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[2/3] >>501 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#17_November_2020_(Undercover_Infiltrators) -- Undercover infiltrators in the opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/11/15/standing-rock-tigerswan-infiltrator-documents/ -- In the Mercenaries’ Own Words: Documents Detail TigerSwan Infiltration >>253 >>489 >>494 >>496 of Standing Rock -- November 15 2020 -- North Dakota’s private security regulator said a trove of company documents showed TigerSwan’s denials were “willfully false and misleading.”

The presentation slides in the HUMINT report [ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7328404-TigerSwan-at-Standing-Rock-Daily-HUMINT.html ] offer intelligence on a variety of people, organizations, and other aspects of camp life. The group Veterans for Peace is “a very communist organization,” said one slide. Another, titled “Red Warrior Camp Cell Leader,” tracked the activities of a water protector named Tempeh, who was thought to be involved with a direct action-focused camp. “Tempeh has asked RO” — coded initials for the infiltrator — “to assist him in evaluating weaknesses in the systems for the purposes of exploiting/sabotaging. RO remained non-committal,” one slide said. “Tempeh is also looking for someone to dig up dirt on sex trafficking involving DAPL workers.” The infiltrators, according to the documents, volunteered to collect such information, in an effort to gain the trust of camp leaders. The slide contained numerous inaccuracies, Tempeh told The Intercept. Tempeh, for example, was close with members of Red Warrior, but he belonged to a separate camp called Heyoka. He said much of the material seemed to be based on rumor or on the kind of directionless brainstorming that occurred around campfires. The PowerPoint was only the starting point for more than a month of documented spying. The records provided by TigerSwan in discovery show that, the same day the report about Tempeh came in, a human intelligence team member named Logan Davis created a WhatsApp chat group with McCollough and a third member of the TigerSwan team, Zachary Perez, who were both getting ready to enter the North Dakota camps. (Neither Davis nor Perez responded to requests for comment.) “Joel, first RFI for you,” Davis wrote, using an acronym for request for information, “who belongs to Red Warrior Group.” He wanted the leadership structure, number of members, where they were staying, and a description of their vehicles. He asked the same for Veterans for Peace. Perez, meanwhile, would attempt to gain access to Sacred Stone camp.

“RW is highly guarded,” McCollough replied, referencing Red Warrior camp. “I got extremely lucky meeting Tempeh the way i did.” He asked Davis to get the name of a pimp from law enforcement, so he could “build bona fides” with Tempeh. (Asked about the report, Tempeh did not recall any conversation with McCollough.) Davis delivered a name and then sent the operatives into action: “Start reengaging your sources. We don’t have the luxury of time.” The infiltrators did just that, according to the TigerSwan documents attached to the Board’s filing. They attended courthouse support protests, offered to be drivers for direct actions, invited water protectors to crash in their hotel rooms, and provided them with gear. They filed intelligence reports and details of their movements back to Davis, who at times mingled among water protectors himself, and later to other handlers, Nik McKinnon and Will Janisch. (McKinnon and Janisch did not respond to requests for comment.) The chat logs describe the role Reese, then TigerSwan’s CEO, played in managing the HUMINT operation. “When Jim Reese visited a while ago he said the collectors” — a term for intelligence collectors, including infiltrators — “could have 1k in petty cash,” McCollough told the group, explaining that he didn’t want to use his credit card in front of the pipeline opponents. “I told him 500 would be plenty.”

Throughout December 2016, McCollough developed relationships with various water protectors. According to the TigerSwan chat logs in the North Dakota security board’s filing, he repeatedly referred to them in the chats as “muj,” shorthand for mujahedeen, a reference to Muslim religious fighters. TigerSwan operatives exchanged crude banter about women and racist jokes, including about “drunk Indians.” The chat itself was titled “Operation Maca Root 3,” a supplement known for increasing libido and fertility in men. As the former member of the TigerSwan intelligence team put it, “At some level you naturally dehumanize the enemy. They do the same thing.” He added, “This isn’t a Brooklyn tech startup, it’s a bunch of mercs in a private chat supposedly.” Advocates for water protectors noted that such dehumanizing language speaks to the mercenaries’ militaristic approach. “It’s the same type of racism that’s employed by the military in other countries to dehumanize and demonize a population under attack or under occupation,” said Verheyden-Hilliard. At one point in the chats, Davis indicated ambitions to do more than just observe water protectors’ activities. He flagged the presence of an organization of veteran volunteers called The Mission Continues, telling the chat group, “I can see this being something we can develop and infiltrate rather easily, if not completely take over.”

On a different day, after noting that few supporters turned out at a trial for a water protector, Davis joked, “It’s pretty bad, I’m gonna eat breakfast and think about how much we have destroyed a grass roots movement.” The assessment of TigerSwan’s efficacy was shared by the former member of the intelligence team: “Demoralization, destabilization, fake crisis, ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare — these had all taken their toll,” he said. The most active infiltrator in the chat group was McCollough, according to the logs made public in the security board filing. Throughout December and January, he attempted to identify weapons in the camps. He described interpersonal disputes between members of the camp security groups and drug and alcohol use among the pipeline opponents. And he showed a special interest in violence against women. Previous reporting by The Intercept shows that he asked two water protectors for names of women who had been assaulted, claiming he was a journalist writing an article about it; they declined. The chat provides evidence of that approach. “Working on the pirs” — priority intelligence requirements — “with a muj who thinks I’m gonna write an article about the rapes in camp,” he told the chat group at one point. McCollough floated another idea for obtaining information that water protectors didn’t offer voluntarily. “Can we get micro recorders for a hotel room? If its legal, of course,” he suggested. (In fact, water protectors had found what appeared to be such a device at the hotel and casino back in October.) “Tempeh used the bathroom to have private discussions even when the room was full. If i had had a recorder I could turn on remotely it would have been great.”

“You can do it but can’t be used in court,” the other infiltrator, Perez, responded. “Only with consent or in a ‘public Setting.’” McKinnon, the handler, jumped in. “It would depend on ‘who’s dwelling’ it is. And what Zach said.” “If i paid for the room, its mine, right?”McCollough asked. “Correct,” McKinnon replied.

They were mostly wrong. In North Dakota, using recording devices, even in your own home, would amount to felony eavesdropping in a space like a bathroom, where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy — unless at least one person present agreed to the recording, according to North Dakota’s wiretapping laws. Tempeh, who remembered seeing McCollough that day in the hotel room, said that operational security was essential to planning nonviolent direct actions and likely prevented McCollough from getting much meaningful information. “If you weren’t in our family, we didn’t talk to you,” he said. “We didn’t even talk around you.” Vanessa Dundon, a plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit related to the water hoses, was also mentioned in the documents. Dundon, who is Diné, lost vision in one eye after being hit by a tear gas canister at Standing Rock. In the chat logs filed by the security board, McCollough claimed to have spent a night in Dundon’s room, to which Davis replied that he hoped McCollough would “make little martyrs” with her. “Cyclops babies,” Perez replied in the chats, a crass reference to Dundon’s lost eye. Dundon said she didn’t remember McCollough. “It disappoints me how childish all of the security firms are and that they are in any position of power,” she said. Even as she continues, four years later, to undergo surgeries on her eye, however, Dundon finds humor in the infiltrators’ boorish exchange. “It’s funny in a way,” she said. “Being Native, the way we take in hate or shaming — we turn those things to make them laughable.”