We've been following along, there's some leaks that show that TigerSwan, a power security
firm, has been working with public authority officials to sort of police the no dapple
movement.
And you helped write that.
I don't know if you can talk a little bit about sort of the work you did on that article.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's three reporters with the intercept.
It's myself, Aline Brown, and Will Parrish.
And basically we obtained a leak from a TigerSwan employee who has given us more than a hundred
documents, internal situation reports that TigerSwan put together between November and
May for their client, which is Energy Transfer Partners, so the pipeline company.
And in addition to that, we also obtained more than a thousand public records that really
corroborate some of the leaks material we have and also show the level of collaboration
between private and private security firms and law enforcement.
And I think the documents show a lot of things, really.
They showed this really massive surveillance effort that went on throughout the protests.
They show infiltration, they show aerial surveillance, social media monitoring of activist works.
And sometimes we get really detailed reports of what's happening inside the camps, which
really shows the fact that TigerSwan and other private security firms had a presence in the
camps and were there listening and reporting back to their employer.
But I actually think that one of the most fascinating things that's revealed in this
leak is really the extent of the collaboration between private security firms and public
law enforcement, which is not sanctioned in any contract.
So the client for TigerSwan was Energy Transfer Partners, a private oil company.
But at the same time, TigerSwan was feeding the situation reports to local sheriffs,
to state attorneys investigations, to the FBI.
So really, this is something quite revealing and quite troubling, I think, that I'm sure
has had an impact in the activist community.
I hear people talking about it.
It's very disturbing, really.
You have TigerSwan building lists of people's names, collect really detailed information
about their license plates numbers, all their activities.
Sometimes they were following people across state lines and feeding all this material
through law enforcement.
And so I think for people who are in the camps, and I said to Aline that these revelations
that sort of people already knew this was sort of happening, but nobody would believe
them.
And now they're kind of out there, and they're like, oh, this is what we're talking about
everybody.
And the other thing I'm interested in, too, is that you're saying there's a public-private
collusion.
And how was this happening, where was the spaces these are happening, and are you going
to kind of speak to that?
Yeah, so the most interesting thing I find is the fact that this was not, as I mentioned,
it was not sanctioned anywhere.
So it was not public knowledge that this was happening.
What did happen on the day-to-day is that TigerSwan agents that were on the ground regularly
checked in with sheriffs and FBI and whatever other law enforcement agency was on the ground.
Sometimes they were welcome, sometimes less so.
I mean, something they talk about in the reports was their effort to get some police, some
sheriffs departments to respond more aggressively to protests.
So they kind of had their own agenda in that sense, too.
Some law enforcement was very receptive of TigerSwan's material.
Some were a little bit more suspicious of their role.
But basically they had a presence on the ground.
They also had a presence in one of these intel centers that law enforcement was running.
And already there was a level of collaboration between different agencies.
So we had sheriffs, we had state troopers, we had the National Guard, we had the FBI,
we had BIA, a number of federal agencies all working together.
One of the things that our stories show is the communication that was happening between
all these different groups as the protests happened.
So for instance, one of the emails that we were able to obtain through public records
showed that law enforcement was using a dapple helicopter to watch the protests.
And so that's kind of, that's the level of public-private collaboration that we exposed
that wasn't really obvious before.
And you're saying there is intelligence gathering centers and those are called fusion centers,
correct?
And then within that center there was a TigerSwan employee?
So fusion centers are something that's already, by itself it's something that's quite interesting.
It's something that came about on the tail of the so-called war on terror.
And it was an effort established by DHS to really have collaboration between different
law enforcement agencies for counter-terrorism purposes, basically.
So we already have different agencies, local, state, and federal working together, which
is something that, you know, it's problematic of its own.
And in addition to that, we had TigerSwan, people show up at the actual physical place
where this law enforcement coordination was happening.
So they had a liaison placed in one of these fusion centers, and we're, again, feeding them
information working with them.
And so they think this is, I mean, this is something that's not completely unusual.
Like, we've seen some level of private public collaboration over the surveillance of other
protesters, you know, there are private social media companies, for instance, that are collaborating
with law enforcement and surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists and other groups.
