Tom Roche

Ryan and Emily discuss Robert Hur's explosive Congressional testimony, UAE threatens to cut off Israel economic support over lack of Gaza aid, State Dep Spox confronted on IDF beatings of Gaza medics, CPI report shows inflation rise, Kenya halts troops to Haiti amid gang uprising, Putin says Russia ready to negotiate, leaked French military docs say Ukraine victory is impossible, and Andrew Tate arrested after streamer Adin Ross revealed his escape plans from Romania.

 

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Former Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis discusses his long relationship with Australia, the latest from Greece and Europe as well as the ongoing influence of America on our foreign policy, on Europe and on the Middle East.

Guest: Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and founder of Diem25

The siege on Gaza and the role of the Palestinian Authority are critical context for the Israel’s assault on Gaza. On this episode we take a look at the history of the blockade and how Israel has ghettoized the Palestinian population. Co-production with The Brief.

Published with permission from Consortium News. Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bccv50tIPWI

 

In late November, the Washington Post (11/22/23) factchecked President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that babies had been beheaded during Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel.

Biden’s remarks during a November 15 news conference triggered the factcheck:

Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again, like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burning women and children alive.

Despite acknowledging a lack of confirmation of such atrocities, the Post stopped short of branding Biden’s statements false, and declined to dole out any of its iconic Pinocchios.

“It’s too soon in the Israel/Gaza war to make a definitive assessment,” Post Factchecker Glenn Kessler wrote, noting that even the most basic facts weren’t yet known.

“The Israeli prime minister’s office has said about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, down from an initial estimate of 1,400,” he said, “but it’s unclear how many were civilians or soldiers.”

An authoritative count

That statement isn’t true. While the exact number killed amid the extreme violence and chaos of October 7 may never be finalized, an authoritative count of civilian deaths—as well as data that definitively refutes claims babies were beheaded—was available to anyone with access to the internet little more than a month after the attack.

That’s when Bituah Leumi, or National Insurance Institute, Israel’s social security agency, posted a Hebrew-language website (11/9/23) with the name, gender and age of every identified civilian victim and where each had been attacked.

Two days later Bituah Leumi (also transliterated as Bituach Leumi) posted an English-language news release (11/11/23) publicizing the website as a memorial to the civilian victims of the “Iron Swords” war—Israel’s name for Hamas’s attack and Israel Defense Forces’ response. (The news release refers to “695 identified war casualties,” but there are no wounded; all the victims are listed as “killed.”)

The journalistic importance of the memorial website was shown less than a month later, when Haaretz (12/4/23), Israel’s oldest newspaper, used the social security agency’s data to debunk some of the most sensational atrocities blamed on Hamas.

‘Proved untrue’

Haaretz’s 2,000-word, English-language article was cautious, with allowances for mistaken and exaggerated reports from traumatized observers describing horrific scenes of carnage. But unlike the Washington Post’s factcheck, the Israeli newspaper didn’t pull its punches, flatly concluding that some of the claims of atrocities “have been proved untrue.”

Chief among the claims disproved was that Hamas fighters deliberately slaughtered dozens of babies—beheading some, burning and hanging others.

“According to sources including Israel’s National Insurance Institute, kibbutz leaders and the police, on October 7 one baby was murdered, 10-month-old Mila Cohen,” the Haaretz article stated. “She was killed with her father, Ohad, on Kibbutz Be’eri.” The child’s mother survived.

In addition to a single infant, the social security agency’s list of victims includes only a few other young children. Haaretz’s reporters were able to determine the circumstances of each of their deaths:

According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children aged 6 or under were murdered, including Omer Kedem Siman Tov, 2, and his 6-year-old twin sisters Arbel and Shachar, who were killed on Kibbutz Nir Oz. There was also 5-year-old Yazan Zakaria Abu Jama from Arara in the southern Negev, who was killed in a Hamas rocket strike, and 5-year-old Eitan Kapshetar, who was murdered with his parents and his 8-year-old sister, Aline, near Sderot.

Haaretz also used the social security data to refute allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Biden that Hamas targeted and tortured children:

There is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to US President Joe Biden that Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.”

‘Details still sparse’

The Washington Post (12/4/23) acknowledged the Haaretz story the same day it was published, with a one-paragraph “update” inserted into its November 22 factcheck. While crediting Haaretz with doing a “detailed examination of unverified accounts of alleged atrocities disseminated by Israeli first-responders and army officers,” the Post downgraded the Israeli newspaper’s conclusion, saying only that “no accounts of beheaded or burned babies could be verified.”

While the Post noted that Haaretz “could document only one case of a baby being killed in the Hamas attacks,” the update did not explain that the source of that critical fact was an agency of the Israeli government. Nor did the Post alter the factcheck’s inconclusive, mishmashed “Bottom Line”:

Almost two months after the Hamas attack, details are still sparse on claims of beheading of babies. One IDF official says he found a decapitated baby; a first responder says “little kids” were beheaded, though an exact number was not provided. Forensic records that would document the cause of death have not been released. There also are reports of at least two beheadings of adults—a soldier and a Thai worker. First responders say they viewed these bodies.

There is little dispute that many of the civilians killed by militants on October 7 died in especially brutal ways. But caution is still warranted, especially at the presidential level, about statements that babies were beheaded. The available evidence does not need exaggeration.

An unnecessary retraction

The Post wasn’t the only factchecker that wavered when judging reports of slaughtered Israeli babies. The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact retracted its story (10/20/23), headlined “How Politicians, Media Outlets Amplified Uncorroborated Report of Beheaded Babies.”

PolitiFact took the embarrassing action after being savaged by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, better known as CAMERA.

CAMERA, which Haaretz (9/5/16) described as “a right-wing media watchdog that routinely attacks news outlets over their coverage of Israel,” blasted PolitiFact as “unethical,” “sloppy and misleading” (11/8/23) for failing to include in its story all reports of mutilated babies made by Israeli military spokespeople, government officials and emergency response workers.

PolitiFact (11/21/23) conceded “our initial story was incomplete,” and published a revised story (11/21/23) that included many of those comments. The new version also quoted an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson stating “that verified testimonies state some people were beheaded, but they could not confirm how many.”

Like the Post’s Factchecker, PolitiFact drew no conclusions about the truth or falsity of those claims, declining to issue a rating on its “Truth-O-Meter.”

‘Details still emerging’

The factchecking website Snopes (10/12/23, last updated 12/18/23) also declined to provide a definite answer to the question posed in its headline: “Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?”

