Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Patterico: ‘Certain Big Media Reporters Are Scared to Write About Kimberlin’

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
When I read that sentence, it brought me up short.

“Scared”?

Is Patrick Frey referring to Jen Preston of the New York Times, whose coverage of the Anthony Weiner scandal was controversial?

Brett Kimberlin’s online attack dog Neal Rauhauser has claimed to have a good relationship with Preston — he CC’d her in the September 2011 e-mail he sent to “Occupy Boston” leaders on behalf of Velvet Revolution — but (a) Rauhauser is a notorious liar, and (b) someone told me that, in fact, Preston thinks Rauhauser is as loony as a fruit bat.

Which he is, quite obviously.

Frankly, I am sympathetic to any reporter who might want to write about the Kimberlin story, but dreads the challenge of trying to explain it in a brief, concise news story that makes sense. I’ve written two American Spectator articles about it:

Both of those articles were quite an ordeal to write because the story is so complex, and it’s easy to get “lost in the weeds.” In terms of understanding the basics of Brett Kimberlin’s criminal history, the best resource is arguably Mandy Nagy’s 3,600-word article from October 2010. which cites several other articles, including the thorough 1981 account by Indianapolis Star reporter Joe Gelarden and an excellent 2007 article by Massimo Calabresi of Time magazine.

Very few reporters, however, have even tried to tell the story in any detailsed way, and the temptation to dismiss it as “just an Internet thing” — involving no political big names — is nearly as strong as the temptation to portray it as a mere squabble between Left and Right, which it most assuredly is not. Continue reading Patterico: ‘Certain Big Media Reporters Are Scared to Write About Kimberlin’ →

Time to Ask: What Did Brett Kimberlin Know and When Did He Know It?

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Following up on the tipster who tells Brooks Baynes he has identified one of Neal Rauhauser’s “beandogs” as a prime suspect in the SWATting of conservatives, please take time to examine — also via Brooks Bayne — the e-mail Rauhauser sent to SWATting victim Mike Stack on May 24.

This involves, as Brooks says, a lot of “crazytown” and “paranoia” from Rauhauser, but it also evidently involves a New York City school-teacher named Lane Lipton who repeats malicious falsehoods about me, as well as a repetition of Rauhauser’s assertions that he is privy to information obtained from FBI agents.

How long has Neal Rauhauser been on Brett Kimberlin’s payroll at the non-profit Velvet Revolution? Were Rauhauser’s efforts to influence Mike Stack part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice?

To what extent were Rauhauser’s secretive poison-pen e-mails — including the spreading of defamatory disinformation about me, Patrick Frey and others — approved, authorized and paid for by Kimberlin and/or Velvet Revolution?

Go read that e-mail at Brooks Baynes’s site. Surely, what Rauhauser has been doing for the past 10 months cannot be defended as tax-exempt non-profit “activism.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES

 

A High Time on the Low Road: Smears Target Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List UPDATE: SWATting Supect ID’d?

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When “Speedway Bomber” Brett Kimberlin was convicted in 1981,
he could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison.

“Brett C. Kimberlin schemed to elude justice with a series of bizarre plots designed to murder, maim and rob his enemies, create havoc . . . and discredit the chief government prosecutor.”
— R. Joseph Gelarden, “Kimberlin Case a Maze of Murder, Deceit,” Indianapolis Star, October 18, 1981

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
As soon as any blogger becomes a nuisance to Brett Kimberlin, that person is targeted by the Web site I call “Not Brett Kimberlin,” and harassed on Twitter by a number of pseudonymous trolls, including the one that on Monday viciously attacked Mandy Nagy.

Over the weekend, the Not Brett Kimberlin site — which I neither link nor call by its actually name, so as not to publicize it — was shut down for a while because it was clearly in violation of its hosting provider’s Terms of Service. Yesterday, Not Brett Kimberlin came back online and posted a dishonest disclaimer that it was taking “the high road” and then immediately published an attack on Lee Stranahan.

