"They didn't look like construction workers. They weren't dressed like they were going to work," Carlos Batista told Fox News. "I would see him with them more than his own kids."
Like the mysterious woman reportedly seen with accused Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, the two individuals spotted with Saipov will never be identified and the corporate media will dismiss Batista's story as irrelevant, if they acknowledge it at all. The lone wolf inspired and radicalized by Islamic State videos is now the official narrative.
"In many ways, this now a classic case of a radicalization of a domestic jihadist who associated with ISIS, and this is their new playbook," New York governor Andrew Cuomo told CBS News. "Very simple. Use a vehicle to cause harm. It's New York. It's London. It's Germany. It's France. It's Ohio. So, this is more of what we've seen."
Is it possible the two men were Saipov's handlers?
For instance, we know the New York Police Department has infiltrated and surveilled the Muslim community not only in New York, but around the country. In 2012, it emerged that the NYPD had not only spied on Muslims, but also inserted agent provocateurs in the Muslim community. This came to light during the trial of Ahmed Ferhani, a mental patient accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue in Manhattan.
Ferhani was befriended by an undercover agent codenamed Ilter, referred to as UC214 in court papers. He targeted Ferhani at a Palestinian solidarity event held by students. "Over time [Ilter] attended several student conferences outside New York City. He constantly engaged in provocative and violent rhetoric to the plight of the Palestinians," said Elizabeth Fink, Ferhani's lawyer. UC214 manipulated the mentally ill Ferhani and steered him toward a set-up. This is similar to the tactics used by the FBI.
Since at least 2002, the New York City Police Department's Intelligence Division has engaged in the religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslims in New York City and beyond, according to the ACLU.
In addition to mapping Muslim communities and conducting photo and video surveillance, the NYPD recruited "mosque crawlers" and "rakers" to scout mosques, restaurants, delis, internet cafes, barber shops, and gyms to find targets. In addition, the unit used coercion to recruit informants. NYPD cops arrested Muslims on traffic stops and outstanding warrants and forced them to become informants.
In 2012, a paid informant working for the Intelligence Division came forward and said he was told to "create and capture" Muslims into saying inflammatory things. He created conversations about jihad or terrorism, then captured responses sent to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month. The police promised to keep him out of jail after a string of minor marijuana arrests. The informant, Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent, said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took photos inside the mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams.
The NYPD Intelligence Division worked closely with the CIA in violation of the agency's charter. It states the CIA is forbidden to conduct operations in the United States. The CIA trained a top NYPD detective, Steve Pinkall, at its Farm spy school in Virginia, and a top CIA officer, a former Middle East station chief, was assigned to One Police Plaza.
Former high ranking CIA officer, David Cohen, became the NYPD's first civilian intelligence chief in 2002. He headed up the CIA's analytical and operational divisions before working with the NYPD. Cohen requested help from the agency to build the intelligence operation in New York. CIA boss George Tenet responded by tapping the expertise of Larry Sanchez, a CIA veteran who had served as a CIA official at the United Nations. Usually, when an agent is used on a temporary assignment, the other agency picks up the tab. This wasn't the case with Sanchez. Tenet kept him on the CIA payroll.
In essence, the CIA turned the NYPD into a satellite operation. The CIA's infamous tactics, however, are illegal in New York. Since 1985, the NYPD has operated under a federal court order limiting the tactics it could use to gather intelligence. The NYPD had used informants and undercover officers in the 1960s and 70s to infiltrate the anti-war movement and target activists without reason to suspect criminal behavior.
The rules were sidelined when US District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. agreed with Cohen the restrictions were no longer relevant in the wake of 9/11. Haight said the guidelines "addressed different perils in a different time."
"In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long," Cohen wrote.
The CIA has plenty of experience. In 1959, the agency created Operation CHAOS, one of the largest and most pervasive domestic surveillance programs in the history of the United States.
"The CIA's Office of Security was monitoring other groups at this time and had recruited agents within different emigré organizations. The CIA considered this a normal extension of its authorized infiltration of dissident groups abroad even though the activity was taking place within the U.S.," writes Verne Lyon, a former CIA undercover operative.
