Newly released documents authored by Larry Wooten, a former Special Agent with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM,) show how the federal government illegally spied on and entrapped citizens during the 2014 “Bundy Ranch Standoff,” and while imprisoned defendants were on trial.
In 2017 Wooten sent an 18-page whistleblower document to Washington State Representative Matt Shea chronicling “a widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical, and legal violations among senior and supervisory staff at the BLM’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security.”
The report directly led to the dismissal of the case against Cliven and Ammon Bundy and several people involved with the 2014 standoff because BLM and FBI agents “shredded documents at dispatch,” withheld “texts and emails that make officers look unprofessional,” and omitted evidence during the trial that proved the innocence of the Bundy family and their supporters.
At the time of the first documents release, The Oregonian reported that: “Wooten accused Dan Love, the former special agent-in-charge of the cattle roundup for the Bureau of Land Management, of intentionally ignoring direction from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and his Superiors ‘to command the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale and militaristic trespass cattle impound possible.’”
Wooten said he learned from other agency supervisors that “Love had a ‘Kill Book’ as a ‘trophy,’ which he bragged about ‘getting three individuals in Utah to commit suicide,’ following a joint FBI-BLM investigation…”
Press reports at the time detailed how Love referred to the Bundys as “retards,” “red-necks,” “douche bags,” “tractor-face,” “idiots,” “in-bred,” and that he “sent photographs of his own feces and his girlfriends’ vagina to coworkers and subordinates. It was also reported by another BLM SAC that former BLM SAC Dan Love told him that there is “no way he gets more pu$$y [sic] than him.”
Now, thanks to a recently released FOIA request made by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch Inc., 252 new pages of the Wooten whistleblower document and testimony are public.
Called Wooten-II, it expands on allegations made in his 18-page memo detailing tactics used not only against Bundy Ranch protestors but also outlines the ongoing warrantless “military style” surveillance operations and “social media misinformation campaigns” being conducted by the Federal Government against U.S. Citizens.
Wooten details the events leading up to the “vast aggressive militaristic trespass cattle impound operation led by former BLM [Special Agent Dan Love].”
Wooten continues: ”an extensive social media BLM misinformation campaign directed by [Redacted] that seemed to have the effect of aggravating the public sentiment.”
Wooten says, “This misinformation campaign was similar to a military operation and intelligence gathering operation and was in regard to constitutionally protected 1st Amendment activities and akin to the ‘intelligence preparation of the battlefield.’ The FBI couldn’t specifically participate in intelligence gathering activities, but I remember after the 2014 Trespass Cattle Impound, but before the arrest operation, this intelligence gathering, generally over social media using undercover accounts and open monitoring was directed by [Love] and conducted by a newly formed BLM unit called the “Threat Mitigation Unit” (TMU) commanded also again by former BLM [Love]. This activity, which was evidently prohibited by FBI policy, was allowed and conducted in the absence of a specific BLM policy, in essence by using a directed loophole to conduct the electronic surveillance and monitoring.”
Independent journalist and podcaster Pete Santilli obtained corroborating documentation detailing the theft and killing of the Bundy cattle. One of these “misinformation campaigns” specifically targeted Cliven Bundy’s daughter Bailey to egg the Bundy family on to a confrontation with Federal Agents.
In a series of text messages by Santilli that were sent to Bailey between March and April 2014 by a Federal Agent named Alex Branson under the pseudonym “Robyn Kirkum.”
The text messages say: “My friends said they saw some of you guys out there at the ‘command Post’ or whatever the Feds call their camp site. I hope you guys were giving them some hell. This is crazy. You’d think they were taking down some heavily armed cult that was enslaving children and making drugs.”
Another message attempted to get Bailey to begin posting photos of an armored vehicle to rile up protestors: “Not sure if this sounds crazy, but my Vegas friend said the FBI has a large armored vehicle (he used some acronym I can’t remember) and that it is stationed at some site in the closed area. Be great to get a photo of that for the news and the people to see.”
The BLM established a “Threat Mitigation Unit” after the Bundy Ranch Standoff. And instead of getting demoted for going against the inter-agency threat assessment that clearly showed the Bundy family was not a threat, the Special Agent in Charge Dan Love got a promotion.
Wooten reveals, “In June of 2016, the BLM stood up the Threat Mitigation Unit (TMU) in response to a rise in threats against public land employees and their resources. The TMU mission was to provide strategic and operational support to the BLM, including threat analysis and mitigation strategies for the security and safety of BLM personnel, facilities, resources, visitors, and partners.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran an article spilling the beans titled BLM agent in charge during 2014 Bundy standoff gets new security job with the agency.
The article states: “The losing general at the ‘Battle of Bunkerville’ has been tapped to oversee security for U.S. Bureau of Land Management facilities nationwide.
As special agent in charge of Nevada and Utah, Dan Love made decisions about law enforcement tactics and security during the BLM 2014 standoff with rogue rancher Cliven Bundy in northeastern Clark County.
Now Love was to serve as the BLM special agent in charge of security and intelligence.