Why Lee Stranahan? Because he has been doing yeoman’s work in exposing Kimberlin’s menace to the First Amendment. It was, of course, Stranahan who declared May 25 “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” producing a YouTube video that made clear who Kimberlin is. More recently, when Kimberlin’s 501(c) Velvet Revolution claimed that Kimberlin had been the victim of a “SWATting,” Stranahan contacted the Montgomery County (Md.) Police Department, who said that no such incident had occurred.

So, naturally, Stranahan must be targeted for the same kind of character assassination that has been aimed at all others who have written the truth about Brett Kimberlin. These attacks are merely an attempt to change the subject, to divert attention from Kimberlin’s own dishonest criminality, and wise men will not be deceived by such tactics. Let us pause, reader, to ask a few questions:

  • Why have the operators of the “Not Brett Kimberlin” site taken extraordinary steps to conceal their own identities?
  • What would we discover about the operators of this site, if their identities were known?
  • Most importantly, who is paying for this elaborate ongoing effort to smear and defame Britt Kimberlin’s critics?

We know that Brett Kimberlin’s tax-exempt non-profit organizations have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we furthermore know that Kimberlin is now a client of Neal Rauhauser, who in 2010 was accused of organizing a gang of foul-mouthed thugs to harass Tea Party activists on Twitter.

Is the “Not Brett Kimberlin” site part of Rauhauser’s operation? Whatever the strategic wisdom of this “brass knuckles reputation management” — as Professor Glenn Reynolds has called Kimberlin’s campaign of harassment and intimidation — one thing should be clear: Such activities are clearly not legitimate uses of tax-exempt funds. Here are the most recent available IRS 990 forms for Kimberlin’s outfits:

People experienced in the management of non-profit organizations who have examined those 990s describe them as “thinly documented.” The phrase “red flag” occurs when discussing these IRS forms with such experts, who marvel that anyone would contribute to groups that exhibit such an astonishing lack of tranparency about exactly how they spend the money they collect.

When Velvet Revolution claimed (apparently falsely) that Brett Kimberlin had been “SWATted,” Lee Stranahan published a statement by Kimberlin associate Kevin Zeese who said that “we are cooperating with the FBI.”

But aren’t Zeese and Kimberlin also “cooperating” with the shadowy online presences that are attacking Stranahan and other names on Brett Kimberlin’s enemies list? Isn’t Velvet Revolution employing the paranoid self-proclaimed “hacker” Neal Rauhauser, who appears to be conducting a secretive campaign against Kimberlin’s enemies? Isn’t all of this extraordinary effort to intimidate Kimberlin’s critics — including Kimberlin’s “lawfare” harassment of Aaron Walker — being funded with proceeds of tax-exempt non-profit organizations?

These are reasonable questions, given the evident facts, and many other people are now asking such questions. It is high time that the people asking these questions include members of Congress, who have already called for Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate SWATtings, but who have yet to invoke the independent authority of Congress to investigate Brett Kimberlin’s profoundly suspicious “non-profit” activities.

UPDATE: The details of the alleged SWATting suspect described in the e-mail to Brooks Bayne are certainly very interesting:

Last year, under Twitter handle @solaar, he trolled Greg W. Howard and threatened to slit his throat, among other things. He ran with the beandogs, specifically leducviolet and methadonna. . . .

Those are Twitter handles of two of the most vicious members of the “beandogs” crew that Rauhauser was accused of organizing against Tea Party types in “TwitterGate,” a 2010 online scandal that was unfortunately ignored by most in the media at the time. Greg W. Howard was one of the primary targets of “beandogs” harassment. Baynes’s e-mail informant further adds:

Brett [Warren] had contact with Neal R. under both of his Twitter accts (Stranded Wind and the name one). Neal wasn’t quite aware of how busy Brett had been. Trust me on this. He tried to dissociate himself, but it didn’t work out too well. . . .
Neal did attempt to contact my law school and stir up shit, but that didn’t work because I had screenshots and email trails of everything.
Both Neal and Brett contacted me via VOIP numbers on Google phone.

