An FBI Counterterrorism Vet Explains How To Use Trump's New Orders Against The Left

Edited by Sam Thielman

LAST WEEK, President Trump issued a pair of consequential memoranda, one an executive order and the other a national-security directive, that unequivocally make the destruction of the American left and of liberal institutions an objective of the War on Terror. 

The executive order declares antifascism to be domestic terrorism, fulfilling a dream of Trump's from the summer of 2020, when millions took to the streets to demand justice for the police murder of George Floyd. The directive, known as NSPM-7, follows a precedent set last year when Congress unsuccessfully attempted to target liberal and left-wing nonprofits as incubators of terrorism. Readers of FOREVER WARS will recall that we called that attempt the most dangerous domestic counterterrorism measure since the PATRIOT Act.  In the introduction to REIGN OF TERROR, I wrote that we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the War on Terror had achieved its final form. Orders like Trump's are the sorts of things I had in mind. 

 NSPM-7 and the Antifa executive order make it plain that Trump is treating Charlie Kirk's assassination as MAGA's 9/11. As with 9/11 itself, the targets of these orders do not have to have anything to do with the actual act of violence, but overfocusing on that lack of connection risks missing the forest for the trees. MAGA is seizing the opportunity presented by the Kirk assassination for long-desired political goals that were previously outside the realm of possibility. 

Unlike after 9/11, Trump does not have to cobble together the institutions, mechanisms and operations of a War on Terror. There is one on the shelf, ready to be aimed at those deemed to espouse—and here I quote from NSPM-7—"anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." That is what "domestic terrorism" means now, and that is what the NSPM-7 directs the apparatus of counterterrorism to confront. 

Specifically, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) that unite the FBI with local law enforcement in every state will "investigate, prosecute and disrupt" entities engaged in the aforementioned subjects that Trump has recast as terrorism. As Ken Klippenstein highlighted on Saturday, NSPM-7 explicitly seeks law enforcement to act against "criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts." 

Now notice that verb disrupt. It's used five times in NSPM-7 and once in the operative section of the Antifa executive order. To borrow an observation from Chip Gibbons, disruption is the heart of the FBI's approach to domestic terrorism, even without an actual domestic-terrorism law. The absence of such a law means that, unlike with a designated foreign terrorist organization, membership in such a group is not itself illegal, so bringing criminal charges requires a connection to an actual crime, rather than a connection to a designated entity. Still, the FBI has many tools at hand to "disrupt" so-called domestic terrorism using investigative harassment that don't have to result in a prosecution. One of them is known as a terrorist enterprise investigation, or TEI, which is how the NYPD spied on mosques after 9/11. TEIs can result in surveillance that lasts for years without ever yielding a criminal charge. 

I've seen a lot of speculation about these two measures. Some of it has taken the form of "but a dog can't play basketball"-style smirking at the manipulations of law or the factual errors ("antifascism is an ideology, not an organization") the orders contain. So instead of engaging in additional speculation, I turned to Terry Albury, a former counterterrorism practitioner, for his lived experience of how the FBI and its allies will implement Trump's order. 

Terry Albury was an FBI special agent and JTTF veteran tasked to do things like surveil the founder of Muslim civil-rights group CAIR—an investigation that went on for years and resulted in zero charges—and infiltrate mosques in Minnesota. Disgust with the FBI's routine post-9/11 violations of Americans' constitutional rights resulted in Terry turning whistleblower and serving prison time. Janet Reitman wrote an excellent profile of Terry that's better than any short introduction I could offer here. "I don’t think anyone fully appreciates how demoralizing it is to be sitting across the table from a peace-loving man or woman from a foreign country, insinuating all kinds of baseless BS, attempting to coerce them to spy on their equally peaceful community, but it was also my job," he told Reitman. That quote sure resonates in an NSPM-7 world. Also, he's the first FBI veteran I've interviewed to quote Immortal Technique lyrics. 