“At present, details are still emerging from communities affected in Israel, the death tolls are still being counted, and the manner of many deaths have not yet been confirmed,” Snopes stated.

In one of eight updates, Snopes cited Haaretz’s December 4 “analysis of child deaths during the October 7 attack.” But, as with the Washington Post’s update, Snopes did not mention that the newspaper had used Israeli social security data in its investigation.

FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, (10/13/23) did find that a Facebook video was correct in saying “that ‘no evidence has been provided’ for the viral claim that ‘40 babies’ were ‘beheaded’ by Hamas.”

But a November 14 update, included in the story, quoted the head of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine saying that “many bodies” of victims he had examined were “without heads.” But he couldn’t determine whether the decapitations were deliberate or the result of explosions.

FactCheck has not published any more on the issue.

The missing proof

There’s a reason why the major factchecking organizations hesitate to pass judgment on the widespread claim of slaughtered babies: They rightly conclude that the lack of verifying evidence, such as photos or autopsy reports, does not conclusively prove the claims are false.

FAIR contributor Saurav Sarkar made that precise point in his report (10/20/23) lambasting “corporate media” for “their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.”

“So we have a story, and that story was generated in a grossly irresponsible way, and then repeated over and over,” Sarkar stated. “But what proof do we have that the story is false? After all, even if it was reported badly, and repeated without additional substantiation, it might be true.”

Bituah Leumi, the Israeli social security agency, provided that missing proof when it posted the official list of victims that showed only one infant was killed in the attack.

The mainstream US news media ignored that authoritative evidence.

‘War on truth’

The first major news outlet outside of Israel to use data from the social security agency’s website was the French wire service Agence France-Presse.

The AFP’s 1,000-word, English-language dispatch, headlined “Israel Social Security Data Reveals True Picture of October 7 Deaths,” was picked up by France24 (12/15/23), the Times of India (12/15/23), the financial weekly Barron’s (12/15/23) and a scattering of small newspapers, including the Caledonian (Vermont) Record (12/15/23).

The AFP story covered much the same ground as Haaretz’s analysis, listing the same slain infant—Mila Cohen—and five other young victims under 7 years old in refuting claims of wholesale slaughter of babies.

While Google searches found no US mainstream media reporting on the Israeli social security agency’s data, several independent journalists did.

Gareth Porter, an American historian and journalist whose credentials go back to the Vietnam War, cited the social security data in an article in Consortium News (1/6/24) that argued that the Netanyahu government sought to build support for the invasion of Gaza by “inventing stories about nonexistent atrocities and planting them with credulous US news outlets.”

In February, Jeremy Scahill used that data to make the same case in a 8,000-word article, headlined “Netanyahu’s War on Truth,” in the Intercept (2/7/24), the investigative website he helped found.

Both journalists credit the December 15 AFP dispatch as the source of the Israeli social security data. (Porter’s story provides a link to the Times of India; Scahill links to France24.)

Earlier this week a third independent journalist, Glenn Greenwald (3/3/24), quoted the December 4 Haaretz report, which used the Israeli social security data, in a YouTube video, titled “October 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal & More.”

Emotion-inflaming stories

In the months since the Haaretz and AFP reports were published, Bituah Leumi has updated its civilian death count to 779, including 76 foreign workers, as more victims are identified (Jewish News Syndicate, 1/15/24.).

But a detailed examination this week of the 16-page list of victims on the memorial website found no additional infants or young children—only those already accounted for by Haaretz and AFP—and a total of 36 children under 18 years old.

Mila Cohen remains the only infant reported killed in the October 7 attack.

US corporate media’s failure to cite the social security agency’s data to forcefully refute claims of butchered babies and other outrages comes at a high cost. Such emotion-inflaming stories continue to foul the public debate over whether Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians (AP, 2/29/24)—two-thirds of those women and children (PBS, 2/19/24)—is a criminally disproportionate response to the Hamas attack.

Al Jazeera (2/29/24) broke down the Palestinian death count further, citing Gaza Health Ministry figures:

The ministry said of the 30,035 people killed so far in the conflict, more than 13,000 were children and 8,800 women. At least 70,457 people have been injured, of which more than 11,000 are in critical condition and need to be evacuated.

In January, when the Health Ministry had estimated the number of children killed at 10,000, Al Jazeera (1/25/24) published the names of more than 4,200 Palestinian dead under 18 years old. Of those children named, 502 were under 2 years old—that is, infants.

Unfounded horror stories about Hamas’s infant victims that should have been debunked were still being repeated by Biden (12/12/23) at a campaign fundraiser more than two months after Israel was attacked:

I saw some of the photographs when I was there—tying a mother and her daughter together on a rope and then pouring kerosene on them and then burning them, beheading infants, doing things that are just inhuman—totally, completely inhuman.

This time the Washington Post didn’t factcheck Biden—even though the White House stated months earlier that the president had never seen such photos (CNN, 10/12/23).

Still no Pinocchios.

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The post US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories appeared first on FAIR.

We catch up on the biggest winners, losers, snubs and looks of the Illuminati Humiliation Ritual commonly known as the 96th Annual Academy Awards. Then speaking of Humiliation Rituals, we discuss the State of the Union, the response from GOP Senator Katie Britt, Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law being killed by her own Tesla, and how Zionists are having a hard time finding a date on the apps.

Catch Will, Amber & Felix on stage (and Chris at the bar) along with Girl God and Jacques from Seeking Derangements at the Lodge Room in LA this Thursday, April 4: https://www.lodgeroomhlp.com/shows/show-pig-a-live-comedy-podcast-spectacular-with-seeking-derangements/

NYC people: keep an eye out for a Movie Mindset season 2 kickoff event. Not fully confirmed yet, but I’d keep May 4th open for now.

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There have been lots of reports in the media about China’s economic problems in recent months. Most of these pieces imply that it is facing some imminent disaster.

I will claim no special expertise on China, and it certainly looks like its government is pursuing some seriously wrongheaded policies, but it’s pretty difficult to see the disaster story in any publicly available data.

At the most basic level, most projections show its economy continuing to grow at a very healthy pace for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, the coverage is almost exclusively negative.

For example, this New York Times piece noted China’s projection for 5.0 percent GDP growth in 2024 with the headline “Xi Sticks to His Vision for China’s Rise Even as Growth Slows.” China’s growth projections, as well as its official statistics, should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, few doubt that the picture shown by government data, of an extremely rapidly growing economy over the last four and half decades, is basically right.

