Declaration-of-Alexa-OBrien

7/30/2019 Declaration-of-Alexa-OBrien

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Carl J. Mayer (CM - 6589)MAYER LAW GROUP LLC

1040 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 2400New York, NY 10018

212-382-4686

Bruce I. Afran (BA 8583)10 Braeburn Drive

Princeton, New Jersey 08540609-924-2075

Attorneys for Plaintiff

UNITED STATES DISTRCT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

----------------------------------------------------------------------------CHRISTOPHER HEDGES, DANIEL ELLSBERG,

JENNIFER BOLEN, NOAM CHOMSKYALEXA OBRIEN, US DAY OF RAGE,

KAI WARGALLA, HON. BRIGITTAJONSDOTTIR M.P.

Plaintiffs, INDEX NO. 12-CV-331 (KBF)

v.

BARACK OBAMA, individually and as

representative of the UNITED STATESOF AMERICA; LEON PANETTA, individually

and in his capacity as theexecutive and representative of the

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; JOHN McCAIN;JOHN BOEHNER; HARRY REID; NANCY PELOSI;

MITCH McCONNELL; ERIC CANTOR;as representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Defendants.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CERTIFICATION OF ALEXA D. OBRIEN

ALEXA D. OBRIEN certifies as follows:

1. My name is Alexa D. OBrien. I am an American citizen, and a resident of

Case 1:12-cv-00331-KBF Document 14 Filed 03/12/12 Page 1 of 11


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New York. I make this certification in support of the Plaintifs application for

preliminary injunctive relief enjoining the operation of the Homeland Battlefield

provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

2. As a content strategist and information architect, I have helped design and

implement digital content strategy solutions for international governmental organizations

and Fortune 500 companies. Between October 18, 2010 and December 30, 2011, I was

employed full-time at a publicly traded energy efficiency firm as a digital media

architect.

3. In January of 2011, I began writing for WL Central

1

, an independent news site

endorsed by WikiLeaks2, which publishes, information citizens require in order to

govern themselves and fact based news, presented in an impartial tone, relying on

primary and verifiable sources.3

4. In my capacities as a journalist for WL Central, I covered the WikiLeaks

release of US State Department Cables, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) memoranda

known as the Guantanamo Files, or 'GTMO files', and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain,

Iran, and Yemen. I have also covered the US investigations into and the prosecutions of

WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning.4

5. On February 23, 2012, I attended Bradley Mannings arraignment as a

member of a media organization, namely WL Central, which was credentialed by the

Pentagon for that hearing. See Appendix for Credential Confirmation for the

Arraignment of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning (UNCLASSIFIED) from the U.S. Department

1http://www.wlcentral.org

2see http://wikileaks.org/Supporters.html

3See http://wlcentral.org/q-a

4For an archive of my work at WL Central please visit http://wlcentral.org/users/alexa-obrien/track. For an

archive of my work on my personal blog please visit http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/archives.html



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of Defense.

6. In the course of my work at WL Central, I conducted hundreds of hours of

interviews and correspondence with former Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) detainees.

7. On June 6 and 7, 2011, I published an interview on WL Central with Omar

Deghayes, who had been imprisoned at Bagram and later at GTMO because the United

States considers him a terrorist member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)

which is on the State Department List of recognized Terrorist groups. (See Hedges

Certification Exhibit A.) My interview with Omar Deghayes concerned his own

experiences as well his personal knowledge about other detainees still imprisoned at

GTMO including Omar Khadr who is a member of Al-Quada and Shaker Aamer who the

US Government asserts is supported by Al-Quada and the Taliban.5

8. I have followed the NDAA or the Homeland Battlefield Act and am familiar

with it. I fear that the federal government will enforce the Homeland Battlefield Act

against me and that my work as a journalist which has been sympathetic to the plight of

detainees -- will be construed as giving substantial support to terrorists and/or

associated forces. Because of the passage of the Homeland Battlefield Act, I am now

fearful of doing the type of reporting that I have done on individuals and organizations

that are considered terrorists by the United States government and my reporting has

therefore been curtailed.

9. Because of my work as a journalist, described above, and my work as an

activist, which I describe below, I believe that I have become a target of the United States

5See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/15/shaker-aamer-amnesty-urgent-action;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/06/guantanamo-gun-abuse-cia-mi5?INTCMP=SRCH; andhttp://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/topstories/8128996.3_000_days_of_Guantanamo_Bay_imprisonment_for_Shaker_Aamer/



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government and because of the passage of the Homeland Battlefield Act which gives the

government frightening new powers, I have curtailed my journalism and activism.

