A man suspected of stealing firearms, threatening churches, setting his vehicle on fire and writing a 161-page antigovernment manifesto to President Trump has been captured in Wisconsin after a 10-day manhunt.
The sheriff’s office of Rock County, Wis., said that Joseph A. Jakubowski, 32, was arrested early Friday morning.
Sheriff Robert Spoden of Rock County said Mr. Jakubowski had been camping near the border separating Vernon and Richland Counties.
“He appeared to be very disheveled and dirty and obviously had been outdoors for some time,” Sheriff Spoden said in a phone interview, adding that no one was hurt during the arrest.
Mr. Jakubowski is suspected of robbing a gun shop on April 4 in Janesville, Wis. A video recorded by Mr. Jakubowski and released by the police shows him preparing to mail a manifesto to the White House. In the video, he calls for revolution, saying, “It’s time for change.”
According to the police, Mr. Jakubowski’s document “includes grievances against government and personal angst towards anyone or anything other than natural law or rule.”
The police found Mr. Jakubowski after receiving reports of a suspicious person on a farmer’s property on Thursday night. A news release from the Rock County sheriff’s office said that around 6 a.m. Friday, “tactical officers made contact with the suspicious person at the campsite. The subject was taken into custody without incident and positively identified.”
At a news conference on Friday afternoon, R. Justin Tolomeo, who leads the F.B.I.’s Milwaukee Division, said Mr. Jakubowski was found with four handguns, one long gun, multiple boxes of ammunition, some containers of flammable liquid, a sword, a helmet, a ballistic vest and a copy of his own manifesto.
Mr. Tolomeo acknowledged that this did not account for all of the weapons reported missing from the Janesville gun shop that Mr. Jakubowski is accused of robbing, which totaled 18 firearms, including an M-16 rifle, and two gun silencers, according to court documents. The authorities continued to search for the remaining weapons.
After being held briefly in Vernon County, Mr. Jakubowski was sent to Madison, Wis., for a court appearance on Friday afternoon, Sheriff Spoden said.
Mr. Jakubowski faces state charges of burglary and arming himself with a dangerous weapon, felony theft, and possession of burglary tools. “There are currently federal firearms charges, which the A.T.F. are pursing,” Mr. Tolomeo said, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He added that additional federal charges may be forthcoming “as the investigation unfolds.”
Mr. Jakubowski had also been suspected of writing letters threatening violence against churches on Easter around Sussex, Wis., in the eastern part of the state. But Lt. Philip Carini of the Waukesha County sheriff’s office said the letters’ origins had not been not verified, and Mr. Tolomeo said at the news conference that the letters were “likely not” sent by Mr. Jakubowski.
The search for Mr. Jakubowski involved 18 local agencies, two state agencies and six federal agencies.
“We could not have asked for this matter to end better,” said David Moore, the chief of the Janesville Police Department. “No one was hurt, no officers were harmed, and Mr. Jakubowski was taken into custody without any injuries.”
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Walter Yovany Gomez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, is wanted by the FBI for his involvement in the murder of a Plainfield, New Jersey man in 2011.
Gomez, a known member of the El Salvador’s most violent criminal organization, MS-13, attacked the man for reportedly speaking to members of a rival gang. Leaders within MS-13 ordered the man be killed.
Gomez, along with another MS-13 gang member, allegedly struck the man in the head multiple times before cutting his throat and stabbing him 17 times in the back.
Prosecutors issued a federal arrest warrant for Gomez in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey in September 2013 after charging the Honduran national with violent crime in aid of racketeering. Officials last spotted Gomez in Maryland.
Gomez’s addition to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list comes just as Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump have vowed to bring foreign criminal organizations operating in the U.S. to their knees.
“Together, we will drastically reduce the danger posed by criminal aliens, gang members, and cartel henchmen,” Sessions told U.S. Border Patrol agents while visiting the U.S.-Mexico southern border this week, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Half of the FBI’s Most Wanted list is comprised of foreign nationals living in the U.S., with two coming from Mexico, two from Honduras, and one from Egypt. Another wanted fugitive was born in Illinois, but has close ties to Mexico. The other four fugitives are from the U.S.
In the real world, it is highly unlikely that your neighbor, coworker or mailman is actually a clandestine Russian operative working under a false identity. But that certainly does not mean the art of espionage has gone out of style in the world of international intelligence gathering, particularly between the United States and its former Cold War foe.
