Oregon Ping
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Posted on 01/24/2005 4:36:00 PM PST by ex-Texan
FBI boss: We need local help
Head of Portland branch finds oversight of terror task force a sticking point
The director of Portland’s FBI office is trying to preserve a relationship with the city’s Police Bureau that he considers “absolutely critical” to his team’s mission of investigating local terrorist threats.
Two city officers are assigned full time to the Portland FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Since its creation in 1997, the police department’s participation in the task force has been renewed by the City Council each year.
This year, however, the council has postponed voting on whether to renew its participation. Three of five City Council members have either announced their opposition or are publicly raising questions about the arrangement.
Special Agent Robert Jordan, who leads a force of more than 100 FBI agents in Oregon and also supervises the Portland task force, told the Portland Tribune that in his view, the council’s opposition to the renewal “just doesn’t make sense.”
“If the single biggest threat to the region is terrorism, it doesn’t make sense to have the largest police presence in Oregon be absent from the terrorism task force,” he said.
For example, he said, “if we get a lead that two undocumented aliens just jumped ship in the Columbia and we go and talk to the owner and find out they’re from a country that’s of interest to us, we’re going to start looking for those folks. And it’s absolutely key to be able to plug into the Portland Police Bureau, to put out alerts and to plug into their information systems.”
A big sticking point is who on the council would get security clearance to review what cases the city’s officers are working on.
Jordan said that he is not willing to grant security clearance to all city commissioners who want civilian oversight of the task force.
He said the only council member who would be invited to apply for security clearance would be the mayor or whoever ends up serving as police commissioner. Jordan’s office has given Mayor Tom Potter an application for “secret” security clearance similar to what was granted to former Mayor Vera Katz.
But opponents point out that the mayor would not receive the same level of “top secret” clearance as the Portland officers who actually work with the task force.
Jordan said Portland stands alone in its demands for civilian oversight among the 100 cities that have terrorism task forces or an equivalent force. “When I meet with my counterparts from other cities, not one of them is having this issue with their city council,” he said.
Get out the vote
City Commissioner Randy Leonard said he can’t support an arrangement where the police officers involved in the task force get a higher security clearance than the chief of police or the mayor.
“These Portland police officers work for us,” Leonard said. “They need to be held accountable to their superiors.”
While Leonard said he has made up his mind to vote no, Commissioner Erik Sten said he is torn.
“Of all the votes I’ve taken on the council, this is probably the one I’ve been least satisfied with,” Sten said. “I’ve voted for it twice, and both times I’ve been unsure it was the right vote.”
Council newcomer Sam Adams has said that he would vote for extending the city’s role in the task force if he were offered security clearance to help oversee the task force’s work.
Jordan said he didn’t think that would be a good idea. “If we gave clearance to everyone who wanted it, we’d end up with nine people supervising two detectives,” he said.
Jordan, a former New Jersey cop and Philadelphia prosecutor, has run Portland’s FBI office for a year and a half. He said the local threat of terrorism is real.
“There are people in Oregon right now who have trained in jihadist camps overseas,” he said. “And in some of those camps they preached the murdering of Americans, and they took vows to murder Americans.”
Portland’s two biggest recent cases involving alleged terrorist threats brought differing results. In the Portland Seven case, six local Muslims pleaded guilty to conspiring to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan (the seventh is thought to have died in Afghanistan). In the Brandon Mayfield case, a local Muslim lawyer was held without charges for two weeks and wrongly linked to a terrorist bombing in Spain on the basis of poor forensics.
Jordan apologized to Mayfield, but he emphasized that his agents had nothing to do with the misidentified fingerprint that implicated the attorney.
“I’m very proud of how we conducted ourselves with the Mayfield case,” he said. “We built a castle and the foundation turned out to be sand. But it was not our fault, not FBI Portland’s fault.
“You can imagine getting a call telling you that the only American subject linked to the Madrid bombings was here in Portland. That’s going to get your attention,” Jordan said.
