Nagy aka @Liberty_Chick, agreed with Stack's theory that the person who sent his intel to The Smoking Gun was a mysterious porn (and sometimes anti-porn) blogger named Darrah Ford. Ford and Stack had been battling for years at the porn forum he used to moderate and at her blog. Stack didn't think that the private emails he shared with Breitbart and Bastone should be considered betrayal, but became consumed with the notion that The Smoking Gun's outing of him as a porn moderator who Ford - and a few porn stars - accused of harassment and his arrest record and mug shot were acts of sheer villainy.

"I believe you...I think you've been threatened by people that are pushing conspiracies on the web...please remain in contact with me," I replied after Wolfe's initial messages.

Wolfe continued, "Ron, I never sold info or gave info to Smoking Gun. I really wish some reporter would clear this up behind the scenes for me. Stranahan keeps pushing this lie. There must be a way to confirm with Smoking Gun that it was not me that did that."

"In fact," Wolfe argued, "Smoking Gun themselves posted an email from Smoking Gun to ME in which I said 'How did you get this email? Private' and Smoking Gun went on to say that I would not cooperate and did not return their email requests. I wish someone would prove Stranahan a liar. He lies so much. He lies and lies and lies."

One lie that Stranahan later admitted making was that he had hired private detectives to track Wolfe down. Stranahan often presented his theories as facts, and used terms like 99 or 100 percent certain when making his arguments on Twitter, at his blog and during his podcasts.

I told Wolfe,"Ive been threatened and my family as you can see from my twitter friend...I'm in same boat as you and others." I also told him that @Artist_R might not really be his friend and "may be connected to clowns threatening people including you." I told him I was unsure about her, but that she acted overemotional during our DMs and she could just be his "helpful friend."

Behind the scenes, I spent weeks working with New York Times reporter Jennifer Preston on Weinergate related stories. The only one published - "Fake Identities Were Used on Twitter in Effort to Get Information on Weiner" - was criticized by @Patterico and others on Twitter, and some of the trolls attacking Preston were quite nasty, so she asked me to publicly defend her. After I did, everyone pretty much began leaving her alone - oddly - and focused on me. Preston used Stranahan as a source, and he hooked her up with a woman who claimed she lived in Boston and had gotten death threats because she shared the same name - Jennifer George - as a journalist in California. I had matched the name Jennifer (or Jenay) George to the Twitter account of someone who apparently pretended to be a teenage girl who asked @RepWeiner to take her to the prom. Although Stranahan initially claimed that the Boston Jennifer George accused him of making the death threats, the woman - who later contacted me - said that she had only reported to the police that it might have been one of his followers on Twitter.

Another source of Preston's, Neal Rauhauser, is a former Democratic operative who claimed to have worked on at least 44 campaigns, and had been posting weird diaries at Daily Kos making bizarre accusations against Patterico, Breitbart and Stack. After I began publicly sparring with the trolls and conservatives who had hounded Preston, Rauhauser began following me and sent me his phone number via Direct Message. He didn't respond when I initially called him, but I received weird texts that I believe were attempts to hack my phone. Rauhauser ducked me for a few days but when we finally spoke on the phone, he said he worked on 29 campaigns in secret. I angrily cut him off and told him that was a FEC violation and that he could email me but I didn't want to hear about possible crimes during a phone call, so I hung up on him. Then Rauhauser began sending me weird quasi-threats about my friends and family, and I later learned he had contacted my last employer and smeared me to them. Rauhauser later claimed that RAW STORY publisher Roxanne Cooper - who I only worked with for about two weeks - badmouthed me and spread lies within earshot of others at Yearly Kos.

Wolfe continued, "I am so sorry about your threats, Ron. I can empathize. That's why I don't tweet. I am stuck here because if I leave twitter people say 'Oh Dan has something to hid[e] he deleted his account' but if I stay on twitter I keep getting tortured by these maniacs. I don't know how to get off twitter. I honestly now wish I never saw that Weiner tweet. I'm serious. I wish I never saw it. I wish I never RT it. It ruined my life. I didn't realize what I unleashed when I did that. And I'm sorry for all the hurt and harm I've caused and the collateral damage."

I told Wolfe that "troublemakers" were "attacking both sides...and causing mischief," but that he might be able to help find out why so that the harassment against me, and my multiple sources at the time, would cease.

He then mentioned Gennette Cordova, the Seattle co-ed Weiner had tweeted, who referred to Wolfe in her May 29,2011 statement that was published by the New York Daily News.

"Friday evening I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about a dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been tweeted to me by Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The account that these tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the Congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters."

An accompanying article, written by Alison Gendar and Seattle stringer Sara Kiesler added, "Cordova said she has been harassed for weeks online after she started following Weiner on Twitter and the congressman added her to the list of about 200 people he follows. Her harrasser 'started posting about me, saying, 'Oh, the congressman is following school girls,' tweeting it over and over. It was very annoying,' Cordova told the Daily News. When the crotch shot appeared online, she said the same Twitter user was the first to comment on it."

However, on May 30, Cordova publicly tweeted to Wolfe, "I'm sorry for saying your twitter name to nydn. You are a very annoying human being but I dont think you're behind this" and "Can I just clarify that, although @patriotusa76 has been a nuisance, I never said or implied that he was behind the tweet."

Cordova later sent Stack screenshots of DirectMessages she allegedly exchanged with Weiner, in which they referred to Wolfe and his #BornFreeCrew, the fake teen, and a real teen and porn model the former congressman - who is mulling a NYC mayoral bid two years after shamefully resigning mostly for lying during Weingergate - did DM.

On May 12, 2011, Weiner allegedly DM'd Cordova about @starchild111 aka Nikki Reid aka Betty (an alias Mediaite's Tommy Christopher bestowed upon her in order to "protect" a teen girl who turned out to be a fraudster), "yeah, a bit. this is a troll who has been bragging elsewhere that he has dirt on me. the profile is a fake."

"Obviously it's fake. They only follow celebrities and girls you've followed."

Weiner allegedly replied, "also these insanely obvious girlcrush follows. part of me wants you to engage 'her.'"

"Wouldn't that be sort of obvious? What would you say? Oh, you want ME to engage her. I read that wrong."

Later that same day, Cordova allegedly DM'd Weiner, "So what do you think about this whole thing?" Even though she suspected Nikki Reid was fake, she never publicly stated that until after Weiner resigned and the Preston article revealing the hoax was published.

Preston reported for The New York Times,

"In an interview, Ms. Cordova said she was contacted on Twitter by “Nikki Reid,” who said she admired one of her posts and then began exchanging private messages with her almost every day for three or four weeks starting May 5. “There was something weird about it,” Ms. Cordova said. At the beginning of their exchanges, Ms. Cordova said, there was no mention of Mr. Weiner. Then the user began to ask her for advice saying, “I’m a fan girl too,” and “How did you get him to follow you?”

When Ms. Cordova saw that Mr. Weiner was following “Nikki Reid,” she said, she expressed her suspicions about the girl’s identity to him in a private message and he stopped following the account.

....

Ms. Cordova said that as she looked back on their exchanges, she saw other signs of a fraud. For example, “Nikki Reid” did not have a Facebook account, like most girls her age. And she made references to “The O.C.,” the television show (featuring the young Hollywood actress Nikki Reed) that was popular among teenagers but ended in 2007.

“There is no way this girl is in high school,” Ms. Cordova said. “No way.”"

Weiner allegedly responded, "still think its a troll thing. remember the attacks on henning, gingerlee and you all started at the same time."

"I know. I just don't get her interactions with me."

Strangely, Weiner allegedly asked Cordova to "lead her back to" him, and suggested that she ask @starchild111 "did you take my advice and follow anthony?"

"I never contact her first that'll be weird. She'll message me in the afternoon probably."

Weiner allegedly responded, "you are too concerned about" but the screenshot cut off the rest of the DM.

Cordova also didn't mention in public that "Nikki Reid" sent her an email on May 29, 2011 which claimed, "Andrew Breitbart and those same crazy nutjobs all set this up...They wanted us to make up lies and say rep weiner and one of his top DEM donors were asking/paying us to go on dates with these dems as underage girls." Cordova claims she informed a few reporters about this email, but attacked Stack for publishing it - and the screenshots - at his blog.

The fake teen - who Cordova suspected may have been Dan Wolfe - allegedly emailed Cordova, "I know that was a hack. They actively hacked him and I am working to prove that now too." When I asked the liberal Cordova multiple times why she didn't contact the police or even tweet about the claim that a Democratic Congressman was "actively hacked" by conservatives tied to Andrew Breitbart, she never really provided a convincing or responsive answer.

Wolfe told me on June 29, 2011, "I feel so sorry for all the innocent people being harmed like those two JG's and Gennette. They are all innocent. Stranahan needs to stop. I never was about harassing women despite that lie that has been perpetuated about me. That is what I am against. I feel strongly against harassing anyone, especially women. Somehow I've become the devil. I just want the harassment of these 3 women to stop."

Direct Messages with Wolfe shared by Stack appear to show he was a bit disingenuous to me, and that he had privately prodded others in the #BornFreeCrew to act more aggressive towards some of Weiner's female followers.

Wolfe continued, "If it would take me making a statement to take the heat of those 3 women I would be happy to do it. I can take it. I'm a big boy. I just don't want innocent women harassed anymore. This has got to stop. Those three women did nothing. The 2 JG's and Gennette dont deserve this. Any ideas on how I can help with that? I really want to help."

Of course, Wolfe could have called a reporter or spoken to at least one person on the phone, to take the heat off of the "three women" but he refused to and no one ever heard his voice.

I told Wolfe that "two of those three women follow me" on Twitter. Soon after, the third woman - Jennifer George from Boston - contacted me, complaining about how Stranahan and Preston treated her, as well. I suspect that since both @dwp6776 and the Boston Jennifer George "disappeared" about a week or so later, that they were most probably connected to one another.

"Yes, I saw you defending all three and that's why I followed you and accepted your request. I admire that about you most of all. You are the ONLY member of the media defending these 3 women! It is outrageous! Whether you believe it or not I really do have a daughter that has been victimized and this is a personal issue for me. Very personal. I hate seeing women, children victimized. So anything I can do to help, just name it. I'd be happy to do or say anything to help those 3."

I asked Dan Wolfe if he was @johnreid9, which was the account "Nikki Reid" used to contact Cordova after she shut down her @starchild111 account, and that lied to Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, sending him fake driver's licenses. This same account also was the source of real and - what appear to be - hacked Direct Messages between Weiner, Cordova and his "fake" daughter, Nikki, which Patterico oddly posted at his blog in the summer of 2011. On July 2, 2011, Stranahan who guest blogged at Frey's Patterico blog, had his account "disabled," in part, because of a feud they had over Reid. Patterico was upset that Stranahan "ridiculously accused [him] of providing JohnReid9 with an uncritical platform to spout lies." At his blog on June 30 - hours before Patterico was SWATted during a phone call with me - Stranahan was mad that John Reid claimed "Nikki never pushed any story about Breitbart or Dana" Loesch. "Publishing this sort of lie – totally unchallenged — from a person confirmed to be a fake seems very questionable on Patterico’s part."

"No I am not johnreid9 and I don't operate all these accounts that Stranahan accused me of. I honestly just wanted to be a member of bornfreecrew and I was enjoying that life. I never had intentions of bringing rep weiner down despite what people think. It was not a plan."

Wolfe's Twitter timeline was consumed with attacks on Weiner, so he was obviously not being honest about his intentions for closely monitoring the former Democratic congressman.

He continued, "We were just a group of friends. Now that is all destroyed. I have no friends now. People think I'm the devil. Stranahan lies about me. But honestly, Ron, I don't care about STranahan lying about me. What I truly care about are those 3 women. This truly upsets me. I want that to stop That must stop I would like to work with you to stop the harassment of those women. It upsets me very much I can't tell you how much."

I told Wolfe that I believed - in regards to threats received by Jennifer George, Patterico, Stack and another conservative blogger Ace of SpadesHQ - that Stranahan was "either in on it, a fool or being used." I later told him that I considered Neal Rauhauser the other leading suspect, since Preston had sent me a strange Direct Message warning me that he was "very dangerous." I then told Wolfe that I had read nearly all his tweets from January to June of 2011, so I knew that he didn't only focus on Weiner. I didn't mention that his monitoring of Weiner was obviously a near-obsession, though.

"I appreciate that you said that," Wolfe told me. "I saw you said that. You are the ONLY member of media who noticed that about my tweets. I don't understand why other members of media just focused on Weiner tweets. And they take tweets out of context like the tweet I said about how we have "fun planned" -- that was not what people think it is. This is an inside joke of bornfreecrew and any of them could tell you that. We would mention "any fun planned today" -- quite frequently. What the inside joke referred to was Tammy - tamale would frequently get attacked by left wing people and she would fight back. So I and the reset of the crew would say to her "any fun planned Tammy."

Stack later confirmed what Wolfe claimed about the "fun planned" tweet.

Wolfe added, "That tweet of mine was not the only time we mentioned "fun planned" but it has been taken completely out of context and twisted by STranahan. I have no respect for that guy. Early on in this he DM me and lied multiple times. Then he lied about getting PI's after me. He is not nice."

I asked Wolfe about his dealings with Dana Loesch, who told him publicly on Twitter after the underwear tweet, "I have screenshots of all of it. Just ... so ... weird." While many assumed that this meant Loesch saw the Weiner tweet live, she later revealed that Breitbart called her and she was sent screenshots, which blogger Dan Riehl recently took credit for.

"That's another thing that has been mis reported," Wolfe told me. "Dana DM me first. I did not DM her. Then she asked if Andrew could see the screen caps I took. I said sure. I emailed them. They decided not to use them. That was the end of my association with Andrew, Dana and everyone else at biggovernment. I did that on purpose I did not want to be dragged into this by the media so that people would say 'well Dan Wolfe is teaming up with Breitbart to take down Weiner.' No. I didn't want that."

But Wolfe was lying to me, or he accidentally revealed that he was @tamale102280 or Stack, since Wolfe didn't email anything directly to Breitbart or his staff. Tamale later bragged on Twitter that she "saw RepWeiner’s tweet before Andrew Breitbart. So did DLoesch" and that she had "a copy of the tweet sent by RepWeiner." She also told merreee1 and redrivergrl (the other two female #bornfreecrew members) that she was "not surprised, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later." Stack wasn't awake when the underwear tweet was sent, and he didn't catch up until the next morning.

Wolfe continued, "So I showed them my caps - they decided not to use them and that was it. I did not agree to even talk to them. They tried to talk to me but I never agreed to talk to them. Then I heard thru the grapvine that Stranhan thought I was out to get Breitbart - which is absurd. That is another thing Stranahan made up. I have no opinion on Breitbart. I never talked to him and was never out to get him. So many lies."

Again, Wolfe claimed he was mostly concerned about the harassment of the "three women": "Sure I will be happy to help you. Listen Ron, I mean this. I will take all the heat if it means 3 innocent women can be spared pain." At the time, Neal Rauhauser and trolls were making a lot of noise about how the "three women" were being smeared by conservatives, however the liberal woman who actually sexted with Weiner was menaced by mostly liberals, as I reported in 2011.

"I am not kidding about that," Wolfe continued. "Victimization has been a personal cause for me since my daughter. I am passionate about that. It is my life. I don't want women, children harmed. I don't want anyone harmed. But these 3 women are being tortured now. I want to help so badly. People have made fun of me and my story about my daughter that I shared. They mock that. Which is sick. But it is not a joke to me."

I asked if I could publicly tweet one of Wolfe's DMs ("I feel so sorry for all the innocent people being harmed like those two JG's and Gennette. They are all innocent. Stranahan needs to stop.") and he said, "Yes you can retweet that about the 3 women - you have my permission. You are the ONLY person that asked permission. That's classy. People have shared private convos without permission for their own selfish motives. It's sad. I've been hurt over and over again."

"You know, I honestly never believed there would be a sex scandel," Wolfe continued. "People focus in on my tweet about that where I mentioned Weiner but they fail to mention I also included Rep Frank, Rep Rangel as well. They conveniently leave that out. I was joking. Blind items come out all the time. I never took that blind item seriously. It was just another way for me to joke/tweak Weiner. That's all. When I saw that tweet I was truly shocked. I never thought there would be a scandal at all. And now as I said I wish I never saw that tweet."

Anyone who read the triumphant and manically obsessive tweets Wolfe sent after the underwear picture knows that the following claim isn't honest, at all: "I dont take pleasure in watching other people's lives get destroyed. Sure I disagreed with Weiner's politics and cant stand the guy. But that doesn't mean I wanted his life destroyed and I certainly did not celebrate when his life came crashing down. People wont believe me when I say that. But it's the truth believe it or not. I don't get gleeful at people's misery. Rhetoric is one thing Enjoying others pain is taking it to a whole other level. I do not enjoy others pain. That is not me and it never will be me I'm not perfect but I know that much."

I told Wolfe that I needed to take a break for food, but that hopefully we'll get to the bottom of why Stranahan was smearing me, even though I was working with him and Patterico to find out who had sent threats. This was the day before Patterico's SWATting, and I didn't learn about the 6/23/11 SWATting of Stack until Mike told me months later. Hours before Patterico was SWATted, Preston sent me a strange email that said, "Innocent people, like Mike Stack is getting screwed." I've theorized that some of the DMs and emails I received actually were sent by Neal Rauhauser or others, but I've never been able to confirm that.

I also complained to Wolfe about how Preston had oddly turned against me. She refused to talk to me on the phone again, even though she claimed she wanted to on public tweets. She was livid that I leaked the Direct Message from her that called Rauhauser "dangerous" and she would tell me on June 30 that this somehow "caused a lot of damage."

Dan replied, "I didn't see those tweets yet I can't keep up with all the insanity around this case. I'm sorry you are being treated like this. You seem like a very fair person. You didn't even know me and you made some very fair statements about me. I appreciate that. That was classy."

To be continued...

Updates at bottom: Investors Hub board calls firm that current Weiner business associate formerly worked for as Compensation Committee chairman a "criminal enterprise"; Bill Clinton met with another Anthony Weiner client, posed for photos at March conference where he allegedly "highly admired" firm; NY Post apparently misreported Weiner went to Florida sex addiction clinic instead of work trip for client in July of 2011

"It did not take Mr. Weiner long to embark on a new career after he left Congress on June 16, 2011,"Michael Barbaro reported for the New York Times on April 29, 2013. "On July 7, he quietly incorporated a new firm, Woolf Weiner Associates, named for his great-grandfather, an Austrian immigrant to the Lower East Side."

According to Barbaro's article, former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner - who I reported was mulling running for NYC mayor months before anyone else, based on FEC records a year ago - "counseled a biofuel firm about expansion into the emerging markets of Latin America and Africa."

The NY Times article continues,

"'Business is business,' said Harold Gubnitsky, formerly executive vice president at Parabel, a Weiner client that harvests an algae-like crop used for food and fuel."

....

