FSP: FBI Sent Bait for Hate to Haití Não É Aqui

Exit polls show Chávez referendum victory. But Chávez had already conceded quote your shitty little victory end-quote by then. O Globo was worse: CHÁVEZ WON BY CHEATING! (Hugo lost.)

The Bergen Record newspaper in New Jersey reviewed Mr. Turner’s court documents and found the FBI had admonished Mr. Turner in July 2007 for his rhetoric and “the potential of it inciting acts of violence” but continued to use him. The FBI also paid Mr. Turner to meet with a wealthy, white supremacist in Brazil.

An item today from the Sunday Folha de S. Paulo tends to reinforce the deep prejudice of every New Yorker: that New Jersey is a mobbed-up banana republic — run out of the Bing of Tony Soprano and Co. –where we are frightened to set foot. (I have ridden PATH exactly twice in 13 years.)

The item also reflects on the quality of journalism at the often-ridiculed FSP.

The local fishwrap presents information that is readily available in the public domain as <based on secret sources>.

Eu, hein? (Roughly, <pull the other one.>

This story was broken by 419 news sources (Google News results) on November 30, 2009. Two weeks ago.

And the FSP is regurgitating it as a red-hot scoop involving investigative reporting of the most romantic kind.

Eu, hein? (Roughly, <there is one born every minute>.

O FBI, a polícia federal norte-americana, ajudou a bancar a ida ao Brasil de um radialista e blogueiro radical de extrema direita de Nova Jersey como isca para atrair e identificar grupos extremistas brasileiros contrários aos Estados Unidos, de acordo com pessoas que tiveram acesso a documentos do governo norte-americano.

The FBI … helped bankroll a visit to Brazil of a white-supremacist radio personality and blogger from New Jersey as bait designed to attract and identify Brazilian extremist groups who oppose the U.S., according to persons who had access to U.S. government documents.

According to the dozens of other journalists — I can make a list of their bylines if you like — who covered the trial of this FBI informant code-named <Valhalla> and requested copies from the court clerk. (I bet you can even download them from the Internet for a minimal fee to cover court expenses.)

Harold “Hal” Turner, 47, viajou a Curitiba, no Paraná, em 2005, onde se apresentou como líder da National Alliance, um dos maiores grupos de supremacistas brancos dos EUA. Ali, se encontrou com um simpatizante brasileiro, com quem teria discutido doação de US$ 1 milhão à causa americana, e com um representante da Sociedade Árabe Brasileira.

Hal Turner, 47, traveled to Curitiba, Paraná, in 2005, where he represented himself as leader of the National Alliance, one of the largest white-supremacist groups in the U.S. There, he met with a Brazilian sympathizer, with whom he allegedly discussed a US1$ million donation to the cause, as well as a representative of the Brazilian-Arab Society.

There are Syrio-Lebanese restaurants in this town to absolutely die for.

Former mayor Paulo (rouba mas faz!) Maluf is a dual Brazilian-Lebanese citizen.

And so on. I am always amused by those who wonder why Brazil thinks it has a stake in the Middle East peace process. It has huge Jewish and Arab populations. The first synagogue in the New World was built here.

De acordo com tais documentos, Turner e o representante árabe discutiram um plano para mandar US$ 10 milhões em ajuda não militar para membros da resistência iraquiana anti-EUA.

According to said documents, Turner and the Arab representative discussed a plan to send US$10 million in military aid to members of the Iraq anti-U.S. resistance.

Segundo relatou à Folha uma fonte familiarizada com o caso, o representante teria dito a Turner que ajudaria a “fazer qualquer coisa que possa sabotar os EUA”.

As a source familiar with the case told the Folha, the Arab representative supposedly told Turner he would help to <do anything that might undermine the U.S.>

<As an anonymous source said … supposedly>. Two locutions that do not belong in the same sentence in worthwhile reporting. It seems to imply you ran the factoid without factoid-checking it with other sources.

Also, this was in the testimony given in open court.

Transcripts freely available.

A reportagem apurou que o representante a que se referem os documentos é o sírio naturalizado brasileiro Mouthi Ibrahim, presidente da Sociedade Árabe Brasileira.

The Folha discovered that the representative referred to in the documents was naturalized Brazilian citizen of Syrian origin Mouthi Ibrahim, president of the SAB.

Procurado pelo jornal em Curitiba, ele confirma o encontro, mas contesta veementemente seu teor. De acordo com Ibrahim, Turner lhe disse apenas que queria estabelecer uma filial da National Alliance no Brasil e que buscava o apoio da comunidade árabe local. O brasileiro disse não ter concordado com ele porque as ideias do norte-americano eram muito racistas.

