The Stratfor Leaks
Everyone has heard of the Wikileaks website. There is a treasure trove of information on that site about how Muslim organizations are viewed globally. A global intelligence company called “Stratfor” was one of the leaks published. In addition to the many three letter agencies that make up our intelligence community, there are also third party companies and some contractors that work on producing intelligence.
Fred Burton, who was at that time the VP of Stratfor, wrote the following in a email,
"I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel (NYPD’s Intelligence Division) has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out – it always eventually comes out. They are going to make [former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right felonious activity, and violations of US citizen’s rights they have been engaged in. “
Burton wrote that he got all of this information from a senior FBI official that taught him everything he knew. It’s important to note that when it comes to leaks and source information, these agencies are not monoliths. Many people at the FBI were not fans of what the NYPD Intelligence Division was doing. Some of them even took the intelligence products that were produced and threw them right into the trash. The FBI and NYPD Intelligence Division continued to clash over the years around several issues. There is more to say on that in a later post. One of the things, I find very amusing is that intelligence assets from these agencies would sometimes unknowingly be pitted against one another.
“Regarding this turf war, Burton wrote the following, here are two issues with this case (off the record of course). One is the source (confidential informant) was a nightmare and was completely driving the investigation. The only money, planning, materials etc the bad guy got was from … the source. The source was such a maron [sic], he smoked dope with the bad guy while wearing an NYPD body recorder – I heard in open source [sic] yesterday btw [by the way], he is going to be charged with drug possession based on the tape. Ought to go over very nicely when he testifies against the bad guy, don’t you think?
Issue two is that the real rub is between NYPD Intel, [Intelligence Division] and NYPD – JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force], not the FBI per se. The NYPD JTTF guys are in total sync with the Bureau and the rest of the partners who make up the JTTF – I understand there are something like 100 NYPD dics [detectives] assigned to the JTTF. NYPD Intel (Cohen, et al) on the other hand, are completely running their own pass patterns. They hate their brother NYPD dics on the JTTF and are trying to undermine them at every turn. They are also listening to [former CIA official David] Cohen [the head of NYPD’s Intelligence Division] who, near as anybody can tell, never had to make a criminal case or testify in court.”
The JTTF is not subject to Handschu guidelines. I don’t believe contractors are subject to Handschu guidelines either. I found the following quote pretty funny because I can’t imagine sitting through a cricket game either. But there are some people that had to do this to keep this country safe.
”Assuming this is real, it's pretty hard for NYPD to deny that they were
targetting based on ethnicity. (one downside to NYPD job--- having to sit through a game of cricket, and possibly not being able to drink while doing so.)”
Statfor is still around to this day. It’s one of the biggest intelligence companies to apply for. Many former NYPD Intelligence Officials retired into the private “risk management” industry. When you see the words “risk management” going forward on someone’s LinkedIn profile it could have another meaning.
