TBR News September 1, 2018

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. September 1, 2018: “The Middle East problem is rather complex.

Sunni Saudi Arabia got rich selling its now vanishing oil.

They hate Shiite Iran.

Iran hates Israel and supplies weapons to Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group in Lebanon.

The Saudis, determined to exterminate the Shiites, got the US CIA to work out a plan.

The Saudis set up IS and paid for it.

The CIA supplied the weapons and set up training camps for it.

When Israel wanted to get rid of Assad because he was allowing the Russians to ship missiles to Hezbollah they tried to get rid of him, using the US as usual.

Assad, with a Russian alliance, fought back.

When the Russian aircraft attacked IS training camps, they killed a number of US Special Forces and CIA people.

The CIA encouraged Erdrogan to shoot down a Russian aircraft and kill the pilot hoping that Russia would respond militarily, thus allowing a NATO counterattack.

Putin was too clever to fall into this trap, designed by idiots.

He cut off economic aid to Turkey and when Erdrogen wanted to stop the trouble, agreed.

Once the CIA saw what was happening, they got Trump, who is very stupid, to attack Erdrogen.

The results were predictable.

The US is now on the outs with Turkey, who is moving more and more into the Russian orbit.

Iran is already well inside Putin’s camp.

Bismarck diplomacy on the part of the US is never used but threats of military force and CIA murders are.”

 

The Table of Contents

• Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: Number 12
• Trump sits alone ‘sulking’ as Washington pays its respects to John McCain
• U.S. associate of indicted Russian pleads guilty, to cooperate with Mueller
• Russia encroaches on US war industry in Middle East
• India may face sanctions if it buys Russia’s S-400 missiles: US
• Hong Kong’s soaring house prices force millennials to break law
• Arrests New Mexico compound members on new charges
• Arming the far right
• The FBI Used the #MeToo Moment to Pressure an Environmental Activist Into Becoming an Informant

 

Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: Number 12

August 8, 2018

by Daniel Dale, Washington Bureau Chief

The Toronto Star, Canada

The Star is keeping track of every false claim U.S. President Donald Trump has made since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Why? Historians say there has never been such a constant liar in the Oval Office. We think dishonesty should be challenged. We think inaccurate information should be corrected

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not teling the truth.

Last updated: Aug 8, 2018

 

• Apr 29, 2017

“The National Manufacturers survey found the highest level of optimism in the history of a very, very old survey. It’s been around for a long time. It just last week hit the highest point it’s ever hit in the history of the survey.”

Source: Remarks at signing of executive orders on trade

in fact: Trump is correct that the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey — which is 20 years old — recently hit an all-time optimism high: 93 per cent of manufacturers said they were positive about their economic outlook. But the survey was released on March 31, not “last week.” Since he launched his campaign, Trump has repeatedly claimed that positive events that actually occurred weeks prior had happened “last week.”

Trump has repeated this claim 3 times

 

• Apr 30, 2017

“You can’t compare anything to ObamaCare because ObamaCare is dead.”

Source: Twitter

in fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.

Trump has repeated this claim 33 times

 

“I’ll tell you who doesn’t cover preexisting conditions. Obamacare. You know why? It’s dead.”

Source: Interview with CBS’s John Dickerson

in fact: Obamacare requires that insurers provide coverage even to people with preexisting health issues. Pretending that it is “dead” does not make this requirement vanish.

 

“Obamacare is dead.”

Source: Interview with CBS’s John Dickerson

in fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.

Trump has repeated this claim 33 times

 

“I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped. They’re not going — it’s not going down anymore, their currency.

Source: Interview with CBS’s John Dickerson

in fact: Trump’s timeline is incorrect: China stopped devaluing its currency in 2014, long before took office — through he was still calling China a currency manipulator throughout his 2016 campaign.

Trump has repeated this claim 3 times

 

“You have Podesta, who, by the way, I understand has a company with his brother in Russia…”

Source: Interview with CBS’s John Dickerson

in fact: John Podesta, who served as chairman as Hillary Clinton’s campaign, does not have a company in Russia, either alone or with his brother Tony Podesta, a prominent lobbyist. Tony Podesta does not have any company in Russia, a spokesman for his company says.

Trump has repeated this claim 5 times

 

• May 2, 2017

“I love the Air Force. I love those planes. I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here. Do they give me credit? No, but that’s OK.”

Source: Speech at Commander-in-Chief Trophy football award ceremony

in fact: Trump isn’t getting credit for making “billions and billions of dollars” in cuts because he did not make such cuts. The federal government has reduced the cost of its F-35 program by an estimated $700 million; even if Trump were to continue to (falsely) claim credit for these savings, they do not amount to billions.

Trump has repeated this claim 13 times

 

“This includes swiftly replacing ineffective and failing fencing and walls with an unbreakable barrier. So we’re putting up a lot of new walls in certain areas. We’re putting up a tremendous amount of money to fix the existing structures that we have, some of which we can keep into the future.”

Source: Speech at Commander-in-Chief Trophy football award ceremony

in fact: Trump is not “putting up a lot of new walls” along the border; the agreement to fund the government through September “doesn’t have money to build any new fencing or walls,” the Associated Press reported, merely to repair existing fencing.

 

• May 4, 2017

On Obamacare: “It’s dead.”

Source: Remarks on House vote on health care

in fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.

Trump has repeated this claim 33 times

 

“Insurance companies are fleeing ObamaCare – it is dead.”

Source: Twitter

in fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.

Trump has repeated this claim 33 times

 

Trump sits alone ‘sulking’ as Washington pays its respects to John McCain

The president will be absent for McCain’s memorial services – a clear sign of his failure to accept the responsibilities of a head of state

August 31, 2018

by David Smith in Washington

The Guardian

The lion of the US Senate,” said Barack Obama during a stirring eulogy at the funeral mass for Senator Ted Kennedy in 2009. Listening at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston were George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain.

Death came to McCain nine years to the day after Kennedy, and by the same cause: brain cancer. Tributes are being paid this week, including a memorial service at the National Cathedral on Saturday where Washington high society will gather. This time, however, the president will be nowhere to be seen.

Donald Trump’s absence – perhaps at the White House, maybe even on the golf course – will not only underscore the antipathy between him and McCain, who made clear he did not want Trump at his funeral. It is also a sign of how the celebrity businessman has embraced the power of the presidency but shunned the responsibilities of a head of state.

Last Saturday, Trump gave a grudging response to McCain’s death. Past presidents, senators and various organisations unfurled lyrical tributes. Trump resorted to Twitter to offer his “deepest sympathies and respect” to McCain’s family. He added, complete with jarring exclamation mark: “Our hearts and prayers are with you!”

According to the Washington Post, which dubbed Trump “president non grata”, White House aides had written a statement that honoured McCain’s service as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and his long career on Capitol Hill and described him as a “hero” – only for Trump to veto it in favour of the 21-word tweet.