"At Parabel, Mr. Weiner was credited with distilling the company’s complex business model into easy-to-understand sales pitches for potential investors and foreign officials, at times to the amazement of the businessmen in the room. Mr. Gubnitsky recalled how Mr. Weiner employed the concept of 'economic ecosystems' to highlight the positive impact of the firm’s technology on farmers and consumers. "

"We have very exciting projects and in both Asia and Latin America,"Gubnitsky was quoted in a July 5, 2011 interview with Algae News.

Weiner apparently snagged Parabel as a client within two weeks after incorporating his firm, since he appeared to be doing homework on the way back from his reported sex addiction clinic trip. However, the New York Post story - which many media organizations unquestionably reported - assuming Weiner visited Florida in July of 2011 for therapeutic reasons related to the scandal appears to be wrong.

"A Post reporter spotted Weiner on Wednesday night flying first-class from Orlando to La Guardia Airport on a Delta flight, carrying nothing but his iPad and several documents,"Josh Margolin, Brigitte Stelzer and Dan Mangan reported for the New York Post on July 22, 2011. "Orlando is near the Winter Park, Fla., offices of the New Leaf Center, which on its Web site says it provides outpatient therapy for sexual addiction and sexual compulsivity issues, including for 'politicians.' Staff there asked a reporter to leave when he asked about Weiner yesterday."

The following picture credited to Brigitte Stelzer noted, "Former Rep. Anthony Weiner -- worried about regaining the trust of wife Huma Abedin, her mom, Saleha, and his wife's boss, Hillary Clinton, after his sex-addiction treatment -- shields his face aboard a mystery flight from Orlando to New York."


"Bizarrely, during his flight home from Orlando, Weiner was carrying a detailed analysis of energy issues in sub-Saharan African countries, as well as what appeared to be real-estate listings for two different grazing and farming properties in Kenya," the July 22, 2011, NY Post article added.

On June 16, 2011 - the same day Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress - PetroAlgae (which changed its name to Parabel in 2012) hired Anthony Tiarks to be CEO. A few weeks before, at Seeking Alpha, hedge fund manager Edward Schneider noted that PetroAlgae had "net debt of $57M, total assets of only $4M, and last 12 months' net loss of -$38M. Petroalgae has not generated any revenues since inception in 2006."

Considering the fact that Weiner's infamous tweet was only captured by one person on Twitter, @PatriotUSA aka Dan Wolfe - who I interviewed in late June of 2011 before he mysteriously vanished - it also seems kind of "bizarre" that the former Congressman would name his firm "Woolf Weiner Associates."

Reporting for the Sunlight Foundation on May 2, 2013, Lisa Rosenberg observed, "Shock and outrage (and some really amusing if not-ready-for-prime-time bits on the Daily Show) accompanied the former representative’s slimy use of social media. But there’s no shock or outrage accompanying his even slimier use of his former position for profit. Indeed, the New York Times seems to think Weiner’s secret lobbying on behalf of corporate clients somehow serves 'as a compelling campaign credential' as he considers a run for mayor."

"Rather than touting it as a career booster, Weiner’s stealth lobbying should be seen as still more evidence for the need to strengthen current lobbying disclosure laws," Rosenberg adds. "The only people in Washington who seem to support secret lobbying are the members of Congress who want to keep that lucrative career path open to themselves when they leave government service."

Also, kind of "bizarrely", the same reporter who wrote a soft article about Weiner's post-Congressional "stealth lobbyist" work, worked on, perhaps, the most devastating NY Times article on Weiner, before he resigned.

Michael Barbaro co-wrote the June 9, 2011 article "In Reckless Fashion, Rapid Online Pursuits of Political Admirers" with Ashley R. Parker, who interviewed Weiner on the same day he sent Andrew Breitbart's future source his "full Monty" picture, as I reported in September of 2011. May 18 was the same exact day that fake teenager Starchild111 claimed she was unfollowed by Rep. Weiner after asking him to the prom, the same day one #BornFreeCrew member asked another, "Did that thing ever surface? I gotta go to work," and the same day that Meagan Broussard allegedly talked on the phone to Weiner and was sent two photos, including the one showing an erect penis; and the same day that a Republican contacted Drudge and Andrew Breitbart on Broussard's behalf.

The June 9, 2011 NY Times article was the first real interview with Gennette Cordova, who was the recipient - although she claims it was deleted before she actually saw it - of the May 27, 2011 underwear tweet that the mysterious Dan Wolfe saw and tweeted to Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch, who broke the story before anyone else.

"Ms. Cordova’s experience with Mr. Weiner appears to fit a pattern: in rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images," Barbaro and Parker wrote.

However, Cordova claimed she never sexted with Weiner and the underwear tweet wasn't extremely explicit. But the Times was unable to reach any of Weiner's actual sexters so they ran with the Cordova interview (I've interviewed two of them, as I will report at a future date). Also, "bizarrely", Cordova later hinted to me on Twitter that she shared screenshots of alleged Direct Messages with Weiner where he allegedly told her to get one of the fake teenage girls - I helped expose with New York Times reporter Jen Preston, who often RT's Barbaro's stories - to follow him, as I reported in April. Weiner allegedly asked Cordova to "lead her back to" him, and suggested that she ask @starchild111 "did you take my advice and follow anthony?"

Preston's story revealing the teens were fake wasn't published until the day after Weiner resigned from Congress. While my research only theorized they were fake, Preston reported that Mediaite's Tommy Christopher - who had written an article on the teens and nastily argued with bloggers who suspected they were fake - sent her a California driver’s license with the name of their alleged mother "Patricia Reid, at a Los Angeles address, as well as school identification for the girls.

NY Times reporter Preston reported all the documentation sent to Christopher was fake "according to California state officials and school district officials," but never posted screenshots or reported the potentially criminal deception to law enforcement, even though it's possible that the same fraudsters could have been involved in the Weinergate-related SWATtings of conservative bloggers. Preston and Christopher also "bizarrely" never reported on the fake 911 calls that sent police to conservatives' homes, even though they had exclusives on the first two a year before the news broke.

5/7/13 Update: No definitive proof Weiner went to clinic in Florida

Although part of the headline for the 7/22/11 exclusive New York Post was called "Weiner in Therapy," the tabloid never actually proved that Weiner's trip to Florida was to visit a sex addiction clinic. And there doesn't even seem to be any definitive proof Weiner spent all that much time in therapy, or even saw a doctor after leaving Congress and starting his firm just weeks later.

"It is unclear where Weiner is undergoing therapy -- and whether it's simply as an outpatient on a shrink's couch or involves more intensive therapy at a special clinic," the Post actually reported, about the 7/20/11 flight that photographer Brigitte Stelzer happened to catch Weiner on. The photograph oddly didn't show Weiner's face, as if he was embarrassed being captured on the trip, and it's strange that one showing his face wasn't used instead.

Brigitte Stelzer is the same photographer who happened to chance upon Weiner bizarrely packing a box into his car the day before Democratic candidate David Weprin lost to Republican Bob Turner in the special election held for Weiner's empty seat. Oddly, the caption under Stelzer's photo said Weiner "loads a chair," while the picture showed him carting a linen box, with a surprised look on his face. Perhaps Weiner was surprised to see the same NY Post photographer catch him outside a house he already had moved out of and who happened to be on the same Florida-to-New York trip two months before.


"Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner did his fellow Democrats no favors yesterday -- moving out of his district just as his panicking party struggled to hold on to his endangered congressional seat," Jennier Gould Keil reported for the New York Post on September 13, 2011. "Weiner took the last remaining items from his Queens co-op just in time to remind voters why they have to vote today -- because he resigned in a sexting scandal that made him a national laughingstock."

The Post reported that Weiner "came back for an office chair and a box," but didn't explain why they weren't picked up by the moving van that he assumingly hired that "virtually emptied" his apartment on Friday September 9. Weiner "declined to comment on his move," so it's unknown why he waited three days to pick up the last remaining box and a chair.

"The Weiner seat, in the state’s 9th Congressional District, is likely to be chewed up by redistricting, so whoever is elected today will represent his Queens-Brooklyn constituents for only the unexpired one year of Weiner’s term," the September NY Post article correctly predicted.

A long, but mostly non-informative ten-page April 14, 2013 story in The New York Times magazine - that read like a P.R. piece - claimed that "Weiner started seeing a therapist almost immediately after the scandal broke." Weiner presumably revealed to Jonathan Van Meter that the only doctor he visited was in New York, since he wouldn't have been able to sneak out-of-state during the height of Weinergate.

"Therapy wasn’t something that came naturally to me," Weiner told Van Meter. "I am this middle-class guy from Brooklyn, the men in our family don’t hug each other, we don’t talk about our feelings. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be. And now I start sentences with, 'My therapist says....'"

Strikingly, Van Meter begins the next paragraph with, "What does your therapist say? I asked the next time we met," but Weiner responds in the past tense: "It’s none of the easy stuff. She didn’t tell me: 'You have a sex addiction! You were abused as a child!' None of that stuff, which in a lot of ways, I’d kind of prefer.' He laughed. "It’s an easy explanation that people intuitively get."

Another sentence uses the present tense to report that Weiner was "in therapy," but there doesn't seem to be any definitive proof that the potential mayoral candidate even saw a doctor after leaving Congress.

The corporate offices for Parabel Inc. are located at 1901 S. Harbor City Blvd. in Melbourne, Florida, so Weiner might have actually been on an all-business trip when Stelzer happened to catch him on an Orlando-to-New York flight. That's only about a 60 mile distance or an hour's drive from the airport in Orlando.

Yesterday, a May 6th New York Post article credited to Sally Goldenberg and Carl Campanile claimed, "Sugar daddies bailed out Anthony Weiner when he was down and out — giving him work after stuffing his many political campaigns with donations."

"Hedge-fund brothers David and Eugene Grin helped Weiner with consulting work after he resigned from Congress following his sexting scandal, The Post has learned," the article continued. "The Grins also assisted his mayoral and congressional races, raising nearly $50,000 for Weiner, who is now considering a mayoral run. Through two hedge funds, the Grins control Parabel, a company that claims to harvest an algae-like crop."

Goldenberg and Campanile report, "What Weiner failed to mention was that on Jan. 13, Parabel transferred nearly all of its assets to a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands — on the same day a United Arab Emirates firm pumped $15 million into Parabel, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission document."

Weiner's memory from only five months ago appears to be stinted since he told the paper, "I’m not even sure I was consulting for them during this period."

I found - through searching the NYC CFB website - $1,250 from Weiner's "sugar daddies" aka the brothers Grin in mayoral campaign contributions dating back to December of 2004 (link), about $10,000 in mayoral campaign contributions in May of 2008 (link), approximately $4700 from David Grin to Friends of Weiner in the fall of 2008 and 2009, and $2,000 from Eugene Grin in 2002 and 2003 and $2,400 in 2009 from Eugene Grin to Friends of Weiner (according to searches in FEC database). In 2008, David Grin collected $31,850, through intermediaries for the 2008 NYC mayoral campaign (as Gold pointed out to me on Twitter), which never happened but would apply to the current race if Weiner enters the field. For some reason, the Grins stopped contributing in 2009, but altogether the brothers - who appear to mostly donate to Republicans - gave and collected close to $53,000 in donations for Weiner campaigns dating back to 2002.

5/9 Update: Firm Weiner consulted for brags former President Bill Clinton "highly admired" its role in making healthcare more affordable and transparent

Anthony Weiner "signed up a New York firm called CureMD, an electronic medical records provider,"the NY Times reported on April 20, 2013. The very first line of Michael Barbaro's article breathlessly reported, "Anthony D. Weiner has demystified the details of the 906-page Affordable Care Act for an electronic medical records company." The EMR provider tweeted a link to the NY Times story on Weiner.


According to its website, "At CureMD, healthcare technology is our core focus. This single vision has enabled us to continuously innovate products and services that facilitate care providers, while providing steady growth and profitability." Its FAQ page adds, "CureMD is the leading provider of innovative health information systems and services that transform the administrative and clinical operations of healthcare organizations. Our award winning solutions simplify decision making, streamline operations, and ensure compliance with industry standards and best practices; ultimately saving time and effort to maximize value and returns."

Just before election day, CureMD_EMR interestingly tweeted a link to a MedCity News article called "The impending disaster of the Obamacare health insurance exchanges." Sally Pipes argued, "Like so much of the president’s gargantuan healthcare entitlement, the exchanges are burdened by a spider’s web of confusing regulations, poor design, and a top-down, command-and-control structure."

"Like Obamacare itself, the exchange system is plagued by incompetent management, burdensome regulations, and inept political calculations," Pipes added. "Even if the president manages to eke out a victory on election day, November could still prove his undoing."


Another tweet by the firm on March 6 said, "HIMSS News Feed - Ex-President Clinton admires CureMD innovation and its role in making healthcare more affordable and transparent..." At its website, CureMD wrote, "CureMD unveiled innovative EMR technology at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Meeting (HIMSS) in New Orleans, March 3-7. Former President, Bill Clinton was also present at the event and admired CureMD’s role in making healthcare more affordable and transparent. At the event, the rapidly growing New York based company also announced the completion of their third acquisition since January, 2013."

The firm's Facebook page modified its own press release claim to "Former President Clinton highly admired CureMD innovation and its role in making healthcare more affordable and transparent at the Annual HIMSS Conference in New Orleans," and includes four pictures of Bill Clinton posing with CureMD executives CEO Kamal Hashmat and CIO Bill Hashmat (pictured below, left and right).


CureMD CEO Kamal Hashmat contributed $2,500 to Weiner's 2008 NYC mayoral campaign fund, according to the New York State Board of Elections Contributions website.

"Bill Clinton Stumps For Health IT At HIMSS,"a headline for a Information Week story by Neil Versel noted, after the former president's March 6 Keynote speech. "Clinton said that the ultimate outcome of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act depends on how the 2010 law is implemented, and on decisions that people make outside the framework of the law itself."

Versel added, "The former president's William J. Clinton Foundation last fall started the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, in partnership with General Electric, Tenet Healthcare and Verizon Communications, to work toward closing health disparities between different socioeconomic groups in U.S. communities." Clips of Clinton's speech can be viewed at these YouTube links: "President Clinton Introductory Remarks at HIMSS 2013" where he expresses "gratitude to GE and Verizon, who have partnered with the Health Matters Initiative," and "President Clinton at HIMSS on Reducing Obesity." Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush's Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, also attended the HIMSS conference, where he had a debate with political consultant James Carville, who "helped Bill Clinton win the Presidency" in 1992, as a HIMSS press release notes.

I was unable to find a transcript of Clinton's speech and didn't hear the former president specifically mention CureMD in any YouTube video clips, but the following may be related to Weiner's client, CureMD: "One of the things that I like in the technology area is this new federal initiative Blue Button which makes data directly available to people who can use it for a number of applications," Clinton told the "standing room only" New Orleans crowd, Healthcare IT Connect noted. "Organizations that serve more than 80 million Americans have now pledged to make healthcare information available digitally."

A commenter at a Healthcare technology blog owned by Brian Ahier, a Health IT Evangelist at Mid-Columbia Medical Center - who posted some of the Clinton clips on YouTube - asked, "Do you know why he didn't mention the HIMSS involvement that was announced the same morning"? Ahier responded, "Andy, if you mean the HIMSS involvement with Clinton Global Initiative and the Healthcare Transformation Project he absolutely did mention it. Watch the first video above - right about 2:30 he talks about the $2.5 million commitment of HIMSS to the project."

"HIMSS, itself a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) since September, announced this week that it would commit $2.5 million over the next five years to its HIMSS Healthcare Transformation Project as part of its pledge to take action furthering the goals of CGI," Neil Versel reported in his Information Week article. "The HIMSS Healthcare Transformation Project is a collaborative forum of senior healthcare executives, while the CGI looks to address a variety of problems around the world, including inequities in the provision of public services."

A HIMSS press release stated, "The Healthcare Transformation brings senior healthcare provider leaders together, with year-round events, research and networking, as they decide and act upon their own commitments to action. HIMSS also announces its participation with CGI on March 6, the same day former President Clinton speaks to the conference attendees during HIMSS13 in New Orleans. More than 35,000 attendees and 1,200 exhibiting companies have come to the Big Easy for the conference."

According to its website, "HIMSS is a cause-based, not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare." The About page adds, "HIMSS Board members are leaders in the field of healthcare information technology—top executives in both vendor companies and healthcare provider systems--who serve a three-year term to help grow and lead the industry." CureMD was touted as one of the Corporate Members of the Week in an HIMSS newsletter that was released shortly before the annual conference in March.

Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, began working for Hillary Clinton sixteen years ago. She "began working for Clinton as a White House intern in 1996, eventually becoming the former first lady's traveling chief of staff -- or 'body man' -- during her campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination,"CNN reported on June 8, 2011, "joined Clinton's State Department staff in 2009, serving as a senior aide," and "Former President Bill Clinton officiated at their July 2010 wedding."

Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton have also famously played the "good wives," and stood by their men. Bill Clinton weathered and survived his sex scandal and his wife's political career may have even been boosted by her unwavering support for her still extremely popular husband. The Weiners are - no doubt - hoping for similar results, which is probably why Anthony mentions Huma frequently in his post-Weinergate interviews with the media.

5/15 Update: Investors Hub board calls firm Weiner associate worked for a "criminal enterprise"


Harold Gubnitsky figured prominently in Michael Barbaro's April 29, 2013 NY Times article which revealed that "good capitalist" Anthony Weiner has a two-year old consulting firm. Along with the quotes up top, the former executive vice president at Parabel also "recalled how Mr. Weiner employed the concept of 'economic ecosystems' to highlight the positive impact of the firm’s technology on farmers and consumers."

Barbaro also reported "Weiner was credited with distilling the company’s complex business model into easy-to-understand sales pitches for potential investors and foreign officials, at times to the amazement of the businessmen in the room," but doesn't mention if his only source for that was Gubnitsky, since the article doesn't quote anyone else who worked or currently worked for Parabel, which used to be called PetroAlgae. As noted above, PetroAlgae hadn't "generated any revenues since inception in 2006," according to a profile written shortly before Weiner landed it as a client after leaving Congress.

Weiner, Barbaro reported, even created a new company - which isn't named, but is "a consulting firm led by Mr. Gubnitsky" which "will focus on renewable energy in Latin America." I searched through Florida and New York corporation databases but was unable to find any information on this "new company," created by possible NYC mayoral candidate Weiner.

"Biophan Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: BIPH), a developer of next-generation biomedical technology, today announced that the Company has named Harold Gubnitsky to the board of directors,"a press release issued on February 7, 2008 states. Biophan's PR also noted Gubnitsky "is a seasoned executive who has worked with and within several large, medium, and small corporations with a wide range of responsibilities spanning executive management and operations."

The moderator and many participants at a message board for Investors Hub Daily, which claims that it's "[o]ne of the most active financial forums in the world," believe that Biophan is a "criminal enterprise."The "About Us" page claims,"Investors Hub has been online for over 13 years and currently has 398,699 Members who have posted 87,953,548 Messages on 21,927 Boards. Our Members currently write on average 40,000 new Messages each trading day."