Before our interview, a quick scheduling note. I know I said that FOREVER WARS has to pause so I can finish the manuscript for my next book. But these are seismic developments in our core area of coverage and I felt derelict to you, the FOREVER WARS subscriber. We'll return, gradually and then properly, in early-mid October. My goal is that my talk with Terry is useful enough that this interview will suffice for a while. And please, if you don't already pay for FOREVER WARS, support this sort of journalism, because you're not seeing it in most news outlets.

This is an edited transcript of my interview with Terry Albury. I tried to edit to remove redundancy and enhance clarity, since we ended up having a pretty sprawling conversation. Maybe think of this as a podcast in transcript form. Terry starts by pushing back against the headline of this piece. 

TERRY ALBURY: In terms of what you began with, I think it's very critical not to limit this just to an issue for the left to be concerned about now that they're the official target. Because, if we take it broadly, if those of us who pay attention to the manner in which the state, namely the FBI and all of its minions in the national security landscape, how they weaponize the law, depending on the political winds, right, how they shift, it can go to the right.

Now, we're under the Trump administration. Everyone's obviously outraged. They're concerned: "What the hell is happening? The rule of law, blah, blah blah." But you know, the FBI under Jim Comey did go after Trump, right? He was alleged to be a Russian asset, blah, blah, blah, 'Jim Comey is my homie' was a popular t-shirt people were wearing back in 2017. 

Liberals have been complicit in their own destruction, right? And now they want to cry foul because it doesn't serve their interests. Liberals have been complicit in standing idly by and allowing the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, all of these agencies, to wield their power against dispossessed and marginalized groups, and they've been more than willing to sanction that because it suited their political agenda. Because, again, hey, 20 years ago, it's the Muslims, right? Twenty years before that, it's those radical black people, right? Twenty years before that, it's those damn hippies that are saying, you know, we don't support war, like the Berrigan brothers or any of the other leftists out here in Berkeley, right? So you know all of that happened with the full support and approval of liberals. 

We make the mistake of believing that these people are honorable, that they will act in accordance with the law, but they will pervert the law.

Now liberals are the enemy. Those on the left are the enemy. Those who have ideas that challenge the prevailing narrative of the state, they are a threat to the established order, and because of that, they're concerned, rightly so, but let's just be honest, right? Let's really examine history, confront the past, confront your complicity, your silence, your inaction that gave the authority to Donald Trump. Liberals, namely, you know, the darling of the liberal establishment, Barack Obama, created this climate. 

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Well, George W. Bush before him, but yeah. 

Obama—you know, I told someone the other day that beer, whether it's Budweiser or Bud Light, is still beer. And Obama was Bush Light. I think a lot of people deluded themselves and said, hey, you know what? He's not so bad. You know, he has fewer calories, so I'm going to consume this one. But it's still Bush. 

I did a panel about a few weeks ago with a group called Disruption Lab in Germany, and I told them, Donald Trump is America, and America is Donald Trump. And until this country fully confronts itself and looks in the mirror honestly and objectively, we're going to continue to have these problems. Those of us who truly care about a society based on equality and fundamental fairness—one that represents men and women and homosexuals and black people and Muslims and Palestinians and any other dispossessed group—until we really, truly confront that and create a society that that reflects the interest of all of those groups, we're going to continue to have these problems. Donald Trump has capitalized on that. He's capitalized on the very real hatred, fear, animosity, vindictiveness, that has been percolating for many, many years and has never truly been addressed, and so that is why we continue to have these problems. 

And yes, to your original question, the liberals, the left should be concerned, because it's their turn now. They're the ones who, again, have created the atmosphere and given him this power that he is all too happy to wield.

What powers does a domestic terrorism designation unlock when there is no domestic-terrorism law?