But suppose we don’t want to take China’s projections for 2024 and instead turn to the I.M.F. as a more neutral source. The most recent projections from the I.M.F. show China’s economy growing 4.2 percent in 2024. Its growth is projected to remain above 4.0 percent for the following two years, and then fall somewhat below 4.0 percent for the last two years of its projection period.

Is this an economy in crisis? Well, it is undoubtedly slower than the near double-digit growth rates its economy chalked up for much of the period between 1980 and 2020, but it hardly seems like a crisis.

To see this point, we can compare the projected growth for China with the projected growth over this period for Mexico, a country with a nearly identical level of per capita income. This is shown below.

 Source: International Monetary Fund.

 

As can be seen, Mexico is projected to have per capita income growth over this period averaging just over 1.0 percent annually, less than a third of China’s pace. (I have used per capita GDP to adjust for the fact that Mexico still has a growing population whereas China’s is declining slightly. Per capita GDP is a better gauge of living standards.) If we are to believe that China’s economy is facing some sort of crisis, then what do we think about an economy that is growing at less than a third of its pace?

It is also worth noting that, by this purchasing power parity measure, China’s economy is already considerably larger than the U.S. economy. It was 22.0 percent larger last year (24.0 percent including Hong Kong.) With the more rapid projected growth rate, it will be 34.0 percent larger by 2028.

This gap is worth noting when thinking about how best to deal with China. Those who think we can spend the country into the ground with a major military buildup need to check their arithmetic. (The Soviet economy peaked at roughly 60 percent of the size of the U.S. economy.)

The U.S. has differences with China in many areas, but both countries will fare much better if they look for areas for cooperation, like healthcare and climate, rather than confrontation. President Biden seemed to acknowledge this in his State of the Union address. It will be good if he follows through.

 

 

The post If China’s Economy Is a Basket Case, What Do We Call Mexico’s? appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Headlines for March 11, 2024; “Empire’s Laboratory”: How 2004 U.S.-Backed Coup Destabilized Haiti & Led to Current Crisis; Guilty: U.S.-Backed Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández Convicted of Drug Trafficking; “The Trauma Is Immeasurable”: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa on Israeli Violence in Gaza

Unlocking this episode about normal conversations and we all learn what Rizz means. Expect "Only Mr. God Knows" to return this week

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Ashley documents the ups and downs of trying to make friends while being ‘weird’ - or an undiagnosed autist.

Relating more to wizards, aliens and ghosts since childhood, Ashley has developed her own unique ways of seemingly 'fitting in’, despite the confusing world of human relationships.

After a childhood full of failed attempts, Ashley spent years obsessing over how to solve the problem of making friends in the only way she knows how - using strategies and methodical research within her peer group.

Now she shares her findings, as well as the epiphany she reached at the end of her study.

Expect niche cultural references, streams of consciousness and a healthy dose of Harry Potter references.

With Rosco McClelland

Produced by Julia Sutherland Sound Design by Sean Kerwin

A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4

For decades we’ve been told that there is an urgent looming skills gap, and that unless our education system churns out more STEM grads, economic disaster looms. But what if it’s not true? In a provocative new book, Neil Kraus argues that this story is at the heart of what he calls the fantasy economy, a wrongheaded view of the labor market that has fueled decades of education reform. And we hear from Tim Schwab, author of an explosive new book about Bill Gates, whose deep pockets have helped to spin the fantasy economy narrative. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast

Lavrov and Latin America. Cuba and BRICS

Danny and Derek speak with Ryan Grim of The Intercept about the piece he co-authored with Jeremy Scahill and Daniel Boguslaw about The New York Times’ exposé of the October 7 attacks alleging systematic use of sexual violence by Palestinian militants. They discuss the piece itself, the role of Israeli volunteer group Zaka, the journalistic standards at …

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NATO's new cold war on Russia and China is destroying Germany's industrial base, devastating Europe's economy, and destabilizing its politics, fueling the rise of the far-right, as neoliberal austerity policies exacerbate the ongoing recession. Ben Norton analyzes the evidence. Links: - EU confesses ‘our prosperity was based on China & Russia’: cheap energy, low-paid labor, big market: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/10/18/eu-prosperity-china-russia-energy-market - German lawmaker denounces Ukraine 'proxy war' and US 'terror attack' on Nord Stream pipelines: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/02/22/germany-ukraine-nord-stream-sevim-dagdelen - How corporate profits are driving inflation, not workers' wages: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/06/26/corporate-profits-inflation-europe-imf Topics 0:00 Crisis in EU's economic heart: Germany 5:04 EU admits "our prosperity was based on China and Russia" 6:51 German industry 8:09 US-NATO "vassalization" of Europe 10:09 Cheap Russian gas or expensive US LNG? 13:37 Corporations and speculators profit 17:08 Greedflation 19:08 Neoliberal austerity is back 21:24 US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) 23:52 Economic war on China backfires 27:01 Rise of far-right 29:46 Germany's leftist anti-war alternative 33:01 Environmentalist policies are not the problem 34:56 Outro

Aaron and Bryce talk about 9/11 with independent researcher Adam Fitzgerald.

Adam Fitgerald runs The Darkened Hour podcast, the Adam Fitgerald YouTube channel, and a Word Press site: 9/11: The Historical Timeline.

Special thanks to Dana Chavarria for producing the episode!

Music: “Touch Tone Bell” by Mock Orange

TIMESTAMPS:

Intro (0:00)

Scourge of the Establishment (6:46)

Interview with George Galloway (33:01)

Ending (1:13:49)

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Jovanni sits down with independent journalist Olesya Orlenko, a Russian historian, who provides on-the-ground perspectives from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.  They discuss the roots of the conflict tracing back to the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the role of Western media in shaping narratives, and the views from both Russian and Ukrainian sides.

Olesya Orlenko is a Russian historian, researcher, and reporter. She studied at the Institute of Russian and Archive in Russia, History Archive Russia, and at the National Charter School in France. Her interest includes World War II, Nazi genocide and extermination policy, history of the far right movement, and theories in France.

Since 2014, Melissa has been closely following events in the Donbass province and has traveled to the war zone several times to gather facts of crimes committed by the Ukrainian army [00:03:00] against the inhabitants of the UNESCO and Lugansk regions. She became a journalist in 2016 and has been reporting on such facts since.

