21st Century Wire says…
A U.S. man and alleged ‘IS supporter’ has been accused of plotting to bomb a 9/11 memorial ceremony scheduled to be held tomorrow in Kansas City. There’s only one catch though – he might not be ‘real’.
We’re told that 20 yr old Joshua Ryne Goldberg of Florida, who was posing as a jihadist in Perth, Australia, using the online sock-puppet identity, ‘Australi Witness’, has been arrested this week at his parents’ home in Florida following an international investigation. We are also led to believe that he used a proxy server in Australia in order to create an online trail disguising his true location in the U.S.
The media are attempting to paint Goldberg (photo, left) as a mere ‘hoaxer’, or a “troll” who was ‘posing as an IS supporter’.
Not surprisingly, the usual suspects are already appearing to help steer this story…
Terrorist experts at Bethesda, Maryland-based, and CIA and Israeli intelligence-linked media outlet, S.I.T.E. Intelligence Group, are suddenly claiming that Goldberg had “fooled” them, when it’s much more likely that Goldberg was actually working with S.I.T.E. on some level in order to craft his online terrorist persona. S.I.T.E.’s boss, an Israeli operative named Rita Katz previous claimed that Goldberg was an, “IS supporter” who held a “prestige” position in online jihadi circles, “part of the hard core group of individuals who constantly look for targets for other people to attack”.
Goldberg also appears to have also been intimately involved in a staged ‘ISIS attack’ in Garland, Texas last May, where Israeli-American operative, Pamela Geller, staged a ‘Mohammed Cartoon’ media event which ended in two FBI-handled shooters allegedly showing up at the event only to be gunned down after meeting dozens of privately-hired ex-special forces mercenaries and police – who we’re told just happened to be there at the event. In the run-up to Geller’s media stunt, Goldberg tweeted the event’s address and reposted a tweet calling for jihadists to come armed.
To make matters even more suspicious, authorities are claiming that Goldberg’s alleged ‘bomb plot’ was presented by a ‘secret source’. US Attorney Lee Bentley III, said Goldberg instructed a “confidential source” how to make a Boston Marathon-style ‘pressure cooker’ bomb. Of course, we’ll never know who that “confidential source” is, but you can be sure that they knew of Goldberg’s role as an online asset.
So between S.I.T.E., a “confidential source”, and “journalists working on behalf of” Australia’s Fairfax Media – we have an alleged “home-grown hoaxer”, but for some reason, he’s not being directly referred to as ‘a terrorist’.
Undoubtedly, Goldberg is much more than a bedroom hoaxer, and is more likely to be part of the inter-agency’s network of online intelligence assets. Whether he was working under instruction, or was being handled, or manipulated, remains to be seen. But he was playing a role in propagating the ISIS narrative online for either western or Israeli interests, or both.
ACTOR: Jewish-American operative Adam Gadahn.
Spooks in Media: Smoke and Mirrors
It’s not the first time that a Jewish-American operative has been exposed as a virtual terrorist menace. The Goldberg case is a near repeat of the case of Adam Pearlman aka Adam Gadahn, an American-born suburbanite who played the role of, “al Qaeda spokesman,” providing the media with another face to represent the CIA and Mossad terrorist brand.
Keen to avoid any further embarrassment over the exposure of this actor, the CIA attempted to quietly close Gadahn’s file by claiming he was killed in a ‘drone strike’ on a compound situated on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border around April 22, 2015, along with hostage Dr. Warren Weinstein (a likely CIA covert operative working with USAID), along with Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, and another “American al Qaeda” leader, Ahmed Farouq. Washington was careful not to confirm anything regarding their asset Gadahn. The State Department claimed that it was “likely” that Gadahn was killed in a separate counter-terrorism operation. Translated, this means that he was not even there at the time of the alleged strike. As far as the US media are concerned, the CIA report of ‘death by drone strike’ cannot be challenged, and therefore, is reported as fact.
Media plant and CNN “terrorist expert”, Paul Cruickshank claimed that, ‘Gadahn had begun to play an increasingly prominent institutional role inside al Qaeda.’ Clearly, Cruickshank is inserting agency talking points here. Spooks appear to have gone to great lengths to convince the public that the Gadahn story was above board claiming that they had somehow recovered ‘letters’ from asset Gadahn to Osama bin Laden – allegedly found during the staged CIA “raid’ on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan – a raid which failed to produce any actual evidence that bin Laden was alive and well at the time he was said to be assassinated by US Navy SEALs.
As it turns out, Gadahn is connected to Israeli’s intelligence network in the US – with his grandfather, Carl Pearlman, being a committed Zionist and on the Board of Directors of the Anti-Defamation League.
More on Goldberg here…
‘JEWISH ISIS’: Florida resident Joshua Ryne Goldberg.
