Agencies Failing to Protect Agents and Operatives From Physical and Legal Threats

Have you ever risked your life to benefit your employer or the greater good? Intelligence field operatives, military personnel, and law enforcement do so on a daily basis, with little expectation of reward or recognition. Is it unreasonable for personnel who have worked undercover to expect their employers to do everything possible to protect them when foreign operatives or betrayed criminals issue death threats and cash bounties to kill the employee? There is a marked difference between feeling under appreciated and feeling completely abandoned and in constant fear for one’s life. Although the risk of revenge or reprisal from infiltrated governments or criminal organizations is known to undercover operatives or agents before they undertake an assignment, they still reasonably expect their employer to make every effort to protect them once the operation is completed and cover is exposed.

Consider the case of Jay Dobyns. A former football player at the University of Arizona, Dobyns joined the ATF and became an undercover agent . During his first operation in 1987 he was shot in the back by a suspect. The round came within inches of his heart. He recovered and was transferred to Chicago, where he was struck by a vehicle driven by a suspect firing on him with an automatic weapon. He later infiltrated the Calabrese organized crime family and the Hells Angels. Dobyns incredibly faked a murder to be accepted into the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels and Aryan Brotherhood have offered cash contracts to hit men to find and kill the former Arizona receiver. One would assume that an employee who has demonstrated such remarkable courage and effectiveness would be sufficiently valued by an employer to offer him witness protection or similar security measures. Dobyns certainly made that assumption and now faces the reality that protecting its own is apparently not a high priority despite official statements to the contrary.

In a liaison capacity a few years ago, I represented an unnamed government agency at an awards ceremony. The main attraction at that event was Jay Dobyns, who was presented the Law Enforcement Officer of the Year award. While sitting in that large banquet hall listening to harrowing descriptions of Dobyns’ 2 year undercover infiltration of the Hells Angels gang, I was amazed that he had survived the experience and frankly more amazed he was being trotted around the country like a show pony by his agency despite death threats and contracts being offered in prisons nationwide for his murder. It did not appear then, and it appears even less so now, that his employer has any interest in protecting Dobyns, who sacrificed his identity, his family, and any semblance of a normal life for 2 years to effect more than 40 arrests of Hells Angels’ leadership structure.

Dobyns, harboring little hope that the ATF will take action to protect him and his family, now feels forced into bringing attention to his plight through the media, which he hopes will result in public pressure being applied to the ATF to protect him and others in similar danger. This media effort places him at even greater risk as his current appearance is shown on web sites and cable news channels, but Dobyns apparently sees no alternative. In an effort to raise awareness, Dobyns granted an extensive interview to CNN, in which he warned that there are many other agents and officers who have worked undercover for various agencies and were similarly abandoned once they returned to civilian life. All of them had something in common: They faced credible threats of reprisals from those whom they had infiltrated.

After warning the ATF of the death threats and murder contracts, Dobyns was surprised and angered by the ATF’s reaction. According to the CNN report:

In response, Dobyns says, the ATF gave him a routine transfer with no special protection, despite his repeated protests. The ATF could have moved Dobyns and his family under what is known as a "threat policy" -- similar to the kind of protection the government routinely gives witnesses in organized crime cases.

But federal agents who go undercover don't automatically get a high level of protection, according to Dobyns and other ATF agents CNN interviewed.

"In order to save money, I was told it wasn't cost effective," Dobyns says.

Dobyns says he has moved himself and his family several times to elude those who've threatened to kill him. He has filed a claim with the ATF for the emotional stress and financial burden he says he's had to bear as a result.

The acting director of the ATF notified CNN that Dobyns’ grievance claim is under review, which to anyone with government experience signifies that no immediate remedy is being sought by the ATF to protect Dobyns until the outcome of this grievance review is determined.

The report also included the results of interviews with a dozen other former undercover ATF agents who have filed claims similar to Dobyns’. The official ATF response to CNN asserted, “"[T]here is nothing more important to ATF and to me than the safety and protection of our employees and their families. We at ATF understand that we have a solemn responsibility to protect the people whom we charge to investigate and arrest the country's most violent criminals."

The ATF statement was refuted in a CNN interview with a prominent former trainer of undercover agents:

Charlie Fuller is a 23-year retired veteran ATF special agent and a former top trainer of undercover agents, who wrote a manual on undercover work, "The Art of Undercover." He trained Dobyns and many other top ATF undercover agents.

"What happened to Dobyns is not an isolated incident," said Fuller. In many cases, he said, managers don't thoroughly understand the complexity of the undercover work or how to best work with and manage the agents once they're back in the real world.