Olesya is an author, documentarian, and founder of the Russian Society of Friends of L’Humanité, a French left wing newspaper.

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Fortress On A Hill is hosted, written, and produced by Chris ‘Henri’ Henrikson, Keagan Miller, Jovanni Reyes, Shiloh Emelein, and Monisha Rios. https://bit.ly/3yeBaB9

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Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts alone, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Coming to you from Belfast this week, Andy Zaltzman quizzes the news with Zoe Lyons, Neil Delamere, Diona Doherty, and Alex Kane.

In this episode Andy and the panel will be asking if turning the Northern Ireland Assembly off and on has made it work again?

Why Labour is keeping the red flag flying?… a Formula 1 style red flag, that is, which they’re waving at their own environment policy to tell it it’s off.

And whose chopper has got them in trouble?

Written by Andy Zaltzman

With additional material by: Cody Dahler, Alison Spittle, John Meagher, and Claire Sullivan

Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Sarah Nicholls Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

Organizers Layla Elabed and Waleed Shahid join us to discuss their recent successes with the movement to vote uncommitted against Joe Biden in the ongoing democratic primaries. They lay out their goals, how they’ve been organizing, what they feel they’ve achieved so far, and what they hope to accomplish going into the Democratic convention.

If you’d like to know more or learn how to get involved, go to: https://www.listentomichigan.com/

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Danny and Derek bring you the world. This week: in Gaza, the U.S. makes airdrops while Biden announces a temporary port (0:30), some countries restore UNRWA funding (4:02), and more; a cargo ship is sunk and data cables cut in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen (12:26); the parliament of Pakistan elects a new prime minister (16:15); a renewed attempt at a ceasefire in Myanmar (18:02); an update on the crisis in Sudan (20:17); a new date is set for Senegal’s presidential election (23:16); an attack in Odesa during a visit by Zelensky and the Greek prime minister (25:32); Sweden officially joins NATO (27:08); in Haiti, a new gang offensive threatens to oust Ariel Henry (28:33); and we continue to break new climate records (33:54).

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Nick and Ciarán from the Berlin-based Corner Späti podcast join us to give a run-down of German politics post-October 7th. We discuss the role of anti-Semitism and holocaust remembrance in German government, the current relationship of the country to the rest of Europe and to Israel, and give a quick brief on the state of Deutschland’s major political parties and the various creeps, criminals and pervs who run them. Finally a brief look at Eurovision 2024 and Israel’s participation has become a touchy subject this year.

For more Corner Späti and their coverage of German and European politics & life, check out: https://www.operationglad.io/

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Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

Headlines for March 07, 2024; Israel’s “Killing Machine”: How U.S. Military Support Is Undercutting Ceasefire Talks, Prolonging War; Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza; New Pakistan Gov’t Marks Return of “Bourgeois Old Guard” as Jailed Imran Khan Looms Large

Headlines for March 01, 2024; “Just Being Racist”: Biden & Trump Push Anti-Immigrant Policies in Dueling Border Visits; The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7

Source: AGU Advances

Soil carbon is exactly what it sounds like: carbon collected and stored in soil. Plants pull carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and deposit it into the soil as their leaves, stems, and roots decompose. In fact, soil contains more than 3 times as much carbon as the atmosphere.

Scientists are uncertain, however, about how soil carbon storage responds to climate change. Increased carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere could lead to more plant growth and a resulting increase in soil organic carbon. On the other hand, studies have shown that climbing temperatures can cause soil to release its carbon into the atmosphere.

Earth system models help researchers understand how Earth and its inhabitants are contributing to and affected by climate change. But their projections are not necessarily reliable for estimating changes in soil organic carbon. Shi et al. examined the reliability of soil carbon predictions in the outputs of 24 Earth system models. The researchers used two generations of models available through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project: CMIP5 and CMIP6.

Seventeen out of 24 models predicted gains in global soil organic carbon under high emission scenarios by 2100, with a mean rise of 43.9 petagrams—or 43 billion metric tons. Eleven of the 17 predicted a rise in soil organic carbon of more than 50 petagrams. Two models predicted large soil carbon losses of more than 50 petagrams, whereas soil carbon levels remained relatively constant globally in the five remaining models. Particularly among CMIP5 results, large differences in soil carbon predictions across models raised questions about accuracy and reliability. Although global soil carbon changes in CMIP6 were much less variable, the models came up with similar results for very different reasons. This inconsistency suggests that there is not yet a true consensus among models—an issue for scientists and policymakers working to prepare for a warming planet.

The researchers suggest that future models should take updated biological and physical observations into account. Microbial activity, changes in permafrost, and fire patterns in tundra and tropical regions all affect the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere as CO₂ instead of being stored as carbon in soil. Along with rising temperatures, these factors also have serious implications for the future of soil carbon in a changing climate. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV001068, 2024)

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2024), Coming to a consensus on carbon, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240111. Published on 7 March 2024.

Text © 2024. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

TIMESTAMPS:

Intro (0:00)

Queen of the Swamp (7:23)

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A month before the 2020 presidential election, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose pandemic lockdown measures drew harsh criticism from President Donald Trump and his supporters.

The alleged plot coincided with growing concern about far-right political violence in America. But the FBI quickly realized it had a problem: A key informant in the case, a career snitch with a long rap sheet, had helped to orchestrate the kidnapping plot. During the undercover sting, the FBI ignored crimes that the informant, Stephen Robeson, appeared to have committed, including fraud and illegal possession of a sniper rifle.

The Whitmer kidnapping case followed a pattern familiar from hundreds of previous FBI counterterrorism stings that have targeted Muslims in the post-9/11 era. Those cases too raised questions about whether the crimes could have happened at all without the prodding of undercover agents and informants.

For the FBI, the stakes in the Whitmer case were high. If defense lawyers learned of Robeson’s role in the kidnapping plot, the FBI agents feared, they’d be accused of entrapment. The collapse of the case, built over nearly a year using as many as a dozen informants, two undercover agents, and bureau field offices in at least four states, would have been a public relations coup for right-wing politicians and news media. Both groups have used the problematic investigation as evidence that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against conservatives — despite a decadeslong public record proving the opposite — and as fuel for conspiracy theories that the January 6 Capitol riot was engineered by the FBI.

