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Hacker-Turned-Informant Is A Free Man After New York Sentencing

Hacker-Turned-Informant Is A Free Man After New York Sentencing

By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK — A judge Tuesday granted freedom to a computer hacker who helped Anonymous and other groups attack credit card companies, governments from Algeria to Zimbabwe, and media outlets but who turned government informant after his arrest.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, 30, who became known among online followers as “Sabu,” could have received more than 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in August 2011 to 12 counts related to hacking, fraud and identity theft.

But prosecutors, who said Monsegur immediately began cooperating with federal agents after his arrest in the spring of 2011, requested that he be sentenced to time he has served since then — seven months in prison.

“Monsegur was an extremely valuable and productive cooperator,” the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, and Assistant U.S. Attorney James J. Pastore Jr. said in a sentencing recommendation submitted last week to U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska.

In sentencing Monsegur to time served, Preska called his cooperation “truly extraordinary.” Preska also ordered Monsegur to pay $1,200.

Monsegur’s cooperation was so extensive that the FBI relocated him and some of his relatives who were threatened as a result of his work with the government.

Monsegur appeared in court for his sentencing and smiled as he walked out of the courthouse a free man.

Prosecutors say Monsegur acknowledged his own criminal conduct when he was arrested and provided information that has led to the arrests of at least eight major co-conspirators. They included Jeremy Hammond, who was the FBI’s No. 1 cybercriminal target when he was arrested in 2012.

Hammond now is serving a 10-year sentence for his conviction on hacking-related activities.

Prosecutors said Monsegur also helped the FBI thwart or mitigate at least 300 planned cyberattacks.

In an indictment after his arrest, Monsegur was described as an “influential member” of Anonymous and two other hacking organizations: Internet Feds and Lulz Security, or LulzSec. Prosecutors said Monsegur was a “rooter” whose skills included spotting vulnerabilities in potential targets and sharing the information with other hackers or using the information for his own operations.

His alleged hacking began in December 2010 with his participation in an operation carried out by Anonymous that attacked the websites of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. In early 2011, prosecutors said Monsegur helped stage attacks on government websites of Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

The indictment said that during the same time period Monsegur infiltrated the computer systems of media organizations, including the Tribune Co., the parent company of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. Also targeted was Fox Broadcasting Corp. Prosecutors said Monsegur and co-conspirators accessed Fox computer servers and stole information related to the network’s show “X-Factor.”

Prosecutors say PBS was attacked in May 2011 in retaliation for what Monsegur and co-conspirators considered unfair coverage of WikiLeaks on the PBS news series “Frontline.” Among other things, the hackers posted a fake story on the “PBS NewsHour” website saying that rapper Tupac Shakur was alive and well in New Zealand.

Officials said that although his most famous attacks were aimed at large corporations, Monsegur also targeted individuals, stealing credit card information to pay his bills and selling that information to others to do the same.

AFP Photo

Gerry Adams Held Over Notorious IRA Murder

Gerry Adams Held Over Notorious IRA Murder

Antrim (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Northern Ireland police on Thursday questioned Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, a chief negotiator in the Irish peace process, over the notorious IRA murder of a woman suspected of being an informant in 1972.

The 65-year-old republican leader was arrested on Wednesday night over the killing of mother-of-ten Jean McConville after voluntarily attending a police station in Antrim, Northern Ireland, for an interview.

Adams strongly rejected any involvement in the murder — one of the most infamous incidents in Northern Ireland’s violent history — saying in a statement that the allegations were “malicious.”

“While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs. McConville,” he said.

Sinn Fein was once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitary group, which waged a bloody campaign over three decades for British-controlled Northern Ireland to become part of Ireland.

The party now shares power with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the devolved government in Belfast. It is also represented in the Irish parliament in Dublin.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said Adams’s arrest was “politically motivated,” as it came three weeks ahead of local and European Parliament elections.

McConville, a 37-year-old widow with ten children, was snatched from her home in west Belfast, becoming one of more than a dozen so-called “disappeared” of the conflict.

The IRA accused her of being an informer for the British army, although a police watchdog later found no evidence to support the claim.

The IRA admitted her murder in 1999 and four years later her remains were found on a beach in County Louth. She had been shot in the back of the head.

McConville’s son Michael, who was 11 years old when he saw his mother dragged away, said he was pleased that the police were “doing their job.”

However, he admitted in a BBC interview that he still refused to name the people he saw taking his mother, saying he still feared reprisals.

“If I told the police a thing either me or one of my family members or one of my children would get shot by these people,” he said.

“Everybody thinks this has all gone away — it hasn’t gone away.”

Nobody has ever been found guilty of McConville’s murder, but former IRA leader Ivor Bell, 77, was last month charged with aiding and abetting those involved.

Five others in addition to Adams have also been questioned.

