Secret Service Investigating Birther Threat
Harry Hope
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/secret-service-targeting-birthers
Thu Jan. 7, 2010
Is the Secret Service Targeting the Birthers?
Why agents investigating threats to the president have been paying
visits to the right-wing activists questioning his citizenship.
� By Stephanie Mencimer
Over the past year, Secret Service agents charged with protecting
President Obama seem to have taken a keen interest in the Birther
movement, http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/meet-birthers the
committed group of anti-Obama activists around the country who claim
the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and is thus ineligible to
serve.
The idea has been widely and repeatedly debunked (see FactCheck.org's
thorough takedown here),
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html but that
hasn't stopped Birthers from doggedly making their case in American
courtrooms, to US attorneys, and even to a rural county grand jury, in
the hopes that a judge will rule in their favor and Obama might
eventually be removed from office.
Those efforts have failed spectacularly, but they seem to have
succeeded in placing the Birthers on the radar of the Secret Service.
At least a half-dozen prominent anti-Obama activists who've petitioned
various federal agencies or courts to investigate the president's
citizenship or publicly questioned his eligibility to serve say
they've been visited by Secret Service or Homeland Security agents.
Dr. Orly Taitz, the "Queen Bee" of the Birther movement, says, "A
number of my supporters had visits from Secret Service, from different
agencies, INS, Homeland Security.
There are a whole number of people who got these visits to intimidate
and harrass them."
She says federal agents visited her home once; however, she was not
there to be interviewed.
Of particular concern to the Secret Service, it seems, are the
individuals who are trying to interest federal prosecutors in bringing
criminal charges against the president for fraud and treason, a
movement spearheaded by a retired Navy lieutenant commander, Walter
Fitzpatrick III.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/walter-fitzpatrick-birther-treason-grand-jury-monroe-county
Last March, Fitzpatrick sent an "indictment" for treason to the US
attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, asking the prosecutors
to act on it.
Two days later, he noted on his blog, two Secret Service agents showed
up at his house along with a couple of local cops, to see what sort of
threat he might pose to the president.
"I'm still here," Fitzpatrick reported afterward.
http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-are-you-prepared-to-do.html
Fitzpatrick was contacted by the Secret Service again in July after he
sent his complaint to the US attorney in Washington, DC.
http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-are-you-prepared-to-do.html
Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick has encouraged others to take the indictment to
prosecutors around the country in the hopes that one will bite.
http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-file-indictment-presentment-or.html
Georgia computer-store owner Carl Swensson is a fan of Fitzpatrick's
and a member of the American Grand Jury movement, which seeks to hold
"citizen grand juries" that bring indictments against the president.
In an interview, he said that last spring, he took Fitzpatrick's
treason complaint to the US attorney for the Northern District of
Georgia.
Shortly afterward, two Secret Service agents showed up at his office.
http://americangrandjury.org/my-friend-and-patriot-carl-swensson-gets-a-visit-from-secret-service
"They said they had to make sure anyone who put forward this
information wasn't a physical threat to the president," says Swensson.
He says he engaged them in a polite debate about the 14th Amendment
and showed them "proof" that Obama's Hawaii birth certificate was a
fake.
He also said that he intended to keep bringing the treason charges to
federal prosecutors all around the country.
They left, and he hasn't heard from them since.
Swensson doesn't have any hard feelings about the visit, which did
little to dampen his enthusiasm for his project.
"They were doing their job. They were professional. They tried to
dissuade me from what I was doing, but I wasn't going to have anything
to do with that," he says.
Indeed, far from discouraging the Birther movement, the law
enforcement visits have become something of a badge of honor for
anti-Obama activists, an event proudly reported to supporters.
In November, Dale Laudenslager, another Fitzpatrick follower, who sent
his criminal complaint to the FBI, got a visit from a Secret Service
agent and some local cops shortly before Obama was supposed to appear
in nearby Allentown.
Laudenslager posted the name and phone number of the agent on
Fitzpatrick's website.
http://thejaghunter.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/mr-dale-laudenslager-this-just-in/
I called the number, which did indeed connect me to the Secret Service
special agent, who admitted that he "may have" visited Laudenslager.
