Watching The Watchmen
The Michigan kidnapping case is a major test for the Biden administration’s commitment to fighting domestic terrorism — and a crucible for the fierce ideological divisions pulling the country apart
In the inky darkness of a late summer night last September, three cars filled with armed men began circling Birch Lake in northern Michigan, looking for ways to approach Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s three-bedroom vacation cottage, subdue her — using a stun gun if necessary — and drag her away.
One vehicle stopped to check out a boat launch while a second searched in vain for the right house in the thick woods ringing the lake. The third car ran countersurveillance, using night vision goggles to look out for cops and handheld radios to communicate with the others.
Earlier, they had scoped out a bridge over the Elk River, just a few miles away, scrambling down under the span to figure out where plastic explosives would need to be placed to blow it sky-high. That would slow police response, giving the men time to escape with the governor — who had infuriated them by imposing COVID lockdowns, among other outrages — and either take her to Lake Michigan, where they could abandon her on a boat, or whisk her to Wisconsin, where she would be tried as a “tyrant.”
The men planned for all kinds of obstacles, but there was one they didn’t anticipate: The FBI had been listening in all along.
For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark.
An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.
A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come
The Iraq War vet, for his part, became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group that he rose to become its second-in-command, encouraging members to collaborate with other potential suspects and paying for their transportation to meetings.
So the FBI most likely instsgated and organized the attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer.
Makes you wonder how much the FBI was involved in causing the January 6th Capitol storming.
I’m reminded of a book I read on the FBI which said that at one point there were more undercover FBI and informants in the Klan than actual Klan members.
Clearly, since the government uses domestic terrorism to gain power, at least part of the job of the FBI is to create domestic terrorism to justify increasing government power.
Remember that their headquarters is still named after J. Edgar Hoover. That should tell you everything you need to know about the ethics culture at the FBI.
J. Edgar dabbled in politics to protect and increase the reputation and power of his precious FBI Agency. He was a scumbag.
Comey, Mueller, and Wray dabble in politics to make sure their personal political prejudices are implemented on the national level in Washington DC and many large states. They are bigger scumbags, and have surrounded themselves with similar power hungry scumbags.
They want to be America’s Praetorian Guard. They think they should determine our President, Vice President, Senators and Congresspeople for America. After all, they know better, and it is only for our own good. They think they should have the privileges of the Praetorian Guard.
I would like to be shocked at this news, but I’m unable. Sad. Very sad.
“Clearly, since the government uses domestic terrorism to gain power, at least part of the job of the FBI is to create domestic terrorism to justify increasing government power.”
This would seem to be obvious. But it’s quite amazing how much people ignore the obvious.
The standing, very good stance, is “The guy in the group trying to get you or the group to do something illegal or to say something that could be considered advocating for something illegal, is the FBI agent/informer”
Ruby Ridge was a huge example of this stuff. FBI and other federals tried to get Randy to do something illegal so they could force him to be an informer. He refused both. Finally he cut the barrel of a shot gun down. The barrel was LONGER than minimum. I.e. the shotgun was still not an NFA item. Sometime between when Randy worked on the shotgun and the shotgun showed up in court, some of the stock was removed to make the over all length short enough to make it an NFA item.
So the FBI/ATF and feds in general spent millions, killed innocents all because some tax wasn’t paid.
There was a group of real losers who were indicted by the FBI for plotting some sort of attack a number of years ago. Their logo and faces were splashed all across the news. These idiots couldn’t have organized their way out of a wet paper bag.
IIRC, the judge threw out the case because every single thing done ‘terrorist’ related, was set up by the FBI informant who joined the group.
I kinda suspected as much, but then I’ve spent enough time around Wobblies to be wary of any announcement that the Feds have thwarted a domestic terror plot.
I was also, early on, reminded of a Get Smart episode in which Max infiltrates a KAOS cell, only to find that it’s made up entirely of infiltrators from various intelligence services, all unbeknownst to one another.
After all that’s been said and done, I really wonder…
Are the fibbies responsible for *everything* gone wrong? As n, the entire organization from top to bottom is pretty much the reason we’re in our current state, and have always been?
Seems like they have their fingers in every pie in the bakery…
Maybe not everything, but close enough. And we should have expected this from an agency that is 100% unconstitutional. Given that everyone who works there violates the Constitution simply by walking through the door, what could possible go wrong, eh?
It’s a classic page from the the old Tsarist Okhrana playbook- state security pushes their own radicals to do something in order to discredit the moderates. But it’s also a page in the Big Book of Dumb Things Governments Do, because that’s who wound up taking over.
And note that the KGB did not go for this sort of nonsense. If they needed a radical plot to publicly foil, they just beat someone until they confessed to it.
Not always — consider the terrorists bombing of an apartment building in the early days of Putin, generally held to be committed by Putin’s minions on his orders. When there aren’t enough terrorists to go around, invent some.
To be fair, Putin is a throwback to the Tsars, despite his KGB background.
To be fair, if the old NKVD/ KGB needed a false flag operation, they’d just do it themselves, then arrest and beat someone until they confessed to it.
“who had infuriated them by imposing COVID lockdowns, among other outrages”
FBI shenanigans aside, that’s a real funny way of saying being really fucking pissed the governor was found to have violated the state constitution, then refused correct her violations and flaunted them