Tag: OFFICE

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Targeted Individuals Hold Rally At Historic Houston Courthouse Steps

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Attorney Ana Toledo Addresses A Targeted Individuals Rally From The Steps Of The Historic Houston Courthouse On 301 Fannin Street (01/12/2024)

On Friday 01/12/24, in commemoration of the one year anniversary of the filing of TJ v Garland lawsuit, Attorney Ana Toledo led a targeted individuals rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse on 301 Fannin Street. The lawsuit seeks to have 18 plaintiffs, who Ana alleges have been placed there by the FBI under an unconstitutional “secret criteria”, removed from the terrorism watchlist.

Ana Toledo(0:02): “The FBI has abused the watchlist, what’s known as the terrorism watchlist for a long time…and 400,000 targeted individuals in the United States, and indeed around the world, have been put on this list. Today marks one year anniversary since we filed TJ v Garland, an extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to remove the names of innocent listed individuals from the terrorist screening database (TSDB) in two secret categories that are not known to the public, and not even to the people that are in them, because the FBI has admitted, they don’t represent a terrorist threat and they are not screened as such. Therefore these innocent Americans, and innocent civilians around the world, don’t encounter problems when traveling...[the list] of all those innocent people that are labeled as suspected terrorists…is distributed through the national crime information center (NCIC), to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, which translates to over 100,000 agents, to over 532 private corporations such as Air BnB, Western Union and many others that retaliate against people that don’t even know are on the list, and 1440 organizations such as universities that could very well deny entrance to somebody to a university of higher education just because unbeknownst to them, they are on this nefarious watchlist.”

Speaking specifically about the TJ v Garland lawsuit, Ana said(2:21): “We urge you to look at the appeal pending before the 5th Circuit[Court of Appeal], TJ v Garland case. It’s case #23-23402. It’s fully briefed and we’re ready for oral argumentation…The single remedy we seek, is the removal of the 18 plaintiffs from the TSDB categories 3 & 4, that are secret categories that the FBI has admitted, they put people on that list under secret criteria. That is not the America we were born into. That is not what the constitution provides. Please be aware, the watchlist in not the entire list. Pursuant to DOJ, the watchlist–the known and suspected terrorist list–comprises 0.5% of the entire list, so if that list is at two million, we don’t want to know how many innocent civilians have been placed secretly under codes 3 & 4, which represents 97% of the terrorist screening database pursuant to DOJ, not pursuant to Targeted Justice.”

Apparently, per Ana, an investigation by the DOJ Inspector-General recently found that the FBI doesn’t even follow its own regulations regarding watchlisting. Ana specifically said: “One of the most nefarious conclusions of an audit report by DOJ Inspector-General, report 08-16, is that the FBI field offices nominate and place people on the terrorist screening database without complying with agency regulations, now let that sink in. Innocent Americans that have never been arrested, tried, or convicted of any terrorist offense, and that by FBI’s own admission, do not meet the reasonable suspicion criteria, are secretly placed on this list. The labeling of innocent Americans, and people around the world, as suspected terrorists, deprives them of basic rights, constitutional and human rights. This has got to stop.”

Ana also took issue with the mainstream media’s strange silence regarding this issue, saying(6:34): “The evidence that the U.S. government is suppressing any dialogue about this, [targeted individuals], any discussion about it, is that despite the distribution of the press release on social media and through email, the press did not come here today. They are not interested in the freedom that second class citizens, targeted individuals, have a right to.”

It’s important to note that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has recently expressed similar watchlisting concerns, and is asking President Biden and the DOJ to address these problems.

No reasonable person looking at the people standing behind Attorney Ana Toledo at the downtown Houston courthouse steps, would conclude that these were the kind of people the terrorist screening database was originally meant to weed out. Sadly, however, it’s normal people like these–your mother, sister, uncle, cousin, who maybe said the wrong/inflammatory thing on social media or elsewhere, or complained about some corruption in high places–who end up getting ensnared by these watchlists/targeting lists, and are then punished in ways regular Americans will never comprehend, up to and including using military assets. Its a total travesty that needs to be fixed and those responsible held to account. In other words, the grave injustice here is not just the malicious watchlisting, but also, the unconstitutional torture that goes with it–organized stalking, financial sabotage, assaults/experiments using DEWs, remote neuromonitoring…the quintessential weaponization of government, which in many cases, constitute violations of the Geneva Conventions against Torture(CAT)

Bottom line folks, this rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse marks a watershed moment for the struggle to free targeted individuals in that it officially takes the fight from the dark corners of social media, where often severely shadowbanned TIs anonymously scream from X(formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, Tik Tok and other social media platforms, to real life activism. Put another way, it is very different, much more effective when real, normal people show up and cogently make their grievances known in public. It becomes very hard for the abusers to use their tried and true defense–“Oh, TIs are just a bunch of loons on social media.”

