The Real Controversy Over The Non-Existent 'Bowling Green Massacre' Is That It Was The FBI's Own Plot

from the fake-news dept

We've already made our views clear on the horrible nature of the Trump administration's ban on travelers who were born in seven predominantly Muslim countries. The administration has been trying to defend the program, but its talking points are (once again) falling apart. For example, the idea that this only "inconvenienced" a tiny percentage of people and was only temporary — government lawyers have now revealed that over 100,000 visas were permanently revoked. Permanently.

But the story that's gotten a lot more attention is how Trump aide Kellyanne Conway went on TV last night and tried to back up another talking point: that this is no different than what President Obama did with Iraqi visas. That's not true, but we'll get to that. Even if it were true, Conway seemed to literally make up a terrorist attack that didn't happen, calling it the "Bowling Green Massacre."

Of course, there was no such massacre. This has resulted in lots and lots of social media mocking about the "massacre" that didn't exist. Some of the mocking is actually quite funny. And, of course, you might want to go donate to the Bowling Green Massacre Fund to support the victims.

Conway, of course, has said that she merely misspoke and had meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" and then further pointed to a 2013 article about the two arrested Iraqis, claiming that it was a sign that "dozens" of terrorists could live in the US as refugees.

Even ignoring the ridiculous massacre claim, and accepting the idea that she just meant to say "terrorists", absolutely everything about this story fails to make her point unless you actively distort it. Let's dig in:

• The two Iraqis were "terrorists" set to carry out a bombing plot. Nope. It turns out that the two guys arrested were involved yet another of the FBI's "own plots." If you're new to this, for years we've covered how the FBI (rather than actually taking on criminal activity) has been inventing its own fake terrorist plots, and then using undercover agents and informants to bully dupes into "joining" the non-existent, FBI-created, FBI-financed, FBI-supplied "plots." We've written about examples of this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again (so don't go in the comments and ask why this story is on Techdirt...)

  And the "Bowling Green Terrorists" story is the same exact thing all over again:

  From that fall through the following spring, the FBI informant invited Alwan to participate in 10 operations to send weapons or money to Iraq.

• There was no bombing plot against Americans. The FBI's "own plot" here didn't even involve attacks on America. It was just about sending (non-existent) money and weapons to Iraq:

  ...throughout their interactions with undercover FBI agents in 2010 and 2011, Alwan and Hammadi never discussed plans to attack anyone or cause destruction on U.S. soil. And while they were found guilty of attempting to provide material support to al Queda militants back in Iraq, the men never indicated that they were personally in contact with any militants, attempted to procure weapons for such individuals, or attempted to provide any of their own money to such individuals. Rather, they showed up when and where the FBI informant told them to and helped physically load decoy supplies into whatever they were allegedly being shipped from.

• There was never any support for the claim that they were part of a larger cell of terrorist refugees: Again, this was a tiny "plot" manufactured by the FBI to send weapons and money to Iraq, not to attack the US. And while Conway has been blowing up Twitter by claiming this ABC story proves that other refugee "terrorists" were here, that article is from 2013, and not a single other person has been arrested, no other terrorist plots associated with refugees (real or fake) have been found or (more importantly) taken place.

  Hell, even former DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller pointed out that the ABC story "is garbage":

• Conway claimed that the media didn't report on the Bowling Green situation... but her proof that it happened is pointing to an article from ABC. Enough said on that.

• What Obama did in response to that was different: This has been a key talking point for those supporting the ban. They claim that no one complained about Obama "ban" for six months on people from Iraq in response to the Bowling Green "terrorists." Except that's simply false. As has been carefully reported in a ton of places, what President Obama did in 2011 was entirely different. There was no ban. There was no stoppage. A single type of visa just had more stringent vetting put in place that briefly slowed the throughput of applications. If you want the most thorough explanation I've seen for just how different the two situations are, read the analysis at Foreign Policy Magazine.