At the top of the Biophan Technologies Message Board on Investors Hub, the moderator's welcome message states, "As Biophan is now officially dark, having elected to go "Pink" and non-reporting, please note that none of the information below can be considered to be current, and quite possibly is inaccurate."

"And as the 'management' of Biophan transferred between $10 million and $17 million of shareholders' funds to private individuals just prior to going dark, some people (your Mod is one) think the company is essentially a criminal enterprise. Others don't, hence the content of the remainder of this iBox," the welcome message adds.

The last press release at Biophan's website, which was released on July 22, 2009 - 17 months after Gubnitsky became a board director - said that it "filed a Form 15 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, voluntarily terminating the registration of its securities and its obligation to continue filing reports under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934."

"The Biophan board of directors unanimously resolved to take this action to conserve its cash resources," the press release also noted. "Other actions taken by the board in this regard include management and staff reductions."

Apparently in response to this news, someone at the Investors Hub message board, wrote, "What a bunch of CROOKS that are involved with this POS!!" In response, a fellow complainer, said that he was "glad" he was out, and added, that he had spent "to[o] many years believing in good technology run by con men."

The forum's moderator "sunspotter"alleged that the Chief Executive Officer and President John Lanzafame had committed "an actionable breach of both fiduciary duty but also of securities legislation," and "must think Biophan shareholders are an extraordinarily naive and gullible group (!)." He alleged, "A more obvious and egregious breach of fiduciary duty was Mr. Lanzafame's extraordinary move to sell the Myotech CSS technology at a knock down price to his own shell company set up by him with his pal Frank Terrizzi." A week later, "sunspotter"argued, "The chaps (phew! close one there - I nearly wrote "crooks"!) running this show have decided that they've pretty well wrung you shareholders out, and now it's time for a new game...Frankly, anyone who doesn't acknowledge that the game is up, and that the ordinary shareholder has been fleeced, is either extraordinarily optimistic to the extent that they are in denial of the facts, or is not being entirely straigh[t]forward in their posts."

Still angry years later, on February 20, 2013, "sunspotter" wrote at the forum he moderates, that he "can only imagine that long-running scam BIPH is being lined up for a mega-pump, and that a $30-$50 day crew is being lined up for a promo blitz. Par for the course for the crooks behind the whole Technology Innovations/Biophan scam, Michael Weiner, Jim Wemett and John Lanzafame. As a buy-and-hold investment, empty shell BIPH will continue to stink, of course."

"And with a long line of previous marks lining up to exit this sorry criminal conspiracy, any strength in the pps will be unlikely to last long," the Investors Hub moderator added.

[Editor's Note: Michael Weiner left Biophan before Gubnitsky was hired, and doesn't appear to be related to Anthony Weiner, as far as I can tell.]

Although his name no longer appears on the Biophan website, an archive link reveals that Gubnitsky was still listed as one of four board members as late as September of 2009.

In September of 2008, Gubnitsky replaced fellow Board Director Stan Yakatan on the Compensation Committee, according to a press release. A May of 2009 filing lists Gubnitsky as "Director and Chairman of the Compensation Committee," and said that he received $14,000, so far, for chairing the committee, that year.

"The Compensation Committee is currently composed of Mr. Gubnitsky," the filing continued. "Ms. Labosky also served on this committee until her resignation from the Board on November 11, 2008. The responsibilities of the Compensation Committee is more fully set forth in the Compensation Committee Charter adopted in June 2005 and posted on our website at www.biophan.com, include reviewing our compensation policies, establishing executive officer compensation, and administering our stock option plans. The Compensation Committee met informally several times during our fiscal year ended February 28, 2009. Each member of the Compensation Committee attended all of the meetings during their respective period of service. None of the members of our Compensation Committee has ever been our employee."

[Editor's Note: On 5/16/13 I changed headline from "Stealth lobbyist Anthony Weiner worked during alleged sex addiction clinic trip" to "Anthony Weiner company led by former board director for firm investors blasted as 'CROOKS'" since the New York Post story that inspired the former appears to be wrong.]

State Department and President Obama defended likely NYC mayoral candidate's wife in summer of 2012 after GOP Congress members questioned her alleged familial ties to Muslim Brotherhood, but no one told the press or public about her "new working arrangement"

Last Thursday, Politico and The New York Times broke the news that Anthony Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, "quietly" reached a "new working arrangement" in her last months at the State Department, where she worked closely with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, prepares for a mayoral run in New York City," Raymond Hernandez reported for The New York Times. That same day, news broke out on Twitter that Weiner and Abedin shot what appeared to be a TV commercial at his childhood residence in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

"[S]o @anthonyweiner & Huma (gorgeous!) are shooting a commercial on my block. i wonder what it's for.. #runanthonyrun pic.twitter.com/DW2OZqK6cJ,"@chippygee tweeted, and posted the following picture:
"Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant," Hernandez reported for The New York Times on May 16, 2013. "A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff."

Maggie Haberman, John Bresnahan and Glenn Thrush reported for Politico that "Abedin never would have had to make the information public had her friend not provided the details."

Some critics of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin believe that there may have been another reason why a "new working arrangement" occurred in June of 2012.

"Did Huma Abedin ‘quietly’ step down as Deputy Chief of Staff in same month Bachmann letter sent to IG?" Walid Shoebat, asked at his blog on May 17, 2013. Shoebat notes that on June 13, 2012, a "letter sent by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), and Tom Rooney (R-FL) to the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General...specifically named Huma Abedin and her familial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood."

The letter sent by Bachmann and four other Republican congress members charged that "the Department’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making."

In an article which unknowingly wrongly reported Abedin was still Deputy Chief of Staff, Politico's Jonathan Allen reported on July 19, 2012, "Similar letters were sent to inspectors general at the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."

"Had an announcement been made in June of 2012 that Abedin was stepping down as Deputy, it clearly would have fueled the controversy," Shoebat speculates.

Shoebat is "a Palestinian militant turned peacemaker", according to a 2004 BBC News profile, but a 2010 Washington Post column questioned his terrorist "credentials," and quoted critics who suggested that "Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. military" were "promoting terrorists-turned-Christians, with potentially deadly consequences" to "spew[] Islamophobic hatred."


At a July 18, 2012 daily press briefing, the Acting Deputy Spokesperson and Director of the Press Office Patrick Ventrell was asked a question by a reporter who specifically referred to Abedin as Deputy Chief of Staff, but he didn't correct him.

QUESTION: No? All right. Well, I was going to bring this up, but since Senator McCain took to the floor of the Senate this morning --

MR. VENTRELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- and delivered a rather stirring defense of the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff, I’m wondering if you, speaking on behalf of her employer, would like to add your two cents to that.

MR. VENTRELL: Can you repeat your question? Sorry, I didn’t hear the --

QUESTION: Do you have anything to say about the allegations that are being made against Huma Abedin?

MR. VENTRELL: We think that – again, if you’re referring to the very specific thing that was about a member of Congress writing to the OIG --

QUESTION: Five members of Congress, yes. And Senator McCain --

MR. VENTRELL: -- I’ll have to look into it for more information on that. But, obviously, the Secretary very much values her wise counsel and support, and we think that these allegations are preposterous.

QUESTION: Okay. Do you know if the Inspector General, to whom Representative Bachmann and the others have sent the letter to asking for him to open an investigation, do you know if there is going to be an investigation being opened, or is it just so preposterous, in your words, that it doesn’t even warrant that?

MR. VENTRELL: I’ll have to check in with the Office of the Inspector General. I don’t have any information, but I’ll check in.

The next day Ventrell was asked, "anything new or any new development in terms of what may have transpired since yesterday in terms of this Department’s response to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s accusation of Ms. Huma Abedin?"

"As I said yesterday, we find those allegations preposterous, and we continue to think so," the Director of the Press Office shot back.

The reporter followed up, "Were you able to get an answer from the IG? Are they actually going to look into this?"

"I have not yet, but I’ll continue to inquire," Ventrell responded, and that appears to be the last time the subject was ever broached at a State Department briefing.

Republican Senator John McCain defended Huma Abedin in a speech on the Senate floor on July 18, 2012, and - as a result - The New York Times published multiple stories online and in the paper about Huma Abedin, three of which that wrongly referred to Weiner's wife as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's current deputy chief of staff.

On July 18, 2012, KJ Dell’Antonia reported for The New York Times Parenting blog, "Maybe Friday’s People cover story will focus instead on how Ms. Abedin juggles a young baby and a high-profile job as a deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."

On July 18, 2012, Kate Taylor reported for The New York Times City Room blog, "Now, for the second time, Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff in the State Department, has been thrust into the limelight under unlikely, and unpleasant, circumstances."

On July 18, 2012, Ashley Southall reported for The New York Times Caucus blog, "She stayed by Mrs. Clinton’s side in the Senate and during her 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is now her deputy chief of staff."

Four more articles about Huma Abedin which unknowingly wrongfully reported she was still Deputy Chief of Staff were published in The New York Times that summer, but apparently no one in the State Department or Weiner and Clinton households informed the paper about the new "working arrangement," even though all have a history of reacting rather quickly to complain about factually incorrect errors.

On July 16, 2012, Robert Mackey reported for The New York Times Lede blog, "Ms. Ahmed then directed Mr. Bradley to a transcript of a recent conversation between two American conservatives who claimed that Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, was participating in a Muslim Brotherhood plot 'to penetrate our government.'"

On July 27, 2012, Jennifer Steinhauer reported for The New York Times Caucus blog, "Ms. Bachmann and four other lawmakers last month sent a letter to the State Department charging that Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff in the State Department and a long-time aide to Ms. Clinton, may be a part of a group of Muslims with ties to terrorist organizations alleged to have infiltrated the federal government."

On August 8, 2012, Peter Baker reported for The New York Times Caucus blog, "Hosting an iftar dinner at the White House marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Mr. Obama singled out Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Mrs. Clinton who has come under fire from a handful of House Republicans who made unsubstantiated suggestions that she was among Muslim Americans with terrorist ties who have infiltrated the government."

On August 15, 2012, Ashley Southall - in an article about Chelsea Clinton - referred to Abedin as "Hillary Rodham Clinton's deputy chief of staff."

Last July, another State Department spokesman, Philippe Reines, released a statement to the media defending Abedin and Clinton, but not informing them that the former was no longer Deputy Chief of Staff: "These accusations are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies, and anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves. I would hope that hearing such a remarkable statement from someone of Senator McCain's stature gives [Bachmann] pause in doing so any further."

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Reines has been described as a "loyalist" and Hillary's right hand "hatchet man," and - like Abedin - he followed Clinton from her Senate job to the State Department, and is still working for her.

In his July 18, 2012 speech, McCain never referred to Abedin's actual job title, and neither did President Barack Obama when he defended her as an "American patriot" at the annual Iftar dinner on August 10, 2012. "And that includes a good friend, Huma Abedin, who has worked tirelessly -- (applause) -- worked tirelessly in the White House, in the U.S. Senate, and most exhaustingly, at the State Department, where she has been nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear," Obama said, adding, "Senator Clinton has relied on her expertise, and so have I."

The White House listed her under Administration members as "Ms. Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Department of State" when she attended the 2010 Iftar dinnar.

On August 13, 2012, Jeane Macintosh, Jennifer Gould Keil and Josh Margolin reported for The New York Post, "Some Weiner-watchers are stunned that the pol, who gave up his $174,000 salary when he resigned, and Huma, who makes around $155,000 annually, can afford the posh pad at 254 Park Ave. South at East 20th Street."

The New York Post story added, "Weiner hasn’t landed steady work since leaving office, according to sources. But some friends of the onetime rising star said he has consulting work and will have no problem exceeding his congressional salary."

Politico reported on May 18, 2013, "One source said that the $135,000 she identified on the couple’s joint tax return of just over $490,000 was the entirety of her payment from the State Department for the calendar year 2012.

"An associate of Ms. Abedin’s said on Thursday that the arrangement allowed her to work from her home in New York, rather than at the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, and to spend more time with her child and husband," Raymond Hernandez reported for The New York Times. "She earned approximately $135,000 from the department during 2012."

On her Twitter account, Politico's Maggie Haberman tweeted, "In NYT piece on his consulting, 'most of' Weiner's and his wife's combined $496k was described as from his work,"then observed, "But $135k was hers from State, and she had other consulting retainers that comprised the $360k combined in income."

"If the most Abedin made over six months was, say, $100k, then Weiner made about $250k for year. They won't answer q's," Haberman tweeted, then added, "Won't answer questions on the breakdown of who made what, that is."

Last night, I tweeted to Haberman - who @AnthonyWeiner follows on Twitter, "In 2012, @NYPost reported Abedin earned 'around $155,000.' Huma then made $135,000 working from home?"

Anthony Weiner has apologized to the press and to the public for misleading everyone about being hacked to cover up sexting relationships with up to six women. But now that he is officially running for NYC mayor, perhaps some reporters should start questioning why the former Congressman spent much of the last two years being less than forthcoming with the press and public.

For the last two years, Weiner essentially dodged the media and allowed many false stories to percolate, which appears to be for his own benefit or myth-making. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that Weiner sought therapy after leaving Congress - even though he was engaging in reckless online relationships dating to the beginning of his marriage, and even though he admits he had no way of knowing if all his online paramours were over the age of twenty-one. He and his wife did a People magazine spread and he gave sporadic soundbites to make it seem like he was working out marriage problems, yet he's bragged that his wife didn't even want him to quit his congressional job in the first place. And he and his wife have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting for clients, many of whom seem to have ties to the Clintons.

What exactly are the "tough lessons" that Anthony Weiner learned? That it's possible to come back after a sex scandal if you avoid and mislead the press and public for two years, but use your political connections to cash in? Weiner went from living in the outer boroughs to a pricey Manhattan apartment that he had no way of affording in 2011. Did the landlord - who is also linked to the Clintons - just trust that Weiner would score lots of loot with a consulting firm he kept secret and ignore the fact that the rent was more than his wife made in a year at her job?

A month ago, Elizabeth A. Harris reported for The New York Times on April 23, 2013, that the Weiners were "paying the going rate for their apartment, where they moved a few months after he resigned from office, swept from Washington by a tidal wave of embarrassment and some exceptionally revealing Twitter posts," but "declined to provide proof of their rent, like a lease or canceled check."

"Some Weiner-watchers are stunned that the pol, who gave up his $174,000 salary when he resigned, and Huma, who makes around $155,000 annually, can afford the posh pad at 254 Park Ave. South at East 20th Street," Jeane Macintosh, Jennifer Gould Keil and Josh Margolin reported for The New York Post on August 13, 2012.

The State Department and President Obama defended Weiner's wife in the summer of 2012 after GOP Congress members questioned her alleged familial ties to Muslim Brotherhood, but no one told the press or public about her "new working arrangement", I reported a few days ago.

"Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant," Raymond Hernandez reported for The New York Times on May 16, 2013. "A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff."

At a July 18, 2012 daily press briefing, the Acting Deputy Spokesperson and Director of the Press Office Patrick Ventrell was asked a question by a reporter who specifically referred to Abedin as Deputy Chief of Staff, but he didn't correct him.

Republican Senator John McCain defended Huma Abedin in a speech on the Senate floor on July 18, 2012, and - as a result - The New York Times published multiple stories online and in the paper about Huma Abedin, three of which that wrongly referred to Weiner's wife as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's current deputy chief of staff.

Four more articles about Huma Abedin which unknowingly wrongfully reported she was still Deputy Chief of Staff were published in The New York Times that summer, but apparently no one in the State Department or Weiner and Clinton households informed the paper about the new "working arrangement," even though all have a history of reacting rather quickly to complain about factually incorrect errors.

A few weeks ago I reported that the NY Post apparently misreported Weiner went to a Florida sex addiction clinic in July of 2011, when evidence suggests he actually was on a work trip for a client. Weiner did absolutely nothing to alert the press that the reporting was wrong, and the Post story spread across the media, creating the impression that Weiner was taking his therapy seriously.

Weiner apparently snagged Parabel as a client within two weeks after incorporating his firm, since he appeared to be doing homework on the way back from his reported sex addiction clinic trip. However, the New York Post story - which many media organizations unquestionably reported - assuming Weiner visited Florida in July of 2011 for therapeutic reasons related to the scandal appears to be wrong.

"A Post reporter spotted Weiner on Wednesday night flying first-class from Orlando to La Guardia Airport on a Delta flight, carrying nothing but his iPad and several documents,"Josh Margolin, Brigitte Stelzer and Dan Mangan reported for the New York Post on July 22, 2011. "Orlando is near the Winter Park, Fla., offices of the New Leaf Center, which on its Web site says it provides outpatient therapy for sexual addiction and sexual compulsivity issues, including for 'politicians.' Staff there asked a reporter to leave when he asked about Weiner yesterday."

Although part of the headline for the 7/22/11 exclusive New York Post was called "Weiner in Therapy," the tabloid never actually proved that Weiner's trip to Florida was to visit a sex addiction clinic. And there doesn't even seem to be any definitive proof Weiner spent all that much time in therapy, or even saw a doctor after leaving Congress and starting his firm just weeks later.

"It is unclear where Weiner is undergoing therapy -- and whether it's simply as an outpatient on a shrink's couch or involves more intensive therapy at a special clinic," the Post actually reported, about the 7/20/11 flight that photographer Brigitte Stelzer happened to catch Weiner on. The photograph oddly didn't show Weiner's face, as if he was embarrassed being captured on the trip, and it's strange that one showing his face wasn't used instead.

A long, but mostly non-informative ten-page April 14, 2013 story in The New York Times magazine - that read like a P.R. piece - claimed that "Weiner started seeing a therapist almost immediately after the scandal broke." Weiner presumably revealed to Jonathan Van Meter that the only doctor he visited was in New York, since he wouldn't have been able to sneak out-of-state during the height of Weinergate.

"Therapy wasn’t something that came naturally to me," Weiner told Van Meter. "I am this middle-class guy from Brooklyn, the men in our family don’t hug each other, we don’t talk about our feelings. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be. And now I start sentences with, 'My therapist says....'"

Strikingly, Van Meter begins the next paragraph with, "What does your therapist say? I asked the next time we met," but Weiner responds in the past tense: "It’s none of the easy stuff. She didn’t tell me: 'You have a sex addiction! You were abused as a child!' None of that stuff, which in a lot of ways, I’d kind of prefer.' He laughed. "It’s an easy explanation that people intuitively get."

Another sentence uses the present tense to report that Weiner was "in therapy," but there doesn't seem to be any definitive proof that the potential mayoral candidate even saw a doctor after leaving Congress.

The corporate offices for Parabel Inc. are located at 1901 S. Harbor City Blvd. in Melbourne, Florida, so Weiner might have actually been on an all-business trip when Stelzer happened to catch him on an Orlando-to-New York flight. That's only about a 60 mile distance or an hour's drive from the airport in Orlando.