The FBI has always had the authority to target those deemed to be domestic terrorist threats.There's a very specific list: eco-terrorists, animal rights activists, white supremacists, "black identity extremists" is a new one. Any group that is deemed to be an internal threat, without the foreign-power affiliation. Right now, that's very specific, because it operates within the criminal realm of things, right? And when I say criminal realm, it's the law that is very specific within the Title 18 code. Now the tools traditionally authorized for counterterrorism on the international standpoint, counterintelligence, are now available to the FBI to employ these tactics against domestic threats. If you look at the language, he's threading a needle, right, and he's using certain language to give the impression that the words, the actions, the associations of those who are Antifa, somehow are connected to a foreign power, that somehow there is actions, there are actions involved that justify such intrusive measures. Because you have a threat internally that is obviously being directed by, you know, as he keeps saying, outside agitators, right, foreign adversaries, for that matter. 

What the FBI is now able to do is use the tools in its playbook, traditionally held for those, let's say, for instance, that are members of al-Qaeda, right, or of Hamas, you know, specially-designated global terrorist groups as defined by the State Department, to then direct those same tools wield that power against internal groups. That runs the gamut right from standard grand-jury subpoenas, National Security Letters, trash covers, surveillance, overt interviews, covert interviews, development of human sources—you know, informants, spies, whatever else, undercover agents, you know, infiltration of any level, right? All of these tools traditionally held, and, you know, narrowly applied to a quote-unquote terrorist, as defined by the U.S. government since 9/11, now it gives them the opportunity to use those exact same tools against U.S. citizens that are, again, allegedly a member of Antifa. 

Since Antifa isn't an organization, how would the FBI interpret the executive order to "investigate, disrupt and dismantle" it? Who would become targets? 

If you look at the overall objective of counterterrorism on the national-security side of the house [that is, the side of the FBI that's an intelligence organization; as opposed to the side that's a law enforcement organization – Spencer], the overarching goal is to dismantle and disrupt the international terrorist organizations. So the tactics are the same. Specifically, they are going to exhaust all legal and lawful investigative techniques. You know, when I worked cases back in the day, the way the FBI would operate was, you had a target, right? Let's say I'm interested in some guy who runs a Palestinian bakery down the street, and I have intelligence that says he is a member of Hamas. Okay, once I have an allegation, I have the predication to open a preliminary investigation—or even a full investigation—there is a wide array of tactics that are at my disposal that are legally authorized. So I am required, per the FBI guidelines, to go down that list and use and fully exploit every technique that I'm authorized to employ. 

And there's no timeline. Because in [the national-security context], the goal is to gather intelligence, right? And intelligence is a very nebulous concept, widely open to interpretation, that authorizes you to exploit any of these tools in furtherance of validating your intelligence and determining if this person has any connection whatsoever to a foreign terrorist organization. And so with that, your case will stay open for six months, six years, sometimes 16 years, right? I worked a case here in the Bay Area years ago, and that case was open for 20-plus years. Never resolved. It was completely without any merit whatsoever. But the case agent believed this man was a member of Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation, right? Ultimately, the case was without merit, but because of this quest to confirm the intelligence and to validate this, this, this narrative, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The case stayed open for several decades. 

And so what's going to happen now is that the FBI is going to use that. We use the phrase 'Canary in the coal mine.' In the post-9/11 world, the FBI was given a blank check to do whatever is necessary to prevent another act of terrorism. And so it was given by the left and by the right, a vast array of tools: preemptive [detention]; entrapment operations, with informants who manufacture [information]. The FBI was able to use all of these tools for 20-plus years against the Muslim community, and they fine-tuned them. They made it so precise and effective that once they prosecuted someone for engaging in this activity, they had an iron case, and it was impossible for anyone to launch a defense. 

A war on terrorism is inherently nebulous. It's designed to be subjective.

There was a recent case in which the judge actually said "the FBI manufactured this case." [He's referring to the Newburgh Four denouement in 2024, in which Judge Colleen McMahon called the entire case an "FBI-orchestrated conspiracy"—Spencer] It speaks to the climate of what was done, and what they were able to do for such. A long period of time preying on the vulnerable, the impoverished, the uneducated or the undereducated, and manipulating them in such a way and creating the climate for a terrorism case that never existed until they created it, right? And so what's going to happen? This was the canary in the coal mine. But of course, no one [cared], right? Because Muslims don't matter in this country, right? Just like black people don't matter in this country. And so they were able to do this for such a long period of time, and the public stood by. They allowed it. They didn't. They didn't resist because, hey, 9/11 happened. 

