theintercept--2020-12-05--Trump Prepares to Kill Brandon Bernard Even as Jurors Say His Life Should Be Spared

in November , Gary McClung sat at a picnic table with his wife overlooking a field off the banks of the Duck River in Tennessee .
It was sunny and mild .
Local vendors sold produce under a pavilion .
In the fall , Centerville River Park , some 60 miles southwest of Nashville , hosts the annual National Banana Pudding Festival , featuring music , face painting , and a cook-off .
This year , the event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic .
The McClungs live in nearby Lobelville , home to an Old Order Christian community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But they ’ re originally from Texas .
It was there that McClung made a decision that has haunted him for two decades .
In 2000 , he was called as a juror in a federal murder trial .
The victims , a young white couple from Iowa named Todd and Stacie Bagley , were visiting Killeen , Texas , when they were carjacked and killed by a group of Black teenagers .
Two of the teenagers , 19-year-old Christopher Vialva and 18-year-old Brandon Bernard , would go on trial for their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of them to death .
Afterward , McClung questioned his decision .
He was particularly bothered by Bernard ’ s death sentence .
It was Vialva , after all , who ’ d shot the Bagleys at close range as they lay inside the trunk of their car .
Bernard was not even present when the couple was abducted .
“ Brandon Bernard , during the trial , he seemed to me to be pretty broken , to be very much afraid , ” McClung said .
He never understood why the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ There were times that I purposely probably didn ’ t dwell on it , ” McClung said .
“ But it would come back to mind.
” He wondered if there was anything he could do , “ somebody to contact and at least put a voice in after the fact , ” he said .
“ But it just seemed too late.
” In 2015 , however , McClung got a call from Bernard ’ s legal team , which was contacting jurors as part of a post-conviction investigation .
By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tennessee , where he was working as a welder .
In 2016 , two investigators came and interviewed him on tape at his workplace .
“ I have for a long time wanted , wished for an opportunity like this , ” McClung said .
He expressed sorrow for the Bagley family .
“ I can ’ t imagine what they ’ ve gone through .
I just would not want to see Mr. Bernard , who I don ’ t believe had any intention of killing anyone , have to die for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was accompanied by a declaration that would become part of a clemency petition for Bernard .
In 2016 , his legal team submitted the petition to the Obama administration .
But Obama never acted on it .
He commuted only two death sentences before departing the White House .
After the Trump administration restarted federal executions with a vengeance after a 17-year hiatus , Vialva became the seventh person killed since July at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute , Indiana .
The Trump Justice Department is on track to execute 13 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more federal executions than the past 67 years combined .
Five more people are set to die before the inauguration of Joe Biden .
One of them is Bernard .
Along with Lisa Montgomery — the only woman under a federal death sentence , whose lawyers contracted Covid-19 last month — Bernard ’ s case has attracted more attention than usual .
This is largely thanks to an online campaign launched by his legal team , which includes testimonials , family photographs , and a lengthy clemency petition that highlights numerous problems in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thanksgiving , Kim Kardashian West posted a series of tweets calling for Bernard ’ s life to be spared .
Today , McClung is not the only juror who supports mercy for Bernard .
Four other people who served on his jury have signed declarations in favor of a commutation .
One of them , Calvin Kruger , was the jury foreman .
When I spoke to him earlier this year , he stood by the death sentence for Vialva .
But in a declaration last month , he wrote that the evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the ringleader in the crime .
“ Because of this , I support Bernard ’ s death sentence being commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
” For his part , McClung said he also now regrets sentencing Vialva to death .
This is largely due to his faith , but it ’ s also informed by his own experiences with the U.S. prison system .
For the past few years , his wife has been corresponding with two incarcerated pen pals ; the McClungs hope to help the men adapt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At the time of Bernard ’ s trial , McClung had a brother who was in and out of prison — and there was a time in his own life when he could have ended up going down that same road .
“ If they ’ ve never been involved in some of those things , ” he said of jurors , “ it ’ s probably harder for them to understand what it could be like and that a person could be different , you know , could change.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump administration executed Vialva in September , his attorneys , family , and friends tried to describe how he had changed .
At 40 , he was no longer the same 19-year-old who so callously shot the Bagleys in 1999 .
Inside the Special Confinement Unit in Terre Haute , where the condemned spend 23 hours a day in their cells , he ’ d developed a reputation as a stabilizing presence .
Bernard , too , grew up on death row .
He turned 40 about a week before the federal executions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him as a “ model prisoner with no serious disciplinary write-ups , ” who has also tried to help young people on the outside avoid the mistakes that he made .
Years ago , he shared his story as part of a youth advocacy project called the Enlightenment Tour , started by twin brothers who knew him in Killeen .
“ Brandon did this out of his own will , ” one of them , Michael Boyd , wrote in a declaration calling for mercy .
He “ did not expect anything from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the kids.
” But above all , Bernard ’ s advocates emphasize what several of his jurors also say : that his role in the crime pales in comparison to the violence committed by the others who have been executed so far .
If the death penalty is truly reserved for the “ worst of the worst , ” he simply does not qualify .
“ I was shocked when they set the date for Brandon , ” his attorney Rob Owen said .
The announcement came on a Friday evening , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his co-counsel .
“ We were literally just saying we were feeling some hope that Brandon would make it through to January without an execution date .
And I was watching my email with one eye as I often do , ” he said , when a message came from the Justice Department .
“ I ’ m not kidding : We just got a date , ” Owen told his colleague .
“ And it was just like being hit in the head with a two-by-four.
” Owen was already representing another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Orlando Hall , who was killed on November 19 .
The two cases share a number of things in common .
Both crimes took place in Texas in the 1990s — a time and place that saw the death penalty at its peak .
Both convictions relied on witnesses who themselves were involved in the crime and agreed to testify for the government in exchange for leniency .
And both involved unresolved questions of racial bias , particularly in the case of Hall , a Black man tried by an all-white jury .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead participant in the abduction , rape , and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1994 , Bernard ’ s role in the Bagleys ’ murder was comparatively small .
“ One of the things that was so confusing to us at the time was the way the story was told , ” recalled Adam Andreassen , who was a youth pastor with the Bernard family ’ s congregation , the Seventh-day Adventist Church , and attended portions of the trial .
“ It was very , very hard in my opinion to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried together.
” Perhaps just as important to Andreassen today is Bernard ’ s age at the time of the crime .
After the trial , he became a clinical psychologist ; his perspective has been shaped by his professional experience evaluating people behind bars , especially following groundbreaking neurological research that forced the courts to recognize youth as a powerful mitigating factor in even the most violent crimes .
In 2005 , the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling , Roper v. Simmons , which outlawed death sentences for defendants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 18 .
The decision was based on scientific and sociological research that confirmed what “ any parent knows , ” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote : that kids simply do not have the same level of maturity as adults .
This makes youths more vulnerable to peer pressure and leads to “ impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions , ” he wrote .
“ The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory , less fixed .
These differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders.
” Although Roper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. society measures adulthood , at 18 , the science shows that male brain development continues well into one ’ s 20s .
Today it is unlikely that Bernard would be sentenced to die for his role in the crime .
“ When I look back , I see a lot of those hallmarks , especially due to his youth , his age , his brain development , his judgment , ” Andreassen said .
“ I don ’ t understand why leniency would not be considered just from that standpoint.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outrage from Texas to Iowa .
The couple ’ s burned bodies were discovered on June 21 , 1999 , inside the trunk of their old Buick LeSabre .
The car had been found on fire on a dirt road inside the perimeter of the Fort Hood military base .
Not far away were five teenagers whose car had gotten stuck in a ditch while they tried to drive away .
They were Vialva , Bernard , 16-year-old Tony Sparks , and two others , the youngest 15 .
Authorities would describe Vialva @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dropout “ with a chip on his shoulder , ” as the Austin American-Statesman reported .
Bernard , too , had dropped out of school , but he did not have the same history of run-ins with the law .
“ He was a non-entity .
He ’ s never at the front of anything , ” the Killeen High School principal told the Statesman about Bernard .
“ He ’ s one of those people who is almost defined by the group he is with.
” Much of the media coverage focused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devotion to each other .
Georgia Bagley , Todd ’ s mother , told the Statesman that her son fell for Stacie after watching her sing in the church choir at Grace Christian Center in Killeen .
After getting married , the couple moved to Iowa , where they were “ truly ideal church members , ” according to their pastor , who told the newspaper that “ they were constantly out and about and especially ministering to youths.
” This included their final moments ; before they were shot to death , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loved them .
The Bagleys were reportedly considering moving back to Texas when they came to visit .
Todd Bagley had weighed plans to become a police officer , which concerned his wife because of the dangers of the job .
Instead , they would both be randomly targeted by teens looking for a quick buck .
The plot is described in transcripts from the 2000 trial at the federal courthouse in Waco , although the sequence of events can be hard to follow .
The key details were laid out by two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government : Christopher Lewis and Terry Brown .
The youths were members of a gang modeled on the Bloods .
