FBI Entrapment Fuels Terror - FBI Introduced Florida Shooter to "Informants" - US Propaganda Operations Attract Extremist Families - Father of Orlando Shooter is Long-time CIA Asset

If even 10% of what the below articles suggest is true, then we have a serious problem that won't be solved by ant-assault weapon legislation and a prohibition on terror suspects buying guns.

This reminds one of the Fast & Furious weapons scandal (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal) and the need for strict oversight over federal law enforcement informant management and sting operations.
  

FBI Entrapment Fuels Terror, Not Stops It
June 17, 2016
  
After a torrent of multifaceted politically-motivated assumptions about the Orlando shooting which claimed the lives of 50 and left scores more injured, the extent to which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interacted with the suspect, Omar Mateen, before the attacks was partially revealed.

In a press conference, FBI Director James Comey would admit (emphasis added):
...the FBI’s Miami office opened a preliminary investigation, and over the next 10 months we attempted to determine whether he was possibly a terrorist. Something we do in hundreds and hundreds of cases all across the country. 

Our investigation involved introducing confidential sources to him, recording conversations with him, following him, reviewing transactional records from his communications, and searching all government holdings for any possible connections, any possible derogatory information. We then interviewed him twice. He admitted making the statements that his co-workers reported, but explained that he did it in anger because he thought his co-workers were discriminating against him and teasing him because he was Muslim.

FBI Director Comey never elaborated on just how those informants interacted with Mateen. However, examining publicly available FBI affidavits from other investigations that resulted in arrests and prosecutions, it is almost certain the informants posed as terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda or the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS). 

In two cases that unfolded just last years, FBI informants would be revealed to have helped plan attacks with suspects, suggest to suspects that they credit ISIS for the attacks (as reported by the Intercept), and even helped them in procuring weapons and explosives before finally arresting them. 

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ru/2016/06/fbi-entrapment-fuels-terror-not-stops-it.html
  
  
US Propaganda Operations Attract Extremist Families

Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando, Florida nightclub shooter Omar Mateen and self-styled leader of a pro-Taliban Afghan government-in-exile in Florida, is emblematic of the American policy that permits extremist propaganda operatives to be nurtured on US soil. Since the Cold War era, the US Central Intelligence Agency has exceled in finding the most extreme Cubans, Eastern Europeans, Afghanis, Uighurs, and others to concoct and broadcast incendiary propaganda on airwaves funded by the US government.

As the late ABC News and Christian Science Monitor journalist and pre-eminent Middle East expert John Cooley so correctly observed in his book, «Payback: America’s Long War in the Middle East», when the United States replaced Britain and France as the major Western power player in the Middle East, it was repeatedly paid back for «poor judgement and often disastrous policy errors». One of the most disastrous policy errors was the decision by the Jimmy Carter administration to provide weapons and other support to some of the most radical Islamist «holy warriors» in Afghanistan. Soon, these Afghan radicals were supplemented by «Arab Legion» jihadists cobbled together from terrorist cells in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/06/18/us-propaganda-operations-attract-extremist-families.html


FBI Tried to Lure Orlando Shooter into a Terror Plot in 2013

A police officer in Florida has revealed that Omar Mateen was targeted by an FBI informant in a failed attempt to push him to commit a terror attack.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to “lure” Orlando shooter Omar Mateen into committing a terror plot in 2013 through the planting of an informant in his life, revelations that raise serious questions about the FBI's indirect role in shaping the recent Orlando terror attack through its entrapment policies.

In an exclusive interview published June 15, Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that the FBI dispatched an informant to "lure Omar into some kind of act" but he "did not bite."
  
The plan, Mascara said, came after Mateen had threatened a courthouse deputy by saying he could order al-Qaida operatives to kill his family.

The FBI is known to be using similar entrapment policies when dealing with those they suspect of belonging to terror organizations or receptive to committing terrorist acts.

In a 2013 column for Mother Jones website, Trevor Aaronson, a journalist and author of “Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror,” revealed that “nearly half of all terrorism cases since 9/11 involved informants, many of them paid as much as US$100,000 per assignment by the FBI.”