He said agents are seen as troublemakers or retaliated against if they raise complaints or report problems.

"Threats like what Dobyns faced -- this is the most serious thing an ATF agent can face -- the threats against his family," said Fuller. "How could they ignore something like that?"

Hopefully Dobyns and others facing similar threats can continue to elude death at the hands of enemies they made while in service of the ATF long enough to receive that review decision.

Other agencies within the intelligence and law enforcement communities are likewise guilty of failing to adequately protect valued employees who have lost all possibility of anonymity or quiet family life due to their undercover assignments. The problem of abandonment or insufficient protection is not solely an ATF issue. Employers demonstrating loyalty to employees seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The plight of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean may be an example of this, as new reports have now surfaced that government reports provided to prosecutors contained false information, according to an Inspector General. These reports refute testimony used to convict the two agents in the shooting of a fleeing armed Mexican drug smuggler transporting hundreds of pounds of narcotics into the U.S. The Mexican smuggler, although in the U.S. illegally, filed a lawsuit for damages against the two agents. Additionally, prosecutors convinced the jury that the agents failed to report the incident to supervisors in an effort to cover up their actions, when recently released documents reveal that Agent Compean did in fact report the incident to his supervisor.

While some facts of that case remain in dispute, one fact is all too clear: the U.S. Government, specifically the Border Patrol and its parent department, failed to provide exculpatory evidence that might have protected its employees from a controversial and polarizing prosecution. What motivated that action should be the focus of media and Congressional inquiries. The motivation for the ATF to abandon Dobyns and others should receive similar scrutiny and condemnation. When government fails to protect those who sacrifice their identity and family security in its service, it discourages potential recruits and embitters dedicated personnel who deserved better.

American Muslims Rising in Defense of '24' but Offer No Rival to CAIR

Spy the News! makes a conscious effort to avoid commenting on celebrity news, as in fact I do not consider celebrity behavior to be news. There are more critical matters worthy of reading time and attention than what individual entertainers do or what they think about politics. However, Hollywood's influence on American culture is considerable and thus Hollywood as an institution must be criticized when it distorts truth or attempts to sanitize truth in the name of political correctness. It should also be praised when it bucks the trend of political correctness and presents story lines that unite Americans in a common cause rather than divide us by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or economic status. The Fox program "24" is stirring controversy for its portrayal of terrorists as Arab Muslim terrorists, but it is simultaneously receiving increasing praise for precisely the same reason.

I admit that a few seasons ago I stopped watching the program, mainly due to plots involving wildly exaggerated internal U.S. Government conspiracies in which the main character, Jack Bauer, appeared to be in more danger from our government than from terrorists. It seemed then (and continues to) that Jack's only hope of thwarting terrorists and saving the world was to work completely outside of all government strategy and existing tactics and he spent an inordinate amount of time protecting himself from elements within the U.S. Government bent on murdering him. Fortunately somewhere along the way it appears the producers of "24" have returned to the plots and realities that made the show unique and compelling in its earlier years. The plots once again involve Islamic terrorists working zealously to kill as many Americans as possible through bombings and other attacks, to include a spectacular detonation of a terrorist nuclear device in Los Angeles in this season's plot line.

That depiction of Los Angeles under a mushroom cloud has generated loud objections from CAIR, an organization that wields far too much influence over Islamic sensitivity training programs inexplicably embraced by U.S. Government departments and agencies. CAIR claims that portrayals of terrorists as Muslim will incite violence against Arab-Americans and contributes to stereotypes of all Muslims as terrorists. Of course reality justifies America's fear of Islamic terrorism, but CAIR is not concerned with reality as it sits on the government's shoulder and whispers sweet nothings about Islam into Uncle Sam's ear.

Regular Spy the News! readers routinely scroll the left column for daily news headlines and notable columns, and hopefully followed the link to the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal today, which contained a piece written by Arab-American Emilio Kareem Dabul. In this article, "In Defense of '24'" Dabul expresses what Americans hope is a growing sentiment among Arab-Americans. Particularly welcome was the following statement:

"In the meantime, the next time a journalist decides to report on Arab-American concerns about shows like "24," maybe he could actually talk to someone other than CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and seek out Arab-Americans with a different point of view. We actually do exist."