According to Lewis , who was 15 at the time of the crime , their plan was to “ ask somebody for a ride , to get in and then put a gun to them ” and collect their ATM cards and PIN numbers .
Bernard was the driver .
He also owned one of the two guns used during the carjacking .
After the teenagers drove to different shopping areas looking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a phone booth outside a Mickey ’ s convenience store .
Bagley agreed to give him a ride .
While Lewis , Vialva , and Sparks got into the Bagleys ’ car , Bernard stayed behind with 17-year-old Brown .
“ I used the restroom , and he was playing video games , ” Brown testified .
“ And when we came out of the store … we realized that they were gone.
” Bernard and Brown went to a couple of nearby ATMs to see if they could catch up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off on their own , stopping at a Winn-Dixie to put in job applications .
In the meantime , Vialva and the others had pulled a gun on Todd Bagley , demanding his wallet and his wife ’ s jewelry and forcing them into the trunk of their car .
With the couple still in the trunk , they tried to pawn Stacie Bagley ’ s wedding ring .
By evening , Vialva and the others had gotten back in touch with Bernard and Brown .
They needed a ride — and Vialva @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crime .
According to trial testimony , Bernard purchased lighter fluid and brought it to a remote area of Fort Hood , where Vialva and the others were waiting .
It was there that Vialva opened the trunk and shot the couple in the head .
There were some holes in the case against Bernard .
Although prosecutors repeatedly stressed that he was the only one in a position to set the car on fire , neither Lewis nor Brown said they saw him do it .
Bernard ’ s lawyers also emphasized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ client to the fire .
Yet they didn ’ t call any experts who might have questioned the forensic evidence .
In fact , they did not call any witnesses during the guilt phase at all .
Any unresolved questions about Bernard ’ s role in the crime were largely overshadowed by the harrowing descriptions of the scene .
“ It was just kind of overwhelming , ” one crime scene investigator testified , recalling the moment he opened the trunk to find the couple ’ s remains .
In a phone call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clemency for Bernard remembered the crime scene images as particularly horrific .
She sat right in front of the TV monitor , she recalled .
“ The burnt bodies — I ’ ll never get that out of my mind.
” Bernard ’ s death sentence hinged largely on the testimony of a medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Stacie Bagley .
She found smoke deposits in her airways and concluded that Stacie had been alive after being shot in the face .
She labeled the cause of death a “ gunshot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inhalation and thermal injury.
” In his closing statement in the guilt phase , Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frost stressed this repeatedly .
“ When Brandon Bernard lit that fire , ” he said , “ Stacie Bagley was still living.
” On June 1 , 2000 , the jury convicted both Vialva and Bernard .
During the sentencing phase , Bernard ’ s lawyers called only a handful of witnesses , despite numerous people who would have testified on his behalf .
His mother , Thelma , struggled to ask for mercy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I ’ m trying to put myself in their position , Stacie and Todd , and it ’ s — it hurts , ” she said .
“ I picture Todd and Stacie as my children .
How would I feel ?
” One of the government ’ s last witnesses was a Bureau of Prisons employee who monitored gang activity inside federal prisons .
Although he did not say anything specific about Vialva or Bernard , his testimony cast them as posing a future danger to their surroundings , no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wants to join a gang “ will commit crimes , he will prey on the weak , he will commit assaults , he will traffic drugs , he will sanction hits , if necessary , and carry them out , in order to ‘ make bones ’ to be a part of that gang , ” he said .
As McClung recalls , Bernard ’ s gang affiliation helped nudge him toward a death sentence .
He said he and another juror were wavering when another man — the sole Black juror in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was familiar with the gang .
“ I remember him saying , ‘ I know these boys.
’ He said , ‘ Ain ’ t none of them any good.
’ ” On June 13 , the jurors recommended death sentences for Vialva and Bernard .
They were the first federal death sentences in the Western District of Texas , U.S. Attorney Bill Blagg announced .
In a phone call , Blagg , who is now retired , said he did not remember most of the details .
He left the U.S. Attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unaware that the Trump administration had carried out so many federal executions , including Vialva ’ s , this year .
Yet he specifically remembered the sole Black juror at trial , who has since died .
As Blagg recalled it , he was impressed with the juror ’ s answers during voir dire and decided to allow him on the jury .
“ A lot of people thought we were crazy for taking a Black juror , ” Blagg said .
“ But he was a real nice man and he voted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , here we are.
” Blagg did not wish to elaborate on who , exactly , pushed back on selecting a Black juror at the time .
But his recollection supports what advocates and attorneys have long argued , particularly in the case of Orlando Hall , whose prosecutor had a history of striking Black jurors : that racism is inextricable from the federal death penalty .
As for the jurors who now say they would like to see clemency for Bernard , Blagg said , “ You know , the death penalty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , people ’ s minds change about it .
… I mean , even my mind has changed about the death penalty a lot over the years .
I do still support it in certain cases .
But sometimes I think it ’ s used too often .
And I think you have to be very careful.
” Bernard ’ s lawyers argue that prosecutors misled the jury , fostering the mistaken impression that Stacie Bagley could have survived the gunshot if not for the fire .
Indeed , according to one juror @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autopsy findings were the main reason he voted for a death sentence .
“ It stated that Stacie Bagley did not just die from the gunshot wound , but also from smoke inhalation , ” he said in a 2016 declaration .
“ There was no rebuttal to this .
Brandon ’ s attorneys did not do anything to dispute this .
… If the information presented in this report had been presented at trial , I would have made a different decision at sentencing.
” The same year that Pustilnik gave his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down a landmark ruling that would lead to the discovery of new evidence in the case .
The justices ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life without parole sentences for people who had committed their crimes before the age of 18 were a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment .
The guiding rationale was much the same as that which led to the 2005 decision in Roper : that teenagers have brains that are less developed than those of adults , making them less culpable for their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hearings for juvenile defendants all over the country .
Among them was Tony Sparks , one of the younger teenagers involved in the Bagleys ’ death .
At the 2018 proceeding , Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier , the same prosecutor who sought the death penalty against Vialva and Bernard , introduced a pair of documents that had never been disclosed to defense attorneys at trial .
The evidence was presented as proof that Sparks should continue to serve a life sentence despite his age at the time of the crime .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lined notebook paper depicting a pyramid drawn in pencil by a Killeen High School student , which was obtained by the local police department in 1998 .
The pyramid appeared to lay out a hierarchy of the members of the gang .
Occupying the top several lines were the “ enforcers , ” among them Sparks .
Vialva was below them , seven levels down from the top .
“ Brandon Bernard , also known as ‘ Dip , ’ is at the very bottom of the chart , ” Killeen Police Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about 30 people below Mr. Sparks.
” To Bernard ’ s lawyers , the revelation was powerful proof that their client had been following the lead not only of Vialva , but also of Sparks .
In a new legal filing in 2019 , they unsuccessfully argued that Bernard should have an opportunity to litigate the issue based on the fact that this evidence was improperly withheld from Bernard ’ s trial attorneys , in violation of rules established by Brady v. Maryland , which dictate that such material must be disclosed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who previously defended Bernard ’ s conviction agrees .
In 2002 , Angela Moore left her position as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas .
Today , she is a defense attorney and professor .
Moore was having lunch in Austin not long after Vialva ’ s execution when she mentioned the case to her colleague .
“ He said , ‘ You know , Brandon Bernard is up to be executed really soon.
’ And I said , ‘ No , I had no idea , ’ ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s when I started getting involved … because I think it ’ s a travesty.
” In an op-ed last month , Moore listed the reasons she thinks Bernard deserves clemency .
She invoked his youth and the scientific research about brain development .
She also cited research finding that “ people tend to view Black boys — like Brandon — as more blameworthy than their white counterparts , even where other relevant circumstances are identical .
… Black teens like Brandon are systematically denied the ‘ benefit ’ of their youth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the eyes of police , prosecutors , judges and jurors.
” In a phone call , Moore said she was especially bothered by the way prosecutors cast Bernard as a future danger .
She found it disturbing — and ironic — that the BOP witness did not reveal the hierarchical nature of gangs given how often such gang structures are invoked in prosecuting federal conspiracy cases involving organized crime .
Yet in Bernard ’ s case , “ they didn ’ t want that evidence to come out , ” Moore said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a big problem.
” In a Zoom hearing on December 2 , Bernard ’ s lawyers tried to convince a federal judge to put off his execution date to allow them to litigate the Brady claim .
But the judge ruled against them , saying that he had no jurisdiction in the matter .
“ Brandon Bernard has been seeking relief since we discovered in 2018 that the trial prosecutors withheld critical evidence , yet procedural barriers have prevented him from obtaining a hearing on the merits of his claim , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We will continue to make our case in court that this hidden evidence would have changed the outcome of Brandon ’ s sentencing .
Given that five jurors no longer stand by their death verdict , Brandon must not be executed until the courts have fully addressed the constitutionality of his sentence , and we will continue to vigorously pursue that vitally important goal.
” On the day before Thanksgiving , I got an email from Bernard .