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/FBI-Tried-to-Lure-Orlando-Shooter-into-a-Terror-Plot-in-2013-20160619-0022.html
  

The FBI, Not "ISIS," Radicalized the Orlando Shooter
June 20, 2016

As predicted, the FBI is revealed to have approached Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen in 2013 with informants posing as terrorists in an attempt to "lure" him into participating in a terrorist attack.
  
USA Today's TC Palm reports in an article titled, "Exclusive: PGA Village residents want answers from security firm," that (emphasis added):

The FBI launched an investigation into Mateen after Sheriff's Office officials reported the incident to the agency. As part of its investigation, the FBI examined Mateen's travel history, phone records, acquaintances and even planted a confidential informant in the courthouse to "lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite," Mascara said. The FBI concluded Mateen was not a threat after that, Mascara said.

This is in line with the FBI's practice of approaching and entrapping potential terror suspects by posing as terrorists themselves and aiding and abetting them in the planning and preparations for high-profile attacks. These undercover operations include everything from "casing out" potential targets, to the obtaining and training with actual, live explosives, to the purchasing of small arsenals of firearms including the sort of semi-automatic rifles and pistols used by Mateen during the Orlando shooting.
...
If Omar Mateen was a "homegrown terrorist," the FBI served as the gardeners.

The American public must now demand the details of the FBI's undercover work regarding Omar Mateen, as well as the truth behind any enduring ties between Robertson and the US government. If Robertson has no connections with the US government, an explanation as to why he is allowed to operate an extremist website on American soil must be provided.

For political and ideological opportunists attempting to seize upon the Orlando tragedy to uphold an example of "Islamic extremism," it is especially ironic that the facts indicate that the act of terrorism was entirely divorced from "Islam," and instead the result of America's ongoing view of terrorism as a convenient and versatile geopolitical tool, rather than a threat to genuinely combat. 

That quite literally every aspect that contributed to Omar Mateen's radicalization is directly connected to the US government itself, illustrates just who the real threat is that American's should fear - the threat within the halls of its own government - not "terrorists" dwelling beyond them. 

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ru/2016/06/the-fbi-not-isis-radicalized-orlando.html


CONFIRMED: FBI Introduced Florida Shooter to "Informants"

It is now confirmed that in addition to two investigations and two interviews, Florida terror suspect Omar Mateen was also approached by "informants" working for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over a period of 10 months.
   
New York Daily News in their article, "FBI spied on Orlando gay club terrorist Omar Mateen for 10 months in 2013: FBI Director James Comey," would admit (emphasis added): 
Mateen first appeared on authorities’ radar in 2013 after the security guard’s colleagues alerted the FBI to inflammatory statements he made to colleagues claiming “family connections to Al Qaeda,” according to Comey. 

Mateen also told coworkers he had a family member who belonged to Hezbollah, a Shia network that is a bitter enemy of ISIS — the network he pledged allegiance to the night of the carnage, Comey noted.

The FBI’s Miami office opened an inquiry into Mateen. 

“He said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so he could martyr himself,” Comey said. 

Nevertheless, FBI investigators investigated Mateen, who was born in New York, for 10 months. They introduced him to confidential informants, spied on his communications and followed him. They also interviewed him twice.

Informants Posing as Handlers

The significance of this cannot be understated. "Informants" in this context, according to FBI affidavits regarding similar counterterrorism investigations, refers to individuals posing as members of terrorist organizations who approach suspects, coerce them into planning and preparing for terrorist attacks, before finally aiding the FBI in the suspect's arrest before the attack is finally carried out.
...
The FBI's counterterrorism program has not made America safer. It has clearly been used to provide a steady stream of "foiled attacks" that otherwise would never have materialized - causing hysteria, hatred, fear, and division across American society. The FBI's counterterrorism program has also clearly failed monumentally to stop actual terror suspects know to them before real attacks have unfolded.

The FBI is supposed to represent an asset for the domestic security of the United States - but in reality it appears to be one of the most compromised of liabilities.
  
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ru/2016/06/confirmed-fbi-introduced-florida.html
  

ORLANDO ‘KNOWN WOLF’ Watched by FBI, Worked with DHS, Amid Crisis Actors, Drills & CI’s
  
Orlando’s Pulse nightclub shooting is said to be the largest mass shooting in American history and in less than 24 hours, investigators already determined the incident to be an “ISIS-related” attack prior to a any investigation or forensic analysis.