At the New York Post, caustic columnist Andrea Peyser wrote on May 24, 2013, "Weiner told me Wednesday, without hesitation, that he did not attend sex-addict rehab but only met with a therapist in Texas for three or four days. But when a reporter asked him about that assertion, he denied it."

"'First of all, I did go, so I don’t know what you’re talking about,' he said. He identified the rehab facility — which he swore he never attended — as the Gabbard Center in Houston.

"I went there to visit with some doctors at a facility there. Some psychiatrists. To try to get some help."

But he wouldn’t give his diagnosis, or describe his treatment, though he denied taking medication to treat his psycho need to strip and send.

What else is he not telling us? Or flat-out fibbing about?"

The New York Daily News reported on May 23, 2013 that "Weiner gave new details of the frantic, humiliating days when he resigned from Congress in June 2011 with a promise that he would seek 'professional treatment to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person.'"

Jonathan Lemire continued, "At the time, political sources said he would seek an evaluation of his compulsive behavior and sexual urges." But Weiner appears to only be talking about what he did in June before resigning from Congress. These "new details" again seem to suggest that Weiner spent no time in therapy after quitting, and instead spent most of his time building a bankroll so he could live in Manhattan with his wife and newborn.

"Weiner revealed Wednesday that he went to the Gabbard Center in Houston, a psychiatric facility that specializes in intensive “three-day outpatient psychiatric evaluations,” according to its website.

'It wasn’t an addiction thing,' he told The News. 'I mean, it was just a place to get away and to meet people ... who might be able to help.'

He did not reveal the diagnosis he received, but called his clinic stay the beginning of 'a journey' to becoming a 'new man.'"

In her original column on May 23, Peyser wrote, "Weiner now admits he did not attend sex-addict rehab."

"I didn’t go to rehab anywhere," Weiner told Peyser. "A couple of days I worked with a therapist in Texas I was referred to. Two days, twice, for a total of four days. Or, it might have been three."

It's curious that Weiner denies ever needing sex addiction treatment, even though he continued to recklessly sext women he never met in real life, despite the fact that he knew conservative trolls were monitoring his online actions. And Weiner continues to use his wife as a prop for his political ambitions, yet there's no evidence that they ever even spoke to a marriage counselor.

"First, there was the decision to resign," Weiner told The New York Times magazine in April. "Huma didn’t really want me to, frankly. But I just had to cull that part of the conversation out of our lives and focus on my marriage, my family, her family. I just didn’t have any bandwidth. My career seemed the least important of all of those other things. That wasn’t easy for Huma. Her frame was: We’ve gotta get back to normal somehow."

Starting a firm weeks after quitting a job - that he claims his wife didn't want him to quit - and saying nothing while the media incorrectly reported he went to a sex addiction clinic, seems at odds with the official Weiner story so far.

Even New Yorkers who forgive Weiner may wonder why he appears to think that he wasn't in need of more therapy or counseling.

And if Weiner doesn't reveal who the other women he sexted with are, then how can the public allay fears that no one might try to blackmail him?

But as long as critics waste their time cracking sophomoric dick jokes instead of asking deeper questions, Weiner will probably be able to avoid talking directly about anything that happened before, during and after the Weinergate scandal.

Update: Former porn actress tells New York Times she can't bear scrutiny of being linked to Weiner; Reporter Michael Barbaro seems to ignore the fact that some of the women in his story flirted publicly with Weiner"The New York Times 'inadvertently' posted an article on the women involved in Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal — and then deleted it," Mackenzie Weinger reported for Politico.

As Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke noted at The New York Observer, "Clicking on the link to the story, once entitled 'For Women in Weiner Scandal, Indignity Lingers,' now takes readers to a page that reads 'Production Note: An article was posted on this page inadvertently, before it was ready for publication.'"

Bloomgarden-Smoke further adds, "According to a Google cache, the story, by political reporter Michael Barbaro, began, "For those on the other end of Anthony D. Weiner’s sexually explicit conversations, the episode damaged careers, disrupted educations."

"Customers still taunt Lisa Weiss," the story began. "'Talk dirty to me,' they joke. 'We know you like it.' Colleagues still refuse to speak with her. Strangers still bad mouth her in nasty online messages."

By searching for particular phrases, I was able to find more lines from the scrubbed New York Times story, although they might not necessarily be in the same order as Barbaro intended.

"'I cannot tell you the devastation,' said Ms. Weiss, a 42-year-old blackjack dealer who exchanged hundreds of explicit messages with Mr. Weiner, then a congressman, in 2010 and 2011."

"In spring 2011, Mr. Weiner sent a 21-year-old college student an image of himself in boxers, with an obvious erection. Now, the young woman, Gennette Cordova, is trying to reclaim her identity, online and off. Ms. Cordova, who has told The New York Times that she had chatted with Mr. Weiner about politics and not about sex, was shocked by his unwanted advances."

"She moved from Seattle to New York City, before Mr. Weiner's decision to run for mayor, eager to leave a place where she had become known for her ties to the unfolding drama."

"Traci Nobles, who has said that a roommate leaked her correspondence with Mr. Weiner without her permission, quit her job as as a fitness instructor in Georgia because of the unwanted attention."

"'It broke my heart,' she said in a little-watched interview for an online talk show. Determined to explain her online dalliance with Mr. Weiner and its impact on her life, Ms. Nobles proposed a book that has yet to be published."

"Ginger Lee, a former adult film actress with whom Mr. Weiner flirted online, said she could no longer bear the scrutiny of being linked to him."

"'Every new headline and news story about him reminds reporters and bloggers that we exist, and the cycle starts all over,' she said in a statement released by her lawyer."

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote in an article called "Weiner Story Appears Briefly, Then Disappears, From The Times’s Web Site," that the paper "has a strong policy against what it calls 'unpublishing' articles. But there are occasional exceptions."

"From what I’ve been able to piece together, there was a miscommunication among Times editors," Sullivan added. "Some thought the article was ready to go, and sent it on through the editorial production cycle. At least one other editor — higher up on the food chain — disagreed about its readiness and did not intend it to be published, at least not at that point."

Although Barbaro reported that the photo Anthony Weiner sent on May 27, 2011 contained an "obvious erection," many liberal bloggers argued that it looked like the former Democratic Congressman had stuck his arm in his boxers, which would explain why he later referred to it as some sort of a joke.

In October of 2011, I published a story called "Twitter Socks Attacked Lisa Weiss Then Hid Evidence."

"Like everyone else involved in Weinergate, Lisa Weiss also received many nasty tweets from anonymous twitter 'socks', including calls for her to get fired from her job," I wrote. "Many of the nastier tweets were deleted later while others made their twitter accounts private."

The casino Weiss worked for "lost my business if you continue to deal there," someone using the handle @tweeterlaura sent to her at her @liberallisa account, "no grifters at the tables please."

Another nasty tweet by @bellaboo2220 told Weiss to "crawl into a hole," and that she should be "ashamed of [her]self and [her] whorish ways." Another tweet by the same account mocked Weiss using antisemitism, saying that she was "doing the Jews proud."

Weiss later told me that she almost lost her job after Radar Online published a picture of her dressed in her work uniform at the casino without her permission. She also claims that she never told the gossip website anything bad about Weiner, despite what they reported, and she remains an ardent supporter.

NY Times reporter seems to ignore that some of the women publicly flirted with Weiner

Some of the women flirted publicly with Weiner, which New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro may not have mentioned in his article. And instead of ducking the media, four women chose to release sexually charged texts and private messages they shared with the former Congressman. Of course, that doesn't mean any of the women deserve to be harassed or humiliated, but it is a fact that the paper should report if they republish his story.

Ginger Lee has complained that Weiner made unwanted advances to her, but she tweeted provocatively about the Congressman before he even followed her back. She also strangely drew attention to herself after the scandal broke by trading tweets with a Twitter account that was mocking Weiner in a sexual manner. I've asked her on Twitter many times why she did that, but she has ignored my tweets.[Editor's Note: My laptop is giving me fits, but I will add screenshots and links proving this as soon as possible.].

For the last two years, Barbaro has ignored my complaints that he reported Weiner made "unwanted advances" to Cordova, since she has argued otherwise. Cordova has strenuously argued that the only flirtatious message she ever received from Weiner was the infamous underwear tweet sent on May 27, 2011.

Nobles, Lee and Cordova wrote flirty tweets or public Facebook messages before the Weinergate scandal broke out, which, again, is something that the New York Times should be including in this article, that some of his defenders are referring to as a "hit piece," even though they didn't read it. While most of the public messages were mild, Nobles made many crude sexual references on Weiner's public Facebook account.

On October 29, 2010, after Traci Nobles left a Facebook comment that joked, "Word Weiner. How BIGGGG?" she was reprimanded by an angry supporter who admonished, "Traci, that's very childish. How old are you? Are you old enough to be on Facebook?"

Nobles left a few bizarre messages that referred to Weiner's "balls" in the fall of 2010, as most media outlets neglected to report after the scandal broke in the spring of 2011.

"Ahhhhhhhhh, if only Obama had those super-sized Weiner balls!" Nobles left on Weiner's public Facebook account on November 12, 2010. "A girl can dream. Keep it fired up Weiner! I heart you!!"

On November 3, 2010, Nobles rued that "they can't all be blessed with those balls, unfortunately for us!"

"Keep on keepin on 'weiner and balls'!" Nobles wrote on November 16, 2010. "MUAW! Luv u."

On November 10, 2010, Nobles wrote, "Can I sit in your lap? I love a good tough Weiner!" A Weiner supporter advised Nobles to "restrain" herself, since it was a "public page."

The strangest thing - in my opinion - regarding the tragic death of journalist Michael Hastings is how his employer BuzzFeed covered it. Why didn't they report he allegedly told a WikiLeaks lawyer the feds were probing him or on the last email he sent to Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith and other colleagues at BuzzFeed warning them the same?

A day after his death, WikiLeaks tweeted on June 19, "Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him." However, they haven't provided any additional details on the alleged conversation since then.

In a mostly negative article titled, "Is WikiLeaks trying to start a FBI Michael Hastings Death Conspiracy?", Alexander Abad-Santos reported for The Atlantic Wire that Robinson was "something of a human-rights watchdog and a protector of investigative journalists." Abad-Santos bashed WikiLeaks for making an "ill-timed tweet for attention," and BuzzFeed may have agreed, since they didn't do a story on it.

Christian Stork reported for WhoWhatWhy:

"A little over 12 hours before his car was incinerated on an LA straightaway on June 18, 2013, Hastings sent out a short email headed, 'FBI Investigation, re: NSA.' In it, he said that the FBI had been interviewing his 'close friends and associates,' and advised the recipients — including colleagues at the website Buzzfeed — '[It] may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.' He added, 'I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radat [sic] for a bit.'"

Retired SSG Joe Biggs - who met Hastings when he was embedded in Afghanistan and was BCC'd on the email which he leaked to KTLA - told me on Twitter that BuzzFeed's Ben Smith ignored an email he sent him about Hastings' concerns. Smith blocked me on Twitter after I asked him questions on June 25:

1) When did @BuzzFeedBen learn Michael Hastings was "concerned that he was under investigation" and what did he do? nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/michael-hastings-fbi-wikileaks-death-conspiracies.html?mid=twitter_dailyintel

2) Did @BuzzFeedBen contact his "Washington sources" when he learned #Hastings feared he was under investigation? http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/missing-michael-hastings

3) Why did #Hastings have to contact a @WikiLeaks lawyer? Didn't @BuzzFeedBen have lawyers that could have offered him advice or help?

4) Why did @BuzzFeedBen tell @joecoscarelli "Michael told a number of his friends and colleagues" but not specify if he was told himself?

5) Is @BuzzFeedBen "too scared" to probe Michael #Hastings' fears he was being investigated by Fed? Or does he think he was just paranoid?

6) Any journalist not asking @BuzzFeedBen hard questions about what he did or didn't do may as well take a piss on Michael #Hastings' grave.

7) Why didn't @BuzzFeedBen IMMEDIATELY contact the FBI to ask if Michael #Hastings was being investigated? Why didn't @BuzzFeed break story?

8) Why did @BuzzFeedBen ignore #Hastings pal SSG @RamboBiggs when @BuzzFeed was asked what they were gonna do? https://twitter.com/Rambobiggs/status/349284390897065986

9) Why didn't @BuzzFeedBen even RT @WikiLeaks tweet about #Hastings? Do any @BuzzFeed journos wonder what he'll do if they are ever probed?

10) Why isn't @BuzzFeedBen reporting that since Barrett Brown was arrested & ProjectPM is under probe, the FBI may be lying about #Hastings?

11) FBI, DoJ have Barrett Brown's emails & must know about email ProjectPM sent me claiming #Hastings had "leadership position" @BuzzFeedBen

12) Hastings reported FBI warrant for March 2012 Barrett Brown raid sought records related to http://wiki.echelon2.org http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/exclusive-fbi-escalates-war-on-anonymous

13) @BuzzFeedBen is Editor-in-Chief for website allegedly worth millions that focuses on Tweets but ignores chatter about #Hastings' death.

14) If @mmhastings wasn't working on a Jill Kelley story, why didn't @BuzzFeedBen bother to "correct the record"? https://twitter.com/Elise_Jordan/status/349502184049754113

"Following publication of the email by KTLA, the FBI quickly denied that the Bureau was ever investigating Hastings," Stork adds. "The Freedom of the Press Foundation and ProjectPM — the research wiki that Brown was involved with — are in the process of filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to learn if indeed Hastings was the subject of an FBI probe."

At San Diego 6 News, Kimberly Dvorak noted, "the FBI Los Angeles-based spokesperson, Laura Eimiller, atypically emailed media emphatically denying the agency was looking into Mr. Hastings background."

Stork reported, "The FBI denial notwithstanding, a number of clues indicate that the proximity of Hastings to Brown and the work of ProjectPM may have been what spawned the purported investigation in the first place."

Last year, BuzzFeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith ignored tweets and emails I sent him related to a possible government probe of Hastings.

Full text of email I sent Smith on May 18, 2012:

Ben,

You ignored my tweets...but can you give me a quote for an article I'm working on about how you allowed Michael Hastings to report on Barrett Brown, without disclosing the search warrant is asking for information that may include Hastings, since he was or currently is in Brown's Project PM.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/exclusive-fbi-escalates-war-on-anonymous

http://pastebin.com/vZEteA3C

8. Records relating to wiki.echelon2.org;

That is the wiki website for Project PM,

Also, his article didn't mention that Brown wrote the forward to his latest book...and that he defended him on the web when he wrote the Runaway General article...and that they used to write at True/Slant together and have a long relationship.

Also, what do you think of the way Hastings favorites my tweets to mock me, but ducks my questions.

And just to cover my bases, are you in Project PM or were you ever, too?

They have a long history of shilling for each other..and I'd like to know if Buzzfeed has any guidelines or journalism ethics rules.

https://www.google.com/search?q=michael%20hastings%20barrett%20brown&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&source=hp&channel=np

thanks,

Ron Brynaert

Former Executive Editor for www.RawStory.com

More links:

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/internet_and_the_republic_of_skepticism_part_two/

As of this writing, I have assembled a fine cadre of bloggers with a collective monthly audience of several hundred thousand people, and each of these bloggers will soon be selecting others to connect to them within the network; they will in turn choose others, and so on. We have Allison Kilkenny, an up-and-coming commentator who deals in policy as a cable anchor deals in cheery banter, and who in addition to her blogging hosts the satisfyingly wonkish program Citizen Radio along with her co-host and husband, comedian Jamie Kilstein. We have Michael Hastings, who served as Newsweek’s Baghdad correspondent and afterwards covered the 2008 election, at which point he grew disgusted with the frivolous nature of political coverage in this nation and left a prestigious position in favor of more virtuous pastures. We have Charles Johnson, the pioneering founder of the blog Little Green Footballs who was among the most widely-read of political bloggers until he found himself at odds with the bulk of his allies and audience due to his support for science and his opposition to racism. I am also in talks with other, similarly prominent commentators and journalists who have likewise demonstrated themselves to be experts in their respective subjects as well as intellectually honest.

https://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/CENTCOM

"Along with colleagues at the research wiki he started, ProjectPM (PPM), Brown was looking into a legion of shadowy cybersecurity firms whose work for the government raised all sorts of questions about privacy and the rule of law," Stork reported.

Stork adds, "Since Hastings was familiar with the government contractors listed in the search warrant, he was also potentially culpable in whatever 'crimes' the feds believed Brown and PPM were guilty of. Is this why he was being investigated in the days before his fatal crash on June 18, 2013?"

"The busy Hastings never fully immersed himself in the work of PPM. “[Hastings] was an outlet for us to pass things to,” says Alan Ross, better known on PPM’s Internet relay chat (IRC) as Morpeth. “His relationship was one of talking to Barrett in my experience, rather than direct involvement in PPM.” He was “more of an associate than a member'."

Just before strangely disappearing for a year from Twitter, Morpeth told me in a June 3, 2012 email that Hastings had "a leadership position within our project."

Morpeth also claimed that Michael Roston - who edited Brown and Hastings at True/Slant and used to work under me at RAW STORY but now is at The New York Times - "is a senior member of PPM and has written much of our wiki."

"Yes, there are some NYT (and others) writers and editors that regularly contribute to our material and help us by editorialising in our favour in the NYT when we ask them," Morpeth claimed. "The government officials that we work with generally do not contribute writings, but rather give us leaks of confidential information relating to government, military, and contractor programmes that form the basis of our research and our core data, whilst some government/federal agency contacts enable us to feed back into their processes and make recommendations that enable us to have a more direct influence over policy (functioning as a kind of direct backchannel into these agencies and a private forum for us to express our concerns directly to those with decision-making remit within the fields of intelligence, information security, and consent manufacture. These people are in the employ of various agencies that I cannot specify here over email, for reasons that I'm sure you can understand."

However, Morpeth strangely signed his email calling himself John Morpeth Jameson, Orchestrating Director Project Pm Europe, instead of Alan Ross.

After the Boston Marathon bombings, during a roundtable discussion on Current's "The Young Turks" (video clip), Hastings speculated that his conversations with Barrett Brown - before his arrest - were being recorded, that he was "careful" to only talk about things "in context", and he noted that his number was on Brown's "phone which has been seized by the government." At the time, Hastings said he could not confirm that he was being monitored, "except that people tell [him] all the time in the Special Forces community."

In another article for WhoWhatWhy published in May, Stork reported, "On April 2, the DOJ served the domain hosting service CloudFlare with a subpoena for all records and personal information on one of its clients, a research wiki known as ProjectPM."

The warrant for records was signed by FBI agent Robert Smith, who Barrett Brown is accused of threatening. Many have questioned why Smith's involvement isn't considered a conflict of interest, but since threats to agents could derail investigations the FBI probably doesn't reassign agents unless they have personal conflicts of interest.

Stork noted that "CloudFlare will likely be forced to turn over records on third parties who were engaged in constitutionally-protected conduct related to curating or visiting the website."