He had spent the last four days visiting with his family .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wrote .
“ First I thought that it was going to be sad … that I was going to have this elephant in the room , but it was the opposite .
Every day was a blessing and I cherished every one moment that I was out there .
I didn ’ t even feel like I had a date when I was with them.
” Bernard has two younger siblings , as well as two grown daughters , Kiara and Taneah , who first met each other as teenagers in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Terre Haute .
“ I have never been able to hug my dad , but mentally and emotionally he is there for me as much as possible , ” Taneah wrote in a declaration when she was 16 years old .
“ It might not seem like much of a relationship , but it is the best one I have and it is important to me.
” The most recent visits were with Bernard ’ s mother and siblings , one of his aunts , and Kiara .
“ It was especially great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t ever get to see her , ” Bernard wrote .
“ And seeing how she has grown … I couldn ’ t stop looking at her.
” Bernard has grown especially close to his sister Quiona , who was only 11 when he was first incarcerated .
In a declaration in 2016 , she remembered how traumatized her family had been by his arrest .
“ My mom , my brother Max , and I prayed together all of the time for Brandon and the victims ’ families , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all slept together in the living room because it felt strange to sleep in their rooms while he was incarcerated .
“ It seemed like a long time before we were able to accept that Brandon was gone and move back into our separate beds.
” In his latest emails , Bernard has expressed gratitude for the growing number of people who have asked for his life be spared .
He is hopeful it will make a difference .
But he admitted that it was hard not to be discouraged by the Zoom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the penitentiary .
“ It feels like all the doors to freedom and life start to close in front of you , ” he wrote .
Nevertheless , after seeing eight of his neighbors taken to die this year , he said he is trying to stay strong “ to show people how to face that which you don ’ t want to … and not be afraid … not let it break you down … because you can find strength in yourself if you just look.
” Before he was executed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He also left him some of his property .
“ I couldn ’ t even read the letter for some time , ” Bernard said .
In an email to his supporters last month , he described the terror of execution nights .
He was with Orlando Hall on the death range during Hall ’ s final days .
On November 19 , the day he was scheduled to die , Hall got a temporary stay of execution , which he knew would not last .
“ It was heartbreaking to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was when they heard about the stay and not wanting to tell them to keep their hopes down because it wasn ’ t guaranteed that it will all work out , ” Bernard wrote .
“ Together we waited .
Every time someone spoke on the radio , or did a round on the range , every time that I heard something move … I thought … this is it … they are coming , but no one came and I dared to hope more , ” he said .
At one point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hall in the middle of the night .
“ He was asleep and I could hear his confusion about being awoken .
He didn ’ t know what they wanted but when he saw it was food I ’ m sure he was relieved that is all it was.
” Around 10 p.m. , Bernard turned on the TV for news but did not find any .
Soon after that , “ footsteps came down the range and the air became heavy … and I knew they were getting him , ” Bernard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … The officer told them in a low voice to open the outer door .
I heard the twinkling sound of the handcuffs and leg cuffs being placed on his ankles.
” Through the bars of his cell , Bernard wrote , he told Hall that he loved him .
“ He told me in a low voice filled with all the emotion one feels at that moment that he loved me too … and he then was gone !
” The rest was like a scene in a movie , he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the news that his execution was near , but he was already gone .
“ They came back afterwards with a cart to clean out his room .
When they were done , ” Bernard wrote , “ I was left on the range alone .
”

On a Saturday morning in November, Gary McClung sat at a picnic table with his wife overlooking a field off the banks of the Duck River in Tennessee. It was sunny and mild. Local vendors sold produce under a pavilion. In the fall, Centerville River Park, some 60 miles southwest of Nashville, hosts the annual National Banana Pudding Festival, featuring music, face painting, and a cook-off. This year, the event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The McClungs live in nearby Lobelville, home to an Old Order Christian community that first attracted them to the area. But they’re originally from Texas. It was there that McClung made a decision that has haunted him for two decades. In 2000, he was called as a juror in a federal murder trial. The victims, a young white couple from Iowa named Todd and Stacie Bagley, were visiting Killeen, Texas, when they were carjacked and killed by a group of Black teenagers. Two of the teenagers, 19-year-old Christopher Vialva and 18-year-old Brandon Bernard, would go on trial for their lives. McClung voted to sentence both of them to death.
Afterward, McClung questioned his decision. He was particularly bothered by Bernard’s death sentence. It was Vialva, after all, who’d shot the Bagleys at close range as they lay inside the trunk of their car. Bernard was not even present when the couple was abducted. “Brandon Bernard, during the trial, he seemed to me to be pretty broken, to be very much afraid,” McClung said. He never understood why the two had been tried as a pair.
“There were times that I purposely probably didn’t dwell on it,” McClung said. “But it would come back to mind.” He wondered if there was anything he could do, “somebody to contact and at least put a voice in after the fact,” he said. “But it just seemed too late.”
In 2015, however, McClung got a call from Bernard’s legal team, which was contacting jurors as part of a post-conviction investigation. By then McClung had moved his family to Tennessee, where he was working as a welder. In 2016, two investigators came and interviewed him on tape at his workplace. “I have for a long time wanted, wished for an opportunity like this,” McClung said. He expressed sorrow for the Bagley family. “I can’t imagine what they’ve gone through. I just would not want to see Mr. Bernard, who I don’t believe had any intention of killing anyone, have to die for this.”
McClung’s video statement was accompanied by a declaration that would become part of a clemency petition for Bernard. In 2016, his legal team submitted the petition to the Obama administration. But Obama never acted on it. He commuted only two death sentences before departing the White House. After the Trump administration restarted federal executions with a vengeance after a 17-year hiatus, Vialva became the seventh person killed since July at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Trump Justice Department is on track to execute 13 people before the end of his presidency — more federal executions than the past 67 years combined. Five more people are set to die before the inauguration of Joe Biden. One of them is Bernard.
Along with Lisa Montgomery — the only woman under a federal death sentence, whose lawyers contracted Covid-19 last month — Bernard’s case has attracted more attention than usual. This is largely thanks to an online campaign launched by his legal team, which includes testimonials, family photographs, and a lengthy clemency petition that highlights numerous problems in his case. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Kim Kardashian West posted a series of tweets calling for Bernard’s life to be spared.
Today, McClung is not the only juror who supports mercy for Bernard. Four other people who served on his jury have signed declarations in favor of a commutation. One of them, Calvin Kruger, was the jury foreman. When I spoke to him earlier this year, he stood by the death sentence for Vialva. But in a declaration last month, he wrote that the evidence “clearly showed” that Bernard was not the ringleader in the crime. “Because of this, I support Bernard’s death sentence being commuted to life without the possibility of parole.”
For his part, McClung said he also now regrets sentencing Vialva to death. This is largely due to his faith, but it’s also informed by his own experiences with the U.S. prison system. For the past few years, his wife has been corresponding with two incarcerated pen pals; the McClungs hope to help the men adapt to the outside world after their release. At the time of Bernard’s trial, McClung had a brother who was in and out of prison — and there was a time in his own life when he could have ended up going down that same road. “If they’ve never been involved in some of those things,” he said of jurors, “it’s probably harder for them to understand what it could be like and that a person could be different, you know, could change.”
A portrait of Stacie and Todd Bagley on the tombstone of Stacie Bagley’s grave in Dyersburg, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2020. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept
The Way the Story Was Told
Before the Trump administration executed Vialva in September, his attorneys, family, and friends tried to describe how he had changed. At 40, he was no longer the same 19-year-old who so callously shot the Bagleys in 1999. Inside the Special Confinement Unit in Terre Haute, where the condemned spend 23 hours a day in their cells, he’d developed a reputation as a stabilizing presence.
Bernard, too, grew up on death row. He turned 40 about a week before the federal executions began in July. His advocates describe him as a “model prisoner with no serious disciplinary write-ups,” who has also tried to help young people on the outside avoid the mistakes that he made. Years ago, he shared his story as part of a youth advocacy project called the Enlightenment Tour, started by twin brothers who knew him in Killeen. “Brandon did this out of his own will,” one of them, Michael Boyd, wrote in a declaration calling for mercy. He “did not expect anything from us except to get his message out to the kids.”
But above all, Bernard’s advocates emphasize what several of his jurors also say: that his role in the crime pales in comparison to the violence committed by the others who have been executed so far. If the death penalty is truly reserved for the “worst of the worst,” he simply does not qualify.
“I was shocked when they set the date for Brandon.”
“I was shocked when they set the date for Brandon,” his attorney Rob Owen said. The announcement came on a Friday evening, as Owen was on the phone with his co-counsel. “We were literally just saying we were feeling some hope that Brandon would make it through to January without an execution date. And I was watching my email with one eye as I often do,” he said, when a message came from the Justice Department. “I’m not kidding: We just got a date,” Owen told his colleague. “And it was just like being hit in the head with a two-by-four.”