In a similar but even more blunt assessment of what Arab-Americans should be doing to fight terrorism within their own religion, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, contributed a wonderful articleto National Review Online last week. Jasser defended the plot line of "24" and declared that Muslims need to unite and defeat the true enemy, which he explicitly identified as Islamism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, made the following call to arms to fellow American Muslims:

"It’s time for hundreds of thousands of Muslims to be not only private but public in their outrage — and to commit themselves to specific, verbal engagement of the militants and their Islamism. We, as American Muslims, should be training and encouraging our Muslim-community youth to become the future Jack Bauers of America. What better way to dispel stereotypes than to create hundreds of new, real images of Muslims who are publicly leading this war on the battlefield and in the domestic and foreign media against the militant Islamists. Condemnations by press release and vague fatwas are not enough. We need to create organizations — high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks — which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America. If Muslim organizations and the American Muslim leadership were seen publicly as creating a national, generational plan to fight Islamism — rather than searching for reasons to claim victimhood — then the issues and complaints surrounding such TV shows would disappear. The way to fight the realities of 24 is to create a Muslim CTU, a deep Muslim counterterrorism ideology and a national action plan for our security."[emphasis added]

As one who has suffered through CAIR Muslim sensitivity training, I echo Jasser's recommendations and encourage Arab-Americans to establish an organization that, unlike CAIR, has no ties to known terrorists and that promotes Muslim cooperation with terrorist investigations conducted to preserve national security. What troubles many within the intelligence/national security community is the absence of any Arab-American organization to rival CAIR. Occasionally brave dissenters like Dabul and Jasser raise their voices to reassure Americans that our neighbors are not terrorists, but compared to the orchestrated and well-funded machinations of CAIR, such reassurances have only minimal effect on public perception. It is frequently stated that Islamic terrorism can only be eliminated through reform within Islam itself. Well-intentioned reassurances, regardless of frequency, are not reform. Jasser's call for a Muslim CTU is intriguing but currently problematic due to the embarrassingly small number of Arab-Americans and Arabic translators serving within intelligence, law enforcement, and military agencies.

Spy the News! applauds the producers of "24" for not cowering before CAIR. If a War on Terror will ever succeed, it will do so only when enemies are clearly identified, isolated so as to eliminate their ability to recruit, and destroyed. For this to occur, the faithful and courageous assistance of Muslims throughout the world will be necessary. Do they share Dabul and Jasser's desire to reform Islam? That is the question on which the War on Terror hinges.

Speaker Pelosi's Slight of Presidential Protocol Worse than "ic" Error by President: Wants to Strip President of War Powers

Comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi illustrated all too clearly that Democratic animosity toward President Bush trumps Democratic commitment to fighting terrorism and keeping the world safe from nuclear arms proliferation. Speaking to a gathering of Democratic members of the House of Representatives in Williamsburg, VA on Saturday, Pelosi menacingly stated to her colleagues, “if it appears likely that Bush wants to take the country to war against Iran, the House would take up a bill to deny him the authority to do so.”

From a national security perspective, this sentiment, coming as it did from someone third in the line of presidential succession, is significant. Note that Pelosi did not qualify her remarks with any caveats such as whether Congress should authorize war against Iran if Iran attacked another nation, such as Israel, or if an Iranian-produced nuclear device were detonated in an American or allied city, or even if Iran continues to refuse to halt its nuclear weapons program. Pelosi likewise did not make an exception for a scenario in which Iran, seeing Congress’s spineless debates over meaningless “resolutions” on the Iraq War, decided the time was right to invade Iraq and seize its considerable natural resources and slaughter Sunni’s without restraint or mercy.

Based on Pelosi’s statement, none of these provocations, any of which would pose clear and present dangers to global security, would be sufficient for this Democratic Congress to approve military action against Iran and support the Commander in Chief, entirely because he is George W. Bush. For Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues the fundamental threat to America is not Iran, or North Korea, or even Islamic terrorists. Rather than working to deny terrorists of their funding, weaponry, and safe shelter from sponsoring states, the current Congress is more interested in working to deny the President the authority to wage war with Iran regardless of Iran’s actions. Note her choice of words, “deny him the authority” (emphasis added). Congress is not interested in proposing a bill to deny ALL presidents the authority to wage war against Iran, only THIS president.

If a Democrat, Hillary Clinton perhaps, is elected president in 2008, and Iran successfully tests a nuclear weapon and then acts militarily against Israel or the U.S., would the Democratic president respond with war on Iran? Or would Speaker Pelosi’s Congress “deny him [or her] the authority to do so”? Democrats cannot have it both ways. Either Iran is a threat or it is not, and to rule out military action against Iran even before it becomes a necessity is irresponsible and demonstrates a poor grasp of national security policies.