In January, after ignoring my tweets for months after Brown's arrest in September, Hastings told me on Twitter that he was finally working on a story and his excuses for taking so long was that "there was an election, and still a few wars going on. but get ready for your mind to be blown." The FreeBarrett website owner said that Hastings was due to meet with Brown in prison in June or July, but the latest filing by Brown's lawyers seems to indicate that they wouldn't have approved of it.

"For instance, the government states that “Brown’s friend confirmed in a statement to the press (posted on August 7, 2013) that lawyers had discussions with a specific media person to arrange an in-person interview with Brown in jail.” GB at 11 (¶27). Presumably, the “specific media person” referenced by the government is Michael Hastings, a journalist, friend and colleague of Mr. Brown who passed away on June 18, 2013 in Los Angeles California. Counsel does not dispute that Mr. Hastings, as with many other members of the media, contacted counsel seeking an in-person interview with Mr. Brown. To counsel’s knowledge, Mr. Hastings did not visit or conduct an in-person interview Mr. Brown before his death.

Counsel has received numerous requests from members of the media, including documentary filmmakers, to interview Mr. Brown. Counsel has advised members of the media seeking an in person interview with Mr. Brown that there is a Protective Order in place, that members of the media would need authorization from all the relevant parties including the authorities at Mansfield Correctional, and that Mr. Brown would be advised not to answer any questions unless submitted in advance, and in writing, so that counsel could screen questions to comply with the Court’s Protective Order, Gentile, Brown, et al ."

Dvorak vows that "San Diego 6 News will continue to seek the truth with the assistance of Judicial Watch, a Washington DC based foundation."

"One puzzling aspect of the LAPD's objection to the release of the police report is the inference in the FOIA/CPRA response to San Diego 6 News that a federal investigation may be in progress, which only adds further questions as to what agency is investigating since the FBI said it is not investigating. This turn of events reaffirms this reporter's contention and the tens of thousands of individuals who have responded to this story that it IS in the public interest … Hastings was a national figure.

To find-out who is investigating and why, this week Judicial Watch will serve additional FOIAs against the DOJ (AKA Eric Holders’ war on journalists), Department of Homeland Security’s HSI, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secretary of the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Secretary of the Department of the Army (due to unchallenged threats made directly to Mr. Hastings)."

But I fail to understand why BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone don't seem to care about any of this. Hastings' employers seem to have little interest in the strange circumstances of his death, and seem content to leave the reporting to smaller media outlets and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Oddly, Hastings' widow, Elise Jordan - who used to be a speechwriter for Condoleezza Rice and a spokesperson for the National Security Council - has done nothing but praise BuzzFeed, even though I don't even think they sent a reporter to the scene of the accident, and Smith ducked questions I asked him on Twitter regarding his response to Hastings' last email. Jordan recently appeared on CNN and said that she thought her husband's death was just a "tragic accident." Instead of being asked if she knew why Hastings was speeding between 80 and 100 MPH, if he had talked to her about the alleged probe or if it's true that she had hired private investigators as Hastings' military pal @RamboBiggs and Dvorak reported, Jordan was asked insipid questions about New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez.

Biggs blocked me on Twitter after I sent him Direct Messages advising him that talking to Alex Jones would make it easier for the media to stop reporting on Hastings' death, and that I suspected it was most likely that Hastings was spooked by a bogus source, not assassinated. He also scrubbed many of his tweets about Hastings, and accused Dvorak of misquoting him on a story which claimed that Hastings was cremated against his family's wishes. After Jordon spoke to CNN, Biggs told Jones that he had cancelled a planned trip to Los Angeles because she allegedly claimed it might ruin the investigation. Jones complained that Jordan was "smiling like she went to the first Beatles concert," while talking about her late husband on CNN.

Dvorak ignored Biggs' complaint that he had only told her he "wasn't sure if that's what Michael wanted or the family", and hasn't replied to anyone on Twitter. Journalist Peter Ludlow tweeted to Biggs that "if she deliberately misrepresented you that pretty much makes the rest of her reporting on this worthless." Dvorak claimed on San Diego News 6 that she had received a threat over her reporting, and later told Russia Today that there was more than one, but she ignored my tweets asking for more details and if she had reported it to the police.

Dvorak also reported there was a gag order enforced on LAPD and firefighters regarding Hastings but she hasn't substantiated the claim. "How did @makmak47 get quotes from lead detective in #Hastings case this week if there's a gag order?" I asked her on August 10. Michael Krikorian also got quotes from the coroner's office, who told him that the toxicology report will finally be released within two weeks.

An obviously distraught Biggs is complaining on Twitter that he is being accused of being "after 'fame'", but that he is "sad and miserable" and almost "failed out of school when [M]ike died and because [he] released the email."

"So many people hate me because I spoke up," Biggs tweeted on August 11. "Sorry, I felt obligated to say something. What would you do if you got that email[?] I had to speak."

A recent article co-written by Jill Simpson - a "whistleblower" who once made unsubstantiated allegations to a RAW STORY reporter that former President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove had tried to kill her and had burned down her house, and spread a rumor he was gay in 2012 - misreported that I was friends with Hastings. In 2011, Hastings followed me after retweeting me, but he smeared me as crazy last year after I complained about his article on the Barrett Brown search warrant. I wouldn't presume to think or speak for Hastings, but I seriously doubt he would have been happy that controversial conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has taken the lead in probing his death, instead of his colleagues at BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone.

"#Hastings didn't get to 'blow [my] mind' with @BarrettBrownLOL story but @BuzzFeed or @RollingStone can if they do real story on MH's death," I tweeted on August 10.

Hastings deserves better than this.

(Afterword: A BuzzFeed contributor favorited a tweet I made linking to this story, so not everyone at Hastings' former job must be happy with how his death has been covered there.)

Update below: Brown's prosecutors claim no confidential human sources were used in case but that doesn't seem to explain warrant for March, 2012 raid, unless prosecutors were allowed to go on a fishing expedition and FBI agents were granted the go-ahead to seize a journalist's computers

On August 8, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert S. Mueller, III gave a speech called "The Future of Cyber Security from the FBI’s Perspective" at the International Conference on Cyber Security 2013 held at Fordham University in New York City.

"Over two years after the Summer of Lulz, FBI Director Robert Mueller remarks at the Fordham ICCS Conference this past Thursday, to the best of my knowledge, the first time he made mention of Lulz Security & their informant leader Sabu, better known as Hector Xavier Monsegur, Jr.,"the Operation Slingshot blog notes. "It is quite curious, since apart from the arrests and proceedings themselves, the FBI leadership has more or less kept radio silence on the matter."

Eight months before Barrett Brown, a journalist who essentially embedded himself into Anonymous, is scheduled to go on trial for computer related crimes, the outgoing FBI director may have accidentally revealed that the feds may have used Sabu's cooperation to help build the case against him.

Mueller told the conference that the Bureau's "combination of technical skills and traditional investigative techniques recently led the FBI to the hacker known as Sabu—one of the co-founders of LulzSec."

"This case began when our Los Angeles Division collected IP addresses that were used to hack into the database of a TV game show. One of these led to an individual who had failed to anonymize his IP address," Mueller said. "Our New York Office used confidential human sources, search warrants, and physical surveillance to identify and locate this man, who was only known then by his online moniker, Sabu."

He added, "When our agents went to arrest him, they gave him a choice: Go to jail now, or cooperate."

"Sabu agreed to cooperate, continuing to use his online identity," Mueller continued. "His cooperation helped us to build cases that led to the arrest of six other hackers linked to groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec. It also allowed us to identify hundreds of security vulnerabilities—which helped us to stop future attacks and limit harm from prior intrusions."

Douglas Stanglin reported for USAToday on March 6, 2012, "Five alleged hackers have been charged with breaking into the computer systems of governments, corporations and media organizations after the reputed head of the LulzSec ring became an FBI informant, authorities announced."

"Five computer hackers in the United States and abroad were charged today, and a sixth pled guilty, for computer hacking and other crimes," the March 6, 2012 indictment states."The six hackers identified themselves as aligned with the group Anonymous, which is a loose confederation of computer hackers and others, and/or offshoot groups related to Anonymous, including 'Internet Feds,''LulzSec,' and 'AntiSec.'"

"RYAN ACKROYD, a/k/a “kayla,” a/k/a “lol,”a/k/a “lolspoon,” JAKE DAVIS, a/k/a “topiary,” a/k/a “atopiary,” DARREN MARTYN, a/k/a “pwnsauce,” a/k/a “raepsauce,” a/k/a “networkkitten,” and DONNCHA O’CEARRBHAIL, a/k/a “palladium,” who identified themselves as members of Anonymous, Internet Feds, and/or LulzSec, were charged in an Indictment unsealed today in Manhattan federal court with computer hacking conspiracy involving the hacks of Fox Broadcasting Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and the Public Broadcasting Service (“PBS”). O’CEARRBHAIL is also charged in a separate criminal Complaint with intentionally disclosing an unlawfully intercepted wire communication.

HECTOR XAVIER MONSEGUR, a/k/a “Sabu,” a/k/a “Xavier DeLeon,” a/k/a “Leon,” who also identified himself as a member of Anonymous, Internet Feds and LulzSec, pled guilty on August 15, 2011 in U.S. District Court to a 12-count information charging him with computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes. MONSEGUR’S Information and guilty plea were unsealed today. The crimes to which MONSEGUR pled guilty include computer hacking conspiracy charges initially filed in the Southern District of New York. He also pled guilty to the following charges: a substantive hacking charge initially filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of California related to the hacks of HBGary, Inc. and HBGary Federal LLC; a substantive hacking charge initially filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California related to the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Fox Broadcasting Company; a substantive hacking charge initially filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia related to the hack of Infragard Members Alliance; a substantive hacking charge initially filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia related to the hack of PBS, all of which were transferred to the Southern District of New York, pursuant to Rule 20 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, in coordination with the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (“CCIPS”) in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Late yesterday, JEREMY HAMMOND, a/k/a “Anarchaos,” a/k/a “sup_g,” a/k/a “burn,” a/k/a “yohoho,” a/k/a “POW,” a/k/a “tylerknowsthis,” a/k/a “crediblethreat,” who identified himself as a member of AntiSec, was arrested in Chicago, Illinois and charged in a criminal Complaint with crimes relating to the December 2011 hack of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (“Stratfor”), a global intelligence firm in Austin, Texas, which may have affected approximately 860,000 victims. In publicizing the Stratfor hack, members of AntiSec reaffirmed their connection to Anonymous and other related groups, including LulzSec. For example, AntiSec members published a document with links to the stolen Stratfor data entitled: “Anonymous Lulzxmas rooting you proud” on a file sharing website."

Last March, I reported that The New York Times oddly deleted passages related to Barrett Brown from their March 7, 2012 article, which was originally credited to Somini Sengupta and Nicole Perlroth. The story originally said, "Barrett Brown, a member of Anonymous who has often served as a spokesman for the group, said that his home in Dallas had been raided and that the F.B.I. had sent three agents to his mother’s house, where he was staying last night."

"'I received an advance warning of the raid and put all my laptops in very specific places where they couldn’t be found,' Mr. Brown said. He said the agents left without making an arrest.

Mr. Brown said the arrests elsewhere would not slow down the Anonymous movement. 'There are lots and lots of people here that continue to work. The F.B.I. did not really cut the head off of anything. Anonymous will go forward as usual. So will I. We hired an army of lawyers last January. We are prepared for a big slug-out.'"

When I asked Perloth why all three paragraphs related to Barrett Brown were scrubbed, she sent me a bland, boilerplate statement which didn't really explain anything: "Hi Ron, Thanks for the inquiry, it's the type of q we often get from readers. In this case the story that was originally posted... on the Web was updated and revised multiple times before it went to print, with some material deleted as more was added. In happens all the time, in part to freshen the story and in part because we think that changes make it better. Hope that helps!"

Even though The New York Times used Barrett Brown as a source for multiple stories, he hasn't been mentioned by any of their reporters in a story since this scrubbing - which even Brown called odd in one of his videos. The New York Times staff completely ignored Barrett Brown's arrest last September, even though he's one of the most famous and known contributors to Anonymous. It's possible that Times reporters are purposely blacklisting all mention of Brown because he published conversations he had with a few of them in an "op" he mounted in the summer of 2012.

Mueller said that Sabu's "cooperation helped us to build cases that led to the arrest of six other hackers linked to groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec." Since only five others are named on the indictment unsealed on March 6, 2012, and Barrett Brown was raided that same day, the FBI director's speech appears to suggest that Brown was number six. Brown isn't a hacker, so it was probably too difficult for prosecutors to find a reason to charge him on March 6, 2012.

In a pastebin posted on March 7, 2012, Barrett Brown complained, after FBI agents showed up at his apartment on March 6, "At that point I began taking calls and e-mails from the press regarding Sabu, whom I learned was in fact a degenerate pussy traitor who couldn't face two fucking years in prison, making him the biggest pussy in the history of mankind. There were several people who came to this conclusion early on; I was not wise enough to be one of them. As to the various stunts he pulled in the months since his arrest - including but not limited to the unnecessary release of credit card information for Stratfor customers - we may never know to what extent such things were encouraged by his 'Justice Department' handlers in an effort to discredit this movement. But I digress, lol. At any rate, the Feds came back a couple of hours later with a search warrant for my mom's place - they fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did."

A website devoted to raising funds for Barrett Brown's defense called Free Barrett states, "Having previously been raided by the FBI on March 6, 2012 and not charged with any crime in relation to that incident, on September 12, 2012 Barrett Brown was again raided and this time arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was online participating in a Tinychat session. He was subsequently denied bail and detained without charge and adequate medical treatment for over two weeks while in the custody of US Marshals. In the first week of October 2012, he was finally indicted on three counts. related to alleged activities or postings on popular websites such as Twitter and YouTube."

In the early morning on September 12, I called the chambers of the North Dallas judge who allegedly signed the warrants (which Michael Hastings later published in a report on Brown for BuzzFeed), and was told that there was no record of it. They suggested I contact the US Attorney's Office to see if the warrants were sealed. The North Dallas Department of Justice office couldn't find any record of the warrants, and was skeptical that they even existed. In a video Barrett Brown claimed that the FBI told him the warrants were sealed because he was the target of a Mexican drug cartel, but it's not clear if he was being serious or not.

"On December 4, 2012 Barrett was indicted by a federal grand jury on twelve additional counts related to data from the Stratfor breach," the Free Barrett website adds. "Despite his lack of direct involvement in the operation and stated opposition to it, he faces these charges simply for allegedly pasting a hyperlink online."

[Editor's Note: I provided the Free Barrett website with research for over six months after Brown's arrest, and I helped contribute to the last line of the preceding paragraph. I've never been in Anonymous, but I support Brown because he's an imprisoned journalist. However, I report objectively on his case, and have often criticized Brown, some of his lawyers and the Free Barrett website.]

The 12 counts on Brown's second indictment - so far - are the only charges that he faces that could be related to Sabu's cooperation. It states that Brown was "aided and abetted by persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury," and one of those persons could be Sabu.

Even though there doesn't seem to be any proof that Brown had anything to do with the Stratfor hack - or foreknowledge of the crime - the majority of the time he faces is related to it. Sabu and Hammond pled guilty to the actual hack, and while the former's sentencing keeps getting postponed (August 23rd is the next date), the latter is facing up to ten years. Brown is currently facing decades, just for copy-and-pasting a link to a fileshare that contained some credit card information into an IRC chat room so he and his Project PM colleagues could pore over the details of the emails in hopes of finding possibly illegal activities by the US government or security firms.

The unsealed March 6. 2012 indictment against Sabu and five others states, "In December 2011, HAMMOND conspired to hack into computer systems used by Stratfor, a private firm that provides governments and others with independent geopolitical analysis. HAMMOND and his co-conspirators, as members of AntiSec, stole confidential information from those computer systems, including Stratfor employees’ emails as well as account information for approximately 860,000 Stratfor subscribers or clients. HAMMOND and his co-conspirators stole credit card information for approximately 60,000 credit card users and used some of the stolen data to make unauthorized charges exceeding $700,000. HAMMOND and his co-conspirators also publicly disclosed some of the confidential information they had stolen."

The Free Barrett website adds, "On January 23rd, 2013 he was indicted a third time on two more counts, relating to the March 2012 FBI raid(s) on his apartment and his mother’s house."

"Sabu was assumed to have been an informant in his case as well, until the prosecutors in Barrett’s case stated there were none at all," the Operation Slingshot blogger wrote, but I'm not sure how he or she came to this conclusion [SEE UPDATE BELOW]. The warrant for the March 6, 2012 raids on Barrett Brown's residences was looking for specific information, which seems to have been derived from an informant's claims. It sought info related to HBGary, Stratfor and Endgame Systems - a shadowy security firm Brown was probing. The warrant also mentioned InfraGard - which was hacked - but Brown said in one of his videos that he never worked on anything related to them.

"I suspect that the FBI is working off of incorrect information," Brown told Hastings - who died in a car accident two months ago - in April of 2012.

There is another informant - a wannabe security firm agent who worked with HBGary after it was hacked - named Jennifer Emick who has relentlessly pursued Barrett Brown since at least February of 2011. A future story that I have been working on for months will hopefully be finished before Brown's trial which is scheduled for April of 2014.

UPDATE - The Free Barrett website pointed out to me that prosecutors claimed no informants were involved in the Barrett Brown case in a July response to a Discovery request by his lawyers (Page 24 of PDF).

Brown's lawyers requested, "A list of all confidential sources who provided information for any application for a search warrant, arrest warrant or eavesdropping warrant in this case, regardless whether such warrant was actually sought or obtained."

"A confidential human source (CHS) is any individual who is believed to be providing useful and credible information to the FBI for any authorized information collection activity, and from whom the FBI expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information in the future, and whose identity, information or relationship with the FBI warrants confidential handling. see http://www.justice.gov/oip/docs/ag-guidelines-use-of-fbi-chs.pdf," the prosecutors responded. "The prosecution team did not rely on any CHSs in applying for search or arrest warrants in Brown’s cases."

Brown's lawyers also requested, "A statement of whether any evidence in the government’s possession, custody, or control was obtained through a confidential informant, and if so, a description of such evidence."

"The prosecution team did not rely on any CHSs in presenting the facts to the Grand Jury for the return of Brown’s Indictments. (See the definition of CHS in the response to #10 above.) If the prosecution team receives/reviews any information or evidence from a CHS and determines the same to be discoverable, it will notify the defense," prosecutors responded.

A member of Project PM who uses the handle @subverzo on Twitter also pointed out that Sabu isn't listed as a witness. The government doesn't have to provide all names until a day before they are scheduled to testify, and podcaster @VinceInTheBay argued that Sabu doesn't necessarily have to testify anyway.

However, the denials don't seem to explain why Brown's residences were raided in the first place on March 6, 2012. It seems unlikely that a grand jury and a judge allowed prosecutors to go on a fishing expedition and to seize a journalist's computers, without any proof that crimes were committed. It also seems unlikely that the government didn't rely - at all - on statements or evidence provided by their inside man, Sabu, or Jen Emick who has allegedly furnished the FBI with tips regarding Brown.

