DHS admits Boston training drill involving backpack explosives SAME DAY as bombing

[madfranks]

http://www.storyleak.com/dhs-boston-training-drill-backpack-explosives/

The Department of Homeland Security has gone public with an admission that an exercise was planned months before the Boston Marathon bombings that involved backpacks being used to detonate explosives by rogue terrorists.

According to the DHS documents acquired by the Boston Globe, the agents were planning on conducting training exercises centered around a fictitious terrorist group called ‘Free America Citizens’, a group that would plant backpacks full of explosives around Boston that the detectives would be forced to track down. Ultimately, of course, this ended up happening at the Boston Marathon itself with precise accuracy. The Globe report reads that “the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion.”

And the DHS isn’t denying that the training exercise manifested itself at the Boston Marathon, as detailed in the back-end article on the Boston Globe that I discovered while browsing the news.

“The real thing happened before we were able to execute,” a Boston police official told the Boston Globe in the report.

The exercise, labeled as “Operation Urban Shield,” was funded by a $200,000 Homeland Security grant. It was planned months before the Boston Marathon, and it was scheduled to ‘take place’ in official capacity this weekend, according to the sources. But the exercise admission lends further credence to the ignored eyewitness account of bomb sniffing dogs and bomb squads running a training exercise during the morning of the Boston Marathon. Was this training exercise part of Operation Urban Shield?

Interestingly, they specifically detailed that this terrorist group (that presumably is based off of ‘right wing extremists’ and the sovereign citizens movement) would carry a logo of a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat. I’m not claiming there’s a relationship, but I find it funny that even their logo matched up with real events from the Boston Marathon bombings. It was in fact the apparent security at the event that was spotted wearing clothing adorning the image of skulls that turned out to be the logo for the Craft International private security firm.

[JohnQPublic]

Police response training planned, but bombs hit first (http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/07/before-police-could-plan-for-terrorist-attack-real-thing-happened/ufxjb9O0RXyzVZNPFyGkiI/story.html)

Boston Globe

"...The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits.

Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe.

But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion. The chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings disrupted plans for the exercise, initially scheduled for this weekend, forcing police to postpone. Now officials must retool aspects of the training.

“The real thing happened before we were able to execute,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the planned exercise. “We’ve already been tested.”

This would have been the third year for Urban Shield, a 24-hour federally funded training exercise meant to test the response of police and other public safety personnel in a large-scale emergency, such as a toxic spill or a natural disaster..."

"...Officials from a dozen agencies had been meeting for months to plan the scenario. They behaved much like movie producers, recruiting students from Northeastern University and the Boston Police Academy to play the parts of terrorists and witnesses.

They scouted warehouses and homes around Chelsea and Winthrop that could be used as a terrorist safe house.

The basic plot was this: Half a dozen members of Free America Citizens wanted to gauge police response to a bomb scare. They would plant hoax devices, then stay on the scene to watch and record the bomb squad and detectives as they responded, as a dry run to a larger attack.

The participating detectives, however, would not have known they were being watched. They would only be told that they were responding to an urgent terrorist threat. The goal of the training was for them to figure out the motives of Free America Citizens as they investigated the case, the official said.

The planned exercise has eerie similarities to the police investigation that led to the capture of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose images were caught on video cameras and who were captured after a car chase and shoot-out with police.


In the training scenario, investigators participating in Urban Shield would have to track down footage of the bombers caught by street surveillance cameras and the phones of “witnesses.”..."

[gunDriller]

the US gov. has a real hard-on for vilifying "Sovereign Citizens".


you see it on the boob tube, too. on the popular TV show, "Justified", their #1 bad guy is a Sovereign Citizen.

[Blink]

You gotta wonder how most don't see the writing on wall, even when they are standing right in front of it........

[palani]

Don't forget .... homeschool is a breeding ground for spelling bee winners as well. Watch. The next attack will be by outraged homeschoolers attacking a public school. The motivation for such an attack might be a stretch. After all ... what does a homeschooler have to be outraged about? Being SMARTER or RECEIVING A BETTER EDUCATION?

[Twisted Titan]

tAGG

[madfranks]

the US gov. has a real hard-on for vilifying "Sovereign Citizens".

Yeah I noticed that too, look again at the name they gave their fictitious terror squad:


a fictitious terrorist group called ‘Free America Citizens’

[JohnQPublic]

Yeah I noticed that too, look again at the name they gave their fictitious terror squad:

Öst Duetschland ist jetz hier in Amerika! Heil Obama! Heil das NSA! Heil die schatten Regierung DHS!

[vacuum]

Chief of FBI’s Boston office, key figure in marathon bombing investigation, stepping down
By Denise Lavoie, The Associated Press

BOSTON – The head of the FBI’s Boston office, one of the main law enforcement figures during the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, announced Tuesday that he’s stepping down to take a private-sector job.

Richard DesLauriers, who’s been special agent in charge of the office since July 2010, said he will leave next month after more than 26 years with the FBI. He said he has accepted a position as vice-president of corporate security with Penske Corp., a transportation services company, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

In an interview Tuesday, DesLauriers said he is most proud of his role in the apprehension of reputed mobster and longtime fugitive James “Whitey” Bulger; the arrests of two Boston-area Russian sleeper agents; the arrests and convictions of a man charged with conspiring to help al-Qaida and a man accused in a plot to fly remote-controlled model planes packed with explosives into the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol; and the investigation into the deadly Boston Marathon bombing.

DesLauriers was one of the main faces of law enforcement during the intense, five-day manhunt that led to the capture of the sole surviving suspect following the April 15 marathon bombing, which killed three people.

DesLauriers, 53, four years younger than the mandatory retirement age for FBI agents, said he first learned of the Penske job in March but delayed his decision because of the bombing investigation.

“My time was coming down the pike sooner or later, so this was a good time to pursue an opportunity with a real world-class organization in the private sector,” he said.
Before moving to Boston, DesLauriers worked for the FBI in New York and Washington, earning broad experience in counterintelligence work. As special agent in charge of the Boston office, he oversaw the FBI in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

After arriving in Boston, DesLauriers said he would have a “laser-like focus” on the search for Bulger and the investigation into the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist, the largest art heist in U.S. history.

His first goal was reached when Bulger was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011, after more than 16 years on the run. Bulger, 83, is accused of participating in 19 murders during the 1970s and ’80s but maintains his innocence. Opening statements in Bulger’s trial are scheduled Wednesday.

The Gardner museum heist remains unsolved more than 23 years after two thieves disguised as police officers stole more than $500 million worth of art, but DesLauriers said the FBI had made significant progress.

“I certainly was hoping to recover that art prior to my departure,” he said.

© The Associated Press, 2013

[BrewTech]

the US gov. has a real hard-on for vilifying "Sovereign Citizens".


you see it on the boob tube, too. on the popular TV show, "Justified", their #1 bad guy is a Sovereign Citizen.

This is a concept known as "projection".

My understanding is that the main problem sovereigns have with .gov is its (.gov's) propensity for using offensive violence (or, more often, the implied threat of violence) to attain its goals.

No lovers of true freedom I know of would stoop to the level of killing innocents to get their point across, because that's precisely the methodology that .gov and friends seem to prefer.