Detectives are using evidence given to researchers at Boston College in the United States, who interviewed a number of former paramilitaries.

The interviewees were told the transcripts would not be published until after their deaths, but a U.S. court last year ordered that the tapes should be handed over to police.

Former IRA commander Brendan Hughes and convicted IRA bomber Delours Price, now dead, both alleged Adams was involved in McConville’s death.

But Adams, a former member of the British parliament who was elected an Irish MP in 2011, has strongly rejected the claims.

“I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family,” he said.

“Well publicised, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these.”

Adams, who has led Sinn Fein since 1983, says he was never an official IRA member, but he played a key role in ending its armed struggle.

He became involved in the 1960s Catholic civil rights movement seeking to end discrimination by the Protestant majority, and was detained several times in the 1970s.

For many in Britain he remains a controversial figure, but he won respect for his key role in the 1998 Good Friday peace accords, and for helping persuade the IRA to renounce violence in 2005.

Adams stayed out of the power-sharing government established under the peace deal, and in recent years has taken on the role of elder statesman.

But the spotlight swung back on his family last year when his brother, Liam Adams, was jailed for raping his own daughter in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

©afp.com / Carl Court

Accusation Of FBI Intrusion Stalls 9/11 Hearing

Accusation Of FBI Intrusion Stalls 9/11 Hearing

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military judge abruptly recessed the first 9/11 trial hearing of the year Monday after defense lawyers accused the FBI in open court of trying to turn a defense team security officer into a secret informant.

If true, the lawyers argued, attorney-client confidentiality may be compromised in the case that seeks to put on trial and execute five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon.

At issue, in part, was the publication in January of prison camp musings by the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, by the Huffington Post and Britain’s Channel 4 website.

Defense lawyers alleged Monday that in at least one instance, two FBI agents enlisted a civilian on the defense team of accused plot deputy Ramzi bin al-Shibh as a confidential informant.

The FBI declined several requests for a comment.

The development seemed to stun the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, who told the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, that he was unaware of the FBI activity. Martins urged the judge to at least temporarily ignore the issue and proceed with a scheduled competency hearing.

“This was thrown in our lap … by the United States government,” said attorney Jim Harrington, bin al-Shibh’s death-penalty lawyer. “They’re the ones that did this, not us, and we tried to bring it to your attention as fast as we could.”

Harrington said two FBI agents arrived at the home of his team’s defense security officer, asked him who gave news outlets the unclassified Mohammed writings and had him sign a non-disclosure agreement that appeared to draw him into a continuing informant relationship.

The agents also asked “open-ended questions” probing for evidence of wrongdoing by 9/11 defense lawyers, said Harrington. He chose not to name his team member, who was being suspended from the case for talking, but said he worked for the contractor SRA International.

Now, the defense lawyers said, they had to ask each of their team members if they had been similarly interviewed by FBI agents and told to keep it secret. Harrington added that Pohl needs to conduct a separate inquiry on whether an FBI probe of defense lawyers had a “chilling effect” on their obligations to zealously defend their clients.

The role of defense security officers in the 9/11 case, one assigned to each of the five legal teams, is designed in part to guide team members, both lawyers and analysts, on what information should be blacked out in court filings — and what information can be released as unclassified. They have Top Secret security clearances and are privy to internal defense discussions and strategy.

Attorneys and observers had gathered at Guantanamo over the weekend for a hearing on whether bin al-Shibh was mentally competent to face the death penalty trial. Neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers had argued he was not fit for trial, but the prosecution sought the inquiry after the Yemeni had repeatedly disrupted the last hearing, in December, with complaints of sleep deprivation tactics at his secret prison camp.

The competency hearing never happened. Instead, the prosecution sought a closed hearing on the competency question with just the judge, excluding the defense. The defense asked the judge to abate the proceedings and order his own investigation of whether the FBI had breached attorney-client confidentiality.

Pohl agreed to meet unilaterally with prosecutors on a competency hearing question and resume open court Tuesday.

Details were still scant but contained in an emergency defense motion filed Sunday at 10 p.m., according to Martins. The document was still under seal at the war court under a procedure that gives U.S. intelligence agencies up to 15 business days to vet it.

But one section disclosed to the Miami Herald accused the prosecution of compromising the defense teams.

“Apparently as part of its litigation strategy,” it said, “the government has created what appears to be a confidential informant relationship with a member of Mr. bin al Shibh’s defense team, and interrogated him about the activities of all defense teams.

“The implications of this intrusion into the defense camp are staggering. The most immediate implication, however, is that all defense teams have a potential conflict of interest between their loyalty to their clients and their interest in demonstrating their innocence to FBI investigators.”

In court, defense lawyers told Pohl that the breach merited an independent inquiry — and that the five 9/11 accused needed additional, separate counsel not currently assigned to the case to advise them.