So to take that to the specifics of the orders, when NSPM-7 says that it seeks a strategy whereby, quote "law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts," what does that tell FBI special agents like you once were to look at, target, and do? 

What that tells the FBI to do now is to employ the exact same tools that they fine-tuned against the Muslim community and wage them against leftists, liberals, people who don't believe in this—I don't even use the word dictator, because it's just kind of like cliche, but this demagogue, right? He's going to use those exact same tools, and this directive, this memo, this executive order, authorizes the FBI to use the exact same tools that the left and the right allowed to be waged against Muslims, will now be waged against liberals, be waged against those who believe. I mean, you saw the targeted groups, right? 

Back in the day, the FBI paid millions of dollars for training on what made someone a radical Muslim. One of the [indicators] was literally growing out your beard really long. The same thing is going to be done now. If you have a certain ideological view that espouses a particular belief that challenges, you know, empire, or says that LGBTQ people have a right to live on earth, right? That is considered radicalization. That is considered a threat. Or, if I believe, God forbid, that women are people too, and they're not here just to make babies, that makes you a threat, because you're challenging the established order. 

A war on terrorism is inherently nebulous. It's designed to be subjective. Intelligence is meaningless as a term, but at the same time, it's very powerful, because as a result of your desire to obtain more intelligence, you can pursue this case, keep it open, launch your surveillance operations, for weeks, for months, for years, even, right? You can go on these fishing expeditions. And that's what it's going to be. It's going to be a perpetual fishing expedition to stifle dissent, to suppress people's rights of free speech, independent thought, free association, the things that you take for granted. I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but I've been saying this since I went to prison. When I was speaking to the Intercept, I was screaming this stuff back then because I was trying to convey: Look at the larger picture. This is not just about the Muslim community. I understood that what they were doing against the Muslim community was also the long-term plan to be done against other communities. And I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. 

So in terms of how you used to work, to what degree is speech a predicate for these investigations, particularly for something like a Terrorist Enterprise Investigation?   

Well, they'll never say that. The official answer is that the FBI doesn't target you based on your speech. But it is an indicator, OK? A data point. And an important data point. What you will be allowed to do is you'll have thresholds, you have varying degrees of investigation, right? You have Guardian assessments – low-level investigations, where predication can be mere suspicion –  you have PIs [preliminary investigations], you have FIs [full investigations], you have Enterprise investigations. And so within that, the threshold for what they used to just call a threat assessment is very low. You can open a threat assessment on people from Yemen that live in the zip code 94702, and they did so because the standard is so low. Then they can copy and paste and say, 'Now we're going to open a threat assessment on college students from the ages of 18 to, I don't know, 26, 28, and we're going to focus our efforts on those who are members of certain student groups, those who maybe attend certain universities that are ideologically aligned with quote, unquote, leftist, liberal views.' And so the door is now open for a more comprehensive targeting.

Not to go on a tangent, but what you're saying in terms of speech, right, and how that's used as a predicate: Once you identify an indicator, you have tools at your disposal. You know, seven degrees of separation, maybe even less, but I guarantee for a fact, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who might be involved in criminal activity.

Yeah, because that's a massive amount of people. 

Exactly. Palantir is in the news today, but I was using Palantir years ago. It was fine tuned in the FBI [and also the Army—Spencer]. 1984 was not supposed to be like a blueprint, but it is. And so the FBI, what they're able to do then is draw these connections. I have what are called selectors. A selector would be your name, your date of birth, your email address, your Twitter handle, your Instagram, your Facebook, whatever you use. I can take all of those, run it through Palantir, run it through any number of internal databases, and start drawing connections. Oh, Spencer has a friend whose picture was captured at a protest. Spencer has made ten phone calls over a series of, you know, two weeks to this person—hmm, who makes that many phone calls, that's highly suspicious. And so it becomes not what you did, but how you frame it, how you articulate it. And again, because it's internal, there's no independent oversight saying that you shouldn't do this, that this is not legally valid. No one's going to challenge you, and you'll be able to pursue more intrusive investigative techniques.