Then came a flag farce. The stars and stripes flew at half-mast at the White House, as is protocol, yet on Monday morning it was back at full mast, prompting widespread criticism – especially as flags remained lowered on other federal buildings. Gen Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, tweeted a photo of the flag flying high above the executive mansion with the comment: “Remember this image the next time this president talks about disrespecting veterans.”

By afternoon the blunder had been corrected. Trump, who seldom backs down, issued a statement that began with a negative: “Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment

But the damage had been done. Former president Jimmy Carter told Fox News Trump “made a mistake” with the tweet that made no mention of McCain’s military and political service, adding on the MSNBC that the subsequent official statement was “still not as enthusiastic as it should be”.

Trump acknowledged McCain in public remarks that night. But he will play no part in the senator’s lying in state in the US Capitol rotunda on Friday, where Vice-President Mike Pence will deliver remarks and present a wreath; nor at the national memorial service on Saturday where Bush, Obama and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger will be among those delivering tributes; nor at his burial at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis on Sunday, where Senator Lindsey Graham and Gen David Petraeus will speak.

Once again, Trump has defied the conventions of the capital and found himself an outcast.

Sally Quinn, an author, contributor to the Washington Post and celebrated Washington host, said: “He has absolutely no respect for any kind of tradition in Washington. It is such bad form.

“There is now this level where nothing he does is shocking any more. All week people have been saying can you believe the flag was up and then down and then up again, but then there’s a shrug. That’s who he is. He’s a man without honour.”

In April, there was a glaringly obvious, Trump-shaped hole at former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral in Houston, where his wife Melania Trump was photographed alongside past presidents and first ladies, looking curiously happy.

Quinn commented: “This is going to be much worse. McCain is a national hero in the national cathedral and Trump will be sitting fuming in the White House. Saturday is going to be a very bad day for Donald Trump.”

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, suggested Trump has failed to understand the ceremonial power of the presidency to bring people together and promote his own causes.

“Sure,” he said, “the guy is coarse, but that’s not the main issue here. The flag going up and down is a metaphor for his lack of realpolitik qualifications. Machiavelli would be blushing at the sheer ineptitude.”

Saturday will be a moment of “national humiliation”, Jacobs said. “It’s part of a big pattern. In so many ways, Donald Trump has marooned himself on a faraway island. His boat is now wrecked on the shore and he’s sitting sulking.”

Along with the Bush funeral, Trump was not invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and American actor Meghan Markle.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior adviser to Bill Clinton and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, said: “He’s a designated non-mourner. From Windsor to Washington, he is beyond the pale. I can’t think of another president who is beyond the pale.”

In Washington itself, the president remains something of a pariah, apparently dining only at the White House or his nearby luxury hotel.

“He lives in his own little kingdom, his own kleptocratic state which has the physical manifestation of his hotel, which should have a moat around it,” Blumenthal said. “He just doesn’t mix at all.”

 

U.S. associate of indicted Russian pleads guilty, to cooperate with Mueller

August 31, 2018

by Nathan Layne and David Alexander

Reuters

An American who is the business partner of a Russian national accused by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller of having ties to Russian intelligence pleaded guilty on Friday to unregistered lobbying for a pro-Kremlin political party in Ukraine.

Samuel Patten, 47, also agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe.

Patten admitted to arranging for a U.S. citizen to act as a straw purchaser to pay $50,000 for four tickets to the inauguration of President Donald Trump on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch, who reimbursed Patten through a Cypriot account.

The move circumvented U.S. law prohibiting foreigners from providing money to an organization running the inauguration. The tickets were given to the oligarch, another Ukrainian, Patten and the Russian national, according to the charging documents.

While the documents did not name the Russian national, the description matches Konstantin Kilimnik, Patten’s business partner, who was indicted along with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in June for witness tampering in an ongoing criminal case in Washington

Mueller has said Kilimnik, who once served in the Russian army as a translator, has links to Russian spy agencies. Kilimnik, who in the past has denied such ties, did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Patten’s plea agreement, which includes cooperating with Mueller, raises the prospect Patten will be called to testify against Manafort, who was found guilty by a Virginia jury last week on bank and tax fraud charges and faces a second trial in Washington next month.

The charge Patten pleaded guilty to – violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by not disclosing lobbying work for Ukrainian politicians – is similar to one of the core allegations against Manafort in his upcoming trial.

Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor, predicted Patten will be a witness in the trial.

“I expect his value as a cooperating witness is he will know how those guys conducted their business relations and can probably shed light on efforts made to evade FARA reporting requirements,” he said.

Patten admitted to working with the Russian national to lobby members of Congress and the executive branch on behalf of the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc without disclosing the work to the U.S. government, as required by law.

The charge, which carries a maximum of five years in prison, was brought by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s National Security Division, which started investigating Patten after a referral from Mueller.

Patten appeared before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will oversee Manafort’s upcoming trial. Patten did not speak to reporters at the court, but apologized to family and friends on Facebook after entering his plea.

“I was wrong not to have filed under FARA for the representational aspects of my work on behalf of the Opposition Bloc in Ukraine,” Patten wrote in a post seen by Reuters, adding that he had sought to promote democracy during a political consulting career that included work in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

“That is why I deeply regret any damage my failure to register has done to the transparency the FARA statute seeks to guarantee.”

Patten’s work in Ukraine dovetailed somewhat with that of Manafort.

Manafort made most of his money working for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before he fled to Russia in 2014, but like Patten also sought to drum up business with the Opposition Bloc in the aftermath of Yanukovych’s exit.

Patten’s ties to Kilimnik are more concrete. The two set up the political advisory firm Begemot Ventures Ltd LLC in February 2015, which was paid more than $1 million for their work for Ukrainian interests. The unidentified oligarch was one of their biggest benefactors, the charging documents said.

The description of the oligarch, including his attendance at Trump’s inauguration and the placing of an op-ed in February 2017 by Patten, appeared to match that of Serhiy Lyovochkin, an Opposition Bloc lawmaker and Yanukovych’s former chief of staff.

An opinion piece titled “Ukraine Can Win in the Trump Age” by Lyovochkin was published in U.S. News & World Report on February 6, 2017, two weeks after the inauguration. Among other assertions, the article blamed a newly created anti-corruption bureau in Ukraine of “manufacturing a case” against Manafort.

At Manafort’s Virginia trial, his former protege Rick Gates testified that Lyovochkin paid Manafort’s consulting firm millions of dollars for political work, including for the Party of Regions, the predecessor of the Opposition Bloc. Gates said Lyovochkin wired the funds from his Cyprus bank account.

Lyovochkin’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Patten also did work for the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political data firm that was embroiled in a controversy over its use of Facebook Inc data, according to interview transcripts submitted by academic Emma Briant and published by British lawmakers earlier this year.