Owen was already representing another man facing execution at the time: Orlando Hall, who was killed on November 19. The two cases share a number of things in common. Both crimes took place in Texas in the 1990s — a time and place that saw the death penalty at its peak. Both convictions relied on witnesses who themselves were involved in the crime and agreed to testify for the government in exchange for leniency. And both involved unresolved questions of racial bias, particularly in the case of Hall, a Black man tried by an all-white jury.
Yet unlike Hall, who was a lead participant in the abduction, rape, and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1994, Bernard’s role in the Bagleys’ murder was comparatively small. “One of the things that was so confusing to us at the time was the way the story was told,” recalled Adam Andreassen, who was a youth pastor with the Bernard family’s congregation, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and attended portions of the trial. “It was very, very hard in my opinion to justify why these two individuals were being tried together.”
Perhaps just as important to Andreassen today is Bernard’s age at the time of the crime. After the trial, he became a clinical psychologist; his perspective has been shaped by his professional experience evaluating people behind bars, especially following groundbreaking neurological research that forced the courts to recognize youth as a powerful mitigating factor in even the most violent crimes. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling, Roper v. Simmons, which outlawed death sentences for defendants who committed their crimes before the age of 18.
The decision was based on scientific and sociological research that confirmed what “any parent knows,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: that kids simply do not have the same level of maturity as adults. This makes youths more vulnerable to peer pressure and leads to “impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions,” he wrote. “The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed. These differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders.”
Although Roper drew the line where the rest of U.S. society measures adulthood, at 18, the science shows that male brain development continues well into one’s 20s. Today it is unlikely that Bernard would be sentenced to die for his role in the crime. “When I look back, I see a lot of those hallmarks, especially due to his youth, his age, his brain development, his judgment,” Andreassen said. “I don’t understand why leniency would not be considered just from that standpoint.”
Brandon Bernard with his mother and siblings during a visit at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Photo: Courtesy of Brandon Bernard’s defense team
A Future Danger
The murder of Todd and Stacie Bagley stirred outrage from Texas to Iowa. The couple’s burned bodies were discovered on June 21, 1999, inside the trunk of their old Buick LeSabre. The car had been found on fire on a dirt road inside the perimeter of the Fort Hood military base. Not far away were five teenagers whose car had gotten stuck in a ditch while they tried to drive away. They were Vialva, Bernard, 16-year-old Tony Sparks, and two others, the youngest 15.
Authorities would describe Vialva as the ringleader, a high school dropout “with a chip on his shoulder,” as the Austin American-Statesman reported. Bernard, too, had dropped out of school, but he did not have the same history of run-ins with the law. “He was a non-entity. He’s never at the front of anything,” the Killeen High School principal told the Statesman about Bernard. “He’s one of those people who is almost defined by the group he is with.”
Much of the media coverage focused on the Bagleys’ deep faith and devotion to each other. Georgia Bagley, Todd’s mother, told the Statesman that her son fell for Stacie after watching her sing in the church choir at Grace Christian Center in Killeen. After getting married, the couple moved to Iowa, where they were “truly ideal church members,” according to their pastor, who told the newspaper that “they were constantly out and about and especially ministering to youths.” This included their final moments; before they were shot to death, the couple told their captors that Jesus loved them.
The Bagleys were reportedly considering moving back to Texas when they came to visit. Todd Bagley had weighed plans to become a police officer, which concerned his wife because of the dangers of the job. Instead, they would both be randomly targeted by teens looking for a quick buck.
The plot is described in transcripts from the 2000 trial at the federal courthouse in Waco, although the sequence of events can be hard to follow. The key details were laid out by two teenage witnesses who agreed to testify for the government: Christopher Lewis and Terry Brown. The youths were members of a gang modeled on the Bloods. According to Lewis, who was 15 at the time of the crime, their plan was to “ask somebody for a ride, to get in and then put a gun to them” and collect their ATM cards and PIN numbers.
Bernard was the driver. He also owned one of the two guns used during the carjacking. After the teenagers drove to different shopping areas looking for targets, Lewis approached Todd Bagley at a phone booth outside a Mickey’s convenience store. Bagley agreed to give him a ride. While Lewis, Vialva, and Sparks got into the Bagleys’ car, Bernard stayed behind with 17-year-old Brown. “I used the restroom, and he was playing video games,” Brown testified. “And when we came out of the store … we realized that they were gone.”
Unresolved questions about Bernard’s role in the crime were largely overshadowed by the harrowing descriptions of the scene.
Bernard and Brown went to a couple of nearby ATMs to see if they could catch up, Brown said. But later they went off on their own, stopping at a Winn-Dixie to put in job applications. In the meantime, Vialva and the others had pulled a gun on Todd Bagley, demanding his wallet and his wife’s jewelry and forcing them into the trunk of their car. With the couple still in the trunk, they tried to pawn Stacie Bagley’s wedding ring.
By evening, Vialva and the others had gotten back in touch with Bernard and Brown. They needed a ride — and Vialva wanted to destroy the evidence of the crime. According to trial testimony, Bernard purchased lighter fluid and brought it to a remote area of Fort Hood, where Vialva and the others were waiting. It was there that Vialva opened the trunk and shot the couple in the head.
There were some holes in the case against Bernard. Although prosecutors repeatedly stressed that he was the only one in a position to set the car on fire, neither Lewis nor Brown said they saw him do it. Bernard’s lawyers also emphasized the lack of physical evidence linking their client to the fire. Yet they didn’t call any experts who might have questioned the forensic evidence. In fact, they did not call any witnesses during the guilt phase at all.
Any unresolved questions about Bernard’s role in the crime were largely overshadowed by the harrowing descriptions of the scene. “It was just kind of overwhelming,” one crime scene investigator testified, recalling the moment he opened the trunk to find the couple’s remains. In a phone call, a juror who does not support clemency for Bernard remembered the crime scene images as particularly horrific. She sat right in front of the TV monitor, she recalled. “The burnt bodies — I’ll never get that out of my mind.”
“The burnt bodies — I’ll never get that out of my mind.”
Bernard’s death sentence hinged largely on the testimony of a medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Stacie Bagley. She found smoke deposits in her airways and concluded that Stacie had been alive after being shot in the face. She labeled the cause of death a “gunshot wound of the head associated with smoke inhalation and thermal injury.” In his closing statement in the guilt phase, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frost stressed this repeatedly. “When Brandon Bernard lit that fire,” he said, “Stacie Bagley was still living.”
On June 1, 2000, the jury convicted both Vialva and Bernard. During the sentencing phase, Bernard’s lawyers called only a handful of witnesses, despite numerous people who would have testified on his behalf. His mother, Thelma, struggled to ask for mercy while acknowledging the suffering the Bagleys endured. “I’m trying to put myself in their position, Stacie and Todd, and it’s — it hurts,” she said. “I picture Todd and Stacie as my children. How would I feel?”
One of the government’s last witnesses was a Bureau of Prisons employee who monitored gang activity inside federal prisons. Although he did not say anything specific about Vialva or Bernard, his testimony cast them as posing a future danger to their surroundings, no matter how restrictive. A person who wants to join a gang “will commit crimes, he will prey on the weak, he will commit assaults, he will traffic drugs, he will sanction hits, if necessary, and carry them out, in order to ‘make bones’ to be a part of that gang,” he said.
As McClung recalls, Bernard’s gang affiliation helped nudge him toward a death sentence. He said he and another juror were wavering when another man — the sole Black juror in the case — told them that he was familiar with the gang. “I remember him saying, ‘I know these boys.’ He said, ‘Ain’t none of them any good.’” On June 13, the jurors recommended death sentences for Vialva and Bernard.
They were the first federal death sentences in the Western District of Texas, U.S. Attorney Bill Blagg announced. In a phone call, Blagg, who is now retired, said he did not remember most of the details. He left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2001 and was unaware that the Trump administration had carried out so many federal executions, including Vialva’s, this year. Yet he specifically remembered the sole Black juror at trial, who has since died. As Blagg recalled it, he was impressed with the juror’s answers during voir dire and decided to allow him on the jury. “A lot of people thought we were crazy for taking a Black juror,” Blagg said. “But he was a real nice man and he voted for a conviction and eventually, well, here we are.”
Blagg did not wish to elaborate on who, exactly, pushed back on selecting a Black juror at the time. But his recollection supports what advocates and attorneys have long argued, particularly in the case of Orlando Hall, whose prosecutor had a history of striking Black jurors: that racism is inextricable from the federal death penalty.
As for the jurors who now say they would like to see clemency for Bernard, Blagg said, “You know, the death penalty is a tricky thing. Over time, people’s minds change about it. … I mean, even my mind has changed about the death penalty a lot over the years. I do still support it in certain cases. But sometimes I think it’s used too often. And I think you have to be very careful.”
