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A Special New Year's Offer: Fight Govt. Overreach

Thanks— and a Special New Year’s Offer!

Start the New Year right with a signed, personalized copy of “The Smear” or “Stonewalled” for yourself or a friend.

Introduce somebody new to the inside, shady world of hidden influence over news and politics while supporting the Attkisson 4th Amendment Litigation Fund to fight the government computer intrusions.

Donate $150 by midnight Jan. 1, 2019 and receive a personalized, signed copy of your choice of the New York Times bestsellers The Smear or Stonewalled (Continental US only).
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About 4 weeks until Oral Arguments in Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI

Please note you must mention this offer, include your choice of book, and send snail mail address(es) and name to be personalized to in the comment section of your donation (which you can make private), or I will not have any way to send you the books.

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The Smear:

Behind most major political stories there is an agenda: To destroy an idea or the people advancing it. Maybe you watched someone on the news report that Donald Trump is a racist misogynist, read that Hillary Clinton used a body double, or heard that Bernie Sanders cheated in the primary. Regardless of accuracy, the themes get repeated until they become accepted by many as the truth. It’s called “the smear.” Sophisticated operatives work behind the scenes to establish narratives, manipulate journalists, and shape the images you see every day. Nothing is by accident.

Now hard-hitting investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, the New York Times bestselling author of Stonewalled, takes you behind the scenes of the modern smear machine, exploring how operatives from corporations and both sides of the political aisle have manipulated a complicit mainstream media to make disinformation, rumor, and dirty tricks defining traits of our democracy. Pulling back the curtain on the shady world of opposition research, she reveals how those in power create well-funded, organized attack campaigns to take down their enemies and influence your opinions, offering a detailed examination of the think tanks, super PACs, LLCs, and nonprofits that have become the hidden backers of some of the biggest smears in American politics.

Why nobody trusts the mainstream media

Trust in the media is at an all-time low. But should it be? Why do fewer and fewer Americans trust the mainstream media. Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, author of The Smear, explains.

https://www.prageru.com/videos/why-no-one-trusts-mainstream-media

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Order the New York Times bestseller "The Smear" today online or borrow from your library

Video Update: Attkisson v. DOJ FBI government computer intrusions

Our next court date is just a few weeks away. Click the arrow below for a video update.

The Computer Intrusions Become Public

The following is the 13th in a series of excerpts from my New York Times bestseller “Stonewalled,” which recounts the government intrusions of my computers. More excerpts to follow. Links to previous excerpts are below.

The AP story turns out to be the first in a rapid-fire succession of strange-but-true revelations about the government’s aggressive actions against news reporters. Less than a week later, on Sunday, May 19, 2013, comes word that the Obama administration has targeted another national news journalist: FOX News reporter James Rosen. Again, it’s supposedly part of a government leak investigation, this one into a State Department contractor who was later indicted. Attorney General Holder himself had approved the search warrant for Rosen’s Gmail account.

It’s so Orwellian for the government to aim its investigative resources and prosecutorial tools at reporters who are doing their legal job. Is this all part of a broad, secretive program to target the Obama administration’s reportorial enemies? Am I on the list, too?

It’s becoming clear that the administration is going after journalists and sources whom it views as the most harmful to its own self- interests. I think about when I was covering Fast and Furious and how the story reached all the way into the White House, prompting the president to declare executive privilege to keep from releasing documents to Congress. The government surely wanted to know what I knew and who was talking to me. Perhaps they felt they could justify monitoring me as another in this series of “leak investigations.” MyFast and Furious coverage bled over into the Benghazi period. The Obama administration was just as frantic over my reporting on that topic. Just as desperate to learn who was talking to me and what I was learning from them.

With the discovery about the intrusions on AP and FOX reporters, a new public sentiment seems to be building: ordinary people are frightened by and outraged over the perceived assault on journalists and their sources.

Just days into news of these controversies, I’m doing a round of radio interviews centered on my current Benghazi reporting.

I'm on the air with Philadelphia radio talk show host Chris Stigall of WPHT 1210 AM when he segues to the subject of the government intrusions on reporters. I haven’t publicly discussed my own situation, which predates the public revelations about AP and FOX. But Stigall pops an unexpected question:

“Do you know if your phone was tapped or your emails watched or seized while you were having conversations with unnamed sources on Benghazi, Sharyl?”

Does he know? I hadn’t given any thought as to what I might say about my own computers. I answer the question on the spot without opening the door too wide.

“I’m not ready to fully speak publicly about some things that have affected me because I’m trying to be methodical and careful about what I say. But there has been an issue in my house, and there’s been an issue with my computers that’s gone on for quite a long time that we’re looking into.”

Stigall seems as surprised by my answer as I was by the question. For several minutes, he continues to press for more information and I give limited responses. I bring the interview to a close by saying, “There’s definitely been an intrusion into my computer system. I re- ally can’t say more than that right now.”