Readers will excuse me for smiling at this tidbit of info about the alleged SWATting suspect:

Brett also got busy as the University of Florida fan in an infamous video in which he professed to know four types of martial arts and challenged University of Alabama fans to meet him at a gate and fight him.

Heh. Roll Tide.

UPDATE: Linked by Bill Quick at Daily Pundit and Dan Collins at The Conservatory — thanks!

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 


‘Team Kimberlin’ Meltdown Continues

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Liars hate nothing worse than to be exposed as liars — exposure makes it hard for them to get away with their lies — and three weeks of public attention to lying felon Brett Kimberlin and his associates have put them under extraordinary psychological pressure.

We’ve seen evidence of Neal Rauhauser’s spiraling descent into madness, outlined by Dan Collins at The Conservatory:

In the email, Rauhauser concedes that the SWATting of Stack was likely performed by one of his “beandog” followers, but that he believes the culprit will get off because the call was untraceable. In Rauhauser’s demented mind, Patterico, Stacy and others were actually the cause of the SWATting, according to some as-yet-to-be-invoked legal theory. . . .
Sometime Kimberlin operative Ron Brynaert has been trying to play a double game, quarrelling with Rauhauser on the one hand and threatening Kimberlin critics who associate him with Rauhauser and Kimberlin on the other, and is likelier than Rauhauser to flip, IMO, but this revelation changes the playing field quite a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Rauhauser turning state’s evidence against Kimberlin at the sane advice of legal counsel. Whether he still has the functioning neurons to try to pull his ass out of the fire, though, is an open question.

There is now a Memeorandum thread, and more and more people are beginning to see the connections between the various dots in the bizarre pattern surrounding Kimberlin’s tax-exempt 501(c) operations at Velvet Revolution and Justice Through Music Project. Investigative journalist Matthew Vadum assures me that lying is not considered a charitable activity by the IRS, and one wonders what the authorities would discover in a thorough forensic audit of Kimberlin’s lucrative (although “non-profit”) enterprises.

Kimberlin and his associates constantly claim to be victims of harassment, but who’s really harassing whom? Patterico exposes the vicious harassment of Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy by one of Kimberlin’s most vocal and persistent online defenders.

Furthermore — and there are so many dots in this pattern that new connections are sometimes surprising — Patterico demonstrates what would appear to be conspiratorial collusion between Rauhauser and Nadia Naffe, who has claimed that she was harassed by James O’Keefe. This is a connection involving Jay Leiderman, a California attorney with ties to both the Occupy movement and the “Anonymous” international hacker conspiracy.

One of Leiderman’s clients was the criminal hacker known as “Commander X,” who jumped bail and joined the Occupy movement. Leiderman had defended the denial-of-service attacks by “Commander X” as a form of civil disobedience. But now Leiderman’s  another attorney, Ed Fry, is on the hook for the $35,000 bond he signed for this Rosa Parks of hacking.

Cosmic justice is a funny thing that way.

-– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES

UPDATE: Dan Collins has updated to correct a misunderstanding:

Correction: Mike Stack emails to state that he pressed charges against Rauhauser for harassment, but that neither is suing the other.

I’ve also corrected an error. I had previously misread the Talking Points Memo article about Christopher “Commander X” Doyon, which makes clear that it wasn’t Jay Leiderman who signed the bond for Doyon:

Ed Fry, a lawyer who has been involved in the the Occupy movement in Santa Cruz, told TPM he met Doyon during the summer of 2010 and put up the bond to help out a friend. He doesn’t think the law will catch up to Doyon, who joined up with the Occupy movement after being released.
“I don’t expect him to be caught. He’s pretty Wile E. Coyote,” said Fry, adding that he last talked to Doyon around Christmas. He said signing the bond was a risk he had to take.

Our first obligation is to get the facts right, and even minor factual errors — honest mistakes — are regrettable.

HUGE! Neal Rauhauser’s Vicious Lies Exposed by Yet Another Leaked E-Mail

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Last night, I published an e-mail showing that Democrat political operative Neal Rauhauser, representing himself as an agent of Brett Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution, had used his connections to the “Anonymous” hacker conspiracy to reach out to leaders of the “Occupy Boston” protests.