Reporting by David Alexander in Washington, and Nathan Layne and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Dan Grebler and Kim Coghill

 

Russia encroaches on US war industry in Middle East

Russia’s offensive in Syria has brought unexpected consequences: US allies in the region are interested in acquiring Russian military hardware. But they could face serious backlash from the White House.

August 31, 2018

by Lewis Sanders IV and Ismail Azzam

DW

Since 2015, Russia has made inroads into the Middle East in a way that few could have imagined at the time. While Moscow’s military intervention in Syria has served to prop up the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, it has also allowed it to show off its military might.

One of the knock-on effects has been a growing interest in Russian military hardware, most notably the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system.

“The demand is rather significant after the Syrian events,” Alexander Mikheyev, chief executive of Russian weapons exporter Rosoboronexport, told state-owned news agency TASS last week.

‘Russian moment’

Part of the interest from US allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, stems from waning American leadership, Fawaz Gerges, international relations professor at the London School of Economics, told DW.

“This is a Russian moment,” said Gerges. The Lebanese-American academic noted that instead of showing leadership, US President Donald Trump’s administration had done quite the opposite by highlighting the “great differences between the United States and its Western allies.”

The differences have been most notable with Turkey, a NATO member that has signaled its intention to buy the Russian anti-aircraft weapon system. Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan on Friday said his country “needs S-400” and would move to “buy them as soon as possible.”

‘Unresolved contentions’

Relations between the US and Turkey have deteriorated over the detention of an American pastor, with Congress in July blocking the delivery of F-35 fighter jets that Ankara had already partly paid for.

“There are clearly a series of unresolved contentions at the domestic, regional and international levels that are contributing to this search for security,” Robert Mason, director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo, told DW.

But while Turkey is still intent on acquiring Russian military hardware, Saudi Arabia appears to have let go of the prospect. Colonel Konstantin Sivkov, vice president of the Russian National Geopolitical Academy, told Russian broadcaster RT that Saudi Arabia had “succumbed to pressure from the United States,” according to the London-based Middle East Monitor.

“The US needs to engage in more robust diplomacy to reassure allies and adversaries, which are engaged in a Middle East Cold War,” added Mason, a former visiting scholar at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.

Other US allies in the region reportedly in talks to acquire the Russian S-400 system include Iraq and Morocco.

‘Russian system outperforms’

But politics are only one dimension of US allies’ interest in Russian military hardware.

Egyptian Brigadier General Samir Ragheb, president of the Arab Foundation for Development and Strategic Studies, told DW that in many ways, countries in the region view the S-400 system as a better alternative to the Patriot system, the US alternative.

“There is no doubt that this Russian system outperforms the Patriot system in range and ability to deal with targets in a small orbit, and its ability to launch multiple missiles,” Ragheb said.

Experts have also noted that Washington’s issue with the system could stem from its technological capabilities.

“The root cause of US dissatisfaction appears to be the S-400 missile defense system’s ability to track and destroy aircraft at unprecedented ranges and to gather information about aircraft in the surrounding airspace,” Mason told DW.

‘Serious downsides’

The US has warned that it would not stand idle when it comes to countries acquiring military hardware from Russia.

The US State Department threatened on multiple occasions to target countries making substantial purchases from Russia’s defense or intelligence sectors, citing potential penalties through the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) of 2017.

US Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, who serves as acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department, said in July that the White House wants US allies to understand how serious the White House is when it comes to them acquiring Russian military hardware.

“We want them to understand the downsides, the real, serious downsides to making these acquisitions, and particularly the S-400 acquisitions from the Russians, and to continue to … look to our systems and to put inter-operability and all the other things we care about first,” said Kaidanow.

‘Project influence’

Richard Nephew, senior fellow at Washington-based Brookings Institution and former Obama administration official for sanctions policy at the US State Department, told DW that US allies could also face problems attempting to incorporate the S-400 system into their arsenal.

“My understanding is that integrating US and Russian military hardware isn’t seamless and, therefore, it would be complex to do so,” Nephew said. “If such sales are successful though, then I think the biggest issue would not be from proliferation, but rather from increased Russian operations with those allies.”

With an increased presence in the region, Moscow would be making headway with its strategy, Daniel Byman, senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, told DW.

“It is a way for Russia to project influence, showing that Moscow — not Washington — is a player in the region that will deliver security for those who choose to be its friends.”

 

India may face sanctions if it buys Russia’s S-400 missiles: US

US might not offer waiver to India if it buys S-400 missile system from Russia, Pentagon official says.

August 30, 2018

Newsgrid

The United States cannot guarantee India will be exempt from sanctions if it purchases weapons and defence systems from Russia, a top Pentagon official said.

Randall Schriver, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, called into question on Wednesday the idea that the US would protect its relationship with India and that it will be insulated from any fallout if the purchase happens.

“I would say that is a bit misleading. We would still have very significant concerns if India pursued major new platforms and systems (from Russia),” Schriver said at a think-tank event, according to Reuters news agency.

The US has imposed sanctions on Russia for its annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which means any country that engages in defence or intelligence sharing with Russia could also be subject to sanctions.

“I can’t sit here and tell you that they would be exempt, that we would use that waiver, that will be the decision of the president if he is faced with a major new platform and capability that India has acquired from Russia,” Shriver added.

The waivers would be possible according to a new US defence bill, which gives President Donald Trump the authority to exempt countries.

Despite Secretary of Defense James Mattis saying he is a strong proponent of granting waivers to India, Schriver said that Trump having the ability to apply these waivers did not automatically mean he would.

India is in the final stages of acquiring S-400 long-range surface to air missile systems from Russia, a deal worth $6bn.

The agreement is expected to be signed by Russia later this year.

The acquisition of the S-400 system would be the latest in a long series of Indian defence purchases, as the country has previously bought combat planes, ships and submarines from Russia.

Schriver stated that the US is concerned about this planned purchase, and is willing to talk to India about potential alternatives to the Russian missile system.

State-of-the-art missile system

India is not the only country buying the state-of-the-art system from Russia.

Other countries such as China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have all bought or are planning to buy the anti-aircraft missile weapon.

US military officials and politicians have also expressed concerns over Turkey’s intention to buy the Russian missile system.

In June, Saudi Arabia said it would consider “all necessary measures” if Qatar closes the deal with Russia.

Despite these threats, Russia has said the supply of the missiles to Qatar will continue, with Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani saying acquiring the system is a “sovereign” decision.

The S-400 missile system is a state-of-the-art weapons platform with a maximum range of 400km, considered one of the best defence systems in existence.

 

 

Hong Kong’s soaring house prices force millennials to break law

September 1, 2018

RT

Young Hongkongers have to violate the law by living in industrial buildings, as the insane prices for property in the region make it difficult to afford rent, much less buy a house.