I wouldn’t have predicted the avalanche of interest that this brief radio interview would generate. Within minutes, word of my computer intrusions is being circulated on Internet blogs and is being tweeted about on Twitter. I know nothing of the chatter until I get a call from the CBS News press office. Inquiries are pouring in. It’s not long before friends and family email to tell me that bloggers are speculating that the White House is bugging me. Or that I’ve mistaken a common computer virus or automatic Windows updates for something nefarious. Or that I’m being hacked by an old boyfriend. It’s funny to hear some work so hard to discredit so much with so few facts.

To Be Continued…

Read excerpt #1 here: The Computer Intrusions: Up at Night

#2: Big Brother: First Warnings

#3: The Computer Intrusions: Disappearing Act

#4: The Incredible, Elusive "Verizon Man"

#5: I Spy: The Government's Secrets

#6: Computer Intrusions: The Discovery

#7: Notifying CBS About the Government Computer Intrusions

#8: The MCALLEN Case: Computer Intrusion Confirmed

#9: The Disruptions Continue

#10: Revelations in the Government Computer Intrusion

#11: Obama Leak “Witch Hunt”

#12: Obama's War on Leaks

Why can't the feds say when it's supposedly legal to spy on us?

by Mark Fitzgibbons

The American Civil Liberties Union announced on December 21 that it is suing under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the federal government to expose its rules for when it hacks into people’s digital information-carrying devices such as our cell phones and computers.

The lawsuit seeks “the release of records concerning the government’s use of hacking to pursue ordinary law enforcement investigations,” which information the ACLU complains has been unlawfully withheld after the organization filed FOIA requests with eleven federal agencies. The ACLU lawsuit alleges computer hacking “tools are being used in ordinary day-to-day investigations, as contrasted with national security or foreign intelligence investigations,” and this “presents a unique threat to individual privacy.”

Nine of the 11 federal agencies that received the ACLU’s FOIA requests failed to respond, and the other two “provided cursory responses that were plainly insufficient, in violation of the FOIA,” according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York. So, it seems the federal government is engaging in lawbreaking — related to other lawbreaking.

Continued at link below:

https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/28/feds-spy-digital/

Obama's War on Leaks: Computer Intrusions

OBAMA’S “WAR ON LEAKS”

The following is the 12th in a series of excerpts from my New York Times bestseller “Stonewalled,” which recounts the government intrusions of my computers. More excerpts to follow. Links to previous excerpts are below.

Four months after Number One first identified my computer intru- sions, I’m watching the news. It’s May 13, 2013, and there’s a break- ing story that sets off a pang of familiarity. I instinctively feel that it’s related to my own situation. It’s not so much that the details are the same—they’re not. But there’s something about the story line: a U.S. government entity secretly, audaciously, reaching into the private communications of news reporters.

Consider supporting the landmark Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI computer intrusion lawsuit: Attkisson 4th Amendment Litigation Fund

The news is that the Justice Department had seized the records of twenty phone lines used by employees of the news organization Associ-=ated Press. AP says the records are from personal home and cell phone numbers belonging to editors and reporters, office numbers of various AP bureaus, and AP phones used in the press quarters in the House of Repre- sentatives, where members of the media have office space. It’s unheard-of. Why did the government take this drastic measure? To try to catch and prosecute the government source who provided information for a 2012 AP story about a foiled underwear bomb plot. The Justice Department had issued the subpoenas to telephone companies but granted itself an exception to its own normal practice in deciding not to provide advance notice of its intentions to AP. Advance notice would have given AP the chance to challenge the move in court. Only now, months after the fact, is the Justice Department disclosing its controversial subpoenas to the news outlet’s managers. Incensed AP officials publicly attack the action as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the news-gathering activities of the Associated Press.”It’s perhaps the first time the Obama administration feels the sting of meaningful criticism from such a wide-ranging group of news media. They’re calling it Obama’s War on Leaks. On May 14, 2013, a coalition of more than fifty news organizations, including ABC, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Re- porters Committee for Freedom of the Press writes a strongly worded letter of objection to Holder. It reads in part:

The nation’s news media were stunned to learn yesterday of the Department of Justice’s broad subpoena of telephone records belonging to The Associated Press. In the thirty years since the Department issued guidelines governing its subpoena practice as it relates to phone records from journalists, none of us can remember an instance where such an overreaching dragnet for newsgathering materials was deployed by the Department, particularly without notice to the affected reporters or an opportunity to seek judicial review. The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies to- ward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct, including matters touching on national security which lie at the heart of this case.

The Justice Department responds to the growing privacy concerns by the media with a statement saying that it “takes seriously the First Amendment right to freedom of the press” and that Holder “understands the concerns that have been raised by the media and has initiated a reevaluation of existing Department policies and procedures.”

Support the Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund to fight the government computer intrusions

How does this story fit into my circumstances? It’s a puzzle I’m trying to sort out but a lot of the pieces are missing.