"This shit is going to get innocent people killed." Mark Potok's Deadly Sock Puppet: How the Department of Homeland Security dances to SPLC's tune.

Brietbart recently posted a copy of a Department of Homeland Security "Intelligence" Assessment entitled "Domestic Violent Extremists Pose Increased Threat to Government Officials and Law Enfircement." Breitbart notes:

A leaked document from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis predicts increased “anti-government violence over the next year.” The document says the inspiration for violence is Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville standoff with the Bureau of Land Management from earlier in the year.

DHS’s seven-page report entitled Domestic Violent Extremists Pose a Threat to Government Officials and Law Enforcement points to the recent murders of two Las Vegas law enforcement officers as evidence that there is a “growing trend of anti-government violence compared to the previous four years and inspired by perceived government overreach and oppression” and the “perceived victory at Bunkervile” will “likely prompt more violence.”

The report is dated 22 July 2014 and reads as if lifted directly from this Southern "Poverty" Law Center screed published earlier in the month entitled , "War in the West: The Bundy Ranch Standoff and the American Radical Right."

This was preceded by New York State Counter Terrorism Bulletin CTB 14-07 dated 12 June 2014 and entitled Recent Spike in Violence Targeting Law Enforcement.

This report, published for internal law enforcement use only by something called the "New York State Intelligence Center," also focuses on the the alleged link between the Bundy's and the methamphetamine fueled cop killers, Jerad and Amanda Miller. It reported:

Evidence at the scene and further investigation revealed the Millers embraced a far right militia ideology. At the scene, the Millers draped a Gasden flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”) over one dead officer, left a swastika on the other, and a note that said, "This is the start of the revolution." While initial reporting of the swastika was interpreted as relating to white supremacist ideology, it appears it was meant to imply the police are Nazis, and the Millers do not appear to have subscribed to a white supremacist ideology. After entering Walmart, the shooters stated this was “the beginning of a revolution.” Both suspects reportedly often spoke about their anti-government ideas and desire to kill law enforcement. The Millers’ social media “centered on Second Amendment gun laws, government spying and drug laws” as well as contained numerous references to the impending need to use violence to support those causes. Jerad Miller had over a decade long criminal history in multiple states, including misdemeanor battery and drug trafficking. . . Jerad and Amanda Miller had also travelled (sic) to Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, although they were reportedly asked to leave for being too radical and due to Jerad’s criminal record.

And then the report attempts to tie the Millers to me as well, as I noted at the time.

In both the Bourque and Miller cases, the perpetrators were concerned with common far right conspiracies involving government seizure of private firearms. With the passage of the NYSafe Act in January 2013, a growing number of far right extremists – particularly militia and sovereign citizens – may view NYS as a more attractive target in order to further their agenda. These extremists must be distinguished from law abiding citizens exercising their first and second amendment rights – namely extremists are those willing to use violence, rather than the democratic process, to further their cause.

Michael Brian Vanderboegh, a longtime militia member and founder of the III Percent Patriot Movement which was supported by Jerad and Amanda Miller, travelled (sic) to NYS at least once in 2013 to speak to the Liberty Oath Keepers meeting in Monticello, NY.18 The III Percent Patriots are a militia group comprised primarily of gun rights extremists who believe in the need to use violence against the government to prevent what they believe to be an impending seizure of all private firearms. The name derives from “an obscure, and not particularly accurate, Revolutionary War ‘statistic’ that claimed that only 3% of the American population during the Revolutionary War participated as combatants in the war.” The Oath Keepers is an organization composed of current and former military and law enforcement personnel who take a pledge to “not obey unconstitutional orders such as orders to disarm the American people, to conduct warrantless searches, or to detain Americans as enemy combatants.” There have been multiple observed instances of overlapping membership in the Oath Keepers and the III Percent Patriots, and the Oath Keepers’ founder has spoken supportively of the III Percent Patriot Movement.

In my Flag Day speech at Belchertown, Massachusetts I dissected these allegations, the transcript of which can be found here and the video of my presentation can be found here. As I observed, the report's "use of loaded language, conflation and what I call "guilt by disassociation" makes it a minor classic of the big lie." As I recalled at the time:

You know I met the Millers briefly at the Bundy standoff when they came up to volunteer. They struck me as a danger to the mission of protecting the Bundys at first glance. Jerad projected all the ambiance of the methamphetamine addict that his neighbors later said he has. He was heavily tattooed and admitted under questioning that he was a convicted felon despite the fact that he was packing a semi-auto pistol on his hip, I counseled Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers and Jerry Delemus who ran the security operation that they be sent on their way and they were. The Millers later complained on their Facebook page that they had been turned away. Of course, we had no inkling that the Millers would later turn violent, nor could we have. These facts have not prevented the collectivist media from tying the Millers to the Bundys, or to us, or, according to this official document of the New York State Police, to, well, me.

I refuted the allegations of the links to the Bundys, the Three Percent movement, the Oath Keepers and to me, concluding:

Okay, let's recap: The Millers are linked to the Bundys -- except they're not. The Millers were supporters of Vanderboegh, the guy who had them ejected from the Bundy security operation -- except they weren't. They embraced militia values -- except they didn't, The Three Percent movement is a militia -- except it isn't. And the Three Percent are paranoids for believing that the New York state cops are going to seize semi-auto weapons -- except they are. Other than that, this is a totally accurate report. Does that clear things up for you?