Justice Dept. memo related to case of Anonymous hacker sentenced on the same day Reuters exclusive was published may contain another lie; Two months after finally covering Barrett Brown, New York Times returns to ignoring his case

Lying to the FBI is a crime, but the bureau has a long history of engaging in asymmetric behavior when it comes to truthfully informing the public. It seems like the only "change" since 2008 - after Obama was elected president - is that lying has become more routine, and that it is done for public relations or propaganda purposes, rather than collecting information or preventing crimes.

An exclusive article published by Reuters reveals that not only have "activist hackers linked to the collective known as Anonymous secretly accessed U.S. government computers in multiple agencies and stolen sensitive information in a campaign that began almost a year ago," but that an FBI official apparently lied to the US public in August when he claimed that - due to high profile arrests - "large information breaches" were "not happening" anymore.

"The hackers exploited a flaw in Adobe Systems Inc's software to launch a rash of electronic break-ins that began last December, then left 'back doors' to return to many of the machines as recently as last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a memo seen by Reuters," Jim Finkle and Joseph Menn reported for Reuters on Friday.

The article continues, "According to an internal email from Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz' chief of staff, Kevin Knobloch, the stolen data included personal information on at least 104,000 employees, contractors, family members and others associated with the Department of Energy, along with information on almost 2,0000 bank accounts."

"Officials said the hacking was linked to the case of Lauri Love, a British resident indicted on October 28 for allegedly hacking into computers at the Department of Energy, Army, Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Sentencing Commission and elsewhere," Finkle and Menn report. "Investigators believe the attacks began when Love and others took advantage of a security flaw in Adobe's ColdFusion software, which is used to build websites."

The Reuters exclusive almost completely contradicts bragging - and apparently premature grave dancing - by an FBI official a few months ago.

According to the FBI, "[t]he hacker collective Anonymous has not produced as many high-profile cyber attacks as it once did, a drop-off that can be directly attributed to the arrests of the group's core members ," Gerry Smith reported for Huffington Post on August 21, 2013.

"The movement is still there, and they're still yacking on Twitter and posting things, but you don't hear about these guys coming forward with those large breaches," Austin P. Berglas, the "assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's cyber division in New York," told Huffington Post. "It's just not happening, and that's because of the dismantlement of the largest players."

As Smith reported, the "41-year-old Berglas leads the FBI's cyber division in New York, one of the busiest of the FBI's 56 field offices," so it's unlikely he was left in the dark about the investigation of breaches "that began almost a year ago" revealed by Reuters on Friday. Perhaps Berglas carefully stated that "you don't hear about these guys coming forward with those large breaches," because no news organization had reported on the Adobe Systems case, yet. The October 11, 2013 FBI memo noted that "the majority of the intrusions have not yet been made publicly known."

While it's possible when Berglas gave his August interview that the FBI didn't have enough evidence to tie Anonymous hackers to the breaches related to stolen information for over 100,000 victims, they almost certainly knew about it then, and presumably wasn't ruling them out.

The Reuters article was published on the same day that Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond was sentenced in a New York federal courtroom to ten years of prison. Although evidence shows that Hammond's illegal hacks of private security firms and government were rooted in activism, a federal judge dismissed his clearly politically-minded actions as "mayhem."

"Before being sentenced inside a packed courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Hammond, 28, described his hacking activities as 'acts of civil disobedience' against both an expanding surveillance state and the companies that do the government's bidding," Mark Mazzetti reported for The New York Times on Friday."But Federal District Judge Loretta A. Preska was unmoved, telling Mr. Hammond 'there's nothing high-minded or public-spirited about causing mayhem.'"

The New York Times headline - "Hacker Receives 10-Year Sentence for 'Causing Mayhem'" - focuses on the judge's derisive pronouncement, rather than Hammond's defense or the actual charges he pleaded guilty over, largely in order to avoid a potential 30-year prison sentence if convicted. Mazzetti also ignored the potential conflict of interest that Hammond's lawyers had argued should have led Judge Preska to recuse herself from the case. In February, Preska refused to step down because her husband only was a two week subscriber to Stratfor, the email address leaked by Hammond and his co-conspirators was "publicly available" at his law firm's website, and he "never provided Stratfor with [his] credit card number or any other personal financial or identifying information such as [his] name, address, Social Security number or telephone number" (pdf link).

And although journalist Barrett Brown - who embedded himself into Anonymous to report on it - is currently facing over a 100 years in prison for copy-and-pasting a link in a IRC chat room to hacked Stratfor emails which included subscribers' credit card info, Mazzetti doesn't mention his name even once. Brown is facing over triple the time that Hammond faced, even though he had nothing to do with the actual hacking. New York Times reporters often used Brown as a source for Anonymous, but - except for a few republished wire reports and an April 14, 2013 op-ed by Northwestern University philosophy professor Peter J. Ludlow - the so-called "paper of record" pretty much ignored Brown's September of 2012 arrest for nearly a full year.

Media reporter David Carr wrote in his September 9, 2013 New York Times column that "much of what has Mr. Brown staring at a century behind bars seems on the right side of the law, beginning with the First Amendment of the Constitution." But other Times journalists continue to ignore Brown's case, perhaps because he leaked some of their emails in #OpNYT, not long before his arrest. (Editor's Note: I helped provide some research for the Free Barrett website for nearly eight months, but I've continued to report objectively and sometimes critically on Brown and his defense.)

A hacker named Hector Xavier Monsegur was secretly arrested in 2011, but worked as a confidential informant for the FBI to help catch others in Anonymous. Many "hacktivists" complain that while Monsegur aka "Sabu" committed some hacking crimes for selfish reasons, the hackers he helped "entrap" acted altruistically.

In his defense, Hammond argued that the FBI used Sabu to manipulate him and other hackers "to collect information regarding the vulnerabilities of foreign government websites and in some cases, disabl[e] them." However, Department of Justice lawyers countered that Hammond's "claims are baseless."

"While the CW and Hammond did discuss vulnerabilities of foreign websites (among others), in fact, the FBI notified foreign governments about this activity and the vulnerabilities in their websites after Hammond was arrested and the CW's role could be revealed without harming the investigation so they could take appropriate remedial action. In any event, even if Hammond's allegations were true, which they are not, they do not bear on any issues relevant to sentencing," Preet Bharara - the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York - and Assistant United States Attorneys Thomas Brown and Rosemary Nidiry argued in a Justice Dept. sentencing memo (hat tip: @APBlake; footnote on pages 19-29: pdf link).

At his sentencing on Friday, Hammond claimed he "broke into numerous websites [the C.I.] supplied, uploaded the stolen email accounts and databases onto Sabu's FBI server, and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu (and, by extension, his FBI handlers) to control these targets."

Hammond specifically cited Iran, Brazil and Turkey government websites in court - which the Judge admonished him over - but the names of six or seven other foreign government websites allegedly targeted were redacted from his statement.

"These intrusions, all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI, affected thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX and the XXXXXX XXXXXXX," Hammond added. "In one instance, Sabu and I provided access information to hackers who went on to deface and destroy many government websites in XXXXXX. I don't know how other information I provided to him may have been used, but I think the government's collection and use of this data needs to be investigated."

While the Justice Department memo claims "the FBI notified foreign governments about this activity and the vulnerabilities in their websites after Hammond was arrested," it seems extremely dubious that an unfriendly country such as Iran would be warned, and that the U.S government and military wouldn't take advantage of such a potential intelligence coup.

US gov't filing in Matthew Keys case cites National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, which actually warns that anti-insomnia drug Trazodone can "affect your judgment""Benjamin B. Wagner was appointed by President Barack Obama on November 6, 2009, to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California," according to his justice.gov profile, and he apparently believes that an antidepressant prescribed for insomnia can be beneficial to journalists who are interrogated by the FBI. In a January filing, US Attorney Benjamin Wagner also suggests that being high on heroin wouldn't prevent defendants from waiving their "Miranda rights validly."Rachel Zarrell reported for BuzzFeed on December 14, 2013, "In a new defense filing, former Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys claims statements he made to the FBI last year were unreliable due to sleeping pills he had taken about five hours earlier.""Keys was indicted on federal charges last March for allegedly conspiring with the hacking group Anonymous to breach a Tribune Co. website, changing a story from the Los Angeles Times," Zarrell added. "The filing includes a previously unseen transcript in which FBI agents interrogate Keys at his home around 6 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2012, where he admitted to working with Anonymous to hack into the website and change a headline on a story. Filed in California yesterday, the filing by Keys seeks to suppress evidence collected by the FBI on the grounds the defendant was under the influence of Trazodone." In a December 12, 2013 declaration, Matthew Keys claimed, "During the time of the interrogation, I was still under the influence of Trazodone and I felt drowsy, confused and forgetful.""The questioning concluded with agents encouraging me to make a written statement, for which I initially refused citing concern over my state of mind," Keys complained. "Despite my concern, agents continued to encourage me to make a written statement." According to the FBI transcript (pdf link), Keys told the FBI on October 4, 2012, "I can tell you I want to write whatever you want me to write in your presence," however, "I don't know that right now I'm in the state of mind where I can, and it's not because I don't want to, it's because I want to be cognizant of any event." In a December 13, 2013 declaration in support of defendant's motion to suppress, osteopath Dr. Barry Cogen wrote, "Trazodone hydrochloride, also known as Desyrel, is prescribed for either depression or sleeplessness," and "[c]ommon side effects" are "confusion, dizziness, drowsiness, fatigue and nervousness." (pdf link)"Because Mr. Keys was awoken during his Desyrel induced sleep, it is my opinion that his statements are unreliable," Dr. Cogen declared. The osteopath "listened to portions of the statements in question," and claims that "facts" show "that there was a very slight slurring of words at the beginning of the interrogation" and "Keys often trailed off when speaking." Cogen further added, "Someone under the effects of Desyrel would be somewhat incoherent during the pendency of that entire interrogation. A statement given as the result of Desyrel under these circumstances is inherently unreliable and should not be used in a court proceeding where innocence or guilt is being determined." In the January 3, 2014 opposition to motion to suppress (pdf link), US Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner, Assistant US Attorney Matthew D. Segal, Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman and Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section Trial Attorney James Silver argued that "Keys' argument fails for multiple reasons.""Trazodone Is Primarily An Anti-Depressant and May Have Benefited Keys," the government's response claimed in bold lettering. It continues, "First, Trazodone may have actually improved Keys' mental functioning and rational faculties, and therefore his ability to waive his Miranda rights validly. In answer to the question "Why is this medication prescribed?" the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report that "Trazodone is used to treat depression. Trazodone is in a class of medications called serotonin modulators. It works by increasing the amount of serotonin, a natural substance in the brain that helps maintain mental balance." The government also countered that defendants in Ninth Circuit cases cited in the response "who had ingested powerful drugs such as Demerol and heroin were still held to have made voluntary statements" and that "[i]n light of these cases involving stronger medications, Keys' ingestion of Trazodone could not have prevented him from waiving his Miranda rights validly." On January 10, 2014, Keys' lawyers Jay Leiderman, Eric Lindgren and Tor Ekeland argued in a reply to opposition to motion to suppress that "[c]onsidering the side effects ["weakness or tiredness...nervousness [and] decreased ability to concentrate or remember things"] listed by the NIH, it does not follow that it could have improved his mental functioning and rational faculties." Unmentioned by Keys' legal team is that in answer to the question "What special precautions should I follow?" the NIH website cited in the US government's filing states that "you should know that trazodone may make you drowsy and affect your judgment." Eoin Reynolds reported for The Guardian on January 29, 2014, "The case against Keys has caused a stir in the online media community, where many are concerned he is the victim of over-stringent action by law enforcement.""At the US district court in Sacramento on Wednesday, an attorney for Keys, Jay Leiderman, said federal agents carried out a trawl of files on Keys's computer in 2012 that was not allowed under their search warrant," Reynolds wrote. "He asked that information taken from the computer be suppressed by the court." Reynolds noted, "Judge Kimberly Mueller is expected to give her decision on the legality of the search on 26 February."

"A split Supreme Court Wednesday struck down limits on the total amount of money an individual may spend on political candidates as a violation of free speech rights, a decision sure to increase the role of money in political campaigns,"Robert Barnes and Matea Gold reported for the Washington Post earlier today. "The case at the court was brought by a wealthy Alabama political donor named Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee."

At Slate, Dave Weigel reports, "Three years ago Dan Backer had met the wealthy Alabaman at CPAC. He convinced him to challenge the court's donation limits. He'd been proved right about their chances."

"Who's [sic] client just won at the Supreme Court?" wrote Dan Backer on Facebook. "THIS GUY! SCOTUS rules in favor of McCutcheon!"

On August 30, 2012, I emailed a trio of Paris-based filmmakers to ask why an American political action committee called EaglesPAC was using their film 'The Gloaming' to raise money. I included a link to the PAC's website and its details page at the Federal Election Commission's website.

"The Gloaming" is a short animated French film written by Nicolas Pasquet and directed by three filmmakers who use the moniker NoBrain, that was released by Sabotage Studio in 2011. On June 28, 2012, "The Gloaming" was chosen as "short of the week" by a website which "seek[s] to discover and promote the greatest and most innovative storytellers from around the world."

It was screened at Italy's Euganea Film Festival for international short films and documentaries in 2011, and Nobrain also directed a music video for the song "All Downhill from Here" by New Found Glory, and according to a Wikipedia article, "When the music video for this song aired on MTV's TRL (Total Request Live), fans voted it on the show 50 days in a row."

A screenshot I took that week of www.EaglesPAC.com shows that underneath "The Gloaming" short, the website was asking for contributions to "The New Establishment," and that "$500 gets you our plan, $1,000 gets you our plan and a call from our Executive Director $5,000+ gets you on the strategy board etc."

"Please make your most generous contribution today," the EaglesPAC website pleaded, at the time. "Your donation will be spent immediately on the literature and advertising we need to win. Thank you so much!"



"We were not aware about that," Nobrain wrote back hours later. "And we gonna stop this immediately, thx for blowing the whistle."

I wrote back, "The lawyer behind that PAC seems to be the only name attached to it. And he is the Treasurer for many PACs, including one for Ron Paul and others for conservatives and tea party groups." I included a link to a March 14, 2012 Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group article written by Keenan Steiner called "Crusading lawyer takes aim at contribution limits," about Dan Backer, the Principal Attorney at DB Capitol Strategies," who has been pushing the FEC to "ease a host of campaign finance rules." Steiner's article focused on "Backer's latest target: the ceiling on how much money a person can give candidates for federal office in one election cycle, which currently stands at $46,200."

"My god, if someone ever told me my film will be used by those kind of mofos (excuse my french) one day, i never believed it," niko nobrain wrote back.

I also told nobrain,

"The website was registered on July 2, 2012...but I'm not sure how long your film has been on that website or if they collected any money...and what exactly it's going to. The lawyer [Dan Backer] is a proponent of PACs giving unlimited funds to candidates [Cutting Edge NewsDemocracy21.org].

The PAC was registered with FEC on July 9 [linkpdf link]."

According to the October Quarterly (pdf link) filed by EaglesPAC treasurer Dan Backer on October 12, 2012, a group called "Victory Online" made a "Carey contribution" of $1,000 to the PAC, the day before I sent that email on August 29, 2012.



On September 6, 2012, I published a story called "'Crusading' legal eagle filches French film to raise cash for sketchy PAC," after I was informed that Nobrain had spoken to a lawyer and was contacting Backer "to ask them to stop this nonsense."

"Beyond the fact that the political ideas you are supporting scares me to death, i think it's very rude of you to use our work for this kind of purposes without any authorization from us," the director of 'The Gloaming' complained in a September 7, 2012 email to Backer, which was cc'd to an Intellectual Property Rights barrister at a London law firm. "The film is online to be watched as a film and not as a propaganda weapon to raise money."

The email to Backer continued, "For the respect of all the people who worked on this project, for us and artistic rights in general, i'm asking you to immediately remove the film from your website. If tomorrow the film is still on your web page i will use other ways to convince you."

Backer's response was brief and to the point: "Thank you for your email. I have communicated with my client and he has removed the content."

The EaglesPAC treasurer didn't mention the client's name, but the website at www.eaglesPAC.com was scrubbed that same day, and replaced with an "under construction" message that hasn't changed nineteen months later.

"And the mofos finally turned the web site off...," Niko nobrain wrote in a September 28, 2012 comment left on my article. "I'm still amazed how those people can be stupid enough to not understand what this film is really about."

I'm uncertain if niko nobrain's winning barrister earned a dime (or six pence or so), but the losing side's lawyers got paid. And, in this case, the EaglesPAC treasurer has his own law firm, DB Capitol Strategies PLLC, which scarfed up ninety-five percent of the PAC's treasury. According to the same October Quarterly (pdf link), Backer's firm collected $950 in "legal fees" from the mysterious PAC on September 7, 2012.



According to the Statement of Organization filed with the Federal Election Commission on July 9, 2012 and signed by Treasurer Dan Backer, the EaglesPAC "supports/opposes more than one Federal candidate, and is NOT a separate segregated fund or party committee." Backer claimed "NONE" on the portion of the FEC filing that asks for names of "any connected organization, affiliated committee, joint fundraising representative, or leadership PAC sponsor."

The only information for "Victory Online" that I've been able to obtain is the address found on the EaglesPAC FEC filing: 2029 Century Park East Suite 1400, Los Angeles, California 90067. Many lawfirms and businesses are located at that suite, so it's difficult to figure out which one is tied to "Victory Online". There is an online marketing company called "Victory Online" - which has worked on Tea Party campaigns - located in Los Angeles, but the name is generic and the address is different, so I'm unsure if they are related.

Backer filed to terminate EaglesPAC - which never contributed any money to any candidates or campaigns - on January 10, 2014. The PAC only spent a few hundred dollars on expenses, aside from the payment to Backer, and he is the only name tied to it on all its FEC filings, except for the mysterious "Victory Online" firm.

On January 23, 2014, FEC Senior Campaign Finance Analyst Nicole Miller from the Reports Analysis Division informed Dan Backer, "Your committee's filing has been accepted as a valid termination and "is no longer required to file reports on a periodic basis...However Commission's Regulations require that you maintain your records and copies of reports for inspection for at least three (3) years. In addition, you may be required to respond to Commission requests for information regarding your committee's federal election activity and previously filed reports."

The $1,000 2012 payment to EaglesPAC was marked as a "Carey contribution," which refers to the Retired Rear Admiral Carey v. FEC case, involving the National Defense PAC. Dan Backer also happens to represent the National Defense PAC, as FEC Compliance Counsel and Assistant Treasurer.

"That organization, the National Defense PAC (ND PAC), supported candidates who had served in the Armed Forces," Sean J. Miller reported for Campaigns and Elections on January 4, 2012. "Its support came primarily through direct contributions to candidates, which were limited by law. But taking advantage of the SpeechNow.org case and other precedents, ND PAC also wanted to accept unlimited contributions to spend on its own advertisements."