What kinds of investigations can the JTTFs launch without ever needing to go before a grand jury? How long can these investigations last without yielding charges? 

The legal standard is going to change. It's no longer going to be probable cause [to pursue an investigation]. It's going to be if you have information or an allegation. It's going to take the tools of the counterterrorism world and turn them domestically. And I think that's perhaps the greatest threat. I read the entire memo top to bottom a few times, and I was just thinking to myself like, we're in for a very challenging time, because the gloves literally are off. You know, this is what the FBI has always been asking for. They've always wanted that freedom to go after domestic terrorism the same way that they've gone after international terrorism. 

You know, when I talked to Janet Reitman, she did some stuff years ago on white supremacists and, you know, just the difficulty in going after that and the nature of the threat. And she was asking me just kind of anecdotally, like, what's the climate in the FBI on the DT [domestic terrorism] side of the house? And I told her, you know, a lot of the agents are frustrated. They don't like the program. Those that get sent there are deemed to be like slugs, you know, just lacking any intellectual complexity and ability to actually pursue a real case, right? You get placed on the DT squad because you're dumb as rocks. There's also the frustration of those agents that do get placed there, how their hands are tied, and they're not able to do much of anything, because the law is not applied in the same fashion as it is on the international-terrorism side of the house. What this new memo has authorized and is saying is, no, the game has changed, and you can do the exact same thing that you do on the intelligence-community side of the house, and your goal is now to prevent an act of terrorism. 

Just to stay with that point for a second, I remember how for a very long time, people on the domestic-terrorism side weren't operating in the part of the FBI that was prioritized. Now it seems like you will get under the Kash Patel FBI, the people in the FBI who really want to suppress the left moving into positions of bureaucratic power, where they have the resources, they have the attention, they have the prioritization. And what do you expect that to accomplish, as someone who's lived and worked in these environments? Will this be where the FBI's best and brightest go to advance up the career ladder?

I think those who gravitate to that program are the ones who are ideologically opposed, morally opposed, [to the left] and sort of look at themselves as being involved in their own holy war, being like a soldier on the front lines of peace and democracy. You know, they will gravitate to that. When I was in Minnesota, the men and women who worked on the terrorism squad, I mean, were just some of the most just right-wing, extreme, hateful people. This one guy talked about how much he would watch the movie Black Hawk Down. And it just, like, drove him. He would go out to the community and target Somalis, because he just hated them, and this was his way of getting back at them. We had men who were in the Army or in the Marines and they would talk about their time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, you know, this was them evening the score.

My thinking and feelings have developed a great deal over the years about the FBI and what it represents, and the people that it attracts. And so I'm very reluctant to call them "the best and brightest." The most hateful, the most ignorant, the most vindictive, mean-spirited people will gravitate to that world because, you know, again, they're the ones who are furthering the narrative of "black identity extremism." Or, you know, to be Palestinian is to be a Hamas supporter, and Hamas is a terrorist organization, therefore all Palestinians are terrorists, right? You know, that type of person is going to gravitate to this new squad. Because, as the FBI, as the U.S. government treats Muslims as a fifth column in this country, an enemy within, the same treatment will be directed to the enemy as deemed to be Antifa, or the enemy as deemed to be, you know, black identity extremism. 

You know, it talks in this memo about extremism on race, extremism on gender. Like, are we talking about things like being transgender? Because these trans people, they're preying on your kids, right? Meanwhile, it's all of these Christian ministers and these cops who are constantly being caught and found out to be pedophiles, right? But it's just such a power play. I mean, you have to just laugh at how the gaslighting and the manipulation that they've been engaged in for all these years and now they've succeeded. And it's a power play of the worst degree that now they're able to take all of their bigotry and their hatred and their their vindictiveness and their their racist views, their sexist views, their transphobic views, homophobic views, and put it into this and say, "We're fighting domestic terrorism. You are a terrorist. You're the reason why Charlie Kirk was assassinated. You're the reason why Donald Trump was shot. 'We're being attacked for our beliefs." It's insanity.