I went on:

Now that's funny -- except it isn't. You know Governor Coumo's finest were nice enough to footnote their various assertions. You know the source of everything they wrote about me? The ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center (although down in Alabama we call them the Southern Preposterous Lie Center). Did you know that the FBI recently announced that they were no longer accepting SPLC "intelligence reports" because of political bias and factual errors? Unfortunately that word doesn't seem to have penetrated to the New York state political policemen of the so-called "intelligence center." It kinda reminds me of that old joke from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Moose and squirrel are standing beside some garbage cans looking for Captain Peachfuzz when out of one of the cans pops a guy in a hat and trenchcoat who announces "I'm from military intelligence." Rocky fixes him with a penetrating gaze and replies, "Don't use contradictory terms."

Like I said, it's funny but it's not. This report goes out to police everywhere. Many are going to accept it as gospel. And who do you think they're going to be reporting? You, with the Oath Keepers tee shirt. You, with the Three Percent patch. You, with the Gadsden flag out in front of your house or the "Don't tread on me" sticker on your pickup truck. Because everyone now "knows" because of sloppy propaganda like this piece of trash that the Gadsden flag equals Three Percent equals Oath Keeper equals domestic terrorist equals meth-head cop killer.

"Don't use contradictory terms" indeed. And the mendacity, conflation and sloppy thinking of the New York State so-called "Intelligence Center" (courtesy, apparently of the Southern Poverty Law Center) becomes even more deadly when the lie is spouted by the mega-amplification of the current version of the American political police, DHS.

You know, there is an organization that has admitted direct ties to the Millers: the Las Vegas Police Department. As reported by Reuters:

According to police, the Millers had cooperated with Nevada law enforcement twice this year to provide witness testimony, but detectives did not receive any indication that the couple had anti-police sentiments.

"Witness testimony"? Regarding what and who? The Bundys? I wouldn't be surprised, since according to the Millers at the time, they claimed to us that they had driven out directly from Indiana. So any contact with LVPD would have been after that. The "mainstream" media has been singularly uninterested in those admitted links. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the NYSIC and DHS do not mention this vital fact since it contradicts the meme they wish to project.

Another curious fact reported by CBS at the time which seems to be beneath the notice of the SPLC-DHS propagandists: "While living in Lafayette, Jerad and his wife Amanda took part in last November’s 'Million Mask March' – a gathering of protesters from the Occupy movement, anarchists, and hacktivists."

Now if this doesn't seem to be the cause of "right-wing extremists" to you, you would be correct. But as my good friend Bob Wright pointed out to me when this news broke, "You know, Mike, once a snitch, always a snitch. If he was snitching in Las Vegas as they admit, he was probably snitching in Indiana." Which begs the question, were the Millers directed to the Bundys by some police agency which already had the much-convicted Jerad in its thrall? Another question ignored by SPLC, DHS and the media.

Professor Robert Churchill at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, in his ground-breaking history of the militia movement in the 1990s, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement, observed that SPLC, ADL and others on the collectivist left had created what he called "the narrative of 1995" that wrongly characterized "the militia movement (as) an outgrowth of the racist right," alleging that the militias were "anti-democratic, paranoid, virulently anti-Semitic, genocidally racist, and brutally violent. Much of this literature suggested that Timothy McVeigh was the movement's highest expression."

In doing so, Churchill observes, SPLC generated a "moral panic," a new "brown scare," that was embraced by the news media, politicians and law enforcement. Churchill notes, "the civil rights organizations that produced the narrative of 1995 conceived of themselves as political opponents of the militia movement, and these organizations made the legal suppression of the movement one of their central objectives. That political objective has systematically shaped their reporting on the movement."

Churchill's principal concern with this was to point out how the narrative of 1995 had skewed the academic study of history. However, it is quite a more deadly seriously thing when the narrative of 1995 is dusted off, polished up with new lies for a new century AND internalized by the most powerful and largely secretive police agency in the country.

I brought all these various reports to the attention of some former intelligence analysts with experience in federal, state and military organizations over the past forty years. All of them were dismissive of the quality of the reports and frankly shocked that any self-respecting analyst would be associated with what one called "obvious propaganda."

Said another, "We laughed at (Morris) Dees' 'intelligence reports' (back in the 90s). They were obvious fund-raising tools tailored to shaking money out of the liberal establishment Easy Coast money tree. Nobody serious put any credence in them."

Another observed, "I can't believe that the New York report . . . and especially the DHS report were written by real analysts. They were either written by, or at the direction of, politicians who wanted them to turn out that way."

"This is some dangerous shit," observed a third. "When DHS is not only letting Mark Potok do their thinking for them, but reporting it and repeating it all up and down the law enforcement channels of command and communication . . . well, this shit is going to get innocent people killed."

Said another in agreement, "These reports are definitely being written to justify a course of action already decided. . . Part of the problem is that these agencies . . . and especially a new agency like DHS, have no institutional memories. They are staffed by new-hires off the street with no practical experience in intelligence collection, collation, filtration and analysis. . . They are divorced from reality . . . and their bosses are telling them what reality is so they write what their bosses want to hear."

The third retired analyst snorted, "God damn, son, if you had told me back in the 90s that the analysts of a serious federal agency were allowing themselves to be SPLC's sock puppets, I'd have told you you were full of shit. NOBODY could be that that stupid."

But, I pointed out, somebody currently at DHS sure was. "Yeah," he repeated, "this shit is going to get somebody killed. Too bad it probably won't be Mark Potok."