Overhead view of where the Bagleys’ car was found in Fort Hood, Texas, left of Quarry Road. Photo: Google Maps
Undisclosed Evidence
Bernard had been on death row for more than 10 years when his appellate lawyers sought out a forensic pathologist as part of his post-conviction litigation. Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, the chief medical examiner in Galveston County, Texas, reviewed the autopsy records for Stacie Bagley, along with the testimony about her death at trial. In his opinion, defense attorneys should have hired an expert who could have pushed back on the prosecutors’ insistence that the fire had contributed to her death. “If Mr. Bernard’s attorneys had contacted any reasonably competent pathologist in 1999-2000, that person could have explained to counsel the distinction between medical death and forensic death,” Pustilnik explained in a 2012 declaration.
This distinction was key, he said, since the former would not preclude the presence of the soot found in Stacie Bagley’s airways. “Even if Mrs. Bagley was medically dead after sustaining this gunshot injury, physicochemically driven autonomic functions were taking place for some period of time,” he said. These final stages of respiration have “nothing to do with consciousness or any higher brain function.” Even before the fire was set, Stacie Bagley’s death was a “forgone conclusion.”
“If the information presented in this report had been presented at trial, I would have made a different decision at sentencing.”
Bernard’s lawyers argue that prosecutors misled the jury, fostering the mistaken impression that Stacie Bagley could have survived the gunshot if not for the fire. Indeed, according to one juror who supports clemency for Bernard, the autopsy findings were the main reason he voted for a death sentence. “It stated that Stacie Bagley did not just die from the gunshot wound, but also from smoke inhalation,” he said in a 2016 declaration. “There was no rebuttal to this. Brandon’s attorneys did not do anything to dispute this. … If the information presented in this report had been presented at trial, I would have made a different decision at sentencing.”
The same year that Pustilnik gave his declaration, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling that would lead to the discovery of new evidence in the case. The justices ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life without parole sentences for people who had committed their crimes before the age of 18 were a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The guiding rationale was much the same as that which led to the 2005 decision in Roper: that teenagers have brains that are less developed than those of adults, making them less culpable for their actions.
Miller eventually led to resentencing hearings for juvenile defendants all over the country. Among them was Tony Sparks, one of the younger teenagers involved in the Bagleys’ death. At the 2018 proceeding, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier, the same prosecutor who sought the death penalty against Vialva and Bernard, introduced a pair of documents that had never been disclosed to defense attorneys at trial. The evidence was presented as proof that Sparks should continue to serve a life sentence despite his age at the time of the crime.
One of the documents was a piece of lined notebook paper depicting a pyramid drawn in pencil by a Killeen High School student, which was obtained by the local police department in 1998. The pyramid appeared to lay out a hierarchy of the members of the gang. Occupying the top several lines were the “enforcers,” among them Sparks. Vialva was below them, seven levels down from the top. “Brandon Bernard, also known as ‘Dip,’ is at the very bottom of the chart,” Killeen Police Department Sgt. Sandra Hunt testified, “about 30 people below Mr. Sparks.”
To Bernard’s lawyers, the revelation was powerful proof that their client had been following the lead not only of Vialva, but also of Sparks. In a new legal filing in 2019, they unsuccessfully argued that Bernard should have an opportunity to litigate the issue based on the fact that this evidence was improperly withheld from Bernard’s trial attorneys, in violation of rules established by Brady v. Maryland, which dictate that such material must be disclosed by the state.
“Black teens like Brandon are systematically denied the ‘benefit’ of their youth.”
One former federal prosecutor who previously defended Bernard’s conviction agrees. In 2002, Angela Moore left her position as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas. Today, she is a defense attorney and professor. Moore was having lunch in Austin not long after Vialva’s execution when she mentioned the case to her colleague. “He said, ‘You know, Brandon Bernard is up to be executed really soon.’ And I said, ‘No, I had no idea,’” she said. “And so that’s when I started getting involved … because I think it’s a travesty.”
In an op-ed last month, Moore listed the reasons she thinks Bernard deserves clemency. She invoked his youth and the scientific research about brain development. She also cited research finding that “people tend to view Black boys — like Brandon — as more blameworthy than their white counterparts, even where other relevant circumstances are identical. … Black teens like Brandon are systematically denied the ‘benefit’ of their youth, which is outweighed by their race in the eyes of police, prosecutors, judges and jurors.”
In a phone call, Moore said she was especially bothered by the way prosecutors cast Bernard as a future danger. She found it disturbing — and ironic — that the BOP witness did not reveal the hierarchical nature of gangs given how often such gang structures are invoked in prosecuting federal conspiracy cases involving organized crime. Yet in Bernard’s case, “they didn’t want that evidence to come out,” Moore said. “And I think that’s a big problem.”
In a Zoom hearing on December 2, Bernard’s lawyers tried to convince a federal judge to put off his execution date to allow them to litigate the Brady claim. But the judge ruled against them, saying that he had no jurisdiction in the matter. “Brandon Bernard has been seeking relief since we discovered in 2018 that the trial prosecutors withheld critical evidence, yet procedural barriers have prevented him from obtaining a hearing on the merits of his claim,” Owen wrote in a statement. “We will continue to make our case in court that this hidden evidence would have changed the outcome of Brandon’s sentencing. Given that five jurors no longer stand by their death verdict, Brandon must not be executed until the courts have fully addressed the constitutionality of his sentence, and we will continue to vigorously pursue that vitally important goal.”
Brandon Bernard as a teenager with his mother, sister, and brother. Photo: Courtesy of Brandon Bernard’s defense team
Together We Waited
On the day before Thanksgiving, I got an email from Bernard. He had spent the last four days visiting with his family. “I’m not going to lie,” he wrote. “First I thought that it was going to be sad … that I was going to have this elephant in the room, but it was the opposite. Every day was a blessing and I cherished every one moment that I was out there. I didn’t even feel like I had a date when I was with them.”
Bernard has two younger siblings, as well as two grown daughters, Kiara and Taneah, who first met each other as teenagers in a visiting room at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute. “I have never been able to hug my dad, but mentally and emotionally he is there for me as much as possible,” Taneah wrote in a declaration when she was 16 years old. “It might not seem like much of a relationship, but it is the best one I have and it is important to me.” The most recent visits were with Bernard’s mother and siblings, one of his aunts, and Kiara. “It was especially great to see my daughter because I don’t ever get to see her,” Bernard wrote. “And seeing how she has grown … I couldn’t stop looking at her.”
“I didn’t even feel like I had a date when I was with them.”
Bernard has grown especially close to his sister Quiona, who was only 11 when he was first incarcerated. In a declaration in 2016, she remembered how traumatized her family had been by his arrest. “My mom, my brother Max, and I prayed together all of the time for Brandon and the victims’ families,” she wrote. For a time, they all slept together in the living room because it felt strange to sleep in their rooms while he was incarcerated. “It seemed like a long time before we were able to accept that Brandon was gone and move back into our separate beds.”
In his latest emails, Bernard has expressed gratitude for the growing number of people who have asked for his life be spared. He is hopeful it will make a difference. But he admitted that it was hard not to be discouraged by the Zoom hearing, which he watched from inside the penitentiary. “It feels like all the doors to freedom and life start to close in front of you,” he wrote. Nevertheless, after seeing eight of his neighbors taken to die this year, he said he is trying to stay strong “to show people how to face that which you don’t want to … and not be afraid … not let it break you down … because you can find strength in yourself if you just look.”
Before he was executed, Vialva wrote a goodbye letter to Bernard. He also left him some of his property. “I couldn’t even read the letter for some time,” Bernard said. In an email to his supporters last month, he described the terror of execution nights. He was with Orlando Hall on the death range during Hall’s final days. On November 19, the day he was scheduled to die, Hall got a temporary stay of execution, which he knew would not last. “It was heartbreaking to hear him talk about how hopeful his family was when they heard about the stay and not wanting to tell them to keep their hopes down because it wasn’t guaranteed that it will all work out,” Bernard wrote.
“Together we waited. Every time someone spoke on the radio, or did a round on the range, every time that I heard something move … I thought … this is it … they are coming, but no one came and I dared to hope more,” he said. At one point, prison guards brought some food for Hall in the middle of the night. “He was asleep and I could hear his confusion about being awoken. He didn’t know what they wanted but when he saw it was food I’m sure he was relieved that is all it was.”
Around 10 p.m., Bernard turned on the TV for news but did not find any. Soon after that, “footsteps came down the range and the air became heavy … and I knew they were getting him,” Bernard wrote. “I just listened. … The officer told them in a low voice to open the outer door. I heard the twinkling sound of the handcuffs and leg cuffs being placed on his ankles.”
Through the bars of his cell, Bernard wrote, he told Hall that he loved him. “He told me in a low voice filled with all the emotion one feels at that moment that he loved me too … and he then was gone!”
The rest was like a scene in a movie, he said. The phone rang to give Hall the news that his execution was near, but he was already gone. “They came back afterwards with a cart to clean out his room. When they were done,” Bernard wrote, “I was left on the range alone.”


theintercept--2020-12-05--Loophole Allows Biden Nominees to Avoid Disclosures. Will They Use It?

The question is partly whether any Biden nominees will use this exemption themselves to conceal their recent sources of income .