Surging house prices have pushed rents to record levels. Hong Kong is the world’s priciest home market, and one of the most densely populated cities across the globe. The average home in the region can reportedly cost 19.4 times the gross annual median income, while renting a tiny flat could cost around $3500 per month.

So, it is no wonder that younger residents prefer to take a risk and rent spaces, unallotted for living, just to save some cash.

“The rents nowadays are very unreasonable,” 32-year-old photographer Wah Lee, who shares his building with a Chinese herbal-oil storage unit, a commercial kitchen pumping out roast meats and a roommate, told Bloomberg. “There’s no way for me to afford those residential units.”

Lee and his roommate pay about $1,400 per month, which is less than half what landlords commonly ask for living in a standard residential unit. The young people are enjoying a small kitchen and private bathroom along with high ceilings and large windows that are usually features of apartments with an area of more than 300 square meters.

The regional authorities are currently trying to tame sky-high property prices and avert social unrest by increasing land supply. However, allowing people to legally live in industrial constructions is not an option. The government is reportedly working on reclaiming more land near Victoria Harbour or building new houses on top of a container terminal.

Industrial buildings are not designed to be lived in,” Chau Kwong Wing, Chair Professor of Real Estate and Construction at the University of Hong Kong and a member of the task force on land supply told the agency. “It involves safety concerns.”

Nearly 12,000 people lived in industrial buildings in 2016, according to research carried out by the Society for Community Organization. The group hasn’t updated the information so far, but the number is obviously higher, as prices in the Hong Kong property market continue to trend upward with more and more people arrive annually into one of the Asia’s largest financial centers.

 

Arrests New Mexico compound members on new charges

August 32, 2018

by Andrew Hay

Reuters

TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) – Five residents of a New Mexico compound were arrested on Friday by the FBI for violating firearms and conspiracy laws in what one of their lawyers described as a “bad development” for the group, who are accused of planning anti-government attacks.

Jany Leveille, 35; Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40; Hujrah Wahhaj, 37; Subhanah Wahhaj, 35; and Lucas Morton, 40, were charged in criminal complaints filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

The arrests and charges came two days after two judges dismissed child abuse charges against the five defendants on procedural grounds and allowed three to be released from jail in Taos.

The FBI said it arrested the defendants “without incident” in Taos.

Marie Legrand Miller, defense attorney for Hujrah Wahhaj, called the arrests “a very quick and peaceful turn-in.”

Tom Clark, Ibn Wahhaj’s lawyer, said the arrests were not a huge surprise as the FBI had been “involved from the beginning.”

The five defendants, who are all black and Muslim, came under FBI surveillance in May at their remote settlement north of Taos after Leveille sent a letter to Ibn Wahhaj’s brother asking him to join them and become a “martyr,” state prosecutors said on Aug. 13.

The five were first arrested following an Aug. 3 raid by the sheriff that found a cache of firearms and 11 children with no food or clean water, according to charges. Three days later police found the body of Ibn-Wahhaj’s missing 3-year-old son in a tunnel at the compound.

State prosecutors accused the five of training two of their teenage boys for attacks on “corrupt institutions.” The five have yet to be charged over the allegations.

The federal complaint charges Leveille, a Haitian national, with being in the United States illegally and unlawfully in possession of firearms and ammunition. The other defendants are charged with aiding and conspiring with her.

The defendants face maximum sentences of between five and 10 years if convicted. Their first court hearing is on Tuesday in Albuquerque, the FBI said.

Lawyers for the other three defendants were not immediately available for comment.

Reporting by Andrew Hay; additional reporting by Keith Coffman; editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler

 

Arming the far right

August 31, 2018

by Christian Jürs

In 2013, Karl Rove began The Conservative Victory Project.  Its purpose has been to support “electable” conservative political candidates for political office in the United States.

In addition, Rove is stated to have formed a new right-wing activist group formed in 2016 and called The  Scavenius   Society, named after a wartime Danish Nazi. A number of its leading members have worked with Wills Carto’s right wing movement before Carto’s death.

The policy of the supporters of the far right groups is to exacerbate latent racism in the United States to the point where public violence erupts and the political polarization of the public becomes manifest. By encouraging and arming the far right and neo nazi groups, the Scavenius group is laying the groundwork for an acceptable and militant government reaction, the institution of draconian control over the entire population and the rationale for national and official government control, all in the name of law and order. It is planned that the far right and neo nazi groups be taken into the law enforcement structure and used to put down any public demonstrations that the government deems to be a potential threat to their policies.

Who are these groups? Here is a listing of only some of them:

• ACT for America
• Alliance Defending Freedom
• America’s Promise Ministries
• American Border Patrol/American Patrol
• American Family Association
• American Freedom Party
• American Renaissance
• Aryan Brotherhood
• Aryan Brotherhood of Texas
• Aryan Nations
• Blood & Honor
• Brotherhood of Klans
• Center for Security Policy
• Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
• The Creativity Movement
• The Sovereign Citizen Movement of the US and Canada
• The Dominonist Movement of America
• National Alliance
• National Coalition for Immigration Reform
• National Socialist Movement
• National Vanguard
• Oath Keepers
• Stormfront
• The Aryan Terror Brigade.
• The neo-Confederate League of the South.
• Traditionalist Worker Party
• White Revolution

The basic plan of the planners is to supply activists neo-nazi groups in the United States with weapons smuggled into the US. These weapons originate with the Chinese firm, NORENCO, The China North Industries Corporation. This is a Chinese company, located at the Xicheng District, Beijing, China that manufactures civil and military firearms and ammunition.

The specific weapons involved in the arming of neo-nazi groups are the following:

• Type 54, copy of TT-33 Pistol Model
• Type 64, pistol
• Type 77, pistol
• NP50, copy of Smith & Wesson model 64
• NP-216, 9x19mm revolver
• QSZ-92 (Type 92), pistol NP-42, civilian export version of QSZ-92
• NZ-75, copy of CZ 75 pistol NZ-85B, clone of CZ 85 pistol
• NP-40, copy of CZ 85 pistol in .40S&W
• NP-22 (rename by importer NP226 or NC226) a SIG Sauer P226 pistol first version copy NP-34 (rename by importer NP228 or NC228), copy of SIG Sauer P228 pistol
• NP-56 45ACP, SIG Sauer P220 Rail pistol Copy in .45ACP
• M-1911A1C, Combat Commander style pistol
• NP-28, Colt M1911A1 copy in 9x19mm Parabellum with double-column magazine (10 rounds)
• NP-44, Colt M1911A1 copy in .45 ACP with double-column magazine (14 rounds)
• CQ, copy of M16A1 variant of M16 rifle
• NR-08, sub machine gun(SMG), copy of Heckler & Koch MP5.
• Type 56 Carbine, copy of Russian SKS semi-automatic rifle
• Type 56 assault rifle, copy of AK-47 MAK-90, a civilian, semi-automatic version of the AK-47
• NHM-90, 1994–2004 gun ban model, w/1.5mm stamped receiver, thumbhole stock, no bayonet lug, non-flashhider
• Type 86S bullpup assault rifle
• Type 87 (also known as QLZ87) 35 mm automatic grenade launcher (AGL)
• QBU-88 (Type 88), sniper rifle
• QBZ-95 (Type 95), an assault rifle
• Norinco-designed QBZ-95 rifle.QBB 95, a squad automatic weapon version of the QBZ-95
• QBZ-97 (Type 97), a rifle，export version of QBZ-95 that uses 5.56×45mm NATO ammunition
• QBZ-03 (Type 03), an assault rifle
• NDM-86, a version of the Dragunov Sniper Rifle that fires .308 Win. ammo or traditional 7.62×54mmR depending on model
• JW-25a, or TU-G33/40, patterned after G33/40.