In this report we will attempt to answer a number of questions about a number of anomalies and unlikely coincidences surrounding this global media event.We’re told that this tragic attack was carried out by an international security firm employee turned ‘radicalized’ gunman – but is there more to the story?
  
QUESTION: Is this is another, in a long line of “Daily Shooter” events designed to evoke an emotive, polarized and highly politicized response, rather than a rational and reasoned one?
  
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/16/orlando-known-wolf-watched-by-fbi-worked-with-dhs-amid-crisis-actors-drills-cis/ 
  

Father of Orlando Shooter is Long-time CIA Asset
JUNE 15, 2016

"The Orlando Shooting. Many things are just not right with this story, including the father of the alleged shooter Omar Mateen, an Afghan-American, Seddique Mateen, who is closely linked to some of the most powerful leaders and agencies in Washington DC.

Below is a photo of Omar’s father after a meeting at the US State Dept. in Washington DC where he met with “officials”, but oddly, no log of his visit is available in the public record.
...
If it wasn’t strange enough to discover that the alleged shooter, Omar Mateen, worked as a contractor for the US Department of Homeland Security, then we learned that the elder Mateen is also standing to run for President of Afghanistan and is allied with the Taliban leadership – an absolutely ideal profile for a Washington-managed, CIA controlled-opposition political candidate."
  
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/15/father-of-orlando-shooter-is-long-time-cia-asset/
  

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Dethroning Ukraine’s Oligarchs: A How-To Guide...

Greg Krasovsky's comments on Foreign Policy's "Dethroning Ukraine’s Oligarchs: A How-To Guide":

- I agree, It's bad news when an oligarchy controls the government and even the fourth estate (journalists and news media) in a country where opposition groups can be persecuted under the guise of fighting terrorism, separatism and foreign aggression.

- How can you talk about dethroning oligarchs when an oligarch is the president of Ukraine?

- the recent anti-offshore media coverage, including that on the Panama Papers, already has demonstrated the selective nature of Western "deoffshorization" anti-money laundering and anti-corruption efforts,

- For decades, if not centuries, America and its allies have supported friendly oligarchs and dictators throughout the world -- oligarchs who opposed American policy have been vilified and undermined.

If the current anti-corruption/oligarch drive is aimed primarily or exclusively at pro-Russian or anti-US/EU/NATO oligarchs, then the Ukrainian people may end up with a truly untouchable new class of oligarchs who will enjoy Western protection and indulgences.

   

- If the present breed of Ukrainian oligarchs is replaced by transnational financial groups who will benefit from privatization and government contracts (to spend moneys borrowed from foreign creditors like the IMF, World Bank and etc.) while avoiding domestic taxation by using formally legal tax avoidance schemes, then the Ukrainian people -- who at the end will be end up repaying those foreign loans from their taxes and social benefits just like the citizens of Greece -- will have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. 

- As long as Ukrainian oligarchs have a "get out of jail card," refuge and a place to stash their wealth either in the West (US/Europe), North (Russia) or even the rising East, any Ukrainian domestic anti-corruption/tax evasion/money laundering efforts will have very limited effect, especially when foreign money is allowed to seep into Ukraine's political system and buy corrupt politicians and civil servants. 

  

- Given to the reality of today's geopolitics concerning Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens, voters and taxpayers are forced to choose the lesser of two evils: supporting either pro-US/EU/NATO oligarchs and their pocket politicians or the pro-Russian variety. 

  

What is the true lesser evil is not something that Ukrainians should expect to learn from domestic and foreign establishment media or so-called think-tanks -- including Foreign Policy (a self-proclaimed "Trusted Advisor for Global Leaders When the Stakes are Highest") -- sources of information that are controlled by their own transnational oligarchs and financial-industrial groups who have their own agenda and ulterior motives for Ukraine and whatever wealth it still has.

         

Selected Excerpts:

"None of the country’s reforms can succeed while the oligarchs still rule. Here’s how to take them out.