10.In March of 2011, I started a twitter profile, @USDayofRage6, and later a

website http://www.usdayofrage.org, whose only avowed purpose is to support campaign

finance reform in the United States.7

11.In late July of 2011, U.S. Day of Rage endorsed the call to Occupy Wall

Street on September 17, 2011. U.S. Day of Rage was responsible for organizing all the

nonviolent civil disobedience trainings in New York in the run up to September 17, 2011;

and we created nonviolent training talk videos and other aggregated resources that we

posted on our web site.8

U.S. Day of Rage has thousands of supporters around the United

States and the world.9

12.Despite being non-violent and devoted almost exclusively to campaign

finance reform, I have been shocked at how private security firms working in concert

with the FBI have tried to insinuate that our group has connections to terrorist

organizations, websites and ideas. It is precisely these efforts to link reform groups to

terrorists combined with the new powers of military policing in the Homeland Battlefield

Act that is not only chilling free speech but giving activists and journalists reason to fear

detention, military trial or worse.

13.An email recently leaked by WikiLeaks on February 27, 2012 illustrates the

problem. These emails were leaked by WikiLeaks from a global intelligence company

called Stratfor which does work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the US

6https://twitter.com/#!/USDayofRage

7http://usdayofrage.org/about.html

8See http://usdayofrage.org/resources.html

9https://twitter.com/#!/MElKasrawy/status/101304983756091392,

https://twitter.com/#!/Younis_Big/status/101908867612545024,https://twitter.com/#!/Younis_Big/status/101909734944280577, http://wlcentral.org/node/2128



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Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

14.In an email exchange dated August 18, 2011 between Fred Burton, Stratfors

Vice-President for Counterterrorism and Corporate Security, and former Deputy Chief of

the Department of States (DoS) counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security

Service (DSS), and Thomas Kopecky, Director of Operations at Investigative Research

Consultants, Inc and Fortis Protective Services, LLC: 10

Re: Fwd: Question

Email-

ID5462138

Date 2011-08-18 19:29:44

From [email protected]

[email protected],[email protected]

No, we're not aware of any concrete connections between fundamentalistIslamist movements and the Day of Rage, or the October 2011 movement

at

this point.

On 8/18/11 1:17 PM, Fred Burton wrote:

?

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Question

Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:15:13 -0700 (PDT)From: Thomas Kopecky

Reply-To: [email protected]: Fred Burton

Hi Fred & thanks for those books you signed....my father thought that

was a great gift.

I was looking into that U.S. Day of Rage movement and specifically

10http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/5462138_re-fwd-question-.html



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askedto connect it to any Saudi or other fundamentalist Islamic movements -

Thus far I have only hear rumors but not gotten any substantial

connection.

Do you guys know much about this other than its U.S. Domestic fiscalideals ?

thanks

Tom

Thomas Kopecky, Director of Operations

- Investigative Research Consultants, Inc.- Fortis Protective Services, LLC

1 E Wacker Dr. Suite 2300Chicago, IL 60601

312.832.9600 - office1145 West 5th St. #101

Austin, TX 78703512.381.9000

800.578.8212 - faxwww.ircIntelligence.com

www.fortisworldwide.com

15.On its web site, Investigative Research Consultants describes itself asfollows:

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IRC has maintained a well respected reputation as an elite operation

among private detective agencies in Chicago. We routinely workalongside law enforcement agencies that seek our expertise in the private

sector. Our investigators have the work ethic and knowledge that keepsU.S. ahead of the competition and in touch with ever-changing legislation

and technology that affects our industry.

16.Though the above-cited emails said they did not find a direct link to Islamic

radicals

at present, subsequent to this email other individuals working in conjunction with the

United States and the FBI linked our group to Al-Quaeda and other terrorsit groups.

17.In late August, the U.S. Day of Rage official twitter profile, @usdayofrage

11http://www.ircintelligence.com/about.html



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began receiving messages that falsely accused U.S. Day of Rage of being affiliated with

terrorist groups. These were from a privately owned security and intelligence contractor,

Provide Security (@providesecurity)12

, managed by Thomas Ryan and Dr. Kevin

Schatzle CISSP, CFE, CPP.

18.On the firms website13 and LinkedIn profile14, Provide Security describes

itself as:

[H]andpicked from the ranks of highly trained and experienced formeragents of the U.S. Secret Service, members of U.S. Special Forces, Global

Intelligence Agencies and other premier law enforcement organizations.Our experts are Board Certified in multiple aspects of Security from

leading Security Associations, including ASIS International, theAssociation of Certified Fraud Examiners and ISC2.

19.Then, on September 1, 2011, @usdayofrage received three private twitter

message, called a direct message, from @providesecurity:

20.On October 14, 2011, Thomas Ryan of Provide Security, published an article

entitled The Email Archive of the #OccupyWallStreet Movement onAndrew Breitbart

12https://twitter.com/#!/providesecurity

13http://www.providesecurity.com/home/)

14http://www.linkedin.com/company/provide-security?trk=fc_badge



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Presents Big Government.15 Thomas Ryan directly associates our group U.S. Day of

Rage with Al Quaeda and other terrorists organizations and states that he has recruited

other people to help U.S. begin the collection of data from social media sites including

U.S. Day of Rage. Ryan stated:

On August 10, 2011, the hacker group Anonymous announced that itwould join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Thats what sparked

my interest in monitoring #OccupyWallStreet.

I reached out to a colleague and asked if he would be interested instudying the protest with me. At first, it seemed disorganized, and we

believed it would only be a few hundred protestors.