Tonight, Brooks Bayne at The Trenches has an e-mail he calls a “bombshell” — and quite rightly so!

UPDATE: I’m not a lawyer, but what Rauhauser appears to be doing in this May 24 e-mail — besides lying about me — is attempting to inveigle California attorney Jay Leiderman into representing Mike Stack in a nuisance lawsuit against Patrick “Patterico” Frey.

Stack is the guy whose involvement in exposing the Anthony Weiner sex scandal resulted in him being “SWATted” and, subsequently, harassed by Rauhauser, who became obsessed with a paranoid conspiracy theory of WeinerGate. In February, Rauhauser published his crackpot theory (“Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”) which suggested that Andrew Breitbart and the security firm HBGary were somehow involved in Rauhauser’s own 2010 “TwitterGate” scandal, as well as plots against Kimberlin.

Like I say, I’m not a lawyer, but I’d guess this incredible e-mail — read the whole thing — exposes Rauhauser to serious legal jeopardy.

My advice to Neal? Plead insanity.

UPDATE II: This scoop by Brooks Bayne — you’ve got to go read it, now — fits in with what one source told me in a phone conversation today: “Neal’s lost it.”

Apparently, Rauhauser has been sending lots of crazy e-mails like this to lots of different people, making insane accusations about me, Patrick Frey, Seth Allen, Aaron Walker, Ali Akbar, James O’Keefe and people who have nothing to do with the Kimberlin story, but against whom Rauhauser harbors grudges.

Rauhauser probably should have been institutionalized after he published his eight-page conspiracy theory treatise in February and sent copies of that deranged gibberish to the FBI and to police officials in New Jersey. He seems to have been undergoing some kind of slow-motion mental breakdown for the past couple of years, and has become obsessed with a variety of “enemies” who, in his demented imagination, are all conspiring against him.

For example, in June 2011, after he became fixated on the WeinerGate scandal, Rauhauser (blogging at DailyKos as “Stranded Wind”) invoked two of his Twitter nemeses from 2010 and threatened to get Dana Loesch fired from CNN:

When you read this, Ms. Loesch, and I know you will, I have a personal request for you. Go get with discredited, disorganized dullards @SwiftRead and @GregWHoward of Twittergate fame, and then show me those pretty, pouty lips of yours saying my name on PJTV again. That’s the only TV outlet you are gonna have, honey, because we’re going to make it impossible for CNN to keep you …

Those whom Rauhauser called “discredited, disorganized dullards” were instrumental, along with Michelle (@Zapem) Lessick, in exposing how Rauhauser (who at the time was a campaign consultant to various Democratic candidates) had aparently organized a crew of Twitter trolls he called “Beandogs” to attack Tea Party activists.

Why did Rauhauser bring up Patrick Read and Greg Howard in the context of trying to get Loesch fired from CNN? It makes no sense, but that’s just how his warped mind works.

UPDATE III: Let me remind readers that Rauhauser published his twisted game plan in two 2010 posts on the Open Left forum:

Those masterpieces of deviousness were, in essence, the blueprint for what Rauhauser attempted to do in “TwitterGate,” with disastrous consequences for his reputation when he got caught. You’ll notice that these articles are now only available as online caches, because Rauhauser deleted the originals. Neal’s always trying to scrub away evidence of his mischief, deleting stuff and trying to pretend it never happened. He thinks he’s so smart (and we’re so stupid) that he can get away with such crap.

UPDATE IV: Just in case you haven’t been following the story, here are my recent posts about Neal Rauhauser:

#BrettKimberlin Says He Was ‘SWATted’; Why Do Maryland Cops Say Otherwise?

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Patterico suspected Brett Kimberlin was lying — which is what Kimberlin seems to do habitually and routinely, perhaps pathologically — when his 501(c) non-profit Velvet Revolution claimed Sunday that Kimberlin was “SWATted” on May 31.

Lee Stranhan contacted police in Montgomery County, Maryland, who say no such thing ever happened. Now we can probably expect Kimberlin to claim that the cops are part of a right-wing conspiracy against him.