Perhaps more important is the question of whether the Biden administration will take steps to eliminate the exemption , thereby foreclosing its abuse by future presidents , Trumpian or otherwise .
It would be difficult for any incoming administration to match Trump for opacity and self-dealing .
But an obscure exemption for executive branch officials from disclosing previous clients may generate an interesting test case for Biden ’ s commitment to full transparency .
“ Donald Trump has presided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history , ” Joe Biden ’ s website declared as he ran for president .
By contrast , the site said , a Biden administration would “ make sure that the principles of equality , transparency , and public — not private — interest drive all government decisions.
” Biden has said he will nominate Blinken to be secretary of state , and Flournoy is a top candidate as Biden ’ s secretary of defense .
Avril Haines , Biden ’ s pick for director of national intelligence , worked at WestExec .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be Biden ’ s White House spokesperson .
“ Think Scowcroft Group , Kissinger , RiceHadleyGates , Albright , but my generation , ” Flournoy told The Intercept soon after the company ’ s birth , naming many firms created by former high-level U.S. officials to capitalize on their government connections .
That ’ s where many of Biden ’ s prospective staff come in .
A remarkable number of them have passed through the doors of WestExec Advisors , a consulting company co-founded in 2018 by Anthony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama administration .
According to WestExec ’ s website , it ’ s named after West Executive Avenue , “ the closed street that runs between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building … quite literally , the road to the Situation Room.
” Once the law passed , the OGE did its job , creating regulations explaining exactly what those words mean .
The OGE handbook for incoming officials informs them that they are exempt from disclosing recent clients when “ a written confidentiality agreement … @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s identity.
” One key requirement of the act is that officials must disclose all sources of income over $ 5,000 within the past two years — unless that information is “ confidential as a result of a privileged relationship , established by law.
” The law also created the Office of Government Ethics , tasked with creating the specific regulations for the executive branch based on the law .
The OGE also keeps track of all the executive branch paperwork .
You can find Trump ’ s byzantine Public Financial Disclosure Report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a list of everyone to whom he owes money ( page 35 ) .
Alinsky was too pessimistic .
Thanks to public fury over the Watergate scandal , Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978 .
The new law forced senators , representatives , and many executive branch personnel — including the president — to make public many details about their finances .
Basic financial disclosure requirements for American elected officials are a relatively recent development .
The legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky joked in his 1971 book “ Rules for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ create such requirements was called Senate Bill 1993 because that was “ probably the year it will finally be passed.
” And WestExec does not disclose its clients — not on its website and not in response to requests from the New York Times , the American Prospect , or The Intercept .
All signs indicate , however , that the company ’ s services are employed by corporations that do significant business with the Pentagon .
A WestExec official told the Prospect that one of its clients is a top-five defense company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also reported , respectively , that WestExec has worked for a San Diego drone corporation and Windward , an Israeli artificial intelligence company .
WestExec has said itself that it has nondisclosure agreements with “ many ” of its clients .
In theory , this means that Blinken , Flournoy , and others might not have to disclose these clients under the OGE exemption for cases with “ a written confidentiality agreement.
” But things will likely be different in practice .
Craig Holman of Public Citizen , a liberal advocacy organization , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and practice of government ethics .
According to Holman , incoming lawyers have used the OGE exemption in the past , but he knows of no examples of it being used by consultants to conceal their clients .
Moreover , the Biden transition has stated that Blinken is asking WestExec clients to give him permission to disclose his business relationship with them .
( When asked whether this was also the case with other former WestExec employees , a spokesman for the transition responded “ every cabinet member will abide by strict ethics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ) And in any case , it is important to keep in mind that all of this takes place in the context of the contempt Trump , his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner , and most others in his administration have had for the most basic ethical standards .
Taking advantage of a disclosure exemption allowed by the OGE would be a minnow of an ethical transgression compared to what ’ s been done by officials in the Trump administration , including by the president himself .
significant problem with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the future .
Trump ’ s unprecedented use of nondisclosure agreements will likely inspire the same behavior in other aspiring presidents .
This could then make current “ reverse revolving door ” prohibitions — under which government officials must recuse themselves from any decisions related to recent employers — extremely difficult to enforce .
“ A public official could hire a large consulting or law firm and require individual employees to sign NDAs , ” Holman explained .
“ The public would know that a public official hired the firm , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uncover which employees worked on behalf of the public official.
” If those same people then joined the government , they could evade revealing that they had worked for the official and therefore , could make decisions regarding that official .
The Biden administration should have the power to preempt this .
Interestingly , this OGE exemption for corporate confidentiality agreements is not required by the text of the Ethics in Government Act .
The term “ privileged relationship ” used in the law is generally meant to refer to the relationship between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the OGE developed its regulations , it made the decision to expand it to cover corporate NDAs .
That means , Holman said , that “ OGE could remove that exemption without legislation.
” OGE has a peculiar independent status within the executive branch , which means that Biden could not simply order it to make the change .
But presidents have a great deal of persuasive power and can make things happen without formal authority .
Biden could also make eliminating the exemption a requirement for the next director of the OGE @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term is up in 2023 .
The OGE received the most attention in its history when its then-director Walter Shaub resigned in 2017 , appalled by the Trump administration ’ s actions .
In his resignation letter , he wrote that “ public service is a public trust , requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution , the laws , and ethical principles above private gain.
” Disavowing the use of the disclosure exemption , and even eliminating it , would not generate a huge concrete change in the practice of politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be a symbolic change , and as the U.S. attempts to recover some kind of ethical compass after four years of Trump , symbolic changes matter too .

“Donald Trump has presided over the most corrupt administration in modern history,” Joe Biden’s website declared as he ran for president. By contrast, the site said, a Biden administration would “make sure that the principles of equality, transparency, and public — not private — interest drive all government decisions.”
It would be difficult for any incoming administration to match Trump for opacity and self-dealing. But an obscure exemption for executive branch officials from disclosing previous clients may generate an interesting test case for Biden’s commitment to full transparency.
The question is partly whether any Biden nominees will use this exemption themselves to conceal their recent sources of income. Perhaps more important is the question of whether the Biden administration will take steps to eliminate the exemption, thereby foreclosing its abuse by future presidents, Trumpian or otherwise.
Basic financial disclosure requirements for American elected officials are a relatively recent development. The legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky joked in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals” that one doomed attempt to create such requirements was called Senate Bill 1993 because that was “probably the year it will finally be passed.”
Alinsky was too pessimistic. Thanks to public fury over the Watergate scandal, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978. The new law forced senators, representatives, and many executive branch personnel — including the president — to make public many details about their finances.
The law also created the Office of Government Ethics, tasked with creating the specific regulations for the executive branch based on the law. The OGE also keeps track of all the executive branch paperwork. You can find Trump’s byzantine Public Financial Disclosure Report on the OGE website here, including a list of everyone to whom he owes money (page 35).
One key requirement of the act is that officials must disclose all sources of income over $5,000 within the past two years — unless that information is “confidential as a result of a privileged relationship, established by law.”
Once the law passed, the OGE did its job, creating regulations explaining exactly what those words mean. The OGE handbook for incoming officials informs them that they are exempt from disclosing recent clients when “a written confidentiality agreement … expressly prohibits disclosure of the client’s identity.”
That’s where many of Biden’s prospective staff come in. A remarkable number of them have passed through the doors of WestExec Advisors, a consulting company co-founded in 2018 by Anthony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy, who’d both served in the Obama administration. According to WestExec’s website, it’s named after West Executive Avenue, “the closed street that runs between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building … quite literally, the road to the Situation Room.”
“Think Scowcroft Group, Kissinger, RiceHadleyGates, Albright, but my generation,” Flournoy told The Intercept soon after the company’s birth, naming many firms created by former high-level U.S. officials to capitalize on their government connections.
Biden has said he will nominate Blinken to be secretary of state, and Flournoy is a top candidate as Biden’s secretary of defense. Avril Haines, Biden’s pick for director of national intelligence, worked at WestExec. So did Jennifer Psaki, who will be Biden’s White House spokesperson.
And WestExec does not disclose its clients — not on its website and not in response to requests from the New York Times, the American Prospect, or The Intercept. All signs indicate, however, that the company’s services are employed by corporations that do significant business with the Pentagon. A WestExec official told the Prospect that one of its clients is a top-five defense company. The Times and the Prospect have also reported, respectively, that WestExec has worked for a San Diego drone corporation and Windward, an Israeli artificial intelligence company.
WestExec has said itself that it has nondisclosure agreements with “many” of its clients. In theory, this means that Blinken, Flournoy, and others might not have to disclose these clients under the OGE exemption for cases with “a written confidentiality agreement.”
But things will likely be different in practice. Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy organization, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the history and practice of government ethics. According to Holman, incoming lawyers have used the OGE exemption in the past, but he knows of no examples of it being used by consultants to conceal their clients. Moreover, the Biden transition has stated that Blinken is asking WestExec clients to give him permission to disclose his business relationship with them. (When asked whether this was also the case with other former WestExec employees, a spokesman for the transition responded “every cabinet member will abide by strict ethics rules and abide by all disclosure requirements.”)