But the truth about the Whitmer kidnapping case is far more complicated. This story is based on thousands of pages of internal FBI reports and more than 250 hours of undercover recordings obtained by The Intercept. The secret files offer an extraordinary view inside a high-profile domestic terrorism investigation, revealing in stark relief how federal agents have turned the war on terror inward, using informant-led stings to chase after potential domestic extremists just as the bureau spent the previous two decades setting up entrapment stings that targeted Muslims in supposed Islamist extremist plots. The files also suggest that federal agents have become reckless, turning a blind eye to public safety risks that, if addressed, could disrupt the government’s cases.

The FBI documents and recordings reveal that federal agents at times put Americans in danger as the Whitmer plot metastasized. In one instance, the FBI knew that Wolverine Watchmen militia members would enter the Michigan Capitol with firearms — and agents suspected that one man might even have had a live grenade — but did not stop them. (The grenade turned out to be nonfunctional.) Another time, federal agents intervened when local police officers in Michigan were about to confiscate firearms from two of the FBI’s targets, who were on a terrorist watchlist. Local law enforcement had received reports from concerned citizens who saw the men loading their guns before entering a hardware store.

The files also raise questions about whether the FBI pursued a larger, secret effort to encourage political violence in the run-up to the 2020 election. At least one undercover FBI agent and two informants in the Michigan case were also involved in stings centering on plots to assassinate the governor of Virginia and the attorney general of Colorado.

The FBI refused to answer a list of questions. “Unfortunately, due to ongoing litigation, we are unable to comment,” said Gabrielle Szlenkier, a spokesperson for the FBI in Michigan. Robeson, through his lawyer, also declined to comment.

Federal agents paid Robeson nearly $20,000 to participate in a conspiracy that evolved into a loose plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, according to the documents. But FBI agents knew that two other informants and some of the defendants in the Whitmer case believed that Robeson was the plot’s true architect.

So on December 10, 2020, agents called Robeson into the FBI’s office in Milwaukee in an apparent attempt to silence him. In an extraordinary five-hour conversation, which FBI agents recorded, one of Robeson’s handlers told him: “A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story,’ right?” Despite federal and state trials involving the kidnapping plot, this recording — which goes to the heart of questions about whether the FBI entrapped the would-be kidnappers — was never allowed into evidence. The Intercept exclusively obtained the full recording and is publishing key portions for the first time.

“A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.’”

The FBI agents asked Robeson to sign a nondisclosure agreement and proceeded to coach and threaten him to shape his story and ensure that he would never testify before a jury. Their coercion of Robeson undermines the Justice Department’s claim, in court records, that Robeson was a “double agent” whose actions weren’t under the government’s control. The agents also made it clear that they had leverage: They knew Robeson had committed crimes while working for the FBI.

“We know we have power, right?” an FBI agent told Robeson during this meeting. “We know we have leverage. We’re not going to bullshit you.”

“We’re speaking from a position of power. That’s why we’re here. We planned this out. We know we have power.”

Robeson’s role as an informant in the Whitmer kidnapping plot was supposed to be a tightly held secret. FBI agents had written the charging documents to conceal his identity.

But the FBI’s paperwork was sloppy. Supporters of the 14 defendants began to piece together clues from details like the FBI’s descriptions of passengers in a car that had been driven near Whitmer’s vacation home in Antrim County, Michigan. The clues appeared to point to Robeson as a snitch — or, in the FBI’s terminology, a confidential human source. After the October 2020 arrests, a panicked Robeson started calling targets of the FBI investigation and denying that he was an informant.

“So when you call, your intentions are to keep some of the heat off of you, right?” an FBI agent asked Robeson during the December 2020 meeting. “To point people in the other direction?”

“Anywhere but me,” Robeson answered. “Not at anyone specific, just away from me.”

Robeson was talking to Henrik “Hank” Impola and Jayson Chambers, two of the lead FBI agents in the Michigan case. Chambers, who previously played in a rock band that “bases all of its music on the fact that Christians are in a spiritual war,” was the registered owner of a private intelligence company whose purported CEO ran a Twitter account known for right-wing trolling and that appeared to tweet about the Michigan case before it was announced.

The two agents started up a good-cop, bad-cop routine with Robeson. Chambers assured him they had done all they could to conceal his role as an informant. Impola, meanwhile, said they needed to come up with a plausible cover story.

“Robey’s Idea From Day One”

From the start of the investigation, the FBI knew that Robeson, like many paid informants, had credibility problems. Robeson has been in and out of the criminal justice system since the early ’80s, charged with having sex with a minor, writing bad checks, bail jumping, and many other offenses. Robeson also acknowledged to the agents that he was previously a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. “I can’t blame what I did on anybody else,” Robeson told FBI agents of his criminal record. “I’m doing what I hope is better now.”

Sexual misconduct is a repeated claim in allegations involving Robeson, and his handlers at the FBI knew this. A local police report in the FBI’s files describes how a 17-year-old claimed Robeson coerced her to have sex in return for a promise to put her pictures in a calendar. He pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge.

More recently, according to an internal FBI report, a woman who lived in Robeson’s garage in Wisconsin told federal agents that Robeson pressured her for sex because he said she wasn’t contributing enough to the household. “I would not call it rape,” the woman said, though she acknowledged to federal agents that she did not believe she had a choice. The woman also told FBI agents that Robeson sold marijuana and prescription drugs out of his house, according to internal bureau documents. She reported that she suspected he was selling firearms as well. (The Intercept is not publishing these reports because they contain identifying information about alleged sex crime victims.)

Robeson’s career as a government cooperator appears to have coincided with his career as a criminal. In 1985, he testified that a member of a violent motorcycle gang with whom he had shared a jail cell confessed to him that he had “hit a girl on top of the head” before her body was found in a burned-out bar, which was allegedly set ablaze for insurance money. More recently, in the mid-2000s, Robeson helped police set up a Wisconsin farmer, who wanted to harm a romantic rival, in a murder-for-hire scheme.

Defense lawyers say the FBI used a nondisclosure agreement with Robeson — which they claim was never turned over as evidence in the Whitmer cases — to prevent Robeson from talking publicly about his work as an informant. As Special Agent Chambers reminded Robeson in their recorded meeting: “So when you get asked, ‘Why did you have to go to the FBI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?’ You don’t have to talk about what we’re talking about here.”

Federal agents were particularly troubled by messages Robeson had sent to Barry Croft Jr., a primary target in the investigation, that alluded to using violence against elected officials. Croft’s lawyer could use those messages to suggest that the kidnapping plot had been Robeson’s idea, not Croft’s, the agents feared.