As we engaged in monitoring its growth, we recruited other people to helpU.S. begin the collection of data available via social media. We began

mapping out key players, and monitored Anonymouss [sic] efforts toorganize protests in the San Francisco Bay area public transportation

system (#opBART) in order to detect patterns and key influencers.

Then, at the end of August, we were alerted by a fellow researcher thatinformation about USDoR (U.S. Day of Rage, to which Occupy Wall

Street is connected) had been posted on Shamuk and Al-Jahad, two Al-Qaeda recruitment sites. We began to take the Occupy protest more

seriously, and dedicated more time to research and monitoring.

Days later, Anonymous announced that it would be releasing its newDDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) tool. Because of the Al-Qaeda

posting, we contacted the New York Field Office of the FBI so they couldinvestigate the potential threat. From that point on, we decided we needed

to include the Human Element of Intelligence (HUMINT), and to infiltratethe protestors to map their ties to Anonymous, and to the postings on

Shamuk and Al-Jahad.

21.I have since found that my employer has been repeatedly by U.S. government

agents concerning my involvement with U.S. Day of Rage and the Occupy movement.

22.Between October 18, 2010 and December 31, 2011 I was employed full time

at a publicly traded energy efficiency firm as a digital media architect, responsible for the

15http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cY0nTMNZZbwJ:biggovernment.com/thomasrya

n/2011/10/14/the-email-archive-of-the-occupywallstreet-movement-anarchists-socialists-jihadists-unions-democrats/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us



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content strategy of the firms internal content management system and website.

23.In a late October 2011 telephonic meeting, between myself and the firms

director of federal programs, who is also a former interrogator and foreign language

specialist with the Massachusetts Army National Guard, I was told that multiple

individuals in the U.S. government on multiple occasions had asked him about me by

name. In early December, after being pulled off several projects and experiencing

increasing difficulty at work managing the perceptions concerning my extramural work, I

telephoned the CEO of the firm where I was formerly employed, and asked him, What

was going on? He mentioned to me that the quality of my performance was not in

question, but many people within the company were extremely concerned about the press

around my involvement organizing Occupy Wall Street, which could become a liability

for the company, whose clients include a major U.S. bank and the federal government.

24.Not wanting to create problems for the CEO I agreed to leave at the end of the

year if I could claim unemployment and be given a good recommendation.

25.On January 11, 2012Australian Security Magazine published an article

entitled, Radical Islam: Global influence in domestic affairs that directly linked, again

incorrectly, U.S. Day of Rage to radical Islamists:16

More recently we found the same types of activity by radical Islamistsduring the planning of the U.S. Day of Rage that was scheduled for

September 17th 2011. While it certainly did not take root and there werenone of the violent clashes that took place during the UK riots, none the

less the same types of people were there seeking to influence proceedings.Those aiming to influence the U.S. Day of Rage followed a similar pattern

as the group and individuals we found to be trying to influence groups forCHOGM. Most were looking to promote violent confrontation, while some

were spreading low level jihadist propaganda.

26.Based on all of the foregoing, I have an actual and well-founded fear that the

16http://www.australiansecuritymagazine.com.au/2012/01/radical-islam-global-influence-in-domestic-affairs/)



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US Government will consider me a covered person under the Homeland Battlefield Act

and will either detain me indefinitely or subject me to a military tribunal. Because of

this fear I have substantially curtailed my journalistic and political activities.

27.For example, the NDAA has caused me to be concerned about enhancing the

security of my interview files. Two days ago, before I left on a trip to London for a

television interview in connection with the Occupy movement, I double encrypted Skype

interview files (both audio and video) of my discussions with a former solider at

Guantanamo who I interviewed about physical restraints used at Guantanamo as to

detainees. I did this encryption because I was concerned about the government possibly

inspecting my computer library at customs upon my re-entry to the U.S. from London. I

had not taken such measures prior to the passage of the NDAA.

28.In addition, I have held back on publishing two articles on WL Central

concerning; 1) the interviews with the soldier described above; and 2) my interview with

a detainee at Guantanamo who reported that his government-appointed defense lawyer

deliberately undermined his defense in a commission hearing resulting in a guilty plea to

a modified charge. My concerns about the impact of the NDAA in deeming me to have

substantially supported terrorist groups by the publication of these materials is a

significant factor in my delaying publication of these interviews or parts of these

interviews.

29.I am not a professional activist. I am an ordinary working professional and

citizen. I rely on my good reputation and salary to live and engage with larger society

and have relied on my salary to fund my journalistic and organizing activities. I have

witnessed first hand how simply trying to reform government led me and my



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organization to be branded as being associated with terrorist groups by the Government

and private security companies working with the government. If the Homeland

Battlefield Act of the NDAA remains the law of the land, the government, working with

private contractors, could not just tarnish my reputation, but detain me indefinitely

without trial and this is a frightening prospect.

30.I have also spent substantial time and money because of the passage of the

Homeland Battlefield Act. I have spent money on phone calls and travel to discuss these

issues with fellow activists and lawyers.


Documents

Declaration-of-Alexa-OBrien