Amid all of the accusations and speculation pouring out of the investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, the notion that foreign spies are using old-school tactics and personally recruiting agents to divulge sensitive information is actually widely accepted among intelligence officials.
There is no doubt that the rise of information warfare and cyberespionage has changed the spy game in the years since the Cold War. But the playbook on how to target, recruit and manipulate sources has generally stayed the same.
These "Spy 101" type tactics are spelled out nearly step-by-step in the FBI court filings from a
2015 case
that names a person identified only as "Male 1." While the government has never revealed his identity, Carter Page has acknowledged to CNN that he is the individual the documents refer to as a target of recruitment by three Russian intelligence agents.
The FBI has never accused Page, who would later become a Trump campaign adviser, of having been
successfully turned as a spy
. He has repeatedly denied any allegations of wrongdoing and said he wasn't aware he had been approached by Russian spies.
"Consistent with the politically motivated unmasking standards seen in the Obama Administration which have recently been exposed, my personal identity and earlier assistance of federal authorities in the 2015 case of U.S.A. v. BURYAKOV, SPORYSHEV and PODOBNYY was framed in an easily identifiable way that amplified the reputational damage against me," Page said in a statement to CNN.
But what the FBI documents outline is the strategy behind how Russian agents marked him as a target. The techniques used in the attempt to recruit Page are similar to those employed by Cold War-era KGB operatives, a former counterintelligence official told CNN.
Step 1: Building a relationship
The beginning stages of the recruitment process are built on the same principles as positive human interactions like friendship or dating.
The first step of the process involves determining whether an individual qualifies as a likely target based on his or her personality, occupation or connections and then initiating a relationship, according to the former counterintelligence official.
In the case of Page, Russian agents allegedly opened a line of communication over email after meeting him at an energy symposium in 2013, according to FBI documents.
The interactions that followed were textbook recruitment tactics, according to the former official, who said a foreign spy will attempt to develop a casual relationship with targets, learning about their background and probing to determine whether or not they would be willing to share any type of information, even if it can be accessed publicly.
In the world of espionage, spies will look to identify any vulnerabilities that they can use to apply pressure or entice an individual into doing what they ask -- such as threatening to expose a secret or offering them payment.
In the 2015 case, the court filings outline a discussion about a Russian spy setting up a face-to-face meetings on occasion with Page and highlight his frequent travels to Moscow for business as an area of interest.
"He writes to me in Russian so he can practice the language. He flies to Moscow more than I do," the two Russian agents said about Page, according to the FBI documents citing phone surveillance. "It's obvious he wants to make a lot of money."
Step 2: Suitable target?
Ultimately, the Russian agents determined that the combination of Page's professional ambition, connections to Russia and general enthusiasm for communicating indicated he was a suitable target to pursue as an intelligence source, according to the FBI's assessment in the filings.
The discussion then shifted to methods of enticing Page into sharing information with them, according to the documents.
While the sharing of publicly accessible documents is legal, the willingness of a target to share signals a willingness to cooperate and an openness to proceeding with the relationship, the former official told CNN.
"You promise a favor for a favor," the transcript of a conversation obtained by FBI surveillance between the two Russian agents reads. "You get the documents from him, and tell him to go f*** himself."
According to FBI testimony, investigators concluded that this conversation reflected a "recruitment method, which includes cheating, promising favors, and then discarding the intelligence source once the relevant information is obtained by the SVR," the Russian Federation's foreign intelligence service.
Outcome
According to the former intelligence official, a successful recruitment of an intelligence source hinges on the final step of the process involving the spy's decision to co-opt the target by finally making the pitch for him or her to share sensitive information.
At this point in the process, a foreign spy will use the information gathered about a target's background, either appealing to individual passions, offering favors or money, or resorting to blackmail to get cooperation, according to the former official.
In the 2015 case involving Page, the FBI said that his interactions with the individuals under investigation did not progress to the point where the bureau felt he had
successfully been recruited
as a spy or intelligence source.
The three defendants in the case were charged with participating in a conspiracy to act as a foreign agent in the US without informing the Attorney General.
Two of the men left the country before the court proceedings and both had diplomatic immunity because of their jobs for the Russian government. The third individual was arrested by US officials and
sent back to Moscow
earlier this month after pleading guilty to his crimes in 2015.
Page, who has consistently said that he did not know the Russians were spies, maintained in statements to CNN that he only "shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents," providing "nothing more than a few samples from the far more detailed lectures" he was preparing for his students.