“This is something that we’re all going to have to overcome,” Impola told Robeson, adding a few minutes later: “It quickly becomes, from a defense strategy, ‘Well, this was Robey’s idea from day one.’”

“I Let the FBI Know”

In the spring of 2020, as the United States grappled with a deadly coronavirus pandemic, Whitmer, a Democrat, issued a “stay home, stay safe” order in Michigan that barred “in-person work that is not necessary to sustain or protect life.” Covid-19 skeptics, along with many Republicans, were enraged. On April 17, Trump weighed in with a tweet: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

Two weeks later, as many as 1,000 protesters attended a rally at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing in what a state senator later described as a “dress rehearsal” for January 6. The so-called American Patriot Rally was organized by Ryan Kelly, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan who was later sentenced to 60 days in prison for taking part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Many of the protesters inside the Michigan Capitol were armed, including an FBI informant and former Army sergeant named Dan Chappel. The FBI had hired Chappel to infiltrate a ragtag group of gun enthusiasts he’d met through Facebook who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen. “I let the FBI know that there was talks of storming the Capitol,” Chappel, known to the militia group as “Big Dan,” later testified.

About 10 members of the Wolverine Watchmen were with Chappel at the state Capitol, unaware that he was working for the FBI. Although he informed the FBI in advance that the Wolverine Watchmen planned to storm the Capitol that day, federal agents did not try to stop them, Chappel later testified. FBI agents knew the militia members had discussed the locations of police officers at the Capitol and how to start “the boogaloo,” code for a civil war. (A year after arrests were made in the Whitmer kidnapping plot, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel confirmed in a podcast interview that law enforcement perceived violence at the Capitol as a real threat. “There was a plan for mass execution that day,” Nessel said.)

The April rally in Lansing was so successful that the same organizers held another, on June 18, 2020. The protesters, including Chappel and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen, milled about outside the Capitol that day, showing off their firearms and military cosplay for the news cameras.

That’s where Chappel first met Adam Fox, who lived in the basement of a vacuum repair shop and liked to work out, smoke marijuana, and rant on social media. A stout man with a beard, Fox had already met Robeson, who was the Wisconsin chapter president of the Patriot Three Percenters militia and had started working for the FBI as an informant in October 2019, according to the bureau.

Robeson had come to the FBI’s attention in part through a secret program known as Operation Bronze Griffon — first revealed publicly in 2022 to Republican House investigators by a whistleblower who misspelled it as Bronze Griffin — through which Facebook provides user activity information to federal agents without a search warrant or subpoena. According to an FBI report obtained by The Intercept, agents received a Bronze Griffon lead on Robeson for posting “possibly violent rhetoric in support of the militia movement and the Boogaloo concept.” The FBI recruited Robeson to be an informant, and he told agents that he knew of fellow militia members who had spoken about attacking law enforcement officials.

Once on the FBI payroll, Robeson organized and led several militia planning meetings, including one in Dublin, Ohio, that Fox and Croft attended on June 6, 2020.

Chappel’s face-to-face meeting with Fox at the Michigan Capitol would bridge two federal investigations, known internally as Operation Cold Snap and Operation Kessel Run, and link two informants, Chappel and Robeson, each of whom was unaware that the other worked for the FBI.

Chappel’s face-to-face meeting with Fox would bridge two federal investigation and link two informants, Chappel and Robeson, each of whom was unaware that the other worked for the FBI.

The informants went to great lengths to position Fox as a leader. Robeson suggested that Fox launch a Michigan chapter of the Patriot Three Percenters. On June 21, 2020, just three days after Fox met Chappel, a third FBI informant, Jenny Plunk, created a private Facebook group called “Michigan Patriot III%ers.” (The FBI classifies Three Percenters as a domestic terrorism threat.)

The Facebook group’s first members were Plunk and Robeson, both on the FBI’s payroll, and Fox and his girlfriend, Amanda Keller. Plunk lived in Tennessee, where, according to her FBI cover story, she led a small militia. While Plunk and Robeson administered the Facebook group, Fox invited several Wolverine Watchmen and other gun enthusiasts to join, bringing the group’s membership roster to 28. Although the FBI’s informants had created the Facebook group for Fox, Robeson announced in a welcome message that Fox was the “C.O.” — a military acronym for “commanding officer.”

Robeson often spoke in the vernacular of a soldier. He never served in the military, but he was so gung-ho that he had obtained forged paperwork that made it appear he’d been a Marine, according to FBI reports. Using military lingo, Robeson posted an invitation to the new Facebook group for a weekend tactical training session in Cambria, Wisconsin, about 40 miles north of Madison.

More than 30 people attended that weekend event in July 2020, including Fox, his girlfriend, and a few members of the Wolverine Watchmen. At the time, Robeson was running scams related to a fake charity he called Race to Unite Races, whose mission was “to bridge the racial divide.” Internal FBI reports indicate that Robeson used proceeds from the fake charity to buy supplies to build a shooting range to train in close-quarters combat, known as a “kill house.”

Videos from the FBI files show the attendees shooting at targets in the kill house. Robeson, a firearm holstered at his side, can be seen giving directions. Chappel, who had combat experience in Iraq, also appears in several videos demonstrating tactics. FBI agents gave Chappel permission in advance to share combat tactics with the militia members, telling him: “You can do what’s on YouTube.”

In a group photo from the event, many attendees hold up rifles, offering the reluctant half-smiles of an awkward family picture. Robeson is off to the left, wearing flip-flops, American-flag swimming trunks, and a sleeveless T-shirt that hangs over his large belly. He’s holding up three fingers, the sign of the Three Percenters.

The events of that weekend were critical to the Justice Department’s case, as they appeared to show the men training for scenarios they’d encounter in their supposed attempt to kidnap Michigan’s governor. But by the time the FBI spoke to Robeson in December 2020, federal agents were deeply concerned that the fine details of that weekend might suggest entrapment.

“You’ve got a Wisconsin Patriot Three Percenter role-playing the kidnapping with Wolverine Watchman at the training you’ve set up, right?” Impola, the FBI agent, said to Robeson.

“It wasn’t just me,” Robeson said. “I set it up and —”

“These are things we need to discuss,” Chambers interrupted.

“You’ve got a Wisconsin Patriot Three Percenter role-playing the kidnapping, with Wolverine Watchmen at the training you set up, right?”