In November, outspoken Birther Rev. James David Manning, a black
minister in Harlem, called for Obama to be "jailed, hung and shot,"
among other things, in one of his online video sermons urging Tea
Partiers to "go viral" with the birth certificate issue.
A few days later, he reported that the CIA and some NYC detectives had
come to talk with him, prompting Manning to release a new video
suggesting that his arrest for threatening the president was
"imminent."
(He has not been arrested.)
Stephen Pidgeon, a Washington state lawyer who brought one of the
first civil suits challenging Obama's eligibility to hold office, went
so far as to alert WorldNetDaily when he suspected that the Department
of Homeland Security, the Secret Service's parent agency, had him
under surveillance.
(He says he spotted black SUVs following him to work.)
The conservative website, which has been a major source of publicity
for the Birther movement (even buying billboards reading "Where's the
Birth Certificate?"),
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98589 immediately
posted a story http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92865
about Pidgeon's suspicions, helping to further fuel the perception
that the government has it in for anti-Obama activists.
The Secret Service won't comment on whether it has focused on the
Birthers or whether it has sent agents to talk to any members of that
movement.
But Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the agency, says the Secret Service
is not interested in the issue of the president's citizenship.
"Our mandate is to protect the president of the United States," he
said.
Wiley did lay out the generic criteria for what might prompt a Secret
Service inquiry.
Writing a letter doesn't necessarily qualify as making a threat.
But "an unusual direction of interest"�that is, an unhealthy obsession
with the president�might get the agency's attention.
By that measure, Birthers are an obvious red flag.
The real question, of course, is whether any of the Birthers might
actually be dangerous.
Many of the plaintiffs in the Birther lawsuits have been active or
former military people.
Orly Taitz reportedly recruited many of them at the Knob Creek Machine
Gun Shoot and military gun show, a semi-annual Kentucky event that's a
hotbed of right-wing and racist radicalism.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/06/obama-guns-ky/
And some of the Birthers' anti-Obama rhetoric can be pretty extreme.
Taitz has even suggested that "it might be time" to exercise "our
second amendment right to bear arms and organise in militias."
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/orly_taitz_seems_to_suggest_call_to_arms_against_o.php
Still, Jerrold Post thinks that the president probably doesn't have
much to fear from them.
A veteran of the CIA, Post is a psychiatrist who specializes in the
psychology of political violence.
He used to evaluate people who tried to break in to the White House to
see just how dangerous they might be.
He says the Birthers do seem to cling fast to the idea that the
president, for whatever reason, must be illegitimate.
But, he adds, "When they are channeling that into legal means like
litigation or threats of public exposure, one is less worried about
physical injury. Having said that, I think it's perfectly appropriate
for the Secret Service to be watchful."
_________________________________________________________
Developing.................................
Harry
Dänk 1010011010
> http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/secret-service-targeting-birt...
>
> Thu Jan. 7, 2010
>
> Is the Secret Service Targeting the Birthers?
>
> Why agents investigating threats to the president have been paying
> visits to the right-wing activists questioning his citizenship.
>
> — By Stephanie Mencimer
>
> Over the past year, Secret Service agents charged with protecting
> President Obama seem to have taken a keen interest in the Birther
> movement,http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/meet-birthersthe
> committed group of anti-Obama activists around the country who claim
> the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and is thus ineligible to
> serve.
>
> The idea has been widely and repeatedly debunked (see FactCheck.org's
> hasn't stopped Birthers from doggedly making their case in American
> courtrooms, to US attorneys, and even to a rural county grand jury, in
> the hopes that a judge will rule in their favor and Obama might
> eventually be removed from office.
>
> Developing.................................
>
> Harry
For a theory so obviously crackpot and so thoroughly debunked, Obama
and his army of leftarded disciples sure seem worried that people
might still believe it, and must resort to intimidation to silence
them.
Nothing ends political dissent quicker than a visit from the Secret
Service. It does not matter if no crime or threat has
occurred,because it scares the person who is visited and also causes
everyone to avoid him like the plague.
Russia had the KGB to silence dissent, while America has the Secret
Service. The tactics are exactly the same, the use of fear and
intimidation to shut people up.