  

Ukraine’s oligarchs are its biggest problem. If there is a single obstacle to establishing a functioning state, a sound economy, and true democratic accountability, it is the tycoons who control the country.

The oligarchs first emerged in the years following Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. They grew rich by gaining privileged access to the gas market, expropriating companies from private owners, trading with state enterprises on advantageous terms, and privatizing those same firms at pennies on the dollar. The crooked dealings that lie at the root of their fortunes give them a vital interest in keeping state officials corruptible, the economy rigged, and the rule of law weak. A world in which regulators abide by the rules, prosecutors and judges behave scrupulously, democratic procedures hold leaders accountable, and market competition works as intended is one in which the oligarchs cannot live and work.

Calls to finally stamp out their influence are growing ever louder and more numerous. But few observers have offered workable plans for doing so. With that in mind, we present a roadmap for how it can be done.

...

Western countries can help. First, they can deny Ukraine’s reprobate political class access to the billions in aid that enable it to stay in power. Far from supporting reforms, Western aid has propped up the country’s rulers and freed them from the need to build a functioning state and market economy. Continued aid will only prolong the elite’s hold on power. Assistance that bypasses the government and supports civil society should continue. And all aid could resume once genuine reformers come to power and install a government free of oligarchs and their hirelings.

Second, the West is home to the world’s two biggest offshore tax and secrecy jurisdictions, the United Kingdom and the United States. These and a slew of other tax havens in Western Europe shelter the fortunes of oligarchs and kleptocrats from Ukraine and elsewhere. If the plea-bargain strategy is to work, Ukrainian prosecutors must gain access to information about the oligarchs’ offshore holdings.Ukrainian prosecutors must gain access to information about the oligarchs’ offshore holdings. Western law enforcement agencies can assist their Ukrainian counterparts in this task.

But the first step is for the people of Ukraine to eject their political masters and replace them with competent outsiders and professional technocrats. Without this, none of the other measures we propose can succeed. It won’t happen this year. But Ukrainians are seeing as never before the necessity of replacing rather than just reshuffling their rulers. With the right leaders, a few good policies, and a little help from the West, Ukraine’s interminable reign of rot may yet come to an end."

  

Please read rest of the article at: 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/13/dethroning-ukraines-oligarchs-a-how-to-guide/

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Kiev allows torture and runs secret jails, says UN.

Greg Krasovsky: Torturing terror suspects and political opponents of your regime? Secret detention facilities - black sites? 

Sound vaguely familiar? 

I wonder where the current Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) could have learned all this? The Nazi Gestapo? The Soviet KGB? 

How about the modern CIA and its allies? 

Yes, the same CIA that's currently deeply embedded into the SBU and is actively helping it to fight pro-Russian federalists (separatists) and alleged Kremlin's agents (i.e. this who actively oppose the pro-U.S. Poroshenko regime)?
   
Is this the freedom, independence and constitutional democracy that Ukrainians deserved and expected from U.S. political, economic, military and intelligence support?
  
Where's the massive press coverage from Western mainstream establishment media? 

What? You didn't know that Western mainstream media tends to cover human rights abuses in countries whose governments are in opposition to the US/EU/NATO establishment? 

That's right folks, the best "get out of jail cards" for kidnappings, unlawful detentions, police brutality, torture and extra-judicial killings are doled out by the U.S. State Department, The Pentagon, and the U.S. Intelligence Community (CIA first and foremost) to virtually ALL U.S. allies and agents who are fighting America's traditional enemies (communists & etc.) and current opponents, such as these in the Middle East

- Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and his allies,
- Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Ba'ath party supporters, anti-American Sunni Muslims and Pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim groups, 
- Syria's Bashar al-Assad and his supporters,
- Iran's government and Shia religious leadership (ayatollahs),
- Bahrain's opposition to the pro-Saudi Arabian Sunni government
- Yemen's opposition to the the pro-Saudi Arabian Sunni government
- Afghanistan's opposition to  
- Pakistan's opposition 

Why? Because although you may be a bad guy, human rights abuser/violator, torturer, rapist, kidnapper, murderer or even a war criminal, you're the means that are justified by a noble end - spreading U.S. government influence and control. Sorry, I meant freedom, democracy, the free market and globalization.
  