 

Because of strict port security in Vancouver, the weapons are off-loaded in the Pacific, off the west coast of Vancouver Island, from a Chinese-flag container ship headed for the port city of Vancouver. The weapons are loaded onto commercial fishing vessels, very common in the area, who subsequently take them south to the Washington port of Tacoma. From there, they are driven by commercial trucks to the Boeing Field airport and placed on private aircraft for distribution to other American destinations.

It is to be noted that there is a strong Chinese presence in the Vancouver-Seattle area. In Vancouver, the Chinese population is over 400,000 and in Seattle they represent 4% of the population. All the smuggled weapons are handled by Chinese personnel until they are loaded onto the aircraft.

Funding for the weapons purchases does not come from the organizing entity but from a different source.

The payments are made via the manufacture and sale of counterfeit nazi period memorabilia. This project is funded initially from retrieved buried nazi concentration camp gold hidden in the mountains of southern Austria. An expedition there in 2014 netted the American neo-nazi group almost $20,000,000 in gold bullion coins and jewelry. The gold and other treasure was buried by an SS general at the end of the war. The gold has been stored in the cellars of a prosperous commercial dealer in neo-nazi relics and used, as needed, to fund the weapons purchases.

There are two powerful agencies in the United States that are, or would be, involved with anti-government activities.

The existence of major FBI–CIA problems has always been refuted by both entities.

The FBI was an established agency in 1948 when the CIA was founded and as the latter expanded, it moved more and more into the FBI’s area of competence.

Eventually, after a period of intense rivalry and competition, an agreement was arrived at that mandated the FBI handle all domestic intelligence matters and the CIA did its work outside the United States.

This was an agreement observed more in the breach than the observance.

 

The FBI Used the #MeToo Moment to Pressure an Environmental Activist Into Becoming an Informant

September 1, 2018

by Alleen Brown and John Knefel

The Intercept

Julie Henry was jogging when she got the call from the FBI. She didn’t recognize the number, which had a Washington state area code, but she answered anyway. The FBI agent identified herself as Kera O’Reilly, and said that Henry wasn’t in any trouble. O’Reilly was there to help.

The phone call, which Henry received on February 22, 2018, brought her back to an internal conflict that she thought she’d finished wrestling with two years earlier. O’Reilly wanted to talk to Henry about her online account of sexual assault, which was strange if you consider that the offense is a crime over which federal agents rarely have jurisdiction. But it made perfect sense considering the person she wanted to discuss: Rod Coronado.

To his supporters in the animal rights community, Coronado is a folk hero who has lived his convictions. People have even written songs celebrating him. To the FBI, Coronado is an eco-terrorist, an arsonist, and a criminal. Although the agency has already managed to put him in prison four separate times, including for setting fire to a mink research facility and dismantling a mountain lion trap, law enforcement apparently still isn’t finished with the 52-year-old activist, who publicly denounced sabotage as a tactic more than a decade ago.

Yet for all of his public accolades and detractors, Henry knew a different side of him.

Nearly four years ago, Henry says, in the midst of a campaign to monitor a state-sanctioned wolf hunt with Coronado’s organization Wolf Patrol, in a remote area outside Yellowstone National Park, Coronado sexually assaulted her. Henry says she didn’t even think about calling law enforcement. Activists aren’t supposed to talk to cops, and definitely not to FBI agents. For months, she stayed silent. But then, after agonizing over the decision, she participated in an alternative attempt at accountability — she described Coronado’s assault in an email posted to a closed activist listserv and later published the details publicly in the activist Earth First! Journal.

Henry doesn’t regret her decision, but the process was painful and disappointing. Coronado denied that anything nonconsensual happened. Although many supported her, others — including some she’d considered friends and allies — didn’t believe her. Some went so far as to label her a snitch and a federal operative, smears often directed at someone perceived to have weakened the movement by talking publicly about internal divisions that law enforcement can exploit.

The FBI call brought all of that flooding back. “I’m a woman working in a man’s world, so I get it,” Henry recalls O’Reilly telling her. “I just want you to know that I believe you, and I’m so sorry that that happened.”

“We’re in the throes of the #MeToo moment,” O’Reilly told Henry, and that had inspired her to reach out. Henry hung up as quickly as possible, sharing nothing. But O’Reilly promised she’d call back.

“My loyalty always has to be with the movement, because the FBI could do so much damage,” Henry told The Intercept. She had no interest in assisting the agency in investigating activists, but she worried that ignoring O’Reilly’s questions about sexual assault could risk endangering other women. “Something was going to happen either way, and I felt, and still feel, completely responsible,” she said. “Whether it’s nothing that happens and he continues to hurt people, I feel responsible for that.”

After O’Reilly left a voice message a few days later, Henry called her back, despite the risks. “I know this is dangerous without having a lawyer. But I have to do this for me,” Henry recalls thinking. “I wanted to ask her why.”

O’Reilly repeated many of the same things she had said before, but one thing stuck in Henry’s head. “‘I understand, it may be hard to talk about the details; we can talk about other things,’” Henry recalls the FBI agent telling her. “And every time she said that I was like, that’s what she really wants.”

After she hung up, Henry Googled O’Reilly. She found a Seattle Times story describing O’Reilly’s years at the bureau, and her previous job as a counselor for sex offenders. But what really caught Henry’s eye was a report in The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, that described how O’Reilly and two other FBI agents had visited six climate activists in July 2013 and asked “about opposition to tar sands development and brought photographs, hoping the activists would identify the people in them.”

“This has nothing to do with me,” Henry realized. “She wants to get to everyone.”

Henry hired a lawyer, Daniel Ayoade Yoon, to follow up. Ayoade Yoon made a recording of the call, which Henry provided to The Intercept.