Impola told Robeson that the FBI’s case notes show that a Wisconsin agent was aware of the training, but that federal agents did not know that Robeson was the one who had organized it.

“I don’t want to put these words in your mouth, but the question is —” Impola said.

“Did I do it under FBI directive?” Robeson interrupted.

“Right,” Impola answered.

“No, it wasn’t just — What I’m saying is, it wasn’t me. It was Adam [Fox] that asked if they could do that —”

“Yup,” the two FBI agents said in unison.

“It was Barry [Croft] who asked if we could get a joint one together. It was Illinois. And I asked before I said yes.”

“The question becomes: Did a bunch of terrorists Shanghai your training for their purposes, or did you set up a training for terrorists?” Impola asked. “That’s the question, right? There’s a training that happened in which a terrorist operation was planned and played out, and you’re involved in setting it up.”

“I Need to Come Play With Y’all”

Robeson’s organizing and financing of the weekend training in Wisconsin wasn’t the FBI’s only problem.

In multiple videos from the training, Robeson can be seen using firearms. As a felon, he wasn’t allowed to have guns. But FBI agents apparently believed that handling firearms would be critical to his credibility among the militia members, so they had asked the Justice Department for a waiver to let Robeson handle “nonfunctional” weapons in his undercover capacity, according to internal emails.

The Justice Department said no, reminding Robeson’s handlers that he was prohibited from handling even an inoperable firearm. “Just the receiver satisfies the federal definition of a firearm,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rita Rumbelow told the FBI in a May 21, 2020, email, referring to the tube that houses the firearm’s bolt.

Internal FBI records show that Robeson and his handlers found creative ways to get around the Justice Department’s directive. One month after the Wisconsin training event, the FBI assigned Robeson a new handler, Corey Baumgardner, an agent in Wisconsin. Baumgardner later testified that he collected a firearm from Robeson: an AR-15-style rifle with an illegal suppressor and a launcher attachment. Instead of handing the firearm to the agent, Robeson left it on the ground in front of his truck. Baumgardner collected the gun, without having to see Robeson handle it.

The gambit appeared to allow Robeson and the FBI to have it both ways: Robeson could have access to guns, maintaining his credibility with the militia members, and FBI agents wouldn’t directly see him handle firearms.

Federal agents went to great lengths to maintain this sleight of hand. As part of the sting, the FBI in early August 2020 went to Delaware, where Robeson and Plunk met with a group that included Croft, a truck driver Robeson started messaging online in 2019 about targeting politicians for violence, and Frank Butler, a Navy veteran from Virginia.

Butler had been in contact online and in person with both Robeson and Chappel, and Chappel had discussed with him a fantastical plan to fly an explosives-laden drone into the Virginia governor’s North Carolina vacation home, though the plot went nowhere. Butler, who was never charged with a crime, later told investigators that Robeson and Chappel “were literally brainwashing me” and “weaponizing me.” (Prosecutors acknowledged in a court filing that Robeson had offered to provide money to “purchase weapons for attacks” and “the use of a drone, to aid in acts of domestic terrorism.”)

After their meeting in Delaware, Robeson had something for Croft. Baumgardner, the FBI agent in Wisconsin, had driven the AR-15-style rifle he’d collected next to Robeson’s truck more than 900 miles to Delaware. The rifle had originally belonged to Croft, and Robeson tried to give the weapon back to him. According to internal FBI reports, Croft refused to accept it, saying he couldn’t keep it at that moment. Plunk, the other FBI informant, took the illegal gun instead.

The following month, two undercover FBI agents and three FBI informants — Robeson, Chappel, and Plunk — gathered for another training event in Luther, Michigan, with around 26 others, including Croft from Delaware and Fox from Michigan. Plunk secretly recorded audio and video during the training event. In one recording, Robeson proclaimed that he was now the national leader of the Patriot Three Percenters militia and had appointed someone else to run his chapter in Wisconsin. “I’m no longer the state C.O.,” Robeson said. “I’m the national C.O.”

Also during this training event, on the afternoon of September 13, 2020, Plunk gave the rifle to Croft, who, in turn, handed it over to Chappel, according to FBI reports.

The story of the firearm only revealed the FBI’s heavy hand in the investigation.

FBI agents appeared to view the rifle with an illegal suppressor and attached launcher as a critical piece of evidence in their conspiracy case. But the story of the firearm only revealed the FBI’s heavy hand in the investigation. The illegal rifle made a full circle, from the FBI and back, through the hands of three paid informants, never staying long with any targets of the investigation.

The gun anecdote is emblematic of the larger sting: The FBI’s informants were ham-fistedly encouraging their targets to discuss plots to harm elected officials. Those efforts reached farcical levels on September 12, 2020, during a meeting and training exercises in Luther.

For that meeting, Chappel brought a friend nicknamed “Red,” a slender man with a 187th Airborne sleeve tattoo on his right arm. “Red” was in fact Timothy Bates, an undercover FBI agent who identifies himself in government recordings as “UCE 7775,” referring to his FBI undercover employee number. Just three weeks earlier, Bates had been in Denver, where he encouraged political violence. In Colorado, an FBI informant named Mickey Windecker introduced Bates to a racial justice activist who expressed interest in assassinating the state’s attorney general — a plot that, like the one targeting Virginia’s governor, ultimately fizzled.

Bates and Chappel, both Army veterans, led a close-quarters combat training for the Wolverine Watchmen. Bates also told the group gathered in Michigan that he could supply explosives. The group’s rough plan to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home involved possibly blowing up a nearby bridge to slow rescue efforts.

“So my guy up in Minnesota, he can pretty much get whatever. He has access to whatever one would want,” Bates said in an undercover recording. Bates had brought along several videos showing men assembling and detonating homemade bombs. These videos were all stage-managed by the FBI, with agents pretending to be rogue bomb-makers.

One showed an SUV obliterated by a pipe bomb. “It’s a short video,” Bates told the group.

“Oh, yeah!” Robeson said, laughing approvingly at the explosion.

Bates explained that some of the bombs used C-4 inside pipes, with timing devices. Others used liquid explosives, he said.

“I need to come play with y’all,” Plunk said excitedly.

As he watched the video, Fox asked Bates: “What kind of price tag we looking at?”

“Depending on how big you want it,” Bates answered. “For that right there? That’s pretty cheap — 1,600 bucks, maybe. Maybe a thousand bucks.”