Little Brett is always the victim, y’know.

 


Florida Rep. Sandy Adams Leads 85 House Republicans in ‘SWATting’ Letter

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Earlier, Mandy Nagy of Breitbart.com reported that 70 House Republicans were prepared to sign a letter calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the dangerous “SWATting” of conservative commentators. Now, Kerry Pickett of The Washington Times reports that the number of signatories is 85:

Congresswoman Sandy Adams, Florida Republican, is sending a letter, currently signed by 85 House Republicans, to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to assign Justice Department officials to investigate the recent threat of “SWAT-tings.”
A SWAT-ting happens when a person calls 911 emergency dispatch services under another individual’s name and falsely claims he or she is committing a violent crime. Such an act is committed to cause local law enforcement authorities (like a SWAT team) to surround and enter the residence of an innocent individual, who was impersonated and framed for a violent crime through the 911 call. The false call can be made via the internet, so as to mask the true caller’s identity and location.
“My concern is someone is going to get hurt,” Rep. Adams told me on Friday. “It’s very dangerous for the people living in the home that didn’t call 911, because have no awareness whatsoever that something like that had happened. So they open the door to law enforcement whether it’s with or without guns drawn,” said Congresswoman Adams . . .
Congresswoman Adams is a first term Capitol Hill lawmaker and has a military and law enforcement background. Following her time in the Air Force, she served for seventeen years as a deputy sheriff in the Orange County, Florida.
“We were dispatched from 911 calls where there were shots fired and holding of a hostage. Those were the things that you went to and you’re going to want to know that,” she said.
The SWAT-ting issue caught the Florida Congresswoman’s attention when she heard that CNN contributor and Red State blogger Erick Erickson was a victim of swat in late May. Another blogger who was SWAT-ted, Patrick Frey, a Los Angeles assistant district attorney, went through the terrifying experience in July of 2011. . . .

That’s actual news, you see, and not something the mainstream media can dismiss as trival and irrelevant. Once big-time political reporters (and some savvy tech journalists) start peeling that big onion and see the connections to Brett Kimberlin, to Neal Rauhauser, to the “Anonymous” hackers, to Anthony Weiner, to Andrew Breitbart, to Barbra Streisand, to the Occupy movement . . .

Trust me: I know reporters. Somewhere out there, I’m sure, Michael Isikoff and other reporters are looking at this story and recognizing what an opportunity it presents.

(Hat-tip: Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints. Now a Memeorandum thread with more from The Lonely Conservative, American Power and Sister Toldjah.)

UPDATE: Got an e-mail from a friend who suggests I may be confused as to who reported what first and who deserves credit. Also, I’m told that the number of congressmen calling for a DOJ investigation of SWATting is now 87, and reminded that Texas Rep. Kenny Marchant was the first House member to make that call.

 

Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Their Transparent Empire of Lies UPDATE: ‘Anonymous’ Connection

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Seventy members of the House of Representatives are reportedly prepared to unite in support of Senator Saxby Chambliss’s call for a Justice Department investigation of the “SWATtings” against Mike Stack, Patrick Frey and Erick Erickson.

There is also reportedly interest among Republicans in Congress about the “lawfare” aspect of the Kimberlin case, along the lines of what Ace of Spades talked about Friday: Legislation to prevent a convicted felon from using claims of “harassment” to intimidate people who are guilty of nothing but telling the truth about his criminal past.

Beginning with his lawsuit against Seth Allen in October 2010, Kimberlin and his allies have used this strategy in a number of variations. In some cases, as with Allen and Aaron Walker, legal action seemed chiefly intended to get behind the online aliases of those who were publicizing Kimberlin’s heinous history.

Allen used the pseudonyms “Socrates” and “Prespostericity,” while Walker was known as “Aaron Worthing” in the blogosphere. Once the actual human beings behind those aliases were discovered — I believe the colloquial term for this is “patched” — then Kimberlin and his surrogates could mount personal attacks against these online critics. This could happen two ways: Either by using negative personal information about the critics in an effort to discredit them, or else by contacting the critics’ employer (or, in some cases, their spouse’s employer) to claim that the critic was engaged in wrongful activity by blogging about Kimberlin’s criminality.