Hopefully we get to see more of these rallies and importantly, a meaningful response from authorities regarding the serious allegations Attorney Ana Toledo and her Targeted Justice are making. Oh and the mainstream media, both nationally and locally(Houston), it’s about time you started doing your jobs. The public deserves to get answers to these serious questions regarding the abuse of the watchlisting system.

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Moderate House Dems Shoot Down AOC’s Intel Oversight Amendment

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On 12/9/21 Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY) introduced an amendment(Amendment 148 to H.R. 5314–Protect Our Democracy Act), that would have restored the oversight powers Congress always intended the Government Accountability Office(GAO) to have, including over our intelligence agencies. Our intelligence agencies, as everyone knows, are notoriously impervious to any Congressional oversight, and often hide behind a vague 1988 Department of Justice opinion to justify their need for secrecy. Rep Ocasio-Cortez’s amendment would have taken away that cover, ensuring much-needed transparency from our intelligence agencies. Surprisingly, 23 Centrist Democrats voted with House Republicans to kill her amendment.

As Rep Ocasio-Cortez correctly pointed out on the House floor, given the kinds of abuses we’ve witnessed during Trump’s presidency, it is only prudent that we restore GAO’s oversight powers over all federal agencies, including our intelligence agencies. Any reasonable person would agree, that it is foolhardy to assume that former President Trump abused all other federal agencies for his selfish political interests, except our intelligence apparatus, the easiest ones to abuse given the secrecy with which they are allowed to operate.

Rep Ocasio-Cortez said on the House floor: “Since it’s creation in 1921, the Government Accountability Office(GAO) has had the purview to conduct oversight of all federal agencies with the goal of reducing waste, fraud and abuse, and holding accountable bad actors. However and unfortunately, most of our intelligence agencies today are not fully cooperative with the GAO, pointing to an outdated and vague 1988 Department of Justice opinion. Our amendment would allow the GAO to act as a check on this behavior, not creating new powers, but restoring the power Congress always intended the GAO to have. This amendment is welcomed by many in the intelligence community, who want to protect their important work and resources from abuse, particularly after the last presidency we just endured. We drafted this amendment in partnership with the community and I’m proud to have the support of Representative Adam Schiff who serves as the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In fact many of my colleagues have already taken a stand in support of this legislation because in 2010, the House passed a virtually identical amendment.”

The amendment failed with a final tally of 233 nays, 196 yeas, with 4 members not voting. Among the 233 nays were 23 Centrist Democrats who Yours Truly is compelled to name. The nay Dems included Reps Cynthia Axne(IA), Cheri Bustos(IL), Matt Cartwright(PA), Angie Craig(MN), Antonio Delgado(NY), Val Demings(FL), Jared Golden(ME), Josh Gottheimer(NJ), Chrissy Houlahan(PA), Conor Lamb(PA), Susie Lee(NV), Elaine Luria(VA), Tom O’Halleran(AZ), Chris Pappas(NH), Kurt Schrader(OR), Kim Schrier(WA), Terri Sewell(AL), Mikie Sherrill(NJ), Abigail Spanberger(VA), David Trone(MD), Filemon Vela(TX), Jennifer Wexton(VA), Susan Wild(PA).

Ever since the Patriot Act was enacted after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, there have been growing calls from civil libertarians and others, for there to be some checks on the almost absolute powers we granted our intelligence agencies after the 9/11 attacks. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple–power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Fast forward to the Trump administration and the abuses we witnessed occurring across all federal agencies–(DOJ being used for the Big Lie, Military on Black Lives Matter protesters in DC, numerous abuses of DHS, “failure” by our intel agencies to anticipate Jan 6th insurrection)– and the need to look into our intel agencies becomes an absolute necessity. It’s against this backdrop that Rep Ocasio-Cortez, with the support of many in the intel community, are pushing for more transparency. One would assume given these set of circumstances, that more oversight would be a no-brainer for Democrats, but apparently not.

Concerns about possible abuses of our intel agencies run the gamut, from the mundane warrantless snooping of our electronic communications (emails, texts, voicemails, etc), to much more serious allegations that if proven, constitute serious violations of our commitments under the United Nations Conventions Against Torture(CAT). These include allegations of 24/7 organized stalking, non-consensual for-profit human experimentation on people entered on terrorism watchlists by weapons manufacturers and others in Big Tech(remote neuromonitoring), militarized attacks on civilians(usually watchlisted) with directed energy weapons, manufactured terrorism cases, etc. These are serious human rights violations that can only come to light through proper oversight. It also bears pointing out that similar egregious abuses have in the past been attributed to our intel agencies, a recent good example being the non-consensual experimentation on U.S. civilians using radiation. President Clinton in 1995, did the just and moral thing by not only exposing this inhumane conduct, but also making whole the surviving victims. The same can be done today.

Bottom line folks, Rep Ocasio-Cortez deserves a lot of praise for pushing for reform on a topic most politicians, and quite frankly the mainstream media, have been terrified to venture into. One only hopes that she musters the courage to push on with it, despite the recent setback on the House floor. Simply put, time has come for our intel agencies to be subjected to some real oversight.

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