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Dear Lawmaker: Remember that old movie “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”? Well, may I, your constituent, ask you to turn your attention away from all the current partisan bickering and realize that the Russians are already here and infiltrating who knows how many aspects of American life?
We’ve heard testimonies that the Russians dispatched gangs of internet trolls to post fake news stories to influence our last presidential election. But what if Russian hackers are also working on ways to shut off America’s power grid or launch our nuclear missiles? What if they are funding organized crime to try to destabilize major American cities, or figuring out ways to disrupt our food supply?
Could you and your colleagues please knock off the distracting, never-ending partisan political fights (about everything!) and focus on the Russian threat to this country?
Thanks for reading this. – A Concerned Voter
That’s the letter I’d plan to send each of my representatives in the U.S. Congress.
It seems crystal clear that Russian megalomaniac President Vladimir Putin has had – and continues to operate – a massive internet-based campaign aimed at destabilizing the United States. He would like to see our democracy paralyzed, and then eliminated. He surely giggles over his nightly vodka as American news reaches the Kremlin and he watches the political paralysis his cybermeddling has created.
Only the foolish would believe Putin is done trying to manipulate the American mindset. Yet the focus on Capitol Hill remains firmly entrenched in other issues punctuated by partisan preening, posturing and finger-pointing, all with the apparent goal of getting face time on the evening news.
This is no way to tend to the nation’s business. I wish there were laws with teeth in them criminalizing political malingering and dereliction of duty.
Make no mistake: Our nation remains under attack by the Russians, not in the traditional military sense but rather on the nearly invisible cyberwar battlefield. Just because our presidential election has passed doesn’t mean Putin and his band of internet vultures plan to pack it in and find other ways to spend their time. Under Putin’s guidance, they are certainly focused on developing new ways to mess with America.
We are told the FBI is investigating. And there are two congressional investigations underway – one in the Senate, one in the House – tasked with discovering and dissecting Russian activities surrounding our 2016 presidential election. How far did they go to try to manipulate U.S. public opinion? What did they actually accomplish? And, perhaps most importantly, were any Americans colluding with the Russians to sway election results? Rumors of treasonous scheming have been rampant, obviously coming from operatives inside both major political parties.
It’s odd how these political propagandists don’t realize who the enemy is. The real adversaries aren’t Democrats or Republicans; they are Kremlinites under the direction of a despot with sleight of hand who desperately needs to distract his people from their own sad plight under his leadership.
A new study of the 2016 election by researchers at Stanford University and New York University concluded, “Fake news didn’t actually sway the election.” While recognizing that social media did play a part in disseminating fake news, the study found, it was not a dominant source of news. “Even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen only by a relatively small number of Americans, most probably ‘rabid partisans,’” the study reported.
So, if the study is right and Russian attempts did not have a measurable effect on the presidential election, what is Washington, D.C., really investigating?
You bet I’m interested to know whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the outcome of the election. I’m also interested to learn whether Hillary Clinton’s camp engaged in a post-election campaign of dirty tricks against President Trump to make her a more attractive candidate should she take another crack at the presidency in a couple years. And whether Obama loyalists have a plot to discredit Trump as he undoes so much of the former president’s legacy.
But what is most important now is our national security. It is clear that battles henceforth will not require armed soldiers marching through streets. Future wars may very well begin and end with shadowy characters sitting at keyboards launching subversive tactics to demoralize and defeat their foes.
Let’s hope the outcome of all these investigations isn’t simply an exercise in political drama that ends with no definitive answers. And let’s pray our leaders aren’t so mired in the past that they myopically focus only on high-priced weaponry systems as a means to insure the nation’s security.
We need to strengthen our own army of keyboard warriors who can root out internet attacks before they do damage and, ideally, paralyze Putin’s cyberwar effort. We would all be safer for it.
Diane Dimond is a syndicated columnist and television reporter of high-profile court cases. Visit her website at www.dianedimond.com.
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You would think that a major news outlet saying that the FBI has “specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion” between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia would have been the biggest story of the day on Thursday, but it wasn’t.
That’s most likely because the original report, from The Guardian buried the lede quite a bit, as this was the very last paragraph:
Also on Mediaite James Comey: The FBI is Investigating Any Possible Coordination Between Russia and Trump Campaign
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One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”
The lede burying is doubly embarrassing for The Guardian because the general thrust of the whole article is about how British intelligence — notably part of the “Five Eyes” information sharing agreement with the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — was the first entity to discover ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
[H/T Slate]
[Photo: Shutterstock]
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