The Olympia Hackbloc has launched http://www.johntowery.com to serve as
a clearinghouse for information about the US Army Informant John Towery
who infiltrated various anti-war and anarchist groups around the Olympia
and Tacoma areas. Please direct people to this site and let us know if
we're missing a media reference and/or information
(submissions@johntowery.com). Please also direct media to this website,
our servers can handle whatever they can throw at them.

UPDATE: We recieved the following reply from cryptome:

Sorry, nobody stoppered Cryptome on Towery, and no under-rugging -- sloth, sure. Several links at our page head to Towery, etc. were superceded; a change from listing offsite links at the page bottom. The story got continuing coverage elsewhere. Two persons wrote on July 27 that Wikileaks offered the WAJAC spying doc, and that also got wide play via Wikileaks' PR stream (copied to us) so no need for another host. Still, don't trust what we say, ever, in cahoots pandemicly

Cryptome.org, the site run by crypto-anarchist John Young that publishes thousands of censored, classified, and secret documents seems to have tried to sweep an issue under the rug: that of informant John Towery infiltrating anti-war groups in Olympia/Tacoma, WA. This story has been covered by major media outlets including Democracy Now! and the New York Times, so what is Cryptome so afraid of?

According to the Cryptome website, "Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance—open, secret and classified documents—but not limited to those". The John Towery story certainly sounds like it fits within these guidelines. Furthermore, the Cryptome website states that content will only be removed if forced by a US Court Order.

One could speculate that the feds paid a visit to Young's residence, but in the past these types of encounters have been widely publicized and haven't resulted in content being taken down. Furthermore, the administrator of the website JohnTowery.com, which has acted as a clearinghouse for information published on the US Army informant that was undercover for over two years, states that they haven't received any visits from anybody in law enforcement, let alone somebody who could force them to take down content. On the same token, nobody in Olympia has received any visits from three letter agencies. Seattle Indymedia, Democracy Now, Portland Indymedia, JohnTowery.com, and numerous other websites host the pictures of the informant that have disappeared off of Cryptome as well as a lot of other information on the story itself.

But the story gets deeper. After the pictures and information about the informant disappeared from Cryptome, a few days later a news clipping and a link to the johntowery.com website appeared only to disappear yet again today.

So what does this tell us about Cryptome? Not much, but it might tell us something about the John Towery story that we already knew: it's a huge fucking deal.

If you want to ask cryptome about this incident, you can contact them at cryptome{at}earthlink.net

Rob of the RNC 8 provides and update on the RNC 8's legal status, discusses the impact of informants on the group, provides insight about informants in our community, and shares some ideas about how to move forward on the program Air Cascadia of KBOO, "Volunteer-Powered, Non-Commercial, Listener-Sponsored, Full-Strength Community Radio for Portland, Oregon, Cascadia & the World!". Click here to listen to the show!

The New York Times, Democracy Now, Indymedia and several other sources are reporting that Brandon Darby, of Austin, TX has outed himself as an FBI informant.  Darby was most recently involved in the Republican National Convention last year and worked with the FBI to identify people that were planning on "violent" activity during the convention.  Darby got his start in the activist community working with Common Grounds after Hurricane Katrina.  From the New York times article:

In a telephone interview, Mr. Darby said that he had provided information leading to the arrest of Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay, and that he planned to testify at their trial.

Mr. Darby would not provide details about his undercover activities, but said he had also worked as an informant in cases not involving the convention. He defended his decision to work with the F.B.I. as “a good moral way to use my time,” saying he wanted to prevent violence during the convention at the Xcel Energy Center.

Documents that activists said were given to defense lawyers by the prosecution and printed on F.B.I. letterhead indicated that an informant — now identified as Mr. Darby — carried out a thorough surveillance operation that dated back to at least 18 months before the Republican gathering. He first met Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay in Austin six months before the convention.

Mr. Darby provided descriptions of meetings with the defendants and dozens of other people in Austin, Minneapolis and St. Paul. He wore recording devices at times, including a transmitter embedded in his belt during the convention. He also went to Minnesota with Mr. Crowder four months before the Republican gathering and gave detailed narratives to law enforcement authorities of several meetings they had with activists from New York, San Francisco, Montana and other places.

One of his last conversations with Mr. McKay ended in an alley in Minneapolis, according to court documents, with Mr. Darby recording Mr. McKay talking about plans to use Molotov cocktails."

This whole case raises some tough questions, how can we secure our own communities when even someone who is heavily involved in the activist community may decide to turn sides and become an FBI informant.  Darby was not someone like Anna, who came into the activist movement just to snitch, Darby was an established activist who decided one day to side with the FBI.  This must necessarily make us re-evaluate our security protocols and our levels of trust.