“We are in the throes of the #MeToo movement, women are coming forward and being very strong about [how] this is not OK,” O’Reilly repeated in her call with Ayoade Yoon. “Women aren’t going to stand for it, and so I just thought I’d provide this opportunity if she wanted it to report it.” O’Reilly said she realized she had been thinking of her investigation of Coronado “too narrowly”  after she stumbled across the Earth First! article providing Henry’s account. She acknowledged that she didn’t know what federal charges might be applicable to Henry’s case. She tossed out hypotheticals — Did Coronado take photos of Henry? Did they cross state lines? — but admitted, “Traditionally, as you know, most of these charges are handled on a local level.”

Their 38-minute conversation quickly shifted to Coronado’s other activities. “Maybe there’s other different criminal charges that don’t have to do with sexual assault she may be aware of — I’m open ears to any of those things.” O’Reilly said. She said that Coronado was “on her radar” as a possible suspect in a 2008 arson of a real estate development called Street of Dreams in a suburb of Seattle. A spray-painted sign nearby included the initials ELF, which stand for Earth Liberation Front, an organization for which Coronado had acted as a spokesperson in the past.

O’Reilly offered to make Henry an informant, technically known as a confidential human source, saying that there was “no pressure” and “if she doesn’t want it to go anywhere … I’ll take it as that.”

She told Ayoade Yoon that in addition to information about Coronado, she was interested in building trust so that the FBI would know about “direct actions that are outside the bell curve of what is normal — acceptable within the code of conduct within activist communities.”

Her final touch: an argument not so different from the one that left Henry so conflicted after the initial outreach. “I just think Rod Coronado is a bad person, and I think he uses his power and control — just a lot of men in different industries are now getting in trouble for — to hurt women,” O’Reilly said. “I would love for the activist community to say, ‘You’re not our guy — you’re not the centerfold of our platform.’”

“Ms. O’Reilly is on a fishing expedition for information regarding Rod Coronado, other dirt, other people who may have dirt on him,” Ayoade Yoon wrote to Henry after talking with O’Reilly. He was not impressed.

The fact that O’Reilly was unable to describe how any charges could be pursued against Coronado for the alleged sexual assault, Ayoade Yoon wrote, “further leads me to believe that she is merely hoping to get an inside look at Rod Coronado, his organization, or the activist community in general. As opposed to actually helping you in prosecuting him on your behalf.”

The FBI had weaponized #MeToo to pressure Henry into becoming an informant. To Henry, O’Reilly’s call was a clear attempt to prey on her desire for accountability and twist it to meet the bureau’s own ends. Henry refused to cooperate.

The Green Scare

The FBI has a long history of using sex to gather information or encourage illegal behavior in order to further its investigations. Most notoriously, under COINTELPRO, FBI agents attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into killing himself by threatening to reveal his extramarital affairs.

More recently, the FBI has repeatedly used women as “honeypots” in terrorism cases, dispatching female agents or informants to entice Muslim men into manufactured plots. Craig Monteilh, a longtime FBI informant, said that his handlers told him to have sex with Muslim women to gather information that could be used against suspects.

In the mid-2000s, during a period of such intense FBI targeting of environmental activists that it became known as the “Green Scare,” the bureau went after Eric McDavid, whose flirtation with a woman named Anna led to a vague plot to take down targets in northern California. Anna, it turned out, was Zoe Elizabeth Voss, a paid FBI informant. McDavid was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison.

O’Reilly’s overture to Henry inverted this long-standing dynamic. Instead of using sexual relations to coax information or action out of unwitting individuals, the FBI positioned itself as a corrective to abuse. Where activists had fallen short, O’Reilly could provide justice — if only Henry would share information.

And even though the dynamic had been reversed, O’Reilly’s approach is common in law enforcement: Find a vulnerability and exploit it. “This is kind of what the FBI does,” says Mike German, a fellow at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice and a former FBI agent. “If they’re seeking information about a particular target, they look everywhere they can find that information, and they use whatever tools are available lawfully.”

When it came to O’Reilly’s comment that she wanted to undermine Coronado as a movement leader, German acknowledged that it was “inappropriate for the FBI to decide who should be leading any kind of political organization.” But, he added, it wouldn’t be considered unacceptable for an FBI agent to say something like that to a potential cooperator in furtherance of an investigation.

In an emailed statement, FBI Public Affairs Officer Ayn S. Dietrich-Williams said, “The FBI does not police ideology. When an individual takes action based on belief or ideology and breaks the law, the FBI will enforce the rule of law.” The spokesperson said that investigative activity is required to follow the agency’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.

“All allegations of criminal activity are reviewed using a myriad of investigative techniques and are vetted for jurisdiction. Even if investigators were to determine that an alleged activity does not constitute a violation of federal law, we refer the matter to appropriate agencies, in the interest of victims’ rights and the administration of justice,” she said. “Often, investigative efforts uncover information that suggests possible additional, related criminal activity.”

“In some cases, a potential victim of a crime may be offered opportunities to provide information anonymously and with a degree of federal protection. We do so with the individual’s safety considered, which in turn provides investigators the best opportunity to collect complete information,” said the spokesperson.

But Henry’s story isn’t just about the FBI. The same misogynistic power dynamics present in the culture at large also permeate social movements that publicly pledge liberation and justice. And in movements that have been heavily targeted by law enforcement, holding abusers accountable can be exceedingly difficult — especially when an activist describes abuse by a movement martyr.

Coronado carried out some of the radical animal rights movement’s earliest and most notorious actions. In the late 1980s and early 90s, he released 200 wild horses and freed turkey vultures, beagles, coyotes, and minks. He launched an organization to capture disturbing footage of the mink farm industry’s pelting season. And in a slew of attacks that he called Operation Bite Back, he torched buildings and used hydrochloric acid to destroy the work of research facilities supporting the fur industry or practicing animal testing. He hit state universities in Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Michigan.

In a movement that is largely white, Coronado, who grew up in the suburbs of San Jose, is of Yaqui heritage, something that has been an important part of his identity. After Coronado went into hiding in the mid-1990s, federal agents found him on the Pascua Yaqui reservation in Arizona. He spent four years in prison for his involvement in torching the Michigan State University research facility. But the government’s pursuit of Coronado never really let up.

In 2003, at a talk Coronado was giving in San Diego, an undercover police officer overheard him tell the audience how to build an incendiary device — instructions that can be found on the internet, as well as in books sold on Amazon. He was arrested two and a half years later under a 1999 anti-terrorism statute that had rarely been applied. He was sentenced to another year in prison.

And in 2010, he was arrested again for violating parole terms that demanded he abstain from communicating with anyone in the activist community. For friending another activist on Facebook, he was sentenced to another four months.

He wasn’t alone. During the Green Scare, more than two dozen activists were indicted between 2004 and 2008 for involvement in actions that the FBI framed as eco-terrorism. Old loyalties were shattered as some exchanged lighter sentences for information about their comrades, and the paranoia and distrust that had long permeated the movement deepened.

