Quote:The Enduring Mystery of an Aggressive FBI Raid Near Area 51

When federal agents kicked in his door one icy morning last November, Joerg Arnu was still asleep. Roused by deafening bangs and shouts, the 60-year-old retired software developer stumbled out of bed to find a crowd of unfamiliar men in military gear standing in his foyer.

At least one of the half dozen men, he remembers, was visibly armed and pointing a gun in his direction. Another was holding a riot shield. “This is the FBI,” one yelled. “Put your hands against the wall!” Less than a minute later, Arnu was being handcuffed and led forcefully outside, dressed only in sweatpants and a T-shirt. His house, located in the remote town of Rachel, Nevada, had been swarmed by police vans. Shivering from a lightly falling snow, he was placed in the back of one of the vehicles, while over a dozen agents from the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations—the Air Force’s secretive counterintelligence wing—poured into his home. Not long afterwards, agents started asking him questions. One of the first things they wanted to know was: “Are there any booby traps on the property?” To Arnu, it seemed like a pretty weird thing to ask. A retired software developer and self-admitted senior citizen? Did that really sound like somebody who would boobytrap his own house?
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As of this week, it’s been more than two months since the government raided both of Arnu’s properties, but he still hasn’t been charged with a crime. He was served with a search warrant that was missing dozens of pages and gave no reason for the raid; the case records related to the warrant have been sealed, so there’s no way of telling what the point of the search was. He also hasn’t been able to get in touch with the FBI, aside from a letter from the agency’s legal department denying reimbursement for the damage caused during the raids, he said. And, it goes without saying, he never got his stuff back.

“I believe the search, executed with completely unnecessary force by overzealous government agents, was meant as a message to silence the Area 51 research community,” Arnu recently wrote on his website.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who has been critical of the bureau since leaving it, called Arnu’s case “troubling.” German, who now works as a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, told Gizmodo that it wasn’t unusual for the FBI to conduct an operation like this to “send a message,” and to cow a specific individual or community. That’s particularly disturbing given Arnu’s role as a person involved in media, he added.

“Certainly it [an operation like this] could intimidate other journalists who were writing about these secret government programs. That chilling effect seems to be part of why they would be so aggressive in a case where the level of dangerousness is not clear,” he said. On top of this, German notes that the targeting of Joerg’s computer equipment “raises concerns that the intent may have been to impede his ability to exercise his First Amendment rights.”
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While Arnu waits for answers, he’s trying to get on with his life. In addition to a slew of interviews with the press, the blogger has launched a GoFundMe to help pay for the damages inflicted by the raids and to finance his legal expenses (he has now hired a lawyer). He’s also trying to make up for the thousands of dollars of computer equipment that have vanished into government evidence lockers.

“I was treated like a drug dealer or some hardened criminal,” Arnu said during one of our interviews. “I was manhandled. I’m a sixty-year-old guy. There was no reason to bang me against the wall and drag me out of my own home in handcuffs...I just don’t see any reason to treat an unarmed senior citizen that way.”

(01-23-2023, 10:02 AM)A51Watcher2 Wrote: My team has been monitoring this disconcerting news ever since it was reported for obvious reasons since we also have a website dealing with the same material.

www.image-analysis-team.com

We speculate that the raid was not prompted by the material on his website, because that material has been up for over a decade, and still remains up to this day.

Instead, the agency that monitors his website and personal communications discovered he was receiving classified info from somebody and he should not have that info in his hands.

We do not possess any classified material or post any and refuse any offers of such material if they are ever offered.

In any case, only 2 members of the team are in the US and rest live overseas. So our mission will continue no matter what happens to the US members.

Our material resides in many clouds so to speak. 

(01-23-2023, 07:03 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote:

(01-23-2023, 10:02 AM)A51Watcher2 Wrote: My team has been monitoring this disconcerting news ever since it was reported for obvious reasons since we also have a website dealing with the same material.

www.image-analysis-team.com

We speculate that the raid was not prompted by the material on his website, because that material has been up for over a decade, and still remains up to this day.

Instead, the agency that monitors his website and personal communications discovered he was receiving classified info from somebody and he should not have that info in his hands.

We do not possess any classified material or post any and refuse any offers of such material if they are ever offered.

In any case, only 2 members of the team are in the US and rest live overseas. So our mission will continue no matter what happens to the US members.

Our material resides in many clouds so to speak. 

Thanks for that info. When that story broke the first thing I did was check if his website was still up; which it was, but just checking now and it appears down. Assume the owner took it off-line and/or it's getting bombarded.