For Some Reason, LA Drug Cops Received Intelligence, Training On ‘Muslim Extremists’ From The Israeli Military
A few years ago, hacktivist group Anonymous liberated a ton of documents from law enforcement agencies all over the world. These were published by transparency activists DDoS (Distributed Denial of Secrets). Journalists and other activists continue to dive into this 269 gigabyte treasure trove, teasing out additional information law enforcement agencies certainly wish was still their little secret.
Some early reporting highlighted the panicky bulletins and alerts issued by the DHS and FBI. The DHS tended to get duped by viral videos or encourage the domestic surveillance of people engaged in First Amendment activities. The FBI, on the other hand, was warning law enforcement that consumer products like Ring doorbell cameras now made it pretty much impossible for officers to get the drop on targets of warrant service. That revelation was steeped in irony, given that dozens of law enforcement agencies had teamed up with Ring to hand out freebie surveillance cameras to citizens - the same cameras that might later give away their position when engaging in a raid.
The Guardian has found something interesting in the so-called BlueLeaks" stash: an extremely improbable partnership between a Los Angeles drug task force and IDF, Israel's joint military group. Here's what this task force was supposed to be doing:
One body whose internal archives were exposed in the hack, LA Clear, is tasked with providing analytical and case support" in narcotics investigations in southern California, according to its website. It was established as a joint project between the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association, the California department of justice, and the Los Angeles county sheriff's department in 1992.
And here's what it was doing. Or, at least, here's what it was looking at.
Despite its ostensible mission to combat drug trafficking, the LA Clear archive of training materials (labeled lacleartraining") included in the BlueLeaks trove has several analyses of previous episodes of widespread conflict in Gaza and the West Bank that are sourced directly from the IDF and closely aligned Israeli thinktanks.
Included in this set of files were an analysis of the IDF's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008. There's also a presentation discussing Israel's unique position in the Middle East, both strategically and politically. Another presentation crafted by the IDF points out the challenges Israel faces when attempting to control internal and external narratives related to its counter-terrorism efforts.
Obviously, none of this has anything to do with LA Clear's anti-drug trafficking work. It could be that it were sent these documents by mistake. Or it could be that it requested them for reasons it's not willing to discuss.
What is clear is that several US law enforcement agencies are working closely with pro-Israel groups and participating in seminars that encourage surveillance of Muslims - ones performed not by law enforcement agencies but rather the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), a pro-Israel non-profit group.
Emails preserved in BlueLeaks show various agencies promoting ADL training sessions for law enforcement officers, including a January 2013 session on screening of persons by observational techniques" and a seminar at the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center on the evolving nature of Islamic extremists".
ADL staff are shown as registered attendees at events run by fusion centers, offering bios that advise the organization that we facilitate workshops for law enforcement on extremism, hate crime and (in Washington DC and Israel) counter-terrorism".
It's all a bit strange. Cops tend to believe most outsiders aren't worth paying attention to, but the ADL is given a pass. Members are allowed to attend events that aren't open to other members of the public (the fusion center events listed above) and are often consulted for their expertise" on Islamic extremism and counter-terrorism, even if those members have never actually worked in the counter-terrorism field. Maybe it's just easier to have a single perspective on things - one that hews more closely to the US law enforcement assumption that most Muslims are probably terrorists.
Whatever it is, it probably isn't what people assume is happening with their tax dollars. Law enforcement agencies are buying into a very singular narrative when they treat entities with an obvious bias as arbiters of unvarnished truth. And this would be just as problematic if agencies decided to use a non-profit like CAIR (Council for American-Islamic Relations) as the sole source of info on Israeli-Palestinian relations, counter-terrorism, or Islamic extremism.
And if you're in the business of providing operation support for drug interdiction efforts, maybe you'd just better focus on the work you're supposed to be doing, rather than pretending that skimming through a few one-sided briefings will turn you into a counter-terrorism expert.