In radical activist communities, arenas imagined to be internal, personal, or private have always been potential tools for the FBI, and some activists have used the bureau’s past misdeeds as a shield against allegations of abuse.

Brian Frank, an organizer with Earth First! and Rising Tide during the early 2000s, has seen his share of well-liked activists accused of intimate partner violence or sexual assault. “I think pretty much every time someone has been called out that doesn’t fit in that raging asshole category, there’s someone that’s going to say, ‘That’s not real, maybe that’s an infiltrator or provocateur of some kind,’” he said.

“People can’t fathom that someone could both be a nice person in a meeting and hit their girlfriend or sexually assault someone,” said Frank. “For some people, it’s so unbelievable they think it must be a conspiracy.”

Wolf Patrol

In 2014, Henry was searching for something new. Two long-term relationships were ending — with her romantic partner and with her activist community. She’d spent the last two years organizing in Texas with the Tar Sands Blockade, and her experience with the movement was mixed. She cared deeply about the work, but she says she’d also been sexually assaulted while she was there, an allegation some in the Earth First! community later used in an attempt to discredit her as a serial accuser. She didn’t know much about Coronado, but a Facebook post about his latest project, Wolf Patrol, caught Henry’s eye. She signed up.

Henry’s first tour with Wolf Patrol was in Montana in September 2014. A group of about 10 activists hiked mile after mile each day on land adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, monitoring a brief annual wolf hunting season made possible after the gray wolf lost its protection under the Endangered Species Act. Compared with Coronado’s earlier activism, the campaign was low key. The group did not release wolves caught in traps or sabotage the hunt. Instead, they simply monitored hunters’ activities, attempting to capture footage of illegal tactics.

Henry and Coronado grew close over the three-day campaign. “The way we clicked together, we got a lot of work done,” she told The Intercept. It was clear that Coronado wanted a romantic relationship, she said, and he broached the topic at the end of the trip. Henry underlined that past trauma left her uninterested in a physical relationship. She was there to do the wolf work.

While Coronado disputes her account of what happened, Henry says it was during a second campaign the next month in Wisconsin that things got weird. “When I returned, it was almost like he decided I was his property,” she said. He would make decisions for her — what her task for the day would be, which vehicle she would be in (always his). “If I disagreed with him, or went against — then I wasn’t a valuable person anymore.” Henry said Coronado presented shared sleeping quarters with him as a given.

Mariam Rauf, who works with victims of domestic and sexual abuse at Sakhi, an organization focused on ending violence against women, said Henry’s story was familiar. “Abusers can take on manipulative tactics to pull someone in, ‘groom’ them with their charm, and then the situation escalates,” she said. “Controlling behavior might at first have been flattering because of the attention the person was getting from the abuser. Physical abuse doesn’t always happen immediately; the emotional and psychological abuse usually comes first.”

Things only got worse when Henry returned to Montana for her third and final campaign. By then it was November, and temperatures regularly dipped below zero.

At night, Henry said, Coronado tested her boundaries. “I would wake up, and he would be touching me,” she said. She felt that her willingness to accept his advances at night correlated directly with how things would go the following day.

“He’s going to treat me like garbage tomorrow if I make him feel bad tonight,” she remembers thinking.

Brett Jarczyk, an activist who was on the trip, witnessed Coronado’s behavior toward Henry. He said one morning he overheard sounds coming from the tent the two shared, just a short distance away. Henry was telling Coronado to stop doing whatever he was doing and sounded “irritated,” says Jarczyk.

Toward the end of the trip, Henry confronted Coronado about the unwanted advances. “You’re making it hard for me to do my job,” she says she told him, to which his response was, “OK, yeah, sure.”

As a blizzard blew toward the park that November, Coronado prepared to head back to his home in Michigan. The night before he left, the group celebrated a campaign Henry didn’t think had accomplished very much. Later that night, Henry says, Coronado assaulted her in a Super 8 Motel room they were sharing with another member of their group who had already fallen asleep.

As they went in, Henry said, she asked Coronado to turn on an air conditioner so they could talk without waking their roommate. She said Coronado was inebriated and wasn’t interested in talking. “He never asked, he never even attempted to use a condom,” Henry told The Intercept. She said she stayed quiet to avoid waking the other person.

Henry recalls that Coronado was in a good mood the next morning before he and most of the group left. “He looked me in the eye and was like, ‘Hey, are we good?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ He kissed me on the forehead and got in the car.”

Henry sat down in the motel lobby, across from another activist, Stephanie. “I told her what happened,” Henry said. “And she was like, ‘Oh hell no, you call him, you make him come back, you need to talk about that.’” Stephanie, who asked that only her first name be used due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, confirmed that Henry told her that morning that Coronado had sexually assaulted her.

Henry called Coronado. “I’m not OK with what happened,” Henry recalls telling him. “He basically was like, ‘I’m not going to talk about this.’”

Matt Almonte, who also stayed behind that morning, remembered Henry was “distraught,” and that she told them about the alleged assault almost immediately. He said they offered to take Henry to a pharmacy to get Plan B, or to a doctor’s office. At one point, Stephanie said, Henry began saying the encounter had in fact been consensual, but she didn’t like that Coronado fell asleep immediately afterward. (Henry denied this characterization.)

That night, Henry says Coronado called and said he was no longer interested in her.

Coronado’s recollections of his relationship with Henry differ significantly. In an interview with The Intercept, he said that when the topic of a romantic relationship between them was broached, he remembers kissing and agreeing that any physical relations would involve a lot of talking. He says he followed through with that and denies that any physical interaction happened without consent. He doesn’t recall any instance of Henry telling him there could be no physical relationship.

“I would preface any intimacy with conscious talking,” Coronado said.

He also denies that he determined where Henry would sleep at night. “I slept in my tent and she chose to sleep with me – there were plenty of tents for everyone, and everyone got to sleep where they wanted to sleep. It was not an issue because we were a couple,” Coronado said.

In Coronado’s version of his last night on the campaign, he asked Henry if she wanted to have sex, and she consented, asking him to turn on the heater to cover any noise. He says they didn’t use protection, but that they had previously talked about the fact that he had had a vasectomy. He remembers Henry approached him in the morning, and she seemed upset. “We need to talk about last night,” she said, according to Coronado. “I think something happened that you don’t remember.”

He says his impression was she was hurt that he didn’t remember having sex. “I started recounting it,” Coronado recalled. “I said, ‘Do you mean when we had sex? Do you mean when I asked you whether it was OK? Do you mean when you asked to turn on the heater to provide white noise?’ She said, ‘OK.’ She started giggling and laughing. I said, ‘I remember everything.’”

When Henry called as he was driving away, Coronado said he does not recall her specifically mentioning the events of the night before, only that she said she needed to talk and that he refused to turn around. And he says he did not call her back the next day to break things off.