Analyzing Pelosi’s comments further reveals much about the Speaker’s emotions and personal disdain for the President. Courtesy protocol within the U.S. Government, and indeed American culture as a whole, once required the proper name and/or title for the person elected to serve as President, regardless of party. Even in the rancorous Congressional debates immediately prior to the Civil War, Congressmen and Senators referred to the President as “Mr. President” or “President (fill in the blank).” Speaker Pelosi rarely uses the appropriate titles for a sitting president, instead choosing to express her anti-Bush sentiment by generally refusing to acknowledge he is the President, constantly leaving out the title altogether.

The Democratic Party recently threw quite a tantrum in the media when President Bush referred to it as the “Democrat” rather than the “Democratic” Party. The President explained that he simply forgot to include the “ic” suffix and apologized, but that hardly pacified the Democrats, who displayed a remarkable sensitivity to the expected protocol of appropriate titles. For Democrats to constantly refer to the President as simply “Bush” or “Mr. Bush” demonstrates an intentional and personal disrespect for the President, who has the historical expectation of being called “Mr. President,” “Sir,” or “President Bush.” News articles and broadcasts, conservative and liberal, have embraced the stripping of titles in the interest of brevity.

Respect for the office of President has declined in the U.S. and the world to the point that few are impressed anymore by the title “President of the United States,” when not long ago it was the most imposing and respected position in the world to friend and foe alike. The loss of respect for the office is not a product of President Bush’s perceived shortcomings, but rather arose prominently during the Vietnam War and unfortunately continues to this day.

Having witnessed the unseemly behaviors of a former president and the social circles he kept, I understand how loss of respect for the man serving as president occurs. Not all presidents are role models in their private lives. However, even when observing such behavior, to me he was still “Mr. President” or “Sir” and he represented the U.S. to the world. Our presidents must project to the world the image of collective support of the American people, particularly in times of war or crisis. There was nearly unanimous support for war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 based on the available intelligence, yet when the war became more difficult than expected blaming the President became a political opportunity for his personal opponents in both parties.

Despite the patently false accusation, anti-war activists eagerly spread the concept “Bush lied people died.” Where are the chants, “Clinton lied people died”? After all, while in office former President Clinton declared Saddam Hussein a grave threat to the world and pointed out that while others may possess WMD, Hussein had actually used them on Iranians and Kurds (read Clinton’s announcement of strikes in Iraq in 1998 and his justification for them here). Senator Clinton echoed similar assessments of Hussein when she voted to support the war in Iraq.

Democrats do not accuse the Clintons of lying, defending them instead as victims of faulty intelligence. They reserve the liar label for President Bush, who used the same intelligence to justify the removal of Saddam. Al Gore screamed, “He [Bush] betrayed out country. He played on our fears,” despite Gore’s support of the decision to strike Iraq in 1998 for the same reasons Bush cited for war. The effort to portray President Bush as a deceiver and warmonger has influenced international opinion and discredited the office of president itself, a weakening that Democrats will wish they had not encouraged if/when they hold that office and need to wield power to protect the nation.

When 2005 brought the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it was the President’s fault that neither the mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of Louisiana took any action to use local resources to relocate and care for their citizens who chose not to listen to FEMA and NWS warnings to evacuate. Democrats instead encouraged storm victims, particularly African-Americans who lost everything to Katrina, to blame the President and accuse him of not wanting to help black people. Was the African-American mayor accused of this when he failed to utilize hundreds of available local school buses to evacuate the city? No, it was still the President’s fault.

We are failing as a nation to project a strong image to the world during a period of war and crisis (terrorism) and our enemies, terror groups as well as nation states, are well aware of our divisions and personal animosities. Until the American electorate chooses otherwise, President Bush is the President of the United States and should be treated as such by Congress, particularly in public appearances and in front of the controversy-hungry media. The Speaker of the House and her party should not be cementing plans to deny the President of any authority that one day may prove essential to national security simply because they personally dislike the man and covet the office.

Technorati Search Tags: Al Gore Presidential Protocol Presidential Authority Islamic Terrorists Nancy Pelosi Bush Administration Civil War Iranian nuclear program National Security Hillary Clinton Bill Clinton Iraq War Global War On Terror

DNC Led in Prayer for Global Conversion to Islam: Ignorance of Islamic Terminology Rampant in Washington

On Saturday, World Net Daily reported that at Friday’s Democratic National Committee (DNC) winter meeting, attendees bowed their heads and were led in prayer by a popular Michigan religious leader. The party usually associated with ACLU positions on prayer religion’s role in public life, appeared in its winter meeting to be eager to show its reverence for religious practice. On the surface this would appear to be a welcome change for the DNC, but when it comes to the DNC and its quest to cast itself as mainstream America, nothing is as it seems. As the DNC bowed and listened to a prayer seemingly for peace, brotherhood, and an end to global strife, what was actually prayed for by the religious leader went completely unrecognized and unchallenged by DNC members.