"A federal court ultimately issued a stinging injunction against the FEC. While Carey could set up another PAC to make independent expenditures (IEs), that would double his group’s record-keeping and registration burdens – not to mention dilute ND PAC’s name recognition. Carey and his team preferred to handle both direct contributions and IEs within ND PAC, using segregated bank accounts for the two pools of funds. The U.S. District Court for D.C. agreed, and the FEC entered into a settlement conceding the unconstitutionality of regulations forbidding ND PAC’s arrangement.

But that arrangement only applied to so-called non-connected PACs – those without a parent organization. Backer’s clients are asking for approval to apply the Carey ruling to connected PACs. 'Everyone wants to comply with the law,' said Backer, an attorney with DB Capitol Strategies. 'We just want to make sure what the law is.'

'We should make it easy to speak in politics and unclear rules don’t help,' he added. 'Nobody wants to go to jail over this stuff.'"

Kelly S. Eustis, "President and Chief Executive Officer of Eusatrix Corporation, a strategic public relations and political consulting firm specializing in campaigns and issue advocacy, public affairs, and online strategy," (according to his website's bio), also was part of the Carey v. FEC lawsuit. Eustis is also the "founder of One Nation PAC, which raises money for conservative, tea party-affiliated causes,"The WatertownDaily Times reported in a June 13, 2011 article. Backer is treasurer and counsel for One Nation PAC, as well.

Included in the "ongoing harm to plaintiffs" section of Carey v. FEC (pdf link) were the following arguments, in a complaint filed on January 31, 2011:

"As soon as possible, and certainly before the 2012 primary and general elections, National Defense PAC would like to make independent expenditures from its general fund, in various amounts, expressly advocating for or against clearly identified candidates of its choice. A specific example of this is included as EXHIBIT F, which includes a proposed advertisement for Newsmax – a popular Internet destination – expressly advocating against the retention of Anthony Weiner in New York’s Ninth Congressional District. This advertisement, with a guaranteed 50,000 views per week, would cost $6,300.00 to run in the months leading up to the November 2012 elections. The advertisements in question would include a picture of Anthony Weiner along with the call to 'defeat Anthony Weiner'– asking users to click on the advertisement to learn more.

A specific example of this is included as EXHIBIT G, a letter of intent from Kelly S. Eustis, who wishes to donate $6,300.00 to help fund independent expenditure communication campaigns against Anthony Weiner but cannot due to the current operation and interpretation of the law by the FEC.

As soon as possible, and certainly before the 2012 primary and general elections, Kelly S. Eustis would like to make a $6,300.00 contribution to National Defense PAC to help fund independent expenditure communications against Anthony Weiner in the Ninth Congressional District of New York. But for operation and interpretation of 2 U.S.C. §§ 441a(a)(1)(C) and 441a(a)(3), Kelly S. Eustis would make this contribution."

The letter from Eustis, dated January 25, 2011 and addressed to Rear Admiral James J. Carey [Ret.], stated, "Please accept this letter as a firm statement of my intent to support the Independent Expenditure advocacy of the National Defense PAC. I share your views as to the importance of defeating Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York in the next election, and want to join you in advocating for his defeat."

"I am only willing to contribute if my contribution will be able to have an actual impact, and if it is legal to do so under federal election law," the Eustis letter continued. "As such, I will contribute $6300, which is the cost you have shared with me to mount an online campaign in opposition to Congressman Weiner. Further, I await clarification from your counsel that my contribution exclusively to your independent expenditure activities is lawful, as determined by either the Federal Election Commission or the courts."



Exhibit F showed the "proposed online banner advertisement and script of 'click through page' in opposition to Congressman Anthony Weiner."



On March 8, 2013, FEC Senior Campaign Finance Analyst Nicole Miller informed Dan Backer, "A review of your reports discloses apparent activity for your committee's Non-Contribution Account. If a committee establishes a separate Non-Contribution Account, consistent with the judgment made in Carey v. FEC, it should notify the Commission by letter filed with their Statement of Organization. If your committee has established separate Non-Contribution Account, please amend your Statement of Organization to include a notification letter clarifying this."

Miller's email to Backer requested a response by April 12, 2013, and she wrote that if he had any additional questions he could contact her "on our toll free number (800)424-9530 (at the prompt press 5 to reach the Reports Analysis Division) or my local number (202) 694-1164)."

On April 8, 2013, Backer filed an Amended Statement of Organization, which noted, "Consistent with the stipulated judgment in Carey v. FEC, this committee has established a separate bank account (a Carey Account) to deposit and withdraw funds raised in unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations, labor organizations, and/or other political committees (Carey Contributions). The Carey Contributions maintained in this Carey account will not be used to make contributions, whether direct, in-kind, or via coordinated communications, or coordinated expenditures, to federal candidates or committees."
The Access National Bank - located at 14006 Lee Jackson Memorial Hwy Chantilly, Virginia 20151 - was named by Backer as the bank for the committee's separate account.

Backer's 4/8/13 Amended Statement of Organization claimed that the committee's web address was EaglesPAC.org, rather than EaglesPAC.com, as did the original Statement of Organization filed on July 3, 2012.



Another Amended Statement of Organization filed by Backer - which changed the EaglesPAC address from his P.O. Box 75021 in Washington DC to the DB Capitol Strategies King Street address in Alexandria, Virginia - also claimed that EaglesPAC.org was the committee's website.

According to Who Is, EaglesPAC.com was created - through Domains By Proxy - on July 2, 2012, updated on June 27, 2013 and will expire on July 2, 2014, and lists EaglesPAC.net and EaglesPAC.org as similar domains but archive.org shows no activity for either listing, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that EaglesPAC owned any other website but EaglesPAC.com. Who Is shows no history for EaglesPAC.org, and it remains available for purchase.

[Editor's Note: Dave Weigel omits the fact that he's friendly with many colleagues of Dan Backer and Shaun McCutcheon - such as filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. - who he has hypedinmanystories. Ehlinger has not only been hired by PACs controlled by Backer to create viral campaign ads - including one that McCutcheon's website brags he "sponsored...to encourage voters to support Republican Bob Turner in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner after his scandal" - he has also been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the FEC (Stop This Insanity pdf, Docket showing Backer representing Ehlinger). Weigel has also hung out at CPACparties sponsored by Backer and McCutcheon, but the Slate reporter is not big on transparency when it comes to himself. In 2012, Weigel and Slate leaked - and cherry-picked - Direct Messages I sent him regarding convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin, who I was falsely accused of working with in a conspiracy theory lawsuit argued by Dan Backer, that was tossed out of court, and Ehlinger also leaked emails to slander me at his blog.]

4/5 UPDATE: It's been two full days since it was reported that Barrett Brown agreed to a plea deal, but the Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post have completely ignored the news. The initial March 6, 2012 raid, the September 12, 2012 arrest, the gag order, and all of Brown's charges - including those that were dropped and the latest superseded ones - should concern all journalists, so it's strange and disturbing that three of the top news sources for the American public have ignored the reported plea agreement, which appears to have been reached on March 31. After I posted this update and tweeted him, NY Times columnist David Carr retweeted me, so hopefully more media outlets will report on the plea deal, and the consequences this entire case could have on all journalists and bloggers.

It's been nearly nineteen months since embedded Anonymous journalist Barrett Brown was arrested and jailed for what many supporters consider unjust reasons. Although the initial charges were for making what Brown's detractors consider threatening YouTube videos against an FBI agent, most critics ignore that his anger was largely based on what he perceived as the government's persecution for his reporting on security firms that spy on activists.

Brown was also upset at FBI Special Agent Robert Smith, because he threatened to charge Barrett's mother for allegedly helping to hide laptops in her house before agents obtained a search warrant for it.. In his third video, Barrett complained (pdf trancript), that - after that raid - "my lawyer told me he'd just talked to the Assistant District Attorney, um, spearheading this case over agent Robert Smith at the FBI, and she had said, well it looks like, uh, well looks like now, that uh, mom has a problem, is what, what he relayed...by which they meant that, uh, my mom is being threatened with obstruction of justice charges."

"My mom has not been involved in any of this at all and was not, is not, did not know about the tip I received the previous day, didn't know I was over there, I come over there a lot, uh, didn't know why I brought, you know, laptops over, you know, didn't notice, didn't pay attention. I hid the laptops the next morning after the first visit from the FBI, not her. She didn't know they were hidden."

She wasn't charged until after Brown spent months in jail, and she ended up pleading guilty in November 2013, and was sentenced to six months of probation and a $1,000 fine. Brown initially faced two similar charges, but after his lawyers filed a motion arguing that he was being overcharged, the new indictment only charges him once.

In a pastebin that Brown posted a day after the March 6, 2012 raid, he complained that "the Feds...fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did." Brown's one-time colleague and friend Michael Hastings, who tragically died last August in a one-vehicle motor accident, reported in April 2012, "The warrant, exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed, suggests the government is primarily after information related to Anonymous and the hacking group Lulzec." In another pastebin that Brown posted in April 2012, Brown wrote that "the FBI is now searching through my belongings for information on HBGary, Endgame Systems, and the website that my group Project PM maintains for the purpose of disseminating info on such firms as these, Echelon2.org."

While, at first, not many journalists sympathetically covered Brown, or just ignored his arrest, he ended up becoming a cause célèbre in 2013, after Glenn Greenwald wrote an article for The Guardian, which also helped raise money for the Free Barrett defense fund. Greenwald hailed Brown as "a serious journalist who has spent the last several years doggedly investigating the shadowy and highly secretive underworld of private intelligence and defense contractors, who work hand-in-hand with the agencies of the Surveillance and National Security State in all sorts of ways that remain completely unknown to the public. It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism."

In February 2013, Christian Stork reported for Russ Baker's WhoWhatWhy, "The Barrett Brown case is simply the latest in a string of prosecutions in which the government pursues anyone involved in making information “liberated” from governmental or corporate entities easily accessible to the public. Those targeted are not necessarily accused of the illegal entry itself (the “hack”) or violating contracts (as in the case of a “leak”). These are people performing a function analogous to that of a newspaper—yet they can face prison sentences longer than those prescribed for murderers, rapists, and terrorists."

"The Obama administration’s assault on accountability is dual-pronged: attack the messenger (as in the case of Brown, WikiLeaks, even New York Times reporters) and attack the source (Bradley Manning, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, etc.). In fact, seven of those sources have been indicted as traitors under the 1917 Espionage Act during the Obama years alone—more than double the “espionage” charges against whistleblowers by all previous presidential administrations combined.

Finally, The New York Times covered the Barrett Brown case. As I reported last November, "New York Times reporters often used Brown as a source for Anonymous, but - except for a few republished wire reports and an April 14, 2013 op-ed by Northwestern University philosophy professor Peter J. Ludlow - the so-called 'paper of record' pretty much ignored Brown's September of 2012 arrest for nearly a full year." Last August I also chided the NY Times, because he hadn't been mentioned by any of their reporters in a story since his March 2012 raid was mysteriously scrubbed from an article. In his second video regarding FBI Agent Robert Smith (pdf transcript), Barrett said that he called a New York Times reporter he had dealt with before and "they printed right then that I'd been raided and that I'd told before that I'd hid my laptops, and they took – they deleted that part for some reason, uh, later on that day. I don't know why, they never explained it to me, they didn't also explain why they were deleting stuff."

Media reporter David Carr wrote in his September 9, 2013 New York Times column that "much of what has Mr. Brown staring at a century behind bars seems on the right side of the law, beginning with the First Amendment of the Constitution." But other Times journalists continued to ignore Brown's case, perhaps because he leaked some of their emails in #OpNYT, not long before his arrest.

Carr noted, "Journalists from other news organizations link to stolen information frequently. Just last week, The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica collaborated on a significant article about the National Security Agency’s effort to defeat encryption technologies. The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden, a private contractor working for the government who this summer leaked millions of pages of documents to the reporter Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian along with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post."

"By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”"

Then, a month ago, prosecutors dropped the charges against Brown, which concerned most journalists. Reporting for The Guardian, Ed Pilkington wrote, "Federal prosecutors had come under widespread criticism for seeking to prosecute Brown for the republishing of a hyperlink. Lawyers, publishers and internet freedom campaigners had warned it could set a precedent that would have put a chill on the culture of linking across the web."

The US government’s decision to drop counts one and three to 12 in the indictment relating to the Stratfor hack came just a day after lawyers for Brown filed a legal memorandum calling for those counts to be dropped. Brown’s attorneys argued in the memo that the prosecution was a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech, saying that “republishing a hyperlink does not itself move, convey, select, place or otherwise transfer, a file or document from one location to another”.

Federal prosecutors have given no further information about why they decided to drop the counts, and a request for comment was not immediately returned. One possible explanation is that government lawyers assessed the steep hill they had to climb overcoming First Amendment protections and decided instead to focus on the other charges still facing Brown.

However, as Free Barrett's Kevin Gallagher wrote on March 6th, "With the linking charges dropped, there are still important free press issues on the table. We cannot declare mission accomplished."

"Barrett Brown still faces up to 40 years for asserting reporter’s privilege—attempting to protect his journalistic sources by placing his laptops in a kitchen cabinet," Gallagher wrote. "In the midst of writing a book about Anonymous and reporting on private intelligence firms, Brown made a decision to make it slightly harder for government agents to obtain his sources, which he had a duty to protect."

Gallagher continued, "The fact that the search warrant being executed sought records on ‘HBGary’ and ‘Endgame Systems’, two companies he’d written and reported about, in addition to the Project PM wiki, makes clear that this FBI probe was all about his investigative journalism, and his sources, from the very beginning. This cannot be in doubt. An established journalist, Brown himself never participated in the criminal hacking activities of Anonymous—he was only involved in research using the information that was leaked."

"In conclusion, these remaining charges are still of great consequence for journalists and for press freedom," Gallagher added. "It amounts to the question of whether intrepid reporters should be unfairly targeted for exposing the ties between government intelligence agencies and their private-sector counterparts."

Yesterday, as Dell Cameron reported for The Daily Dot, "Federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment on Monday seeking to modify the criminal charges against Barrett Brown, an American journalist who was arrested on Sept. 12, 2012, after allegedly threatening the "life" of an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Adjusting the charges in such a way indicates that federal prosecutors may be negotiating a deal with Brown’s attorneys."

The U.S. government claims that Brown knowingly hindered the apprehension of a hacker identified by the motion only as “o”—a nickname [Jeremy] Hammond used when interacting with Brown during online chats. Additionally, the motion claims that Brown assisted Hammond specifically by creating “confusion regarding the identity of the hacker.” Brown also communicated with representatives of Stratfor, the government said, "in a manner that diverted attention" away from Hammond.

The indictment waiver stated, "After being advised of the nature of the charges and of his rights, Brown hereby waives in open court prosecution by indictment and consents to proceeding by information instead of by indictment." It notes that Brown "fully discussed with his attorney the right to have this case presented to a Federal Grand Jury and the consequences of waiving this right. After discussing the same with his attorney, Brown voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waives the right to have this case presented to a Federal Grand Jury."

The superseding indictment claim that "Barrett Lancaster Brown did...create confusion regarding...the purpose of the hack" may be partially based on a pastebin he wrote on December 26, 2011, that stated, "In the wake of the recent operation by which Stratfor's servers were compromised, much of the media has focused on the fact that some participants in the attack chose to use obtained customer credit card numbers to make donations to charitable causes. Although this aspect of the operation is indeed newsworthy, and, like all things, should be scrutinized and criticized as necessary, the original purpose and ultimate consequence of the operation has been largely ignored."

"Stratfor was not breached in order to obtain customer credit card numbers, which the hackers in question could not have expected to be as easily obtainable as they were. Rather, the operation was pursued in order to obtain the 2.7 million e-mails that exist on the firm's servers. This wealth of data includes correspondence with untold thousands of contacts who have spoken to Stratfor's employees off the record over more than a decade. Many of those contacts work for major corporations within the intelligence and military contracting sectors, government agencies, and other institutions for which Anonymous and associated parties have developed an interest since February of 2011, when another hack against the intelligence contractor/security firm HBGary revealed, among many other things, a widespread conspiracy by the Justice Department, Bank of America, and other parties to attack and discredit Wikileaks and other activist groups. Since that time, many of us in the movement have dedicated our lives to investigating this state-corporate alliance against the free information movement."

Although may critics - and trolls - that rail against Barrett Brown refuse to acknowledge that he's a journalist, he has a lengthier resume than most, and back in 2010 I actually first became aware of him when he sought a job with RAW STORY, the political website I used to work for as Executive Editor. The superseding indictment claiming that Brown did "conceal the involvement and identity" and "create confusion regarding the identity of the hacker"'o' - aka Jeremy Hammond who was sentenced to 10 years in prison last November - should especially concern all journalists who depend on sources to do their reporting, and who are supposed to be protected by the 1st Amendment under the "Freedom of the Press" clause. Many would be out-of-work if they were expected to essentially "rat out" sources and whistle blowers, since no one would confide in them anymore.

At D Magazine, Tim Rogers reported that Gallagher "guesses that this new indictment is good news," because he told him, "The new documents suggest that this was negotiated by both parties and that there is a plea agreement imminent. If so, it could mean Barrett could get out soon with time served."

However, tweets by Gallagher at the @FreeBarrett_ twitter account, suggested that Kevin was still concerned that the superseding indictment could have a chilling effect on journalists who report on Anonymous or use hackers as sources.

"'Accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access' is a new #CFAA charge which could have consequences for journalists reporting on hacks,"@FreeBarrett_ tweeted, and, "If you report on hackers or use them as sources, maybe you could get charged w/ 'accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access...' too."

Kevin Gallagher told me, "The government has substituted an access device fraud charge for a new charge of being an 'accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access to a protected computer' which is surprising and troubling, especially as this new construction may potentially implicate journalists who report on leaks and hacks, and use hackers as sources, in the future. We don't know what the evidence is for this particular allegation but I'm sure we'll find out."

"The superseding indictment suggests that the parties may be negotiating something and we have yet to find out the exact form it will take," Gallagher added.

After I suggested Brown might be facing at least a year alone on the new charge - "Accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access to a protected computer" (pdf link) - and prosecutors might still want at least a two year sentence for probably the toughest charge he faced - retaliation against an FBI agent - Gallagher told me, "Any plea deal would necessarily involve some risk that Brown will receive more than time served at sentencing, but on the balance of everything we still remain hopeful that he will get out this year. The charges remaining against him cannot be worth much more."

Today, just a few hours ago, news broke that Barrett Brown had reportedly reached a plea bargain with prosecutors. The Free Barrett_ tumblr account announced, "After a year and ½ in jail awaiting trial, the writer/journalist Barrett Brown, best known for his previous association with Anonymous, through his defense team has reportedly reached an agreement with the government to plea to some counts. Full details are not available since the documents are sealed."