Only a domestic terrorist would question the legitimacy of the
President and refuse to recognize his authority:
Sid9
"D�nk 1010011010" <dan...@rocketmail.com> wrote in message
news:ccc664b0-c3e3-4cfd...@j24g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 7, 10:44 am, Harry Hope <riv...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/secret-service-targeting-birt...
>>
>> Thu Jan. 7, 2010
>>
>> Is the Secret Service Targeting the Birthers?
>>
>> Why agents investigating threats to the president have been paying
>> visits to the right-wing activists questioning his citizenship.
>>
.
.
Simply reading some of the RRR posts here on these newsgroups proves there
is sufficient cause for Secret Service concern. Watching Teabaggers and
birthers in action on TV is another cause for concern.
We are a nation of law.
You are unpatriotic to smear the Americans who work for the Secret Service
with comparisons to the KGB
Christopher Helms
It's not "leftarded deciples" doing the investigating, it's the Secret
Service and Homeland Security. Since the average birther is a
delusional, flag waving nutball who six months ago was liable to show
up at an Obama speech wearing a fucking machine gun on his back
because Glenn Beck told him the president was Hitler, I think it's
perfectly reasonable to make sure that these heavily armed,
teabagging, sputtering moonbats know they are being watched.
Frito Pendejo
> It's not "leftarded deciples" doing the investigating, it's the Secret
> Service and Homeland Security. Since the average birther is a
> delusional, flag waving nutball who six months ago was liable to show
> up at an Obama speech wearing a fucking machine gun on his back
Imagine comparing the President to Hitler! How extremist!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3653/3644823884_5780daea31.jpg
And carrying a gun to a Tea Party rally! How racist!
"Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the
fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion
was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so
edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black."
Siobhan Medeiros
For fucks sake, there's people who think we never landed on the moon.
No matter how outlandish a theory, you'll always find someone out
there dumb enough to believe it.
And yeah, I fully believe some of those whackos would love to take a
shot at the President. Why the fuck else would you bring an assault
rifle to a speech?
> Nothing ends political dissent quicker than a visit from the Secret
> Service. It does not matter if no crime or threat has
> occurred
You're saying that "Obama should be hung and shot" doesn't constitute
a threat? Not a very bright boy, are you?
>,because it scares the person who is visited and also causes
> everyone to avoid him like the plague.
The world would be a better place if everybody avoided stupid people
like the plague.
>
> Russia had the KGB to silence dissent, while America has the Secret
> Service. The tactics are exactly the same, the use of fear and
> intimidation to shut people up.
>
Bullshit. If they had sent the KGB, every one of those people would
be in the ground or in a mental hospital somewhere for
"reeducation".
> Only a domestic terrorist would question the legitimacy of the
> President and refuse to recognize his authority:
>
> http://teenormous.com/t-shirts/Tees-For-All-Not-My-President-Bush-Fat...
Oh, so now you want the Secret Service to throw people in jail for
criticizing YOUR President. Hypocritical shitbag.
Siobhan Medeiros
> Christopher Helms wrote:
> > It's not "leftarded deciples" doing the investigating, it's the Secret
> > Service and Homeland Security. Since the average birther is a
> > delusional, flag waving nutball who six months ago was liable to show
> > up at an Obama speech wearing a fucking machine gun on his back
> > because Glenn Beck told him the president was Hitler...
>
> Imagine comparing the President to Hitler! How extremist!
>
> http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3653/3644823884_5780daea31.jpg
>
> And carrying a gun to a Tea Party rally! How racist!
>
>
> "Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the
> fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion
> was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so
> edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black."
Black or white, he was an asshole.
Christopher Helms
> Christopher Helms wrote:
> > It's not "leftarded deciples" doing the investigating, it's the Secret
> > Service and Homeland Security. Since the average birther is a
> > delusional, flag waving nutball who six months ago was liable to show
> > up at an Obama speech wearing a fucking machine gun on his back
> > because Glenn Beck told him the president was Hitler...
>
> Imagine comparing the President to Hitler! How extremist!
The Hitler references weren't coming from the highest ranks of the
Democratic power structure. No one on Air America called declared him
an enemy of America, told listeners where he would next be appearing
and then encouraged them to show up with their guns. You people did it
for weeks on end.