Fucking New Yorkers so Paranoid they eat their own young…

The Ubiquitous New Yorker
by Philip Giraldi – 27 September, 2012 – AntiWar.com

Remember the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel who made his mark saving aristos from the guillotine? “They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.” Fortunately Baroness Orczy’s creation lived and worked in the eighteenth century. It’s not so difficult to find people these days given the capabilities afforded by high tech methods of intruding into people’s lives and monitoring their activities. Nowadays the Pimpernel would no doubt be detected and detained when using his cell phone or swiping his credit card at a 7-11.

For New Yorkers nostalgic for a reminder of life in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s city, experiencing something from home is not now nearly so elusive. In fact, New York is pretty much anywhere you turn. A little bit of New York has turned up in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and even Williamsburg, Va. It’s in Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Spain, India, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, and Israel. No, it’s not in the form of a Broadway deli or a Famous Original Ray’s pizza. It’s the New York City Police Department, which proudly displays the motto “Fidelis ad Mortem,” faithful unto death. The NYPD is everywhere.

In the wake of 9/11, the New York City Police Department decided that it had to have its own CIA, so it hired David Cohen, who had recently retired from the Agency. Cohen was a career intelligence analyst who somehow had been appointed Director of Operations by Bill Clinton’s CIA Director, John Deutch, who had taken a shine to him. Cohen suddenly found himself managing the CIA’s spies even though he had only limited exposure to that type of work. Both he and Deutch, an engineer by training, were not surprisingly very unpopular among the rank and file at the Agency. Cohen was replaced after two years in 1997, following on Deutch who had left six months before under a cloud. Deutch admitted to having in his residence “enormously sensitive material” downloaded to his unsecured home-computer. Deutch’s computer was also used for accessing porn sites and for e-mail exchanges with a Russian scientist.

Apparently Cohen’s somewhat shaky credentials were good enough for NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Cohen was named Deputy Police Commissioner of Intelligence, a position that he continues to hold. The intelligence and counterterrorism budget was boosted substantially, reaching $178 million in 2010. Cohen, inexperienced in running either police or intelligence operations, decided to “Take a big net, throw it out, catch as many fish as you can and see what we get.” He attempted to recreate the CIA in miniature, bringing in former Agency officers Larry Sanchez and Marc Sageman and even sending NYPD officer Steve Pinkall to attend courses at the CIA’s clandestine training center “The Farm” near Williamsburg, Va. He also ordered the creation of the force’s “Demographics Unit,” which targeted Muslim groups and communities all over the Eastern United States. Its first job was to map New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut’s ethnic communities in search of “hot spots.” And for ethnic, read Muslim, not Middle Eastern. Coptic Egyptians and Jews of Sephardic origin were automatically excluded from the program.

Muslims who Americanized their names were particularly targeted, placed on special “suspicion” lists. Police informants were introduced into places of worship, into social groups, and even into restaurants. Islamic student groups at 16 colleges were monitored and in some cases infiltrated. It was all done without any liaison with local police forces but the program was exposed in June 2009 when a building superintendent discovered an NYPD safe house and surveillance point in an apartment close to the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick New Jersey. In a subsequent press conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the NYPD’s right to go anywhere in the United States in search of terrorists without informing the local police. …more