In 1964, President Johnson allowed then CIA Director John McCone to create a secret branch called the Domestic Operations Division, a mockery of the intent of Congress when it forbid domestic operations.
"Congress could not hinder or regulate something it did not know about, and neither the President nor the Director of the CIA was about to tell them," writes Lyon. "Neither was J. Edgar Hoover, even though he was generally aware that the CIA was moving in on what was supposed to be exclusive FBI turf."
President Nixon continued and expanded Operation CHAOS. In 1970, he met with the FBI's Hoover, CIA DCI boss Richard Helms, NSA Director Admiral Noel Gaylor, and Defense Intelligence Agency representative Lt. Gen. Donald V. Bennett. Nixon wanted to crush dissent and break the back of the anti-war movement.
Operation CHAOS agents were instructed to "Gather information on [activist] immorality. Show them as scurrilous and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions. Explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex, break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them. Send articles to the newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt. Get records of their bank accounts. Obtain specimens of handwriting. Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death," writes Mae Brussell.
These immoral tactics are mild when compared to other activities the CIA engaged in-behavior modification, mind control programs, assassination attempts of foreign leaders, engineering coups, and unethical human experimentation.
The template used was the CIA and USAID's Phoenix program in Vietnam. "The widespread use of informants, blacklists, selective terror and black propaganda defined the Phoenix program all the while mirroring itself in its twisted sister and US-based counterpart, MH Chaos or Operation Chaos," writes Kara Z. Dellacioppa.
The Senate Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission investigating abuses by the CIA and FBI had little interest in getting to the bottom these activities. Senator Gary Hart lamented committee disinterest in investigating the full range of abuses. He said the majority of the 600-page report compiled from CIA Director William Colby's testimony that comprised the "family jewels" never made it into the final Church Committee report.
The report reveals a long list of CIA abuses, including: wiretapping journalists, surveillance of journalists, including Jack Anderson; home break-ins; opening mail (under the NSA's Project Shamrock); behavioral research on American citizens, including LSD experiments under Project MKULTRA; assassination plots against Fidel Castro, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and René Schneider, Commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army, in addition to Operation CHAOS and projects RESISTANCE and MERRIMAC.
Until we know the identity of the two men seen with Sayfullo Saipov, we will not know if his attack was instigated by the CIA, NYPD, FBI, or other government agencies. The record clearly demonstrates the state has engaged in such behavior in the past.
Many Americans, of course, refuse to believe the government would kill innocent civilians, especially their fellow citizens. Bush and Obama killed a number of American citizens, including al-Qaeda hostage Warren Weinstein, Ahmed Farouq, Adam Gadahn, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son, Abdulrahman, and Jude Kenan Mohammad. All were killed without due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
The establishment media has ignored the CIA's role in creating al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. This was accomplished not only to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan, but also to create a perpetual and undefeatable enemy to replace the Soviet Union after it collapsed.
The attacks of 9/11 were designed to kick the war on terror and the surveillance and police state into high gear. Ongoing domestic terror attacks are primarily false flag events engineered to inculcate the people into accepting ever-increasing militarism abroad and at home. It parallels Operation Gladio in Europe, which was initiated to move the people to call on the state to protect them from terrorists despite the cost in liberty and privacy.
President Donald Trump has called for Sayfullo Saipov to be sent to Guantánamo and given the death penalty after a military tribunal. The concentration and torture camp at Guantánamo is supposed to hold non-Americans-with the exception of Yasser Hamdi, whom the government does not consider a citizen-and if Trump has his way, a precedent will be set. Americans accused of terrorism or providing material support for terrorists may soon be denied their constitutional rights.
Again, we don't know at this point if Saipov was in fact steered into violence by the state, or if he was motivated by US foreign policy to commit the act. This is, of course, irrelevant to the state and the ruling elite with their vested interest in war, the profits it rakes in for the military industrial-surveillance complex and the control measures it forces on the people who are, in the minds of our authoritarian leaders, enemies of the state if they dare organize and protest the crimes it perpetuates.
Once is an accident, twice is a happenstance, three times is enemy action, four times is signs of treason.