The hearings are being held at Guantanamo under a security framework that shields most information about the CIA prisons where the five men were held and interrogated before they got to the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba in 2006.

Only officers of the court with Top Secret security clearances specific to the Sept. 11case are allowed to meet with the 9/11 accused. It typically takes months to get a clearance, meaning more hearing delays — if the judge agrees the accused now need additional lawyers to advise them on the privilege issue.

An Amnesty International observer questioned who in U.S. government the judge could task to unpack the problem.

“They have to have a full investigation and find out how far it has gone. And the defendants have to have an independent counsel,” said Anne Fitzgerald, director of the research and crisis response program for Amnesty International. “But so many branches of the government have compromised themselves that it’s hard to know who’s left to conduct an independent investigation.”

Martins urged the judge to set aside the conflict question for a scheduled hearing on whether bin al-Shibh is mentally fit to go on trial with Mohammed and three other Guantanamo captives accused of conspiring with al-Qaida and the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers to commit the mass murder.

If Pohl takes up the issue it would be the latest allegation of U.S. government monitoring of the relationship between the 9/11 accused and defense lawyers who have access to government secrets on condition they not disclose them.

Past hearings demonstrated that agents had planted listening devices in the rooms where the lawyers meet prisoners and that someone outside Judge Pohl’s court could mute the audio feed to the public. Pohl had the external audio kill-switch disconnected and the military, which argued it had never listened in on attorney-client meetings, removed the meeting room listening devices.

A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on the allegation of FBI intrusion.

But Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, the spokesman, noted that the prosecution had not characterized as “a leak” the disclosure of the document Huffington Post called Mohammed’s manifesto. Rather, in a separate emergency motion filed by the prosecution March 3, Martins’ team was simply asking the judge to inquire “into the procedures by which the information was made available.”

It appears that Mohammed’s musings, called “Invitation to Happiness,” have been in circulation for some time. Several Sept. 11 case defense attorneys said Monday that it had never been classified, was not part of the war court record and that Mohammed’s Marine lawyer last year distributed cleared copies widely to both the 12-member prosecution team as well as all the defense attorneys.

Why?

“Mr. Mohammed wanted us to read it,” said Harrington. “He’d like the whole world to read it.”

 

Al Sharpton Says He Cooperated With FBI

Al Sharpton Says He Cooperated With FBI

By Emily Ngo, Newsday

NEW YORK — The Reverend Al Sharpton said Tuesday that he cooperated with federal officials in wiretapping interactions with Mafia contacts in the 1980s and would do it all again if his life was threatened.

He said he has made mistakes in his decades as an activist but has always made the right choice when it came to hard decisions.

“I’m not a mobster; I’m a preacher,” he said at a news conference at his National Action Network headquarters in Harlem.

Sharpton, preparing for a National Action Network convention to feature New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and President Barack Obama that kicks off Wednesday, said he was not a “rat.”

“I’m a cat. I chase rats,” he said.

But the civil rights leader said he couldn’t detail the conversations, what equipment was used and under what circumstances.

He said he did not know whether the conversations he helped to record with Joseph “Joe Bana” Buonanno — whom he said Tuesday that he initiated talks with, in conjunction with the FBI — ultimately helped to take down Genovese crime family members like Vincent “Chin” Gigante, also known as “the Oddfather.”

“We had conversations for the purposes of trying to solicit these guys to repeat the threats,” Sharpton said. “The conversations were recorded, and I would record them today if somebody threatened me.”

He said he never considered himself an “informant,” but rather said he believed he was cooperating in fighting crime.

Sharpton’s role as an informant was initially reported by New York Newsday in a 1988 series.

At the time, Sharpton said he carried concealed microphones in briefcases and accompanied undercover federal agents wearing body recorders to meetings with various subjects of federal investigations.

Sharpton also told Newsday in 1988 he had allowed the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York to install a tap on a telephone in his Brooklyn home, but said it was only used to record conversations with alleged drug dealers.

The Jan. 20 article said that Sharpton had been “secretly supplying federal law enforcement agencies with information” for about five years.

But, Newsday reported that “most law-enforcement officials, noting the problem of keeping informants’ identities secret, refused to comment on Sharpton’s dealings with government investigators.”

Sharpton said Tuesday that he does not know whether he was “CI-7,” or confidential informant No. 7, and did not address allegations that he was cooperating with the FBI after getting ensnared in a drug sting, as a report by The Smoking Gun website alleged. He said his life was threatened, and he still gets threats.

“I don’t know if I was C-7 or B-19 … I know that I was threatened,” he said.

Sharpton said he encourages young people to also work with authorities to curb crime.

At an unrelated news conference later Tuesday, de Blasio told reporters he was “very proud” to be Sharpton’s friend.

“He was asked by the FBI to support their efforts and he agreed to help … I have the exact same positive view of him I had before,” de Blasio said.

AFP Photo