So getting back to European Ukraine (the geographic center of the European continent is in Ukraine!), should we be surprised if the United States and its allies allowed the same type of political repressions against anti-U.S/EU/NATO groups as in Saudi Arabia, America's staunchest ally in the Arabian Peninsula with all ensuing consequences?

Should we be scared if the United States recommends and implements in Ukraine the same type of counter-insurgency and anti-communist/socialist measures as in Latin America from the 1960s to the 1990s, like in
  
- El Salvador
- Nicaragua
- Peru
- Colombia
- Argentina and
- Chile

or the counter-insurgency tactics elsewhere around the world like in 

- post-Hussein Iraq, 
- post-Taliban Afghanistan or 
- the Philippines (against communist groups and Moro Muslim Rebel groups).
  
Should we be surprised if the US/EU/NATO turn a blind eye against ethnic, linguistic, religious and political persecution of ethnic Russians, Russian-speakers, Russian Eastern Orthodox and Pro-Russian cultural & political movements, the same way that human rights abuses have been tolerated against America's perceived opponents in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania)?

If you're a staunch Ukrainian Nationalist who holds Ukrainian WWII Nazi collaborators as heroes and their anti-Soviet/Polish/Jewish tactics (i.e. war crimes and crimes against humanity) as justified, then you'll approve of ALL measures necessary to eradicate the Russian menace which you believe has ruined Ukraine for hundreds of years.

But if you're a moderate Ukrainian-Russian-American like me who wants to see a tolerant, independent, democratic and corruption-free Ukraine, then you'll be scared for the sake of all normal and peace-loving Ukrainians of the above scenarios.

Why be saddened and scared? Because I don't want Ukraine to go through what former Yugoslavia has experienced less than 30 years ago - a civil war where neighbors started to beat, torture, rape & kill neighbors just because they were of a different ethnicity. 
  
I don't want Ukraine to look like Iraq where neighbors killed neighbors because they were Sunni and not Shia (and vice-versa).
  
I don't want Ukraine to go through Argentina's Dirty War or the persecutions of Franko's Spain where political opponents are tortured and killed in secret prisons and their children stolen to be raised by their parents' henchmen. 

But all of the above crimes have already started to happen in Ukraine since the Euro-Maidan protests in February of 2014. For better or for worse, the majority of the human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes committed against humanity have been perpetrated by the US/EU/NATO supported Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko regime.

But the Western Political establishment, mass media and even human rights groups mostly have turned a blind eye on these crimes and abuses. Why? 
  
Is it because people believe that it's justified or even necessary to fight Russia's evil with evil?

If you believe that the persecution of legitimate & peaceful political opposition in the Soviet Union was wrong and evil, then why would you tolerate or even participate in the same type of evil in today's Ukraine, even if  it is directed (for now) just at the alleged agents and sympathizers of Russia and Stalin's supposed heir in the Kremlin? 
  
BTW, let's look at modern Russia's geopolitical forays since its founding in 1991 and look at the alleged "evil" it has caused by:

A. Former Soviet Union
- defending Abhazian autonomy in Georgia in 1992-1993 with peace-keeping troops,
- defending Ossetian autonomy in Georgia in 2008 with peace-keeping troops,
- defending Armenian autonomy in Nagorny Karabakh,  
- defending pro-Russian autonomy in Trans-Dniester region of Moldova with peace-keeping troops,
- providing military & political assistance to contain radical Islam and drug trafficking in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. 
- providing political, economic and military assistance to Pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian federalists ("separatists") in Donetsk and Lugansk.

B. Europe
- providing economic, political and military assistance to Serbia 
- providing political assistance to Greece
  
C. Middle East
- providing military support to Syria's legitimate government,
- selling arms and building a nuclear power plant in Iran

D. Latin America
- selling arms to and engaging in trade with Venezuela 
- providing military, political and economic assistance to Cuba 
   
Now let's compare this to the millions of deaths and billions (if not trillions by now) of US dollars in destroyed civilian infrastructure caused by US/NATO led or supported interventions since 1991 in
  
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Libya
- Syria
- Yemen

Now did "evil" Putin's Russia or the former Soviet Union cause the above conflicts and demand US/NATO foreign interventions that have created failed states? No!
    