But I think what these documents reveal is really just how extensive that collaboration
is.
Yeah, we're speaking of TigerSwan, too.
Like, they started in the Middle East doing private security work, and they brought some
of that language that they were using there to hear.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Absolutely.
So, like, TigerSwan is a company that's mostly been doing defense contracts overseas.
They operate in several different countries, but most of their work has been done in Iraq
and Afghanistan, again, in the so-called war on terror.
And I think, actually, one of the things that is really disturbing about this report is
that the fact that they were able to operate in such an unchecked manner in the U.S. against
U.S. citizens just makes you wonder what the hell are they doing overseas, like, where
there's absolutely no scrutiny, no oversight, nobody paying attention to what they're doing.
But what's also interesting is that, you know, this is a military defense contractor
that then comes home and brings with it, you know, this language of really counterterrorism.
I mean, they talk about water protectors as terrorists.
They talk about direct actions as attacks.
They talk about the camps as a battlefield.
At some point, they describe the movement and compare it to a jihadist movement, which
I thought was absolutely insane, I mean, for lack of better words.
And that really kind of gives you a sense of the level of hostility and militarism that's
been built around this project.
So were they using that language in their reports or were they sending, like, so in
the Fusions Center, they're saying these reports out with this language that they brought
from doing work in Iraq?
Yeah, absolutely.
One of the other things that we showed in one of the stories is that Tiger's One was
feeding disintelligent reports that it was preparing for energy transfer partners.
It was also sending them to law enforcement, and it was communicating with law enforcement
about some of the things it observed on the ground.
So for instance, something that shows up in the reports quite a bit is racial profiling
of Palestinian or other activists of Muslim descent, or presumed Muslim descent, like we
know now, Palestinians are Muslim, of course, but in one instance, there's an email chain
that we looked at in which one of these law enforcement agents talks about a female activist
of Shia origin and who has traveled overseas, and it kind of really shows you this level
of paranoia and really racial profiling that came from Tiger's One and was fed to law enforcement.
Okay, I think we have time for just a few more.
Okay, so another thing I was wondering too is, so when I was on the ground there, the
sheriff would talk a lot about the need to do things lawfully and how, like, new people
are not being lawful, and this idea of lawful, and so was Tiger's One, what was the work
they were doing, and did they have the day where they were doing it, like they didn't
have a permit for it?
Well, Tiger's One did not have, this is actually another revelation of the story, Tiger's
One did not have and continues to not have a permit to do security work in North Dakota.
So they have permits in other states where they're also operating, and in North Dakota,
they said that they were doing IT consulting work, which is of course a very limited part
of what they were doing.
To this day, they don't have a license, this is actually something that was just confirmed
in our second story.
But in terms of the legality of what they were doing, I think that's also a tricky,
interesting question because, you know, a lot of people just assume all of this must
be illegal, and in fact, because Tiger's One is a private security firm, a lot of it isn't
necessarily.
I mean, they're doing things that are very unethical and shady, but they're not necessarily
breaking any law.
I was just saying, so like, the fusion centers are within the public domain in theory, and
so that means that there's a chance that the public can access their information, but Tiger's
One...
Absolutely.
I mean, the only reason why we were able to report on any of this is because we got
a leak showing us these documents.
What's interesting is that the stuff we obtained through public records requests corroborates
it.
So sometimes, you know, we had the privately obtained document from Tiger's One, and then
a version of that document, which was also shared with law enforcement, and because it
was shared with law enforcement, it became public record.
But I also think that this is another important thing to tease out, really, is that, you know,
law enforcement has much higher standards when it comes to...
Well, they should have much higher standards, anyway, when it comes to protecting people's
right to see people's right to assemble and protest, and, you know, they have obligations
to constitutional rights that private companies don't necessarily have.
But because this relationship between Tiger's One and law enforcement was not sanctioned
in any contract, it's a lot more difficult to make the case that Tiger's One was working
for law enforcement.
They weren't officially law enforcement contractors, they didn't have public contracts.
And so they were just feeding in, you know, intelligence and other information without
necessarily making themselves accountable to the levels of scrutiny that law enforcement
has.