It's exceptionalism, is what it is. 

Exactly, and the sad reality is the left has no one to blame but itself. Because they've sat there and they've sanctioned it, and they've provided the template and given the George Bushes of the world, the Donald Trumps, the Joe Bidens, the Barack Obamas, all of them, they've given them the authority to do this.

I would quibble and say that's liberals and not the left, because the left hasn't been in power and liberals have, but I take your point. 

I'm speaking off the cuff, but we're on the same page, man. 

So I have just maybe two more programmatic questions. It caught my eye that section 2(k) of NSPM-7 seeks to use Section 2339, the authorities against material support for terrorism.

Yeah. 

2339, especially 2339B which the section specifically cites, is about foreign terrorist organizations. How applicable is 2339 against a purely domestic entity? 

Yeah, I mean, it's not applicable in the traditional sense of the law. But again, the law is meaningless, though, right? We make the mistake of believing that these people are honorable, that they will act in accordance with the law, but they will pervert the law. They will manipulate the law, they will use it, and they will weaponize it however they can to suit their agenda. And so, the material support to a terrorist organization as defined by 18 USC 2339 is very specific, very clear. There are certain elements that have to be met.  Now, how they're going to use that same statute and convince an [assistant U.S. attorney] that, you know, some kid at UC Berkeley has met the elements of this statute on a domestic terrorism charge is going to be one hell of a case. But because they've successfully changed the conversation and successfully convinced the public that this is what their overarching goal is, public safety and thwarting terrorism and all these different things, they likely will succeed. And so, proving those elements, building a case that someone has engaged in material support, you know, it's, I think it's going to be quite easy. Especially when you start showing the ideology, the association, the contacts, the protests, all of the different things. What was that old phrase, retweets are not endorsements? But that's what they're going to do. They're going to build a case around all of that to justify prosecuting people.

You know, what I found to be really dangerous is what they're doing on the financial front, the IRS–

Yeah, so that was my next question, the Treasury stuff.

It's crazy, because you know what that means? I was at Berkeley back in May, and I spoke at the Logan symposium. I didn't know much about the Logan family until before I got up on stage. And, you know, very, very inspiring family, really good people. The family is continuing to honor the legacy of their parents. But, you know, they're very wealthy people, and they have certain values. They want the world to represent those values, they want the world to represent, you know, the arts, they want the world to represent, you know, a society based on equality and fairness and equal access to information, education. And they do a lot of really great things in many different cities around the country, around the world. And I realized as I was reading [the orders] is what the FBI can do is target even the Logan Foundation. They can target people who are funding, you know, quote-unquote, woke ideology. They can target people who are funding, and these organizations that are supporting, advancing the rights of the LGBTQ community. Or those who say black lives matter. 

That's not a radical thing to say, but again, being associated with that organization is deemed to be radical. Or any of the groups that say free Palestine, and receive funding from groups and organizations—they can be targeted from the financial-terrorism support network. And it's very nebulous. I've worked cases with the IRS. I've been in the room and leveraged their resources in support of a case on someone who was deemed to be engaged in activity supportive of terrorism. And so we were able to freeze assets, we were able to label their activity as somehow being connected to terrorism. There's a part in there that people also probably forgot, it talks about SARs.

Yeah, so this was my question. In issuing Suspicious Activity Reports, can they task banks to stop quote-unquote domestic-terrorist funding sources? 

Yes. Yes they can, and yes they will. And the reason why they can and they will is because they've already done it. Muslims in this country that have used the financial system to transfer money to family in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, all these places, they've been targeted by the FBI and have had their funds prevented from being transferred, because it's "suspicious."

A SAR, there's no evidentiary standard, and people need to understand that. There's no, oh, you have to meet this threshold. It's called suspicious, right? That's the first word of a SAR. It's suspicious. Doesn't mean it's true. You know, I see someone wearing a hoodie on a hot day, that's suspicious. Well, it doesn't mean a goddamn thing. It just means you're wearing a hoodie on a hot day because you like hoodies. So that translates into the issuance of these SARs. 