The success of Kimberlin in employing this tactic shows one reason, by the way, why using online aliases creates a vulnerability for anyone engaged in what we might call “combat blogging.” There is no such thing as a pseudonym that is totally secure. You may think that your online alias protects your private life, but if you ever get into heavy-duty blogwars — giving an antagonist a motive for wanting to know who you really are — your privacy becomes a weakness.

As soon as I began digging into the Kimberlin story on May 17, I became aware that what Ken at Popehat has called “Team Kimberlin” includes a number of persons operating behind Twitter pseudonyms who were involved in publicizing negative information about Kimberlin’s critics. And I also learned that Team Kimberlin had been trying to “patch” Ace of Spades.

Perhaps readers now see why I have spent the past three weeks in scramble-the-jets mode. “But wait a minute,” you say, “why Ace?”

The answer involves WeinerGate, Kimberlin’s 501(c) Velvet Revolution, the late Andrew Breitbart and a guy named Neal Rauhauser.

Readers who have been following the series of posts I call “The Kimberlin Files” have become familiar with the name Neal Rauhauser. You know about the lunatic conspiracy theory Rauhauser published under the title, “Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?” You know that Rauhauser has described Kimberlin as his “client,” and that Rauhauser accompanied Kimberlin to the May 29 hearing in Maryland at which Aaron Walker was arrested.

Focusing on the Kimberlin-Rauhauser connection is, I think, the key to unlocking a mystery that has puzzled me and others for a while: What are they trying to hide?

The frenzied intensity of attacks we’ve seen from Team Kimberlin in the past three weeks strikes many observers as suggestive of what criminologists call “consciousness of guilt.”

A source familiar with the investigation of “Team Kimberlin” told me that recent exposures caused them to “freak out,” and that certain streams of communication between their team members suddenly went into “radio silence” mode. Meanwhile, certain of their pseudonymous online presences have begun frantically attacking those who are helping shine the light on Kimberlin, even to the point of sending veiled threats and “disinfo” messages to anyone who seems to be connected to the light-shiners.

While it is interesting to speculate on the actual identities behind the various online personas employed by Team Kimberlin, their general mode of operation very much resembles what Neal Rauhauser was doing in the 2010 “TwitterGate” scandal. As I’ve said to several people familiar with the case, we seem to be looking at “Beandogs 2.0.”

Today, I needed to clear my head and relax, so I went driving around and, among other things, visited a fireworks store to do some Fourth of July shopping. But I also made some phone calls, and learned of some interesting evidence showing a direct connection between Neal Rauhauser and the international criminal hacker conspiracy known as “Anonymous.”

Before I show you that, however, let me point out a basic fact: Brett Kimberlin is a liar. He lies to reporters. He lies under oath in court. His apparent compulsive lying is one of the great constants of Kimberlin’s life, going back to when he was convicted of perjury as a teenager. Patterico calls attention to how blatantly Kimberlin lies:

[Kimberlin said] that he does not maintain any online presence and said he and his family have been victims of threats themselves and accused the bloggers of constructing a “false narrative” about him.
“I don’t blog, I don’t comment, I don’t tweet on any blogs at all. This is a right-wing attack on me and my organizations and it’s a smear job. It’s a swift boat action against us,” Kimberlin said.
— Arlette Saenz, ABC News, June 6

“[I]t’s part of my job to, to work on the Internet because it’s basically a social networking job and so I get Google alerts all the time mentioning my my organizations . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, in Montgomery County court hearing vs. Aaron Walker, May 29

These two statements seem incompatible. If Kimberlin is “on the Internet” doing “a social networking job,” how is it that he never uses Twitter or writes on blogs? With whom does he network on the Internet, and how does he do it without using the most common tools for online social networking?

Ah, but there is that evidence I mentioned earlier, involving Neal Rauhauser and the “Anonymous” hacking conspiracy.