"The director of his legal defense fund, Kevin Gallagher, said: “The Barrett Brown who I know and call my friend has never been one to compromise with the government. But in this instance, I think he recognizes that taking this case before a jury in conservative Texas is a needless roll of the dice. In fact, I think this whole thing would have been settled long ago, if not for the fact that the government had filed excessive and meritless charges which they later dropped. I’m pleased that the parties were able to reach this agreement. Although in principle he shouldn’t have to plea to anything, this spares everyone the spectacle of a costly trial, and the bottom line is that Barrett will be coming home – as he’s already served 19 months unnecessarily. Supporters can be assured that this is in accordance with Barrett’s wishes plus expert legal advice.”"

"In motions filed with the Court, Brown’s defense made a very strong case for dismissal, which combined with negative publicity surrounding the prosecution of a non-violent writer/journalist who caused no actual harm, perhaps influenced the government to seek to settle," the Free Barrett_ tumblr statement added.

According to Wired's Kim Zetter - who, frankly, often makes errors in her reporting, "Brown is scheduled to be re-arraigned, on the charges on the superceding [sic] document, on April 29 in Texas."

"Brown is also facing charges related to threats he allegedly made against an FBI agent," Zetter added. "It’s unclear if the plea agreement will cover that indictment as well. If it does, and the two cases are combined, Brown’s maximum statutory sentence would likely be five years."

At The Guardian, Karen McVeigh reports, "A gag order on Brown's case prevents both sides from providing details, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas", and that "neither Brown's lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, nor prosecutors would provide details on the developments."

Thursday night, Ars Technica posted Judge Sam A. Lindsay's order regarding the "Government’s Agreed Motion to Seal the Plea Agreement and the Factual Resume, filed March 31, 2014."

"After careful consideration, the court grants the motion, with the stipulation that on or before the date of rearraignment hearing that the government will file an agreed motion to lift the court's September 4, 2013 Agreed Order Re: Extrajudicial Statements, and thereafter request that documents filed under seal pursuant to such order be unsealed," Lindsay's order, signed April 2, 2013 continued. "The Plea Agreement and the Factual Resume shall be filed under seal".

Judge Lindsay's order reveals that Barrett Brown's indictment waiver, the superseding indictment, the "Government’s Agreed Motion to Seal the Plea Agreement and the Factual Resume" were all filed on the same day, March 31, 2014.

FreeBarrett_ tweeted that "it applies to both cases", and that"the gag order in Brown's case could be lifted, and documents unsealed, around April 29th."

Back in March 2011, Michael Isikoff (pictured above with Barrett Brown) reported for NBC News, "Brown told us he is not personally involved in any computer hacking but he fully expects federal prosecutors will come after him." And he was right.

And Kevin Gallagher could also be right that the last Barrett Brown charge "may potentially implicate journalists who report on leaks and hacks, and use hackers as sources, in the future."

(Editor's Note: I helped provide some research for the Free Barrett website, but I've continued to report objectively and sometimes critically on Brown and his defense. And I will either update this article or write a new one regarding why the superseding indictment accused Brown of "communicat[ing] with representatives of Stratfor in a manner that diverted attention away from the hacker 'o'.")

"I need programming now and then and I heard he needed money."; "A lot of people loved to spread rumors that he was somehow very close to me and we talked all the time and he did DDoS for hire and crap."



Boston-based hacker Gregg Housh is "one of the few people associated with Anonymous who speaks publicly using his real identity," as Doug Gross reported for CNN in March of 2012. Recently, Housh received a lot of pressattention for his work as a consultant for the critically-acclaimed original Netflix series "House of Cards", closely working with actor Jimmi Simpson who played a hacker called Gavin Orsay on the show. "I went through a lot of what Gavin goes through on the show," Housh told The Huffington Post. "I was under the FBI’s thumb for seven years."



Housh was instrumental in getting "House of Cards" to mention journalist Barrett Brown, who recently pleaded guilty - and is set to be sentenced in August after spending nearly two years in jail - to computer-related crimes, even though Brown isn't a hacker. "[House of Cards] didn’t mention Barrett Brown because it helps Barrett Brown, they mentioned Barrett Brown because it adds a real sense of authenticity to the character and to that part of the story line," Housh told Boston.com.



From April 14 to April 15, 2013 - hours before the Boston Marathon bombings - I interviewed Housh via emails to talk about Barrett Brown, Neal Rauhauser, Occupy Boston, informants and security firms that target and may illegally spy on Anonymous activists and journalists.



"I am always happy to answer simple direct questions that I actually have answers for," Housh told me on April 14. "So feel free to ask anything you want. If I can actually answer them I will. I thought my years of doing that would have made the point. Don't hesitate to email me, sometimes I cant respond right away, but I try to get to the emails every day."



However, Housh stopped returning my emails after I challenged him on what I perceived as some kind of weird warning not to report anymore on Barrett Brown's ex-girlfriend who "hijacked" his email, Twitter and Facebook accounts after he initially gave her permission when he was arrested by the FBI on September 12, 2012 (related screenshots can be viewed here and here).



Some time in the future - perhaps not until after Brown's sentencing - I'll report on the other topics I discussed with Housh. This article is focusing on the contradictory answers Housh provided on Neal Rauhauser, who has bragged that he's the Luca Brasi of the Progressive/Anarcho-syndicalist world. Brasi was a hitman for the fictional Don Corleone family. At his blog, Rauhauser claimed that the FBI (cache link) sent him a "cease & desist hypertrolling letter" on November 29, 2012, and he is currently being sued for cyber-harassment by Cheaterville/Bullyville website owner James McGibney, who is represented by Jay Leiderman, an attorney who previously had many dealings with Rauhauser (which I'll report more on, at a future date).



On the second day of our correspondence, Housh complained about "heated questions" I tweeted to him a few months prior - after he started tweeting at @GreggHoush - about introducing Neal to Occupy, and he claimed that I was "going all Glenn Beck". "You sound awfully protective of Neal...and you duck everything I fucking say about his background as an FBI informant and Infragard member and security firm volunteer," I wrote him. Rauhauser was also a volunteer - and admits that he still sometimes sends "intel" to - a security firm called Project Vigilant, that many journalists believe is a hoax or some kind of front.



In a Daily Kos diary posted on May 30, 2011, using one of his many aliases "Stranded Wind", Rauhauser bragged, "OK, kids, in addition to being a mouthy blogger I'm also an Infragard member and my day job gets me occasional meetings with the FBI. I just called the agent for my district who covers cybercrime and we need to get this muddle distilled down for him."


Two years ago, New York Times journalist Jennifer Preston warned me that Neal Rauhauser was a "very dangerous" Democratic operative. He claims to have worked on over 44 Democratic campaigns, but told me in the only phone call we ever had in June of 2011 that he operated in the shadows because conservatives menaced him. "If I am going to point at a particular individual they have to be criminal, deeply and obviously unethical, or seriously mentally ill and making a huge nuisance of themselves," Rauhauser argues. But the truth is that Rauhauser is the aggressor, and his targets aren't always conservatives, even though his eponymous blog used to brag that he was "Hypertrolling The Wingnutosphere." Rauhauser has menaced and smeared me since 2011, and many conservatives have been fooled by Neal into believing that I "worked" with him and committed political "SWATtings" on his behalf, which should explain my anger with Housh regarding Neal.



Barrett Brown, a journalist/satirist who "embedded" with Anonymous after Housh reached out to him, was arrested in September of 2012, and there are many reasons to believe that Rauhauser may have manipulated him by feeding him false intel about security firms that had been menacing him.



I first learned that Gregg and Neal knew each other after former Washington Times columnist R.S. McCain wrote a blog about it in June of 2012, based on emails Rauhauser exchanged with Housh, Boston journalist Alex Pearlman and "Occupy Protest Chaplain" Marisa Egerstrom in September of 2011 (cache link).



"We're getting in position to drive part of the narrative for the Occupiers," Rauhauser emailed Housh on September 30, 2011. "Here is how it's being done."

"Overnight I created a fairly complete list of the OccupyWhatever Twitter accounts.

http://twitter.com/#!/list/WeOccupyAmerica/occupations

There is now a paper.li so we can see what they are talking about:

http://paper.li/WeOccupyAmerica/1317378132

And we have our Press Agent running on @WeOccupyAmerica. This account had 2,500 hand picked followers, mostly Progressives, no bots, no junk, no wingnuts. It's picked up 300 followers in the last day and since I'm using it in this fashion now I can't be aggressive about policing who follows.

This is what we're doing message wise:

1. Continuous low speed trickle of Eight Rules, nonviolent engagement advice from Cynthia Boaz

http://weoccupyamerica.blogspot.com/2011/09/eight-rules.html

2. We can use the list of accounts to send them individual public @ messages, so far we have said:

a. please help us find the rest of you
b. please look at Andrew Krieg's article on 20 House members pushing investigation of Clarence Thomas (started 9/30 early AM, will run all day)

3. Next steps with this will include some of the following

a. other Velvet Revolution activities - American Crossroads seems most likely to draw their eye
b. If we can get Seema Kalia's work on Wall Street corruption positioned right that will be HIGHLY inflammatory
c. Keep an eye on progress against Thomas & labor uptake, maybe we get a shot at Scalia for this NLRB/Boeing stuff he & his son do
d. taking suggestions from the folks in the bcc: on what else needs attention, as well as from @Occupier accounts

I've personally visited the Wall Street occupation, to establish some grassroots cred specific to this movement, to renew contact with old friends, and to meet new ones. I've got my fingers into the D.C. planning and I'm going to make a run to Baltimore to help get that one moving, too. I may well go back to New York for a bit if it's warranted and I'm going to check my Amtrak miles to see if I can swing a trip to Boston.

There are already back channels developing but it's so chaotic I can't discern which ones are important. I would greatly appreciate those of you who have an occupation near you skulking a bit, and bringing me half a dozen contacts for each. If you're actually getting involved up close and personal, well, let's *talk*.

The visible emails are Jen Preston of New York Times, Mark Ames of ExiledOnline, and Adrian Chen from Gawker - three of the four journalists I know who don't suck. The rest of you down in bcc: are free to hit reply if you have something you want to give one of them, and I'll validate you as a source. If you're feeling sneaky you can pass me stuff and I'll hand it off to them.

So ... reform or bust, what say you?"

"Thanks for the intro," Rauhauser said to Housh, after Gregg told Neal, "Ive been in on the Boston planning. The people you want to talk to for it to start to get any sort of cohesion will probably be these two."

Then Rauhauser referred to convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin, who is now a political activist but is probably best known for his endless feud with bloggers associated with the late Andrew Breitbart and controversial journalist James O'Keefe, "Keep in mind I work with the guy who triggered the investigation into Clarence Thomas over the Citizens United payoff and there is a lot of similar stuff like that sitting around here. Those groups get in the mood to clean house, we've got the treasure map for them."

"We also have the general site, occupyboston.com," Pearlman responded. "I'm part of the Media/Message team and can get this to them ASAP. Thanks so much!"

These were Gregg Housh's initial responses to my questions about Neal Rauhauser in the first email I sent him:

1. When did you first meet Neal Rauhauser?



"Never met in real life, online we haven't talked any other way but some emails, unless he has talked to me under some other name on IRC that I am unaware of. Barrett told me that he was someone he was working with on some research IIRC. He cc'd me on an email I believe between the two of them. A short time later Neal, who I believed to be a friend of Barrett based on the fact that Barrett introduced me to him, emailed me that email that everyone seems to think holds some meaning for Occupy Boston. I believe that was the fourth or fifth email I had received that included Neal on it. I don't think I actually responded to him more than one or two times after that. In fact I just responded to an email of his today for the first time in a long time, it was about all this too. I have no actual idea what you people are on about, and I really don't want to know or be involved. I still have no real idea who Neal is, or you for that matter and I hope to keep it that way. I just have no time for all of this drama, I have a family to raise."



2. Did you send him Barrett Brown's dad's contact information or forward an email to him from Neal?



"I had no idea he had talked to Barrett's dad, but my memory for such things is horrible. But because you asked I went and searched my email. I found an unread email from Neal stating that he had talked to Barrett's dad, so I guess he did happen. I usually don't open email from anyone involved in all of this, so it was still there unread from late last year. I didn't give him his dads contact info."



3. How often do you talk to him?



"Talk? I have responded to a few emails from him in the last few years. The one today is probably the first one I have responded to in a year. I do not like the drama or any of this, whatever it is. When I realized that it was all just a bunch of drama that would take up way to much of my time for no reason, I started ignoring it all. The times you have mentioned Neal to me are the most I hear his name."



4. What emails did he send you related to Barrett Brown?



"To who? Just Neal? I have no idea. I usually stick to just talking to either his family, or close personal friends of his about him. And anything law/legal related I usually stick to talking to his lawyers about. I talked to Barrett today on the phone in fact, he seemed to be in high spirits and happy about his new lawyers."



"Its strange that I talk to Neal 3 or 4 times via email over the span of a few years and because an email leaked that had me forwarding him on to someone I am somehow tied to him and everyone thinks I am involved in all of this mess. I got a lot more emails with him on them (from, cc, bcc ,whatever,) but I havent responded to 99% of them. I just do not want anything to do with all of this. I am really glad I don't know whats going on or I would probably wonder why everyone wants to find a way to make me part of this and drag me into it."

"I wondered if you would have any issues forwarding the emails you got from Neal Rauhauser to Barrett's mom or his lawyer," I emailed Housh. "There may be things he said that could help Barrett's case in some way. Of course, I'd love to see them, too, but I'm mostly concerned that stuff proving Brown was manipulated might not be given to Brown's defense in time that might help him."



I added, "Barrett was booted from Daily Kos a few days before his arrest after he put up this weird diary which was mostly a repost of a troll called Liberal Grouch who defends Neal Rauhauser and blogs at the Breitbart Unmasked blog which is almost definitely connected to Neal and/or convicted bomber/hoaxer Brett Kimberlin. And Neal contacted Barrett to push him against Patterico in order to help Nadia Naffe's lawsuit which Jay Leiderman dropped out of in January. Neal brought Naffe - who stole James O'keefe's emails in a similar way that Jenna did to Barrett - to Leiderman. The day after Barrett's arrest, Rauhauser wrote LA County and tried to get Patterico fired as Deputy DA (he deserves to get fired, but that's not the issue heh) for talking to Barrett Brown. That was the conflict of interest that I kept complaining about with Leiderman...by making Barrett look bad or do major time, it could have pushed LA County to settle the lawsuit."



I tried to explain to Housh that this isn't about "drama. It's about an extremely disturbed liar/hoaxer who has played hoaxes on liberals and conservatives for years, worked with InfraGard, belonged to Project Vigilant when Manning chatted with Project Vigilant volunteer Adrian Lamo and was advised by PV's director Chet Uber - who was pals with Neal for years - to turn him in, and has informed on people to the FBI since 1999. He spreads lies, menaces conservatives and some liberals, uses trolls and socks, harasses people. He isn't really liberal..he leans to the right and was a libertarian up until at least 2010, but he has successfully infiltrated Dem groups, Anonymous, and OWS in NY and DC. I'm not sure if he still works with Project Vigilant and Lamo, but I believe it's possible."



Even Project Vigilant Director Chet Uber has turned against Rauhauser. In a September, 2012 Direct Message, Uber told me that Rauhauser is "crazy and he will get his".



"He hoaxed Barrett Brown and Anonymous in April of 2011 with a fake HBGary leak that included Barrett's name as the password," I continued, in my email to Housh. "He asked for dox on me at his blog last year and my family's phone numbers and contact info was posted, then more info, then my social security number. Since he might be behind multiple SWATtings I fear that that's the main reason he wants my current address."



Housh replied to my questions about Rauhauser, "It is late, I am heading to bed. But to respond to all that I have been in contact with Barrett, his mom, lawyers, and dad. I am good friends with most of them. I have given whatever I have been asked to. I am actually going to be talking to one of the new lawyers Tuesday to catch up on some things. I will bring up the contact and see if they want the material."



"My biggest problem here is not having enough time to put into any of this to actually figure out who did what in this big 'he said she said' mess that is happening," Housh argued. "Financially I could be doing a lot better right now. I have a family to care for, and a lot of this stuff is distracting me from making the money to feed the kids. That is the main reason I avoid all of this. I just dont have the time. I am sure there are a hundred people who have done something wrong in all of this, and I am very sure there are people pulling strings and puppets in play."



Housh continued, "I spend the time I have to put into this on the things I can actually do. Research is definitely not my strong point, and writing is in fact my weakest. Last week I did a panel at Boston College. This week I have one at BU, and I have a meeting at the globe to talk about getting more things covered. These things I am decent at, so I focus my efforts there. There is an activism awards thing here on the 23rd and they are going to talk about Barrett, I am a guest and will be talking about him as well. This stuff takes me a couple hours every couple weeks. Unlike what you do which is more research than I would want to do in an entire lifetime."



"I believe Barrett's mom probably knows more about Neal than any of his lawyers might....so even if they say no, perhaps you can ask her, too, if they're interested in your contacts," I pleaded. "This isn't drama. 'And it's not 'he said, she said.' I'm frankly tired of hearing that...and anyone who argues that is either being incredibly naive or not being honest."



I added, "It's not a theory that Rauhauser was in Infragard - and I'll remind you that Barrett's march 6, search warrant specifically sought info on Infragard - worked with Project Vigilant or informed on people to the FBI. Those are hard facts. Anyone arguing in defense of Rauhauser is either being dumb or works with him. He is also fucking insane, and sends incredibly scary and menacing emails to his victims."



Housh reacted strangely after I told him about Rauhauser's past as an FBI informant, a Project Vigilant volunteer, and member of InfraGard



"As for Neal and the FBI, I just assume that there are tons of FBI informants and others like [Project Vigilant] people all over the place," Housh told me. "If I paid attention to every time I was told about one of them I would have no time to sleep."



I fired back, "You assume there are many FBI informants who may be illegally spying on Americans around...and you just fall asleep without caring. That's you, pal. I report on that. The fact that you've ignored every fact I've told you about Neal Rauhauser, but that you still think it's 'drama' or a joke, remains interesting to me."



"I have been randomly friendly with him," Housh finally admitted to me after I pressed him. "He was around some of the chanology stuff early on and he made friends with some of my friends. Through some of them I learned that he was a gifted programmer. I need programming now and then and I heard he needed money."



Housh continued, "I tried to get him to do some programming for me on a couple projects for clients. It never really worked out. He is indeed a gifted programmer, but he doesn't finish projects that often. He also got distracted very easily so he would randomly be gone for days when I had a deadline. That went on for a few months then we sort of drifted apart. He randomly reached out to me a few times after that, but not much more than that. We run into each other from time to time on IRC or other places and I am generally friendly, as I try to be with everyone."



"A lot of people loved to spread rumors that he was somehow very close to me and we talked all the time and he did DDoS for hire and crap," Housh oddly complained. "I don't do that stuff for very obvious reasons, I am way to public to be involved with any of that. Its that same line that me and Barrett often talked about. I wont cross it, I have kids to house and feed. I wouldn't be able to if I was crossing that line."