And in any case, it is important to keep in mind that all of this takes place in the context of the contempt Trump, his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and most others in his administration have had for the most basic ethical standards. Taking advantage of a disclosure exemption allowed by the OGE would be a minnow of an ethical transgression compared to what’s been done by officials in the Trump administration, including by the president himself.
A more significant problem with the exemption, Holman believes, could arise in the future. Trump’s unprecedented use of nondisclosure agreements will likely inspire the same behavior in other aspiring presidents.
This could then make current “reverse revolving door” prohibitions — under which government officials must recuse themselves from any decisions related to recent employers — extremely difficult to enforce. “A public official could hire a large consulting or law firm and require individual employees to sign NDAs,” Holman explained. “The public would know that a public official hired the firm, but it would make it very difficult to uncover which employees worked on behalf of the public official.” If those same people then joined the government, they could evade revealing that they had worked for the official and therefore, could make decisions regarding that official.
The Biden administration should have the power to preempt this. Interestingly, this OGE exemption for corporate confidentiality agreements is not required by the text of the Ethics in Government Act. The term “privileged relationship” used in the law is generally meant to refer to the relationship between a lawyer and a client. When the OGE developed its regulations, it made the decision to expand it to cover corporate NDAs. That means, Holman said, that “OGE could remove that exemption without legislation.”
OGE has a peculiar independent status within the executive branch, which means that Biden could not simply order it to make the change. But presidents have a great deal of persuasive power and can make things happen without formal authority. Biden could also make eliminating the exemption a requirement for the next director of the OGE when the current director’s five-year term is up in 2023. The OGE received the most attention in its history when its then-director Walter Shaub resigned in 2017, appalled by the Trump administration’s actions. In his resignation letter, he wrote that “public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.”
Disavowing the use of the disclosure exemption, and even eliminating it, would not generate a huge concrete change in the practice of politics in Washington, D.C. But it would be a symbolic change, and as the U.S. attempts to recover some kind of ethical compass after four years of Trump, symbolic changes matter too.


theintercept--2020-12-06--“My Phone Haunts Me”: Kashmiris Interrogated and Tortured by Cyber Police for Tweeting

as he approached the fortified police station , its walls covered with barbed wire and gun-toting cops guarding the entrances .
The college student had received a phone call the previous day from Jammu and Kashmir ’ s cyber police , asking him to report to the station with no reason given .
Ahmed , whose name has been changed for fear of retaliation , had never been summoned by the police before .
Upon his arrival , police immediately took Ahmed to another station nearby ; his cellphone was confiscated at the gate .
He was brought to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young people .
After exchanging a few nervous glances and hushed whispers , the five youths realized they knew each other — not in person , but through social media .
They were meeting for the first time at Cargo , a counterinsurgency police complex known for its history as a torture site .
Since August , the facility in Srinagar , the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir , has allegedly been used to interrogate and torture young Kashmiri social media users who have been critical of the Indian government ’ s repressive policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society , a group of human rights organizations , reported in August that police had made complaints against more than 200 users of social media platforms and virtual private networks , deploying surveillance technology to trace and summon them to police stations under anti-terror and detention laws .
Ahmed and the young people he met at Cargo are among the more than two-dozen men and women , mostly students , who spoke to The Intercept about their experiences in police custody for their social media posts .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cyber unit and asked to sign a nonbinding agreement at a local police station to refrain from criticizing civil authorities or the armed forces on social media .
Others recounted that they were sent to Cargo , where they were thrashed , verbally abused , and threatened with imprisonment or death .
The recent police crackdown on social media is part of a sharp escalation of censorship efforts under India ’ s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi since August 2019 , when the government unilaterally decided to revoke Jammu and Kashmir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Indian Constitution and divide the state into union territories under its direct control .
The posts under police scrutiny , mostly shared on Twitter and Facebook , were explicitly political : They questioned India ’ s actions against Kashmiris leading up to and following the dissolution of the region ’ s special status , as well as human rights violations perpetrated by Indian security forces and the media ’ s silence on such abuses .
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment .
The victims said that police confiscated their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after officers had used login information extracted during interrogations to access their social media accounts .
Since being released from custody , many of the victims said they no longer post political content online or they have deactivated their accounts to avoid being summoned again .
There have been few reports outside Kashmiri and Indian media about the recent crackdown .
After publishing a story on the issue for Indian news site Article 14 , Kashmiri journalist Auqib Javeed was summoned in late September to the cyber police headquarters .
He later claimed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Cargo for five hours — a treatment similar to what the social media users described .
The intimidation of social media users and journalists is meant to silence criticism , said Gowhar Geelani , a journalist and author who himself has been booked by the cyber police under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act , a controversial Indian anti-terror law .
“ It is part of a larger crackdown and criminalizing of opinions.
” Considered the world ’ s most heavily militarized zone , Kashmir was put under an unprecedented military lockdown by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services and digital communication lines were blocked without any prior notice — resulting in the longest internet shutdown ever recorded in a democracy .
The Indian government restored internet access , including to social media sites that were previously banned , in March , but only at slow 2G speed .
The restrictions on internet access have come in tandem with increased surveillance in the region , said Devdutta Mukhopadhyay , associate counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation , an internet advocacy group based in India .
“ Some examples we have seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administrators being made to register with district authorities , ban on VPN services , and additional verification requirements for prepaid mobile internet users , ” she said .
Some Kashmiris , in the spirit of the decadeslong rebellion against Indian rule , have taken to social media to air their frustrations with the government — but not without consequences .
After spending more than three hours in the holding room , getting fingerprinted and photographed , and handing over his banking information and other personal details , Ahmed was taken to an interrogation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him .
“ They yelled and shouted , ‘ Who is giving you money to post all this ?
’ ” he said .
“ One officer slapped and kicked me.
” One of the officers pushed a file toward him containing screenshots of his posts from Twitter .
“ I was asked to unlock my phone and one officer started scanning it , ” Ahmed said .
“ Another officer asked for the passwords of my email and social media accounts.
” The officers pulled up Ahmed ’ s Twitter account on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about his more recent tweets .
Some of the posts sought accountability from the police and the Indian army for human rights violations , such as extrajudicial killings of civilians in staged gunfights , while others seemed more benign .
“ One officer asked me why I had congratulated Kashmiri photographers who won the Pulitzer Prize this year , ” said Ahmed .
“ They asked me why I quote selective poets and poetry in my tweets.
” Another college student who spoke to The Intercept also said that a police officer confiscated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cargo and looked through photos of his mother and siblings .
“ He abused them and threatened that they will also be treated like me , ” said Bilal , whose name has also been changed for fear of retaliation .
Bilal and two other victims told The Intercept that officers had proposed they become informants and snitch on other social media users police were monitoring , in exchange for their release .
They were told that they would otherwise be jailed or killed in a staged gunfight .
Bilal was baffled by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying that he never thought his tweets would land him in a situation in which the police would ask him to become a spy .
“ They would leave me alone for hours to decide , ” he said .
However , he was eventually let go with a warning that next time he would be booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act .
Kashmir ’ s cyber police force was expanded shortly after the August lockdown last year , with the intention of curbing cybercrimes .
Since then , the unit has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ equipped with advanced technology for tracking down Kashmiris , including more recent monitoring of those who contracted Covid-19 during the pandemic .
Tahir Ashraf Bhatti , the head of Cargo who is also in charge of the cyber force , was awarded a medal from the Indian government on Independence Day for his department ’ s work .
Bhatti told The Intercept that the cyber unit opens cases mostly for complaints regarding financial fraud and “ cyberbullying ” — the latter of which has been used as justification to summon social media users @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people were being summoned or tortured for expressing their political views online .
Bhatti himself has been accused of assaulting at least one social media user in custody .
The victim told The Intercept that he was summoned to the cyber police station in August after he had mocked Bhatti on Twitter .
He was taken to Cargo where Bhatti used a leather belt to beat him repeatedly for three days on the same part of his body .
“ If I tell you the spot they hit , they would get to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Bhatti denied this incident took place .
Bhatti declined to go into detail about what kind of surveillance technology the cyber force uses to collect information on Kashmiris who live both in the region and abroad .
Multiple people told The Intercept that despite using VPNs to stay anonymous on social media , the police were still able to find out who they were .
“ It takes us half an hour to pinpoint location and details of a user , ” Bhatti said .
He showed The Intercept a WhatsApp conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked him about an individual ’ s location and address , and if they had a past record .
“ My team did it in minutes , ” he said .
That team is composed of 40 tech-savvy cops , Bhatti said , while the more challenging cases are outsourced to private companies , which he did not specify .
While much of the cyber unit ’ s internal operations remain shrouded in secrecy , its actions have had a noticeable chilling effect on social media activity in Kashmir .
Many accounts have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or no longer post political content .
Shefali Rafiq , a 22-year-old journalism student who is active on social media , said she has become more cautious about what she posts .