And again, no one [cared] when it happened against the Muslim community. Now they're going to issue SARs against the left, against Antifa, against people who are funding, who are giving money, organizations—hey, so-and-so wrote a check, they sent a wire for $50,000 to this little organization in Berkeley, hmm, that's suspicious. What do we do now? Well, I'm going to, A, do my database checks. B, maybe task my informants and see what they know about this organization and its officers. C, I'm going to do my internal database checks and run the name through, you know, Palantir and IDW and all this other [stuff], right? D, I'm going to go out and do a couple drive-by surveillances. E, I'm gonna go pull their trash, right? And that's just under a Guardian threat assessment. Wait till I get to do a PI [preliminary investigation], wait until I get to do a full [investigation]. 

Okay, last thing. Given all of this, if you were to give advice to organizations and people who are worried about their exposure and are worried about coming under investigation, what would that advice be?

I want to give you a nice short answer but I can't. I spoke with a professor two weeks ago back east, and he was approached by the FBI for an interview, and his attorneys, I don't know why, agreed to it and said, 'We will have an interview if it only falls within these parameters, and you give a non-prosecution memo and blah, blah, blah, and it's very specific.' And so they convinced him to do this interview, and he was about to do it, and the family called me with him, and we talked, and I said to him, like, 'What is wrong with you?' Under no circumstance should you ever consent to any interview. If they want you to talk, make them subpoena you before a grand jury. Don't do their job for them. If they're interrogating you, assert your Fifth Amendment rights. 

Recognize that you are going to be targeted. Recognize that the game has changed. Recognize that the fact that you are a person of conscience that believes in equality, that believes in the fundamental freedom and the rights of dispossessed groups, you are a target. And this is where I was going with the story about the professor: anyone that you meet is a potential threat. Anyone that you spend time with and you talk to, and you go and you break bread with and have coffee with, or whatever else, is a potential FBI informant, guaranteed. And so it's going to be important for everyone to change their mindset, right? You know, as a culture, we're very trusting by nature. We're an open book. We live online, right? All of that is going to be used as a basis to build a profile of you. It's going to be used to develop intelligence about you as a person and then exploit it. 

And so what people should do is, number one, recognize the threat landscape, recognize who their adversary is and what their adversary is committed to doing by any means necessary. In the same way that I am committed to seeing a free Palestine, they are committed to seeing you locked in a cage because you are an extremist in terms of gender, you are an extremist when it comes to race relations, you're an extremist when it comes to saying, hey, gay people exist. They have a right to marry whomever they choose. People need to protect themselves. They need to educate themselves. They need to stop carrying water for the state and consuming the lies and the propaganda that they are told day in and day out about this government and what it does and what it represents. It's a threat to us all, left, right and center. We need to truly have an understanding of solidarity and community and intersectionality and love and compassion for each other, regardless of race, right, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, and truly stand together against our shared oppressor.

You know, I heard a good song by Immortal Technique years ago–

!!!!

–and in there, he talks about, you know, my enemy is not, you know, the average white person. 'In fact I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people, as much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking…' There does have to be a change in our consciousness and a true class solidarity, right, and uniting across racial and social and ethnic and religious lines and putting these petty differences aside, because they don't matter. 

You got it right there. 

You got me worked up on a Monday. 

So just to clarify: are you saying that people should be careful what they post, and what their associates post? 

No, I am not advocating self-censorship. People need to be tactical, surgical and methodical in what they say on and offline. There needs to be both a comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape—entrapment, FBI rats, and agents provocateurs—while embarking on a sustained strategy—protest, education, advocacy—to counteract that threat. We need to collectively speak with greater ferocity in solidarity with the least of us, regardless of the arbitrary and insignificant differences they use to divide us. Finally, we must solidify our resolve, prepare for further weaponization of the law, and commit to resisting fascism masquerading as patriotism.