Sought for comment by the Folha in Curitiba, he confirms the meeting but vehemently denies the reports of its content. According to Ibrahim, Turner said merely that he wanted to establish a branch of the National Alliance in Brazil and was looking for support from the local Arab community. The Brazilian said he did not agree with the ideas of the American because they were highly racist.

The hush-hush nature of the sourcing in this report in unbearably stupid and unnecessary, by the way.

Why? Because these facts were testified to in open court a week or so ago and reported widely in the local, regional and national press.

Hatewatch, for example (of the Southern Poverty Law Center), on December 2, 2009:

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — With the FBI paying for his plane ticket, white supremacist Hal Turner flew to Brazil on behalf of the National Alliance because a Brazilian had offered to donate money to the neo-Nazi group, a government witness testified today.

As the government began presenting its case during the second day of Turner’s trial, testimony from several FBI agents provided a glimpse into Turner’s former role as a confidential informant known as “Valhalla.” The blogger and Internet radio host is charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges in Chicago.

Motivated partly by money, Turner provided intelligence on leaders of prominent white supremacist groups, including the National Alliance and Aryan Nations, according to Special Agent Amy Pickett, who supervised the FBI agent handling Turner during Turner’s first two years as an informant. In one instance, his reports led to the arrest and conviction of an Aryan Nations leader, she said. “His information was always valid and true; he gave very good information,” Pickett said. She did not elaborate on Turner’s excursion to Brazil in early 2005. But according to FBI documents filed in federal court, the trip allowed Turner to identify 12 people of interest to the FBI, including an Arab who talked about doing business with Turner in order to provide supplies to Iraqi insurgents.

Pickett testified that Turner was instructed — both on his first day as an informant and yearly thereafter — that he would not receive immunity from investigation, arrest or prosecution. Turner was not authorized to take part in criminal activity and was warned against doing so, she said. Striking at the heart of the defense’s argument, she said the FBI never asked Turner to engage in violent rhetoric against public officials.

Despite his purported value as an informant, Turner had an on-again, off-again relationship with the FBI. After the February 2005 murder of federal judge Joan Lefkow’s mother and husband at the judge’s home in Chicago, Turner took credit for inciting someone to kill her family and suggested that three other judges could be next. (As it turned out, the slayings were not connected to white supremacy.) When his handler asked Turner to remove a request for the home information of the three judges from his blog, Turner wrote a letter of resignation to the FBI, saying the bureau was using its relationship with him to meddle with his website. His handlers ceased contact with him, but they were sure he’d be back. “We didn’t think he could go that long without being an informant for the FBI,” said Pickett. Sure enough, Turner contacted the bureau and resumed serving as an informant in May 2005.

Turner was also admonished after he linked his blog to the home address of the primary witness at the trial of neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale, who was accused of soliciting the murder of Lefkow during a copyright trial involving his group, the World Church of the Creator. The day of Hale’s 2004 conviction, rival white supremacist Bill White posted what he thought was the home address of Tony Evola, who had served as a confidential informant in the Hale case and subsequently testified as the key witness at Hale’s trial, according to testimony from FBI special agent Sara Lopez. Turner removed the link from his blog at the urging of his FBI handler. (White, who after these events went on to join the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, and later to start his own American National Socialist Workers Party, is to be tried next week on charges of making threats over the Internet in a case that is remarkably similar to Turner’s.)

Turner was cooperative when agents came to his home on June 24 to execute a search warrant — his wife even made coffee that she offered the visitors — and sat down at his dining room table to talk about the posts he’d made earlier that month saying the judges “deserve to be killed.” “He said he intended no harm to anyone,” FBI Special Agent Mark Wallschlaeger testified. “He said he understood he’d be culpable if anyone hurt the judges based on his blog.”

As prosecutors worked to show that the government did not sanction Turner’s hateful posts, a New Jersey mayor was demanding that the FBI reimburse his city $80,000 to cover the cost of police overtime and other expenses associated with Turner’s November 2005 rally in Kingston, N.Y. Mayor James Sottile told The Daily Freeman that he decided to make the request after reading that Turner was serving as an FBI informant when the rally took place. “I think the FBI needs to be held accountable,” Sottile said. The FBI said it had not yet received the request.

The government will continue presenting evidence tomorrow.

A mistrial was declared in the prosecution of Turner on December 7, 2009.