• Even if President Obama had done the same thing, people should still be upset: Because banning all people from a certain country or set of countries without a specific reason or threat, and (in the process) wreaking havoc on the lives of tons of people, including permanent residents and American citizens, deserves to be condemned as simply cruel.

In summary, Kellyanne Conway is using a non-existent "Bowling Green Massacre" to defend an inhumane policy, based on falsely arguing that two refugees, who were ensnared in a plot created by the FBI to send fake money and fake weapons back to Iraq (and not to attack America), were the tip of the iceberg of a bunch of refugee terrorists (who didn't actually exist) planning to attack America (which never happened) and because of that fake plot, fake massacre and fake terrorists, President Obama similarly banned people from Iraq -- which was something he didn't do. Is that about the sum of it?

Filed Under: bowling green massacre, bowling green terrorists, fbi, humanity, immigration, kellyanne conway, lies, own plots, president obama, president trump, visas

Fighting For The First Amendment Is Going To Be A Priority: Help Us Do It

from the free-speech-under-attack dept

Throughout the campaign, we noted how Donald Trump's views on the First Amendment and free speech were horrific. While some of his supporters insist that he's wonderful for free speech because he's not "politically correct," in almost every way he's positioned himself as an enemy of free speech and the First Amendment (even the whole "political correctness" thing is misleading, because if you mention certain other words, Trump supporters seem to get just as worked up as the "PC police"). He (along with Clinton) promised to censor the internet and brushed off the free speech concerns about doing so, calling people who bring up free speech in that context to be "foolish people." And, then of course, there is the long list of threats to sue his opponents for their ads, news organizations for their articles and other critics as well. Those are all protected speech. It didn't help matters that his very first post-election tweet complained about protesters exercising their First Amendment right to assemble and protest, and the press for supposedly "inciting" them to protest.

In the past few days things haven't gotten much better. His campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway threatened Harry Reid with legal action for criticizing the President-elect. Sure, Reid's statement was hyperbolic and a bit ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than stuff that Trump himself said on the campaign trail. You don't go and threaten people for expressing their opinions -- especially when its people from opposing parties. That's what dictatorial strongmen do, not those in a country that has the First Amendment. And, of course, Trump continued to use Twitter to get into a weird spat with the NY Times insisting (incorrectly) that people were unsubscribing because of its coverage of him. And then he insisted that the NY Times was lying in reporting on things he said about having more countries get nuclear weapons. Except he did say those things, and even the friendliest publication to Trump, Breitbart, reported on him saying it. No, he's not threatening legal action there, but selectively attacking and calling out certain publications -- especially for their accurate reporting -- is pretty ridiculous and again shows that Trump seems to have a serious inability to recognize that adversarial reporting on the government is kind of an important part of the freedom of the press.

And we haven't even gotten to Trump's promise to "open up libel law" to make sure that publications that reported negatively on him have "problems." As we noted when he said this, while he can't just "open up libel laws," he can still create lots of problems for free speech and the First Amendment.

And that's why people like Margaret Sullivan are arguing that this is our big First Amendment test. Some people have argued -- including in our comments -- that we should wait and see what Trump actually does. I think we should take him at his word. If he didn't mean, then let's see it by his actions. But in the meantime, it's going to be important to guard our free speech rights carefully, because Trump and his campaign have so far showed almost no respect for them at all. As journalism professor Dan Gillmor said in a recent speech, journalists need to become activists for free speech.

At Techdirt, we've always considered ourselves exactly that: strong advocates for free speech and an open internet, and so much of what we talk about stems from that. And we plan to continue to do so, even though we're quite small. I know I've seen lots of people suggest people subscribe to newspapers and some wonderful organizations like the ACLU and EFF -- and we're all for that too. But if you want Techdirt's voice to keep speaking out on this as well, perhaps, think about supporting us as well.