And I think one thing that's quite interesting with this is North Dakota actually has some
pretty open public information laws, so you can request a lot of information.
Now, as many journalists know, like when you do request information, you'll have to fight
them and keep at it and really push to get the information you do have a right to.
But in some states, you don't even have that.
I mean, really getting any kind of accountability from law enforcement is a lot harder.
So I think, you know, what I hope these documents do, what we're doing at the Intercept is publishing
all these documents because I think there's so much in them that can be learned about
and that people that were on the ground and activists and other groups that came under
surveillance can use these documents in a way that's, you know, useful to them.
We're also hearing from lawyers that are hoping to use some of this stuff in court.
And so because the documents are so expansive, we're just releasing them to the public as
a public service really.
Of course we're doing our due diligence, you know, we like verify the documents and we're
also going through all of them and contacting every single person that gets named in them,
which is part of the reason why we're rolling it, you know, we're rolling it out a few weeks
at a time because there's so much and there are dozens and dozens of people that get named
and we want to make sure they have a chance to speak with us before we release their names
and if we don't get a hold of them, we redact their names.
And is there any time frame that we can, I know we're speaking, I'm not sure if people
just came back, but we're speaking on, you know, there's going to be another story coming
out and you're going to release all of these documents.
Is there a time frame where people can look forward to the story or?
We're hoping to, you know, I'm here now so I can't quite file yet, but we're hoping to
keep up the pace.
I mean, we realize there's a lot of public interest in these documents.
It takes a while.
It's a pretty time consuming process to go through them and redact them.
We have documents from Tigers on all the way through May.
So we'll probably release those in the next few weeks, but we're also doing additional
reporting on things that we're learning about from the documents.
So we're looking at other pipeline fights, for instance, and that's actually one of
the stories that you guys might look out for.
We're looking at ways these documents can be used in court.
As you know, there are 700 plus people that have been arrested in the protests, and so
we're looking at those stories as well.
Yeah.
I was just saying, where else is Tiger Swann operating within?
They're still contracted, right?
They're still contracted in North Dakota.
As the documents show, they were actually operating in Iowa as well as in Illinois.
One thing that actually I find quite interesting, they had a pretty strong presence here in
Chicago where they looked at connections between the anti-Nodaka movement and other activists
groups.
So by the end of the documents we have, so all the way to May, we really see how Tiger
Swann is trying to pitch itself to its client as a potential security source on other fights.
They follow activists to the climate march in Washington.
They talk about other fights that are happening post-Double, of course.
And one thing to keep in mind, I think that's important, is that Tiger Swann is a for-profit
company, and it's very obvious when you read these reports that they were trying to make
a case to their client that the situation on the ground was much more dangerous and much
more volatile than it actually was, so they could justify their very expensive presence
there.
Okay.
Well, I was just going to say, thanks for speaking with us a lot.
I know that for our audience, we spent a lot of time there, and I know it's good to hear
it.
We're also working on a feature-length documentary where we're like, yes, this is what we want
to talk about is the fact that there was this private-private collusion.
There was all this sort of action to dismantle this movement, and we just want to show what
that work was.
I'm thankful that...
And I think the fact that they went to these levels of surveillance and security and infiltration,
it really shows how scared they were of this movement and how effective the movement was
despite of its losses as well.
You don't do this if you don't really fear this level of resistance, and I think if anybody
can take any consolation out of these documents, is that that resistance was working.
Thank you for speaking with us.
I'm Alisha from the Intercept co-writer, TigerSwan documents, leaks, take a look at the stories.
Really informative, and I'm looking forward to everything else that's coming out.
Is there any way people can get a hold of you, or anything like that you want to share?
You know, I'm on Twitter.
I can be contacted securely.
In fact, I highly recommend that if you have anything to tell us about TigerSwan or your
interactions with them, you reach out to us securely.
All of that information is on the Intercept site.
All right.
Wonderful.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much.
I'm going to let the people submit.
We're going to be trying to find out some interviews about specific topics and stuff
like that.
Then just bring them to you live.
I know that we haven't been live all day.
I've been working on trying to find a certain set of interviews.
I don't want to say the names yet in case they fall through, but they're coming.
That's pretty good.
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