FBI says ‘Australian IS jihadist’ is actually a Jewish American troll named Joshua Ryne Goldberg
Elise Potaka and Luke McMahon
Sydney Morning Herald
A young Jewish American man has been charged with pretending to be an Australian-based Islamic State jihadist after a FBI joint investigation with the Australian Federal Police based on information provided by Fairfax Media.
Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a 20-year old living at his parents’ house in US state of Florida, is accused of posing online as “Australi Witness,” an IS supporter who publicly called for a series of attacks against individuals and events in western countries.
In recent days Australi Witness has claimed online that he is working with other jihadists to plan attacks in Australia and the United States. He distributed pictures of a bomb that he was working on with “2 lbs of explosives inside”.
(See picture of the ‘bomb’ below)
Early on Friday, Australian time, Goldberg, who is non-Muslim and has no real-world links with extremism, was arrested at his home by Florida police for “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction”.
However, one of those apparent representatives of Islamic State has now been revealed as an America-based, non-Muslim online hoaxer.
The Australian Federal Police do not intend to apply for Goldberg’s extradition, but said in a statement that he faced a 20-year prison term if convicted.
“Investigations by the AFP in June 2015 established no initial threat to the Australian community. When investigations determined it was likely the person responsible for these threats was based in the United States, the investigation became the jurisdiction of the FBI, with the AFP in a support role.”
AFP Acting Deputy Commissioner National Security Neil Gaughan alleged Goldberg had “relied on the internet providing a cloak of anonymity”.
“This operation again highlights how law enforcement can investigate people in the online space and use our long-established partnerships to work with overseas agencies to bring people to account for their actions”.
An affidavit sworn at the time of the arrest says that, between August 19 and August 28, Mr Goldberg “distributed information pertaining to the manufacturing of explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence”.
US Attorney Lee Bentley III, said Goldberg instructed a confidential source how to make a bomb similar to two used in the Boston Marathon bombings two years ago that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
He allegedly instructed someone how to fill the bomb with nails, metal and other items dipped in rat poison.
Police base the charge on his communication of five web links to sites that provided instructions that could be used to make explosives as part of a plot to explode a bomb on September 13 at a memorial ceremony in Kansas City, commemorating the 9/11 the terrorist attacks.
The affidavit, released by Special agent William Berry of US Customs and Border Protection, says that Goldberg had initially denied to officers that he had any involvement with distributing information on how to make a bomb, but then later admitted it.
“Goldberg further admitted that he believed the information would create a genuine bomb,” Agent Berry alleged.
However, Goldberg also claimed that he meant for the person he was communicating with to either kill himself creating the bomb or, that Goldberg intended to warn police in time so that he would receive “credit for stopping the attack”.
In conversations with Fairfax Media, which were also cited in the affidavit, Mr Goldberg had said he did not expect any jihadist to actually carry out an attack because: “These guys are pussy keyboard warriors”.
Fairfax media can also reveal that Goldberg, as Australi Witness, is suspected of a number of other online hoaxes, including posing online as prominent Australian lawyer, Josh Bornstein.
Australi Witness’s online actions might have had fatal real-world consequences in May.
In the leadup to an exhibition in Garland, Texas, at which pictures of the Prophet Mohammed were to be displayed, “Australi Witness” tweeted the event’s address and reposted a tweet urging people to go there with “weapons, bombs or with knifes”.
Two Muslim men attempted an attack at the exhibition, and were killed by police. Australi Witness then praised them online as martyrs.
A tweet from Australi Witness. Photo: Twitter
Australi Witness also urged followers to target Australian cartoonist Larry Pickering, who has previously depicted the Prophet Mohammed.
The Australi Witness persona fooled members of the international intelligence community as well as journalists, with well-known analyst Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group saying the “IS supporter” held a “prestige” position in online jihadi circles and was “part of the hard core of a group of individuals who constantly look for targets for other people to attack”.
Ms Katz has previously acted as a consultant for US and foreign governments and testified before Congress on online terrorist activities.
The Australian Federal Police were unaware of Australi Witness’s real identity as Goldberg until contacted by journalists working on behalf of Fairfax Media.
In the Bornstein hoax, Goldberg established a blog on the Times of Israel in the lawyer’s name before posting an inflammatory article calling for the “extermination” of Palestinians. The Times retracted the article and apologised, and Bornstein went public with the story saying “I deplore racism… I’ve fought racism since I was four years old”.
When confronted, Goldberg boasted he had avoided detection, saying, “That guy has no idea. He thinks [online radical right wing website] Daily Stormer did it.” He also said he wanted to obtain Bornstein’s real life address, in order to “freak him out even more”.
In conversations and in articles written under his real name, Goldberg repeatedly professed to be an advocate for free speech, and showed disdain for organisations and individuals who call for limits on hate speech or hate speech laws…