The rest of the campaign went poorly for Henry — she didn’t get along well with the other two activists, and Coronado texted her throughout, jokingly calling her “White Noise” – a reference to the air conditioner that was turned on in the hotel room. She appeared to laugh off the nickname, which Coronado sees as evidence their encounter was consensual. “He was trying to keep things sexual,” Henry said when asked about the texts. “There was just no point in trying to fight it.”

Worn down and frustrated with the group dynamic, Henry found herself calling on Coronado to pick her up. Almonte said that when Coronado arrived, he confronted him about Henry’s account. “‘She said you straight-up assaulted her,’” Almonte recalled telling Coronado. “He looked at me very puzzled, said, ‘I have no idea why she would say that.’ I said, ‘I don’t know either, but that’s between you two, and it needs to be addressed.’” (Coronado said he does not recall the conversation.)

She went back with Coronado to his house, where the two shared a bed, and although they did not have intercourse again, she said, his groping resumed. She did not bring up the assault again while they were together. Even after everything that had happened, Henry still hoped to continue on with Wolf Patrol. The group was preparing for another campaign in Wisconsin, and Henry was desperate not to lose another community. But Coronado told her that she would not be invited on the next trip — he blamed the tension between her and the other activists.

Exiled from Wolf Patrol, she left Coronado’s home, planning to tell no one else about the assault. “I was a deep, dark hole,” she recalled.

Attempted Accountability

Unbeknownst to Henry, during the time that she was working with Wolf Patrol, a debate over how to address Coronado’s behavior had already been roiling the radical environmental activist community.

A few months prior to the alleged assault on Henry, Coronado had trashed his ex-wife Chrysta Faye’s home after he saw her with a new boyfriend, emptying garbage, kitty litter, and compost throughout the house.

In February 2015, an activist named Toby Fraser sent out a notice on an email list describing the trashing of Faye’s home and noting that Coronado had violated consent with people he had worked with — a reference to Henry, who was still unsure about sharing her story publicly. “While Rod is more than just these actions, and he has been a huge inspiration for many of us, it is actions like these that people also need to know so they can make an informed choice,” Fraser wrote in his email. “If you have friends in the northern states where Rod is directly working on the wolf hunts please share this with them.”

It was at that point that Henry decided to go public by releasing a statement on an Earth First! email listserv. “My name is Julie Henry,” she wrote, “and I was sexually assaulted by Rod Coronado.”

Henry’s email was forwarded from one activist to another and spread via social media, but it was more than a year before the editors of Earth First! Journal decided to address the issue.

“It is the job of the Journal to post news, analysis, and thought pieces regarding defense of the earth, of other species, and of the wild,” wrote one activist in a thread of emails debating whether to cover Henry’s accusations. “It could make a difficult situation much worse, but bottom line is it is not the Journal’s job.”

Eventually, the journal published an interview with Henry by Kiera Loki Anderson, a writer and longtime environmental activist, who is writing their doctoral dissertation on sexual assault within the environmental movement.

The Earth First! community quickly took sides. The reaction of some movement leaders was shaped by the years of persecution they’d faced from law enforcement. Henry was framed as a potential informant, at worst, and, at best, a security risk who could hurt the movement. Some of the doubters claimed that Henry was unstable or questioned her credibility because she’d accused others of assault in the past.

The official Wolf Patrol Facebook page called Henry a “fraud and a liar.” Coronado wrote on Facebook that he wouldn’t “engage with dysfunctional activists or my lying and cheating ex-wife who use FBI-style smear tactics.” He threatened to sue the Journal, arguing he’d had no opportunity to give his side of the story.

Just over a month after the interview with Henry was published, a site called It’s Going Down published an interview with a lawyer named Lauren Regan by an activist named Lilia who was on Henry’s final Wolf Patrol campaign. The post was titled “Informants and Information,” and was illustrated with large photos of former activists who had taken deals and testified against other activists. “Green Scare Snitches” read a large label on each photo.

“A huge issue though is the extent that activists are making the government and private spy’s jobs so easy by using facecrack or email to put the most dirty laundry of movement participants out into these public domains. They are basically giving them clear road maps of where vulnerable targets for government repression might be located, or who might be more likely to be a snitch or an infiltrator,” Regan said. “For me personally whenever I see some of that stuff happening I am really suspicious of the sources of it.” (Regan said she wasn’t responding to a specific incident.)

But for all those who questioned Henry, there were at least as many who supported her.

“People that have been persecuted by the state are martyrized and lionized in ways that survivors aren’t,” Anderson told The Intercept. “The way the movement takes more seriously state repression versus political violence against women allows people like Rod — not to milk it, but to use it as a shield.”

An editor at the Earth First! Journal who calls himself Rabbit recalled how split the reaction was. “I’d get off the phone with one person who was super pissed that we hadn’t immediately published a thing showing solidarity with Julie like the next day,” he said. “And the phone rings when I’m done with that, and someone’s super pissed we haven’t put out a condemnation of Julie for doing this because Rod would never do this.”

“Rod Coronado went from a hero and an idol and member of the Earth First! community, to a person who is not welcome at all,” Rabbit said. “If Rod showed up to an Earth First! rendezvous or organizers conference, I don’t care who is hosting it, I guarantee you he’d be thrown out immediately.”

Coronado told The Intercept that the last time he’d attempted to attend a radical environmentalist gathering — of forest defenders in Eugene, Oregon, the lug nuts were removed from his tires.

For her part, Faye has struggled with what accountability and justice should mean for Coronado, her ex-husband. “I believe Julie and I support Julie,” she said in an interview. She too had a difficult relationship with the activist.

Faye was married to Coronado throughout the Green Scare, when he was in and out of prison. Their relationship was marked by nearly constant surveillance, which, combined with the intoxicating effects of Coronado’s hero status, resulted in years of dysfunction and finally separation by 2014.

“We had our telephone monitored. We had our computers monitored. We were being surveilled by the FBI. They knew where I was at times that seemed totally irrelevant. It does something to your psyche, it truly does,” Faye said. “I think if we would have just been a normal, going to work, doing the 9-to-5, raising kids, things could have been really different, but the amount trauma that his being an activist brought into our lives had devastating effects.”

Coronado confirmed in an interview that some of the problems in his marriage to Faye had centered around sex and consent. “Me touching her in bed when she was asleep, that was one of the many dysfunctional things I did,” he said. He said that the behavior took place in the context of a relationship in which both parties were behaving in ways that hurt the other deeply. “There was inappropriate things that I did, that she spoke to me about, and I definitely acknowledge that.”

Faye found a way to heal her relationship with Coronado — something she felt was necessary given how intertwined their lives were. She believes deeply in the power of transformative justice, which aims to address conflict and violence outside the criminal justice system. “It’s super complicated, but it has to come from a compassionate view versus a punitive view, and it’s scary — it’s scary because it’s new for all of us. It’s a new system for all of us to be considering not exiling the perpetrator.”