U.S. News

2263 readers

127 users here now

News about and pertaining to the United States and its people.

Please read what's functionally the mission statement before posting for the first time. We have a narrower definition of news than you might be accustomed to.

Guidelines for submissions:

Post the original source of information as the link.
If there is any Nazi imagery in the linked story, mark your post NSFW.
If there is a paywall, provide an archive link in the body.
Post using the original headline; edits for clarity (as in providing crucial info a clickbait hed omits) are fine.
Social media is not a news source.

For World News, see the News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

Powderhorn@beehaw.org

A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found. (www.propublica.org)

submitted 23 hours ago by melp@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A) "Reporting Highlights

A Freelance Vigilante: A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. The Future of Militias: He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump. A Secret Trove: He sent ProPublica a massive trove of documents. The conversations that he secretly recorded give a unique, startling window into the militia movement."

B) There's also an audio version of the article for those who need vision asst or time asst.

C) The reason I shared this was William's record dump was just shared on ddosecrets this month - https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-leaks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (7 children)

Williams is no shit a modern-day Thompson. I'm loving how much evidence he gathered (ProPublica didn't break the story), and how many ties to officials he found. The unfortunate part is it means fuck-all for the system as a whole.

Edit: maybe they did. I didn't realize this was a Jan. 4 piece, and it started sounding really familiar.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 8 points 21 hours ago (6 children)

It was a pro publica story. This is another case of mainstream news outlets not wanting to touch an important story, so a smaller outlet got the scoop. If this was the 70s the NYT or Washington Post would've jumped on this story, now I'm not sure if other outlets even covered pro publica's coverage of this story.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, to go back to an era of the Fourth Estate doing its job would be nice. Instead, we have a Fourth Reich.

And look, I'm going to continue making that reference, because people need to understand where we are. And also that it doesn't end well.

I penned my first published piece in 1998. I am beyond fucking furious with where the media have gone.

[–] melp@beehaw.org 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I quit journalism as a profession for the same reason.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 2 points 3 hours ago

That's the truly insidious part. Consolidation led many of the better journalists to head for the exits, though that has nothing to do with the bullshit at the Post.

load more comments (3 replies)