UPDATE: E-mail communications in September 2011, in regard to “Occupy Boston” protests, involving Neal Rauhauser (claiming to speak on behalf of Kimberlin’s non-profit Velvet Revolution) and someone named Gregg Housh:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Alex Pearlman <alexnpearl…@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: FYI Clarence Thomas message goes to Occupiers
To: Gregg Housh <greggat…@gmail.com>
Cc: neal rauhauser <nrauhau…@gmail.com>, Marisa Egerstrom <
megerst…@gmail.com>

We also have the general site, occupyboston.com. I’m part of the
Media/Message team and can get this to them ASAP. Thanks so much!

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Gregg Housh <greggat…@gmail.com> wrote:

> Also, Boston has this:
>
> https://sites.google.com/site/occupyrevolution/home
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:13 PM, neal rauhauser <nrauhau…@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>   Gregg,
>>
>>   Thanks for the intro – I just put out a ‘clarification’ to the NYGA’s
>> Declaration of Occupation. It’s a bit more literate than what they did and I
>> think I’ve got the overall tone and content about right. Is this something
>> we can get people to discuss? I didn’t have the patience to get to speak in
>> one GA, can’t imagine how to do outreach to a whole bunch all at once w/o
>> begging assistance.
>>
>> http://www.scribd.com/doc/66968871/NYCGA-Declaration
>>
>>   Keep in mind I work with the guy who triggered the investigation into
>> Clarence Thomas over the Citizens United payoff and there is a lot of
>> similar stuff like that sitting around here. Those groups get in the mood to
>> clean house, we’ve got the treasure map for them.
>>
>>                  Neal
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Gregg Housh <greggat…@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Ive been in on the Boston planning.  The people you want to talk to for
>>> it to start to get any sort of cohesion will probably be these two:  “Marisa
>>> Egerstrom” <megerst…@gmail.com>, alexnpearl…@gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:25 AM, neal rauhauser <nrauhau…@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>   We’re getting in position to drive part of the narrative for the
>>>> Occupiers. Here is how it’s being done.
>>>>
>>>>    Overnight I created a fairly complete list of the OccupyWhatever
>>>> Twitter accounts.
>>>>
>>>> http://twitter.com/#!/list/WeOccupyAmerica/occupations
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    There is now a paper.li so we can see what they are talking about:
>>>>
>>>> http://paper.li/WeOccupyAmerica/1317378132
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    And we have our Press Agent running on @WeOccupyAmerica. This account
>>>> had 2,500 hand picked followers, mostly Progressives, no bots, no junk, no
>>>> wingnuts. It’s picked up 300 followers in the last day and since I’m using
>>>> it in this fashion now I can’t be aggressive about policing who follows.
>>>>
>>>>    This is what we’re doing message wise:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   1. Continuous low speed trickle of Eight Rules, nonviolent engagement
>>>> advice from Cynthia Boaz
>>>>
>>>> http://weoccupyamerica.blogspot.com/2011/09/eight-rules.html
>>>>
>>>>   2. We can use the list of accounts to send them individual public @
>>>> messages, so far we have said:
>>>>
>>>>      a. please help us find the rest of you
>>>>      b. please look at Andrew Krieg’s article on 20 House members
>>>> pushing investigation of Clarence Thomas (started 9/30 early AM, will run
>>>> all day)
>>>>
>>>>   3. Next steps with this will include some of the following
>>>>
>>>>      a. other Velvet Revolution activities – American Crossroads seems
>>>> most likely to draw their eye
>>>>      b. If we can get Seema Kalia’s work on Wall Street corruption
>>>> positioned right that will be HIGHLY inflammatory
>>>>      c. Keep an eye on progress against Thomas & labor uptake, maybe we
>>>> get a shot at Scalia for this NLRB/Boeing stuff he & his son do
>>>>      d. taking suggestions from the folks in the bcc: on what else needs
>>>> attention, as well as from @Occupier accounts
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    I’ve personally visited the Wall Street occupation, to establish some
>>>> grassroots cred specific to this movement, to renew contact with old
>>>> friends, and to meet new ones. I’ve got my fingers into the D.C. planning
>>>> and I’m going to make a run to Baltimore to help get that one moving, too. I
>>>> may well go back to New York for a bit if it’s warranted and I’m going to
>>>> check my Amtrak miles to see if I can swing a trip to Boston.
>>>>
>>>>    There are already back channels developing but it’s so chaotic I
>>>> can’t discern which ones are important. I would greatly appreciate those of
>>>> you who have an occupation near you skulking a bit, and bringing me half a
>>>> dozen contacts for each. If you’re actually getting involved up close and
>>>> personal, well, let’s *talk*.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     The visible emails are Jen Preston of New York Times, Mark Ames of
>>>> ExiledOnline, and Adrian Chen from Gawker – three of the four journalists I
>>>> know who don’t suck. The rest of you down in bcc: are free to hit reply if
>>>> you have something you want to give one of them, and I’ll validate you as a
>>>> source. If you’re feeling sneaky you can pass me stuff and I’ll hand it off
>>>> to them.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    So … reform or bust, what say you?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> —
>>>> mailto:nrauhau…@gmail.com//
>>>> GV: 202-642-1717
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> —
>> mailto:nrauhau…@gmail.com//
>> GV: 202-642-1717