Filed Under: chilling effects, defamation, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, kellyanne conway, slapp, threats

Donald Trump's Son & Campaign Manager Both Tweet Obviously Fake Story

from the not-very-credible dept

It's no secret that there's been a huge number of totally fake news websites popping up in the past few years. Apparently, it's a fun and profitable venture. While some of the fake news sites come up with generic names, like National Report, Hot Global, The Valley Report and Associated Media Coverage, some of the most successful fake news sites just make use of the big well-known broadcaster websites... and just get a .co domain: using nbc.com.co or abcnews.com.co. Some of the hoax stories are really well done -- and, yes, even we've been fooled, though in our defense, the fake story we fell for... was so believable it became true just months later. But, of course, we're just a bunch of random bloggers, not a Presidential campaign.

The Trump campaign, on the other hand, should know better. Amusingly, of course, this week we've talked about the Trump campaign's willingness to fall for hoaxes, but they seemed to take it up a notch this week. I first noticed it when I saw Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway tweet an obviously fake story, claiming that an anti-Trump protestor was really paid by the Clinton campaign. You can even see the URL there, showing that it's "abcnews.com.co" and not the actual ABC news website (even if Conway does tag the real ABC as if they wrote the article). And, as I was writing up this story, I saw that The Hill notes that Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, tweeted the same fake story: Here's the thing, though. If you actually look at the story, it's so obviously fake. I mean, first off, just the claim that a protestor got $3500 to protest a Trump rally? I mean, even Donald Trump himself only paid his fake supporters $50 to cheer at his campaign announcement. Yes, the Clinton campaign has raised a lot more money than the Trump campaign, but $3500 a protestor? I mean, that's pretty obviously a ridiculous number.

And the article itself just gets more and more ridiculous the more you read. Whoever wrote this is clearly not even trying to fool people. I mean, just read this paragraph about how the guy knows it's Hillary's campaign that "paid" because the people who contacted him used AOL:

“As for who these people were affiliated with that interviewed me, my guess would be Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” Horner said. “The actual check I received after I was done with the job was from a group called ‘Women Are The Future’. After I was hired, they told me if anyone asked any questions about who I was with or communicated with me in any way, I should start talking about how great Bernie Sanders is.” Horner continued, “It was mostly women in their 60’s at the interview that I went to. Plus, all the people that I communicated with had an AOL email address. No one still has an AOL email address except people that would vote for Hillary Clinton.”

Or, how about the made-up Trump supporter in the article saying it was obviously a fake protestor because they shouted facts, or how "the best we could do was just yell and punch 'em."

“I knew those weren’t real protesters, they were too organized and smart,” said 59-year-old Tom Downey, a Trump supporter who attended the rally in Fountain Hills. “I knew there was something up when they started shouting all these facts and nonsense like that. The best we could do was just yell and punch em’ and stuff.” Downey continued

Yeah, sure. These fit the "stereotypes" but in such an exaggerated way that it's obviously false.

And then the article actually sorta becomes self-aware, with a pretty big wink to anyone who actually read it that it's false:

David Mikkelson, founder of Snopes.com, a website known for its biased opinions and inaccurate information they write about stories on the internet in order to generate advertising revenue, told ABC News that he approves of what a story like this is accomplishing.

“You have to understand that when a story like this goes viral, and we spend a minute or two debunking it, we make lots of money. Stories like this have helped put my children through college, buy a new car, a home and even get the Silverback gorilla my wife Barbara always wanted since she was a child,” Mikkleson said. “We claim ‘to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well‘, but that’s just ridiculous. Do you know how much time that would take? Instead, we just copy and paste parts of the original article into ours, write a couple sentences, and that’s it. I just want to be clear, our website does zero journalism or anything creative, and I’m only telling you this for legal reasons...."

That one goes on for a while having the fake Snopes person going on and on about fake news sites, totally unrelated to the subject of this "story." So, uh, yeah. It's pretty clear that either Trump's son and campaign manager read the story and are so completely clueless that they still thought it was real, or they were so excited by what the headline claimed that they just glided right past the ridiculous dollar amount and assumed it must be true. Yes, people get fooled by fake news stories all the time. But having an actual Presidential campaign get fooled by one is... well... bad.

Filed Under: credibility, donald trump, eric trump, fake news, kellyanne conway