“ There were some profiles I would eagerly follow , ” she said , “ but they have either deactivated their accounts or they no longer write critical posts.
” Three social media users said they have noticed suspicious activity on their accounts since being released from police custody , such as likes or retweets they did not make , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who had been summoned said they have lived in fear since their encounters with the cyber police .
After being called in for interrogation four days in a row , Ahmed said he was finally let go on the condition that he would stop criticizing the Indian government and security forces online , and report to the station whenever he was called in .
Since his release , Ahmed said he has experienced panic attacks and a lack of appetite .
He has not been able to bring himself to post on social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At times I write a long post and at the end , I delete it and cry , ” he said .
“ My phone haunts me .
”

Ahmed was nervous as he approached the fortified police station, its walls covered with barbed wire and gun-toting cops guarding the entrances. The college student had received a phone call the previous day from Jammu and Kashmir’s cyber police, asking him to report to the station with no reason given. Ahmed, whose name has been changed for fear of retaliation, had never been summoned by the police before.
Upon his arrival, police immediately took Ahmed to another station nearby; his cellphone was confiscated at the gate. He was brought to a holding room where he noticed four other young people. After exchanging a few nervous glances and hushed whispers, the five youths realized they knew each other — not in person, but through social media.
They were meeting for the first time at Cargo, a counterinsurgency police complex known for its history as a torture site. Since August, the facility in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, has allegedly been used to interrogate and torture young Kashmiri social media users who have been critical of the Indian government’s repressive policies implemented in the region since last year.
Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a group of human rights organizations, reported in August that police had made complaints against more than 200 users of social media platforms and virtual private networks, deploying surveillance technology to trace and summon them to police stations under anti-terror and detention laws.
Ahmed and the young people he met at Cargo are among the more than two-dozen men and women, mostly students, who spoke to The Intercept about their experiences in police custody for their social media posts. Some of them had been contacted by the cyber unit and asked to sign a nonbinding agreement at a local police station to refrain from criticizing civil authorities or the armed forces on social media. Others recounted that they were sent to Cargo, where they were thrashed, verbally abused, and threatened with imprisonment or death.
The recent police crackdown on social media is part of a sharp escalation of censorship efforts under India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi since August 2019, when the government unilaterally decided to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s semiautonomous status previously guaranteed under the Indian Constitution and divide the state into union territories under its direct control.
The posts under police scrutiny, mostly shared on Twitter and Facebook, were explicitly political: They questioned India’s actions against Kashmiris leading up to and following the dissolution of the region’s special status, as well as human rights violations perpetrated by Indian security forces and the media’s silence on such abuses. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
The victims said that police confiscated their phones and returned them days later, after officers had used login information extracted during interrogations to access their social media accounts. Since being released from custody, many of the victims said they no longer post political content online or they have deactivated their accounts to avoid being summoned again.
There have been few reports outside Kashmiri and Indian media about the recent crackdown. After publishing a story on the issue for Indian news site Article 14, Kashmiri journalist Auqib Javeed was summoned in late September to the cyber police headquarters. He later claimed that he had been assaulted and detained at Cargo for five hours — a treatment similar to what the social media users described.
The intimidation of social media users and journalists is meant to silence criticism, said Gowhar Geelani, a journalist and author who himself has been booked by the cyber police under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a controversial Indian anti-terror law. “It is part of a larger crackdown and criminalizing of opinions.”
Kashmiri journalists browse the internet on their mobile phones inside the media center set up by government authorities in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, on Jan. 30, 2020. Photo: Dar Yasin/AP
Inside the Interrogation Room
Considered the world’s most heavily militarized zone, Kashmir was put under an unprecedented military lockdown by the Indian government last August. Cellular services and digital communication lines were blocked without any prior notice — resulting in the longest internet shutdown ever recorded in a democracy. The Indian government restored internet access, including to social media sites that were previously banned, in March, but only at slow 2G speed.
The restrictions on internet access have come in tandem with increased surveillance in the region, said Devdutta Mukhopadhyay, associate counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation, an internet advocacy group based in India. “Some examples we have seen in the past year are WhatsApp group administrators being made to register with district authorities, ban on VPN services, and additional verification requirements for prepaid mobile internet users,” she said.
Some Kashmiris, in the spirit of the decadeslong rebellion against Indian rule, have taken to social media to air their frustrations with the government — but not without consequences.
“They yelled and shouted, ‘Who is giving you money to post all this?’ One officer slapped and kicked me.”
After spending more than three hours in the holding room, getting fingerprinted and photographed, and handing over his banking information and other personal details, Ahmed was taken to an interrogation room where several officers were waiting for him. “They yelled and shouted, ‘Who is giving you money to post all this?’” he said. “One officer slapped and kicked me.” One of the officers pushed a file toward him containing screenshots of his posts from Twitter.
“I was asked to unlock my phone and one officer started scanning it,” Ahmed said. “Another officer asked for the passwords of my email and social media accounts.” The officers pulled up Ahmed’s Twitter account on a desktop computer and started questioning him about his more recent tweets. Some of the posts sought accountability from the police and the Indian army for human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings of civilians in staged gunfights, while others seemed more benign.
“One officer asked me why I had congratulated Kashmiri photographers who won the Pulitzer Prize this year,” said Ahmed. “They asked me why I quote selective poets and poetry in my tweets.”
Another college student who spoke to The Intercept also said that a police officer confiscated his phone while he was detained at Cargo and looked through photos of his mother and siblings.
“He abused them and threatened that they will also be treated like me,” said Bilal, whose name has also been changed for fear of retaliation.
Bilal and two other victims told The Intercept that officers had proposed they become informants and snitch on other social media users police were monitoring, in exchange for their release. They were told that they would otherwise be jailed or killed in a staged gunfight.
Bilal was baffled by the offer to become an informant, saying that he never thought his tweets would land him in a situation in which the police would ask him to become a spy.
“They would leave me alone for hours to decide,” he said. However, he was eventually let go with a warning that next time he would be booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
Track and Trace
Kashmir’s cyber police force was expanded shortly after the August lockdown last year, with the intention of curbing cybercrimes. Since then, the unit has grown into a sophisticated surveillance operation, equipped with advanced technology for tracking down Kashmiris, including more recent monitoring of those who contracted Covid-19 during the pandemic. Tahir Ashraf Bhatti, the head of Cargo who is also in charge of the cyber force, was awarded a medal from the Indian government on Independence Day for his department’s work.
Bhatti told The Intercept that the cyber unit opens cases mostly for complaints regarding financial fraud and “cyberbullying” — the latter of which has been used as justification to summon social media users for anti-government posts. He denied that people were being summoned or tortured for expressing their political views online.
The cyber unit has grown into a sophisticated surveillance operation, equipped with advanced technology for tracking down Kashmiris.
Bhatti himself has been accused of assaulting at least one social media user in custody. The victim told The Intercept that he was summoned to the cyber police station in August after he had mocked Bhatti on Twitter. He was taken to Cargo where Bhatti used a leather belt to beat him repeatedly for three days on the same part of his body. “If I tell you the spot they hit, they would get to know my identity,” he said. Bhatti denied this incident took place.
Bhatti declined to go into detail about what kind of surveillance technology the cyber force uses to collect information on Kashmiris who live both in the region and abroad. Multiple people told The Intercept that despite using VPNs to stay anonymous on social media, the police were still able to find out who they were.
“It takes us half an hour to pinpoint location and details of a user,” Bhatti said. He showed The Intercept a WhatsApp conversation, in which a senior officer had asked him about an individual’s location and address, and if they had a past record. “My team did it in minutes,” he said.
That team is composed of 40 tech-savvy cops, Bhatti said, while the more challenging cases are outsourced to private companies, which he did not specify.
Gone Quiet
While much of the cyber unit’s internal operations remain shrouded in secrecy, its actions have had a noticeable chilling effect on social media activity in Kashmir. Many accounts have vanished, while others have gone silent or no longer post political content.
Shefali Rafiq, a 22-year-old journalism student who is active on social media, said she has become more cautious about what she posts. “There were some profiles I would eagerly follow,” she said, “but they have either deactivated their accounts or they no longer write critical posts.”
Three social media users said they have noticed suspicious activity on their accounts since being released from police custody, such as likes or retweets they did not make, or following and unfollowing other accounts.
Those who had been summoned said they have lived in fear since their encounters with the cyber police. After being called in for interrogation four days in a row, Ahmed said he was finally let go on the condition that he would stop criticizing the Indian government and security forces online, and report to the station whenever he was called in. Since his release, Ahmed said he has experienced panic attacks and a lack of appetite. He has not been able to bring himself to post on social media like he used to.
“At times I write a long post and at the end, I delete it and cry,” he said. “My phone haunts me.”


theintercept--2020-12-06--How Opioid Addiction in the U.S. Fuels a Crisis for Farmers in Mexico

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U.S. Official Hints at Possible Plea Deal for Julian Assange
The U.S. ambassador to Australia said there could be a “resolution” to the Justice Department’s pursuit of Assange.