It wasn’t the first time Bates had offered bargain prices. In Colorado, Bates suggested he could hire a hitman for $500 to kill the state’s attorney general. In Michigan, he was offering explosives for pennies on the dollar.

That evening, Robeson, Chappel, Bates, and a few militia members drove near Whitmer’s vacation home. They inspected the bridge they’d bomb, tried to view Whitmer’s home from across the lake, and drove down her road. This apparent reconnaissance trip was central to the government’s case.

But true to form, Robeson mucked up the evidence. Fellow Wisconsinite Brian Higgins was the one who drove past Whitmer’s home — a seemingly incriminating act — but Higgins later told federal agents that Robeson had said they were hunting for sexual predators. In his December meeting with FBI agents, Robeson confirmed that Higgins was not initially aware of the kidnapping plot and instead believed they were out “hunting pedophiles.” But once he was in Michigan, Higgins learned that some of the attendees had a rough plan to kidnap Whitmer. Higgins drove down Whitmer’s road using a dash camera and provided the video to Chappel. After he returned to Wisconsin, Higgins claims he told Robeson he didn’t want to be involved in the plot.

The FBI’s own informant was telling a man he thought was the target of an investigation to destroy evidence.

Feeling guilty for tricking him, Robeson tried to protect Higgins from criminal exposure — a fact federal prosecutors admitted to in a court filing. Robeson called Chappel, still unaware that he was also an FBI informant, and told him to destroy his copy of Higgins’s dash-cam video. The FBI’s own informant was telling a man he thought was the target of an investigation to destroy evidence.

During the December 10, 2020, recorded interview with Robeson, Impola tried to coerce the informant into changing his story about what Higgins knew before the drive: “If you’re sticking with the story that [Higgins] was out there on a pedophile ring,” the FBI special agent said, “you’ll be his star witness in the defense. There’s zero options for that.”

“We Have One Chief”

When arrests and charges were announced in the Whitmer plot, the Justice Department portrayed Adam Fox as the leader. But FBI recordings suggest the informants were the ones in charge.

On October 7, 2020, as the government was making arrests in the case, Robeson, Chappel, and Plunk were on a recorded phone line talking about who should make future calls to action — in other words, who should be the leader.

“I was thinking we should have one person … to make the call for both states.”

“I mean, I’m good with Robey, because you’re the national guy, the president,” Chappel said, adding a minute later: “We have one chief.”

“We can definitely roll,” Robeson said. “That’s fine.”

The FBI arrested 13 people that day, and the foiled kidnapping plot made national news. (Higgins, the 14th defendant, was arrested a week later.) After the initial arrests, Robeson made a series of calls to Chappel; the girlfriend of one of the militia members; and others who orbited the supposed kidnapping plot. Robeson offered several outlandish claims, including that he believed Croft, a primary target of the investigation, had leaked information that caused the arrests. FBI reports indicate that Robeson again called Chappel, still unaware that he was also working for the FBI, and told him to throw the rifle with the illegal suppressor and attached launcher into a lake. Chappel, however, had already returned the gun to his bureau handlers.

During these calls, Robeson told fellow informant Plunk that he believed Chappel was an informant. Robeson appeared to be flailing after the arrests, pointing fingers to avoid being revealed as a government snitch.

His behavior in the immediate aftermath of the arrests was so concerning to FBI agents that federal and state prosecutors discussed charging him with witness tampering, according to emails that circulated among more than a dozen FBI agents the day after the kidnapping plot was announced. The bureau then began to investigate Robeson, internal records show. Agents reinterviewed the woman living in his garage, who claimed he had coerced her into having sex with him. That woman told the FBI that during the undercover sting, Robeson had an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom; that he was bringing in drugs from out of state; and that he had proposed taking her to rallies and training events in other parts of the country so she could make money, which she described to the FBI as “sex trafficking.”

For his part, Robeson appeared to realize that he had crossed the line from informant to participant in the kidnapping plot, putting himself in legal jeopardy. An internal FBI report said Robeson told another informant that he was worried he could be linked to “product,” by which he meant explosives.

“I Did This Trying to Keep My Undercover Position”

The Whitmer kidnapping plot has yielded five acquittals, five convictions, and four guilty pleas in federal and state courts. Robeson didn’t testify in any of the trials. When defense lawyers tried to compel him, he told the federal court that he would assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. The Justice Department claimed that Robeson was a “double agent” whose statements would not be “binding admissions of the government itself.”

The recording of Robeson’s December 2020 meeting with the FBI reveals that the “double agent” ploy was a carefully planned strategy. When Robeson was called into that Wisconsin FBI office, agents described three possible scenarios for him.

The first was that all the defendants would take plea deals, in which case “your name is not on the witness list,” Impola said. The second was that Robeson could be a government witness or, in the third option, a witness for the defendants whose testimony could support their claims of entrapment.

At the time, the agents errantly assumed that option one was the likeliest. “I am fairly confident that when anybody looks at that witness list, they’re not going to trial now because they know the ramifications,” said Impola.

But what he didn’t say was that the second and third options — involving Robeson testifying in court — weren’t real options at all, at least not in the view of the FBI. There was also a fourth option that the agents didn’t mention: The Justice Department could jam Robeson, a felon, with firearms charges for crimes he committed while working undercover for the FBI.

And that’s what happened. On March 3, 2021, the Justice Department indicted Robeson in Wisconsin on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors alleged that Robeson bought a .50-caliber sniper rifle, among the most powerful firearms available to civilians in the United States, and later sold it on Facebook — all while working for the FBI.

At his plea hearing, Robeson claimed he’d bought the gun to bolster his FBI cover. “I did this trying to keep my undercover position where I was at and kind of make me look a little more aggressive in the organization,” Robeson said in court.

Robeson was sentenced to probation on a federal felony charge that could have carried a 10-year sentence. He and his handlers knew he had illegally possessed, purchased, and sold multiple firearms in the course of the sting; the single gun charge represented a threat of more to come if he were to testify in any of the state or federal prosecutions.

With that threat, FBI agents stopped the facts from getting in the way of their “good story” about the Whitmer kidnapping plot. In their zeal to protect a career-making case, those federal agents also poured jet fuel on conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and the January 6 Capitol riot that will be central to this year’s presidential election.

The post The Informant at the Heart of the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Was a Liability. So Federal Agents Shut Him Up. appeared first on The Intercept.

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