While the readers begin to dissect the information in that e-mail thread, I’ll clue you in: Gregg Housh is well-known as an operative of “Anonymous,” and has been involved in a business partnership with someone who was raided by the FBI this year. 

UPDATE II: To make explicit what this means: First, in November 2011, it was announced that Gregg Housh had agreed to co-author a book about “Anonymous” with the group’s public spokesman, Barrett Brown, for a reported six-figure advance.

Second,  Housh has been described as a “seventh-grade dropout, devout atheist, and proud computer troll” who once served “three months . . . in federal prison for copyright infringement via software piracy.” Third, in March of this year, the feds busted the “Anonymous” offshoot known as “LulzSec” and, apparently in connection with those arrests, the FBI raided Barrett Brown in Texas.

Now, read that e-mail thread I’ve posted very closely, and tell me what you see about the connection between Rauhauser and Housh. I’ll be back to explain more, in case you don’t immediately spot the key bit of information.

UPDATE III: Did you spot it? “Gregg, Thanks for the intro.”

That is to say, when Rauhauser was looking for an introduction to the leaders of “Occupy Boston,” he asked Gregg Housh — with whom he clearly had a prior acquaintance — to make the introduction. Housh has a federal felony record and had a co-authorship deal with Brown, the “Anonymous” spokesman raided by the FBI in March of this year. And at some point prior to September 2011, Rauhauser and Housh were already good enough buddies that Neal could ask his buddy Gregg for a favor, namely this intro to the leadership of “Occupy Boston.”

Rauhauser proposed to transact official business of Kimberlin’s 501(c)3 Velvet Revolution with the “Occupy” movement via this connection obtained via his contacts with “Anonymous” operative Gregg Housh. And why would a paid agent of a tax-exempt non-profit organization have this kind of connection? Why was Rauhauser interested in “Anonymous,” and how did that interest overlap with the activism of Velvet Revolution?

Let reporters start asking those kinds of questions.

Let members of Congress start asking. Let the FBI start asking. And the next time Neal Rauhauser shows up at one of Brett Kimberlin’s court proceedings, how about somebody start asking Kimberlin about Neal, and then start asking Rauhauser about Brett. Who knew what, and when did they know it?

How about a little hint?

In a June 2, 2011, post at Daily Kos (where he used the pseudonym “Stranded Wind”), Rauhauser offered this bizarre claim:

Congressman Anthony Weiner was stalked, set up, smeared, and this was coordinated to protect Clarence Thomas from scrutiny.

What did Rauhauser link? A petition by Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution demanding impeachment and prosecution of Justice Thomas. Read more background on Raushauser here.

Is there more? Oh, yeah — lots and lots more. But I think readers will agree that this is enough to push the story forward one more day, and you can chew on this until Monday afternoon, when I plan to peel this onion just a bit more.

-– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES: