Democracy Now!: Over 23,000 Business Leaders Working With FBI and Homeland Security

[marmar]

Report: Over 23,000 Business Leaders Working With FBI and Homeland Security

The Progressive magazine is reporting that more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The business leaders form a group known as InfraGard that receives warnings of terrorist threats directly from the FBI before the public does. We speak with the the reporter who broke the story and the editor of The Progressive, Matt Rothschild.

Guest:

Matt Rothschild, reporter who wrote the piece, “The FBI Deputizes Business.” He is editor of The Progressive magazine and is author of You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression.

AMY GOODMAN: More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly in collaboration with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, this according to an exclusive report in The Progressive magazine. The business leaders form a group known as InfraGard that receives warnings of terrorist threats directly from the FBI before the public does. In return, they provide information to the government. According to one whistleblower, the FBI has given members of InfraGard permission to shoot to kill in the event of martial law.
Matt Rothschild is the reporter who broke the story. He is editor of The Progressive magazine. He’s author of the book You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression. He joins us from Madison, Wisconsin.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Matt.


MATT ROTHSCHILD: Thanks for having me on, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about InfraGard and what this program is all about?

MATT ROTHSCHILD: Yeah. It was formed in 1996 by the FBI. It’s an FBI program that works directly with businesses across the country. More than 350 of the nation’s 500 Fortune 500 companies are involved in it. And on one level, it’s like a corporate TIPS program. These companies, these representatives of these companies feed the FBI information about threats. They also can give the FBI information about disgruntled employees and have the FBI investigate them. So the pipeline goes that way.
And the pipeline goes the other way, too. The FBI gives these 23,000 businesspeople almost daily threat warnings that the public never gets. In at least one occasion, a government official, Governor Gray Davis of California, didn’t get, until he heard from his brother, who was in InfraGard, about threats to the bridges in California.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about InfraGard.

MATT ROTHSCHILD: Well, you know, it started—the FBI started it in 1996 in Cleveland, and it was working with businesses to, I think, try to break a case of cyber espionage or something. And then the FBI decided to start little organizations around the country. There are now eighty-six chapters of InfraGard. And the FBI and now Homeland Security are working with these local chapters, statewide chapters, and they have meetings. They have these secretive meetings around the country, and at some of these meetings, the FBI and the Homeland Security agents tell businesspeople what their responsibilities are during times of an emergency or martial law. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/11/report_fbi_deputizes_23_000_business

[fascisthunter]

1. Hail Fascist America

congrats to our BS government

[marmar]

3. Yup. "Fascist administration" is not just hyperbole anymore....

n/t

[katty]

2. yeah, horrific,,,i posted this last week

[roamer65]

4. Welcome to Amerikkka.

Fascism is here...NOW.