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abuse of power, Afghanistan, American Indian, American Indian Rights, American Indians, archaeological sites, Bakken, Bakken Crude, Bakken Crude Oil, Bismarck, Blackwater, Cannonball River, Civil Rights, civil rights violations, clean water, corruption, Dakota Access Pipeline, Dallas, DAPL, destruction of ancestral burial sites, direct action, DOJ, Donald Trump, EIS, Eminent Domain, Energy Transfer Partners, environment, Environmental Impact Study, environmental justice, ETP, Federal Land, First Amendment Rights, Fort Laramie, Free Speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, historical sites, Indigenous, indigenous rights, injuries from non-lethal weapons, Iraq, James Reese, jihad, Lake Oahe, Lakota, law, Missouri River, National Historic Preservation Act, Native American, Native Americans, Natural Gas & Oil Drilling, Navajo, Navajo Nation, NEPA, New Mexico, No DAPL, North Dakota, oil and gas, petroleum industry, pipeline, pipeline protest, police brutality, prayer camp, private military contractors, protest, religious rights, sacred sites, Standing Rock, Standing Rock Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, TigerSwan, treaty of Fort Laramie, Treaty Rights, Trump, Trump Administration Abuses, Trump Administration Lies, US, USA, war at home, war on terror, water, water protectors, water rights
Related Background:
“Jeremy Scahill: TigerSwan Security, Linked to Blackwater, Now Coordinates Intel for Dakota Access” November 21, 2016, https://www.democracynow.org/2016/11/21/jeremy_scahill_tigerswan_security_linked_to
In 2009 it was reported that “James Reese, a retired Army special operations soldier, has been named chief executive officer of TigerSwan Inc. of Apex… He was recently a vice president with Blackwater Worldwide, where he ran a high-threat security program in Iraq and Afghanistan.” See “TigerSwan: Mercenaries move to Apex” Submitted by James on Mon, 03/30/2009, http://bluenc.com/content/tigerswan-mercenaries-move-apex
TigerSwan is a Delaware registered company: “Delaware: An Onshore Tax Haven” https://itep.org/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven/
“Erik Prince in the Hot Seat: Blackwater Founder Under Investigation for Illegal Mercenary Biz“, MARCH 25, 2016 https://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/erik_prince_in_the_hot_seat Prince is also close to Cheney family.
Kukes: Russian Oil Magnate with Ties to Putin and Cheney Gave Almost $300,000 to Trump
War abroad come home.
From Common Dreams.org:
“DAPL Company Hired War on Terror Contractors to Suppress Native Uprising Leaked docs reveal the collusion between local police forces, pipeline company, and defense contractors as they executed ‘military-style counterterrorism measures’ to suppress the water protectors by Lauren McCauley, staff writer Published on Saturday, May 27, 2017
The years-long, Indigenous-led fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline [1] (DAPL) briefly captured the nation’s attention last fall as images of peaceful resisters being sprayed with water canons and surrounded by police in tanks and other military-grade equipment were spread widely, fueling global outrage and a fierce protest movement against the oil pipeline.
Now that the pipeline is operational and already leaking [2] internal documents obtained by The Intercept and reported [3] on Saturday reveal the deep collusion between local police forces, the pipeline company, and defense contractors as they executed “military-style counterterrorism measures” to suppress the water protectors.
TigerSwan, described as a “shadowy international mercenary and security firm” that “originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror,” was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to spearhead “a multifaceted private security operation characterized by sweeping and invasive surveillance of protesters,” The Intercept wrote.
Reportedly, one of TigerSwan’s contractors leaked 100 internal documents to reporters Alleen Brown, Will Parrish, and Alice Speri, who were able to assemble roughly 1,000 more via public records requests.
The trove paints a damning picture of the police response to the Indigenous-led effort to block construction of the pipeline on sacred, treaty land and is a shocking example of how anti-terrorist rhetoric and tactics could be applied to any uprising the government would like to suppress.
According to the reporting:
Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component” and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. One report, dated February 27, 2017, states that since the movement “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model while active, we can expect the individuals who fought for and supported it to follow a post-insurgency model after its collapse.” Drawing comparisons with post-Soviet Afghanistan, the report warns, “While we can expect to see the continued spread of the anti-DAPL diaspora…aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements are now a proven method of defeating pipeline insurgencies.”
“As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around the country pass laws criminalizing protest,” Brown, Parrish, and Speri write, “the fact that a private security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated its efforts with local, state, and federal law enforcement to undermine the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications.”
Indeed, in the wake of the 2016 election, Republican legislatures [4] in at least 19 states introduced various anti-protest [5] laws, many with a deliberate nod to the uprising in North Dakota.
Not only that, but Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, who oversaw the police response to the DAPL resistance, has been advising [6] other law enforcement on how to deal with protests and demonstrations.
Indeed, the documents reportedly show that Energy Transfer Partners has “continued to retain TigerSwan,” despite the fact that the anti-DAPL camps have disbanded. The security firm continues to produce so-called situation reports that document “the threat of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country.” These reports include “intelligence on upcoming protests,” information gleaned from social media, and “extensive evidence of aerial surveillance and radio eavesdropping, as well as infiltration of camps and activist circles.”
In some cases, persons “of interest” were even tracked when they crossed over state lines.
What’s more, the documents obtained via open records requests include “communications among agents from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Justice Department, the Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as state and local police,” that reveals interagency collusion and information sharing on the anti-DAPL protesters.
Read the extensive reporting and several published documents at The Intercept.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License”
[1] https://www.commondreams.org/tag/dakota-access-pipeline
[2] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/10/told-you-so-everyone-was-dreading-first-dapl-spill-reported
[3] https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/
[4] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/02/un-americans-right-protest-grave-danger-under-trump
[5] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/01/19/verge-trump-era-republicans-push-new-laws-chill-protest-nationwide
[6] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/11/sheriff-who-met-dapl-opponents-brute-force-now-advising-other-law-enforcement
[7] https://theintercept.com/document/2017/05/27/internal-tigerswan-situation-report-2016-09-13/
[8] https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/
CC-BY-SA: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/27/dapl-company-hired-war-terror-contractors-suppress-native-uprising (Emphasis our own.)
TigerSwan Delaware found in FL biz: http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResults?inquiryType=EntityName&searchNameOrder=TIGERSWAN&searchTerm=Tigerswan
“By 2007, 70 percent of the US intelligence budget – or about $38 billion annually – was spent on private contractors. Much of this largesse has been directed toward overseas operations. But it is likely that some of that money has been paid to private contractors – hired either by corporations or law enforcement agencies – that are also in the business of spying on American citizens. As early as 2004, in a report titled “The Surveillance Industrial Complex,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned that the “US security establishment is making a systematic effort to extend its surveillance capacity by pressing the private sector into service to report on the activities of Americans.” At the same time, corporations are boosting their own security operations. Today, overall annual spending on corporate security and intelligence is roughly $100 billion, double what it was a decade ago, according to Brian Ruttenbur, a defense analyst with CRT Capital.” Excerpted from: “We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists” by Adam Federman, Published on Wednesday, May 29, 2013 by Earth Island Journal
Blackwater (now Academi): “Cofer Black, the company’s vice-chairman from 2006 through 2008, was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001. He was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of Ambassador-at-Large from December 2002 to November 2004. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence-gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice-chairman of Blackwater. Robert Richer was vice president of intelligence until January 2007, when he formed Total Intelligence Solutions. He was formerly the head of the CIA’s Near East Division.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
Mining Awareness + 
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