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A Century of Surveillance: An Interactive Timeline Of FBI Investigations (muckrock.com)
"Over a century of fear and filing cabinets" at the FBI has been exposed through six years of Freedom of Information Act requests. And now MuckRock founder (and long-time Slashdot reader) v3rgEz writes:
MuckRock recently published its 100th look into historical FBI files, and to celebrate they've also compiled a timeline of the FBI's history. It traces the rise and fall of J. Edgar Hoover as well as some of the Bureau's more questionable investigations into famous figures ranging from Steve Jobs to Hannah Arendt. Read the timeline, or browse through all of MuckRock's FBI FOIA work.
The FBI interviewed 29 people about Steve Jobs (after he was appointed to the President's Export Council in 1991), with several citing his "past drug use," and several individuals also saying Jobs would "distort reality."
The FBI interviewed 29 people about Steve Jobs (after he was appointed to the President's Export Council in 1991), with several citing his "past drug use," and several individuals also saying Jobs would "distort reality."
And yet FBI didn't bother to read Trumps stuff? And he can just go into the whitehouse, take control of the executive branch and he hasn't even put his assets into a blind trust (not that Trump Casino Panama or any 'Trump' branded property could ever be 'blind'ly held)!
Go read:
1. The accounts he's disclosed as part of tax disputes (real).
2. The accounts he's disclosed as required by foreign laws (e.g. UK Companies house), also real.
3. The partial reveal of company borrowing in his Election Disclosure Filing (borrowing from banks will be real, but the earnings numbers are lies).
4. Search the names of his foreign coinvestors, and read their ad-hoc claims of investments in Trump 'properties'.
5. Pull the revPar numbers for similar properties to get an idea of he true (non-Trump-lying) revenue.
You quickly find out that Trump co, is a Madoff style ponzi scheme.
Even a little common sense tells you the problem. e.g. he borrows yet another $19 million against Trump National Doral last year.
His attorney when fighting a tax demand says the property is worth only $75 million. A highest estimate puts it at $96 million.
His borrowing against it is $125 million (1.6x the actual value his own legal team claim!).
HE BROKE AND OVERMORTGAGED.
The income claimed in his election filing for that is ridiculous 10x the actual RevPAR of similar golf resorts (i.e. a lie).
So the mortgage profit is bigger than the real profit.
IF HE HAD MONEY HE'D LEND IT TO HIMSELF. SO HE'S BROKE.
Most of his properties have issues, if he sold them at best price, paid off his total borrowing, he'd be very very bankrupt, and there would be a lot of outside investors whose assets had been used as capital against unrelated properties.
He needs to keep pulling in new investors and making new projects to fund the debts on the previous projects. And he needs to do it in secret so the investors don't see where their money flows.
They can't, because the biggest foreign threat is about to become their boss.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wonder if anyone has considered that the FBI forced Richard Nixon to resign by feeding reporters information anonymously. "Deep Throat", it turns out, was the assistant FBI director. That rather important piece of information was kept from the public for almost 50 years. Long enough that a movie got made that portrayed Woodward and Bernstein as heroic reporters instead of pawns of the FBI. Why were they investigating Steve Jobs at all/ The answer is to get whatever dirt they could collect in case he ever posed a threat to their political agenda. The reality is the FBI has always been an authoritarian political organization.
With our current President-erect's publicly stated attitudes, do you think the FBI's investigative powers will grow or shrink over the next four to eight years? What, with that pesky ACLU and its [redacted] lawyers put in their place, I suspect the FBI will be more than busy enough to justify any budget increase they may need to keep us safe.
To rephrase: if the FBI isn't the premier law enforcement agency we would desire, it'll be more effective to improve them than it is to replace them - and regardless of their blunders, we really can't do without them.
And then we have the fact that Hoover used the FBI to help Reagan get elected and then, this year, Comey provided the final push to get Trump elected.
That was a pretty amazing feat, given that J Edgar Hoover died in 1972.
#DeleteChrome
Sorry, Nixon.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No, actually, I am going back to my original statement. J. Edgar gave assistance to Reagan during his career, which ultimately resulted in Reagan becoming President. The connection between the assistance and the election wasn't so direct as with Comey and Trump.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The FBI thought that Steve Jobs had taken drugs that altered other people's perception of reality? Have I woken up in a Philip K Dick story?
There was a time that some of felt we weren't doing anything worthwhile unless the FBI had a file on us. We were young and stupid, but that didn't make us wrong.