In a remarkable, but sadly not uncommon (Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Chairman House Intelligence Committee unaware of whether Al Qaeda was Sunni or Shiite), display of Washington’s chronic cultural ignorance of Islamic culture and symbolism, DNC members prayed for their own conversion to Islam, liberation of the world from religions other than Islam, the end of American and Israeli “occupations” in the Middle East, and the destruction of Israel. More troubling is that none of them appear to have realized they had done so.

The meaning of the prayer, spoken in English by Husham Al-Husainy, Shiite imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan, was clearly understood by those with knowledge of Islamic symbolism, but not by any DNC members, many of whom already hold or aspire to occupy the most sensitive policy making positions within the US Government. Senators, Congressman, presidential aspirants, and key staffers, the power-wielders in the party now controlling Congress suffer from a deplorable ignorance of traditional, let alone radical Islam. Lest Republicans gloat about their rival colleagues’ shortcomings, a similar ignorance of Islam exists in that party as well, though displayed less transparently than Rep. Reyes and the DNC have illustrated.

Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch, reviewed a transcript of the prayer and provided a concise explanation of terms as they relate to Islamic culture, history, and teachings from the Quran. The prayer was delivered as follows:

“In the name of God the most merciful, the most compassionate. We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation. We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us God to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Ameen.”

Spencer pointed out that in Islam, the term “straight path” refers to Islamic Sharia, the body of Islamic law that governs politics, economics, behaviors and all other aspects of life under Islamic rule. All other paths, or governmental forms, are errant and must be corrected. Likewise, the phrase “the path of the people you bless” refers to peoples living under Sharia law. All other religions or nations not under Sharia rule are doomed.

It is significant that the next sentence importunes God to “liberate and fill the earth with justice”. Liberate whom, and what form would justice take? “Liberation” in Islamic terminology denotes conversion of all nations to Islam, or liberation from errant religions, and “justice” equates to Sharia, the Islamic code of laws Muslims would implement after “liberating” nations oppressed by other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity.

Imam Al-Husainy concluded with the obligatory reference to Israel, calling for an end to the Israeli state and its presence on (occupation of) disputed Arab land, as well as and end to the US “occupation” of Iraq. To embrace a prayer with such references and wishes is ironically stunning for the DNC, which is supported with fierce (though clearly misguided) loyalty by American Jews. Donating to campaigns of candidates from a party that invites clerics to pray for global conversion to Islam is, one would reasonably conclude, not in the interest of members of any other religion or no religion at all. Under Sharia there is no special consideration or immunity granted to atheists, agnostics, or naturalists. ACLU secular crusaders would face beheading for attempting to separate Church and State under Sharia law.

That the DNC sought to demonstrate its conveniently new effort to appear religious by inviting an imam to pray is not objectionable. That the DNC did not recognize or have courage to criticize the content of the prayer should stir outrage among all Americans of either party and of all religions. Our elected officials and the parties funding them either lack basic knowledge of Islamic culture and the teachings of the Quran, or if they have such awareness lack the fortitude to point out and condemn thinly veiled calls for the overthrow of America and Israel, especially when those calls come from a popular imam.

Secretary of State Rice recently bowed to “political correctness”, referring to HAMAS as a “resistance movement” rather than a terrorist group (despite the State Department’s official designation of HAMAS as a terrorist organization). Even those tasked with recruiting allies in the War on Terror are afraid of offending terrorists by calling them terrorists. It should come as no surprise that the DNC imam had the audacity to pray for such things by invitation in front of a prominent political organization. That he did so and no one in Washington noticed or cared should be a clear warning sign to all who are not on the “straight path” that radical Islam is winning the political, media, and culture war here while our soldiers are fighting the physical war in the Middle East.


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Spy the News! Poll Results: Radio/Cable/Internet News Personalities

The results are in from last week's Spy the News! poll, which asked readers to identify which radio, cableTV, or Internet news personality influenced their opinions most.

Here are the results of our poll:

Laura Ingraham 43%
Rush Limbaugh 29%
Sean Hannity 14%
Hugh Hewitt 14%

Visit Spy the News! to participate in this week's poll: Which 2008 Presidential Candidate Best Represents Your Values?

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