So how can we justify, tolerate, ignore and/or go unpunished  human rights abuses, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the current Ukrainian government under the flag of fighting Russian aggression and Kremlin's agents of influence?  
  
Please remember that ANY selective tolerance of evil, tyranny and despotism by a society or its government, regardless of whether it is 

- happening domestically or abroad,
- being done or tolerated initially in a limited way on a temporary basis,
- being used to fight a "greater" evil,

will sooner or later desensitize and corrupt the tolerant observer, facilitator or accomplice and lead to a potentially lethal spread of evil like a cancer with unavoidable pain, suffering and even death to follow.  

Do we want that sort of blow-back? I hope not!
  
****

Selected excerpt:

"Ukraine’s spy agency, the SBU, is systematically rounding up and torturing suspected rebel sympathisers, the United Nations has told The Times.

Ivan Simonovic, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, said that in some areas Kiev’s “disregard for human rights” had become entrenched and systemic and needed to be urgently addressed.

The UN report documents hundreds of cases of illegal detention, torture and ill-treatment of detainees — both by pro-Russian armed groups and by government agencies.

It draws attention to prisoner abuse and murders by pro-Russian rebel groups, but also exposes the scale and brutality of Ukraine’s government-backed torture programme..."

Please read the rest of the article at: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/kiev-allows-torture-and-runs-secret-jails-says-un-vwlcrpsjn
  
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3 Facts That Will Change Everything You Believe About U.S. Foreign Policy.

Greg Krasovsky: If you want to find out or confirm the truth, always follow the money trail...'cause money don't lie, especially in global arms sales.

Selected excerpt:

"(ANTIMEDIA) The Unites States has the world’s most powerful military — and a huge budget to match it. In fact, the U.S. spends more on defense than the next seven countries’ military budgets combined. America’s navy has been branded a “Global Force for Good,” and U.S. military operations around the world are sold to the public as freedom-by-force operations (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom).

But what is the truth about America’s foreign policy? Is America truly a benevolent empire hell-bent on raining democracy-by-drone strikes around the world? To answer this question, we looked at America’s arms global deals and came to a rather disappointing  conclusion.

The United States is the largest exporter of freedom-promoting military weaponry in the world, accounting for 33 percent of total sales. This is not really surprising considering the U.S. is the world’s strongest superpower with a technological advantage in military equipment over every other country. What is surprising, however, is which countries the U.S. is exporting these arms to. The top three beneficiaries of American arms sales from 2011-2015 raise some serious red flags that may change the way people think about U.S. foreign policy."

Please read rest of this article at: http://theantimedia.org/3-facts-us-foreign-policy/

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Ukraine Declares War on Journalism.

Greg Krasovsky: When even The New York Times writes about press censorship, intimidation and persecution of journalists in Ukraine, you can just imagine what it's like to be a defenseless independent journalist, especially if your objective coverage appears to be against the Poroshenko regime and/or for pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian federalists ("separatists").

"KIEV, Ukraine — In July 2014, I went to Donetsk, a separatist-controlled region in eastern Ukraine, to cover the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. It was a dangerous place at the time.

The Ukrainian military and the rebels were shelling each other, and temperamental men with Kalashnikovs who had been known to kidnap journalists were everywhere.

Like many foreign reporters, I was there to relay what was happening to the remains of the downed flight’s 298 passengers and crew members.

Before I went to the crash site, I obtained accreditation from the separatists. This did not guarantee that I would be safe, but it was the only way to get past the armed checkpoints.

Now Ukraine has labeled me an accomplice in terrorism.

On May 7, the website Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”), courtesy of anonymous hackers, published part of the separatists’ accreditation records. My name, email address and phone number were among those of more than 4,000 journalists, including freelancers like me, as well as correspondents from this newspaper, Reuters, the BBC and other outlets.

We were collectively labeled “terrorist collaborators” for gaining accreditation from the separatists.

The list’s publishers claimed not to know what the consequences would be of releasing this information, but it seemed clear that the intent was to encourage people to take action against the journalists on their own."

Please read the rest of the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/ukraine-declares-war-on-journalism.html