Journalist Risen: 'Mercenary Class' Now Permanent Fixture in National Security State

[Octafish]

36. Department of Homeland Security Brands ThisCantBeHappening! a ‘Threat’

Disturbing News, but Our Proudest Moment

by DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch, JUNE 09, 2014

ThisCantBeHappening! has just learned that our little news organization was listed, in an alert fired off to all 78 Fusion Centers by Kelly Wilson, Director of the Washington DC Fusion Center’s Regional Threat and Assessment Center, as a potential threat.

The stated role of the Fusion Centers, which were created (and lavishly funded) in the wake of 9-11, was to link federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in order to better detect and combat terrorists inside the US. So what about this threat posed by ThisCantBeHappening!, though? Well, as Threat Assessment Director Wilson explains in her alert, the threat is that TCBH! published an article suggesting that the Fusion Centers played a central role in orchestrating the attacks on Occupy Movement actions in cities all across the US.

As she states in her alert:

“Although at this time these reference to fusion centers and Occupy seems (sic) to be compartmentalized I wanted to make you aware of these references in case the national news media begins (sic) speculating about fusion center involvement.”

Wilson includes in her alert a headline and several key paragraphs from our Nov. 15, 2011 article (which was later proven by us and others to be totally accurate), as well as a link to our entire article on those connections. The selected quotation she chose read as follows:

Police State Tactics: Signs Point to a Coordinated National Program to Try and Unoccupy Wall Street and Other Cities

“…Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 25, (Oakland Mayor Jean) Quan authorized the first brutal police assault on Occupy Oakland. It led, among other things, to the critical wounding of Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran who was among the protesters, and was hit in the forehead by a police tear gas canister fired at close range.

“Who organized that critical conference call (among 18 mayors)? Was it Quan or one of the other mayors, or was it someone in the federal government? (Oakland attorney Dan) Siegel says he doesn’t know, and Quan isn’t saying.

“But both Siegel and (National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi) Boghosian say they strongly suspect federal involvement in the planning of the recent spate of police violence against the occupiers. Says Siegel (who resigned in disgust from his post as an advisor to Quan following the brutal OPD assault on Occupy Oakland), ‘It’s only logical to assume that the Fusion Centers are involved, (Wilson’s emphasis) especially after the Oakland occupiers shutdown of the port in Oakland…’”

Homeland Security Fusion Center alert sent to all Fusion Centers by DC Office of Threat Assessment concerning ThisCantBeHappening! Homeland Security Fusion Center alert sent to all Fusion Centers by DC Office of Threat Assessment concerning ThisCantBeHappening! (click on image to go to original image at the Partnership for Civil Justice, which obtained the memo through the Freedom of Information Act)

We can see then that the exposing of a federal role in the brutal crushing of the peaceful and Constitutionally-protected Occupy Movement nationally, or even suggesting such a thing, in today’s America, is now considered to be a “threat” by the Department of Homeland Security and its Fusion Centers — both organizations that were specifically created not to monitor the media but to root out and “defend” the country from terrorism. The threat in our case is not that we are planning a bombing or some other kind of mayhem. Rather, what alarms the DHS and the “threat assessors” in the Fusion Centers is that ThisCantBeHappening!’s investigative reporting might eventually lead to the news about the Fusion Centers’ role in crushing Occupy breaking out of the “compartmentalized” alternative media and into the national news media, which then might “begin speculating about fusion center involvement.” (It seems self-evident that if the Fusion Centers had not been involved in orchestrating the Occupy crackdown, they wouldn’t have been worried at all about some small alternative news outfit like ours, or even the mainstream media, “speculating” about such a role, ergo this fear of exposure amounts to a full admission that the DHS and its Fusion Centers stand guilty as charged.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/09/disturbing-news-but-our-proudest-moment/

Thank you for the heads-up on the Lindorff interview, nationalize the fed. I will listen later today. The guy is an enemy of the state for telling the truth about the state. What that makes us for knowing that should concern not only DU, but ALL Americans.