Suspicions raised
The bungling of the Mayfield case raised suspicions among local Muslims. So has the realization that the FBI infiltrated a local mosque as part of its Portland Seven investigation, said Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton.
“If the FBI can prove to me that they have sent agents into an evangelical church, or a synagogue, then it would be fair,” Ahmed said. “But they don’t. The bottom line is, we are a pariah community.”
Jordan said the FBI has the authority to infiltrate mosques when necessary.
“We follow leads,” he said. “If we have a credible reason to think that somebody is involved with criminal or terrorist activity, we’re going to do what it takes within the Constitution to follow up. That’s what the public expects from us.”
Sten said the public also expects elected officials to make sure that the war on domestic terrorism doesn’t lead to civil rights abuses.
“The choice we’ve been given is cooperate with us under these terms or don’t work with us,” Sten said. “The federal government has made an arbitrary choice to keep civilian oversight out of the process.”
The FBI does have one probable yes vote in Commissioner Dan Saltzman. But the key vote likely will come from Mayor Potter, who has not indicated how he is leaning.
If that happens, we will be flooded by FBI, CIA, Naval Intel, and other military people who will have to take over the city of Portland.
As far as I am concerned, I believe that will be a good thing. But nobody care what I think anyway. I am just a guy that has to live in the hoplessly corrupt Peoples Republic of Oregon.
I would say they'd be as dangerous as anyone with secure information based on the last 10 years I've lived here.
The Portland city council is the poster child for situational ethics, no matter what.
Oregon Ping
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**“If the single biggest threat to the region is terrorism, it doesn’t make sense to have the largest police presence in Oregon be absent from the terrorism task force,” he said.**
Common Sense alarm!
I wish I had a nickel for every pro-Islamo terrorism sympathizer in the greater Portland region.
Simple. Fire EVERYBODY who won't play by the rules. There's no room for political posturing when it comes to terrorism and national defense.
We are not a serious country...
Its actually now "the peoples republic of Oregon" which explains the embrace of the terrorists.
"The FBI does have one probable yes vote in Commissioner Dan Saltzman. But the key vote likely will come from Mayor Potter, who has not indicated how he is leaning.'
Feedback that I have gotten from moderates and liberals in Portland about Potter are not positive.
He is politically correct, pro gay, pro Islamo and pro green. Feedback from these people indicate that he is really no different than the outgoing mayor in this important issue.
I know this first hand. The cities of the left coast are so leftist, so socialist that they might as well be called the USSR west. The left coast is where elections are rigged and scandels abound. The left coast is home to the apologists who admire such degenerates as Che Guevera and Fidel Castro. I and a few other FReepers who live here are the only bastion of conservatism and patriotism in this area.
Terrorist training camps were found in the PRO (Peoples Republic of Oregon). If I ever come across one. Well just read my tagline.
There are some scary people working at Intel but its much worse in the Bay Area.
Unfortunatly, with "Ms PC" in charge of HR, nothing will be done until things go bad.
My Comment Has Been Censored By the People in Power. Cough, Cough, Cough -- ! Burp !
Here just north of Seattle I have actually seen Churches get converted to mosques. Only a few such structures right now but consideirng the majority of the population, the threat will grow.
Send in federal marshals, arrest mayor and city council members.
Obviously he isn't enlightened enough to realize that "single biggest threat" is failing to uphold the liberal idealization.
It is a shame that "go bad" is alternate speak for US city vaporized.
I'm sure these people are as pinko as the day is long, but, like a stopped clock, they are right twice a day. In this case, they are right to oppose federalization of law enforcement.
More localities should tell the feds to pound sand.
The reason the feds fear this is that they only have tenuous constitutional authority outside of federal reservations without local LEA permission. If the sky does not fall, the serfs might start asking WHY there are 200,000 armed federal agents of all kinds.
Go around them.
All high tech cos are in need of serious investigation. Full of H1Bs and unassimilated, America hating folk, with definite low hanging fruit in terms of terrorists and other revolutionaries. Now consider this - consider the ability they currently have to cripple the economy from within.
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