Wooten says in his document that he was concerned about “BLM ‘mission creep’ and the associated perception of the TMU (especially managed by this particular BLM SAC) to the public in reference to intelligence gathering on Constitutionally protected activities.”
He continues, “These intelligence type gathering activities were evidently controversial enough to be prohibited by other agencies to include the FBI and the BLM was operating outside of any approved policy on these activities.”
As it turns out, Wooten was right. Not long after the formation of this Threat Mitigation Unit, the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho began “monitoring jail calls between defendants and their wives […] without prosecutor or FBI consent for the apparent purpose of making fun of post arrest telephone calls between Idaho defendants/FBI targets.”
The Wooten document continues about how a “BLM ASAC described to me what amounted to a parabolic microphone covert/spy listening device and a bionic ear booster and amplifier.”
“The BLM ASAC indicated this old directional eavesdropping microphone and headset allowed for covert monitoring of individuals for compliance and law enforcement purposes in the field and around campsites and was purchased and used a good while ago by someone who had retired. I told the BLM ASAC that this activity would require a [warrant] since it is basically a search similar to a Title-III Wiretap since none of the parties in the conversation would have given consent, it seemed to me that the BLM ASAC didn’t understand this. It also seemed to me that although he has no doubt been trained and as a knowledge factor of his position, he should understand search, seizure and protected communications.”
By 2015, complaints about the conduct of Special Agent Dan Love reached a fever pitch within the Bureau of Land Management. Love’s questionable tactics at the Bundy Ranch Standoff and in earlier operations such as “Operation Cerberus Action,” which led to the suicide of a doctor named Jim Redd, began to raise eyebrows with many of his coworkers at BLM. Because of this, the OIG started several investigations into Love.
Wooten’s document says that Love was, “…directing subordinates to erase official government files in order to impede the efforts of rival civilian BLM employees in preparation for the ‘Burning Man’ Special Event, unlawfully removing evidence, bragging about the number of OIG and internal investigations on him and indicating that he is untouchable…”
In Wooten’s whistleblower document, several disturbing allegations say that Dan Love, “…committed fraud, waste and abuse and that he allegedly received kickbacks from the Burning Man organization, made unauthorized and wasteful expenditures, traveled unnecessarily and falsified his time and attendance. The complaint also alleged that the BLM SAC sought to abuse employees that do not agree with his actions. This case was assigned to the BLM OLES Director and determined to be unsubstantiated.”
Love’s questionable conduct regarding Burning Man included “ordering his subordinates to erase and otherwise destroy the records relating to the Burning Man Event in violation of Federal Records Laws in an effort to impede and obstruct the BLM Nevada State Office from being successful at managing the event once the BLM SAC was no longer in charge of it.”
The events at Burning Man eventually led to Love’s termination from the BLM.
It also seems this could have been the reason for an investigation into the Director of BLM’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security, William Woody, who found that allegations against Love were “unsubstantiated.”
Woody was removed from his post in 2018 following an ethics violation after the OIGl, concluded he was “using a government-owned vehicle without proper authorization.”
Wooten’s document says that Woody “favored” former Love, and when Wooten tried to lodge complaints about the conduct of Special Agent Love, he was “…informed by the BLM Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Chief that any issues that had anything to do with a particular favored BLM SAC [Love], the BLM OLES Director [Woody] looked at himself instead of OPR. The OPR Chief told me he was shut out of those types of inquiries. […] I also noted that these types of issues I discovered apparently weren’t properly investigated as required. The bad joke I heard around the office was that the BLM SAC knew where the BLM OLES Director had buried the prostitutes body and that is why the BLM OLES Director protects him.”
Elsewhere, Wooten reveals that Love had, “…violated ethics rules in reference to the Nevada Burning Man Event in 2015 and a hiring process for a friend. The investigation also noted that it was reported that the ELM SAC stated that “he owned” the ELM OLES Director and as a result no action could be taken against him. The investigation further stated that it was reported the ELM SAC said that ‘You know, if you don’t side with me, grenades are going to go off and you’ll get hit’ and the ELM SAC bragged about ruining the reputation of a subordinate and indicated to another subordinate that the ELM SAC would ruin the career of that subordinate if she did anything against him.”
The new 252-page “Wooten-II” document reveals in that the trials against the Bundy family and their supporters in Nevada were based on lies, that the government “relied on factually incorrect talking points and on (or about) February 15, 2017, misrepresented the case facts about government snipers during the trial.”
One of those points is the fact that the FBI and BLM did have snipers training their weapons on civilians at the standoff, saying, “The investigation indicated that there was at least one school trained Federal Sniper equipped with a scoped/magnified optic bolt action precision rifle, another Federal Officer equipped with a scoped/magnified optic large frame (308 caliber) AR style rifle, and many officers that utilized magnified optics with long range graduated reticles (out to 1,000 meters-approximately 500 meters on issued rifles depending on environmental conditions) on standard law enforcement issued AR (223 caliber/5.56mm) and that often officers were in ‘over watch’ positions. Additionally, the investigation also indicated the possibility that the FBI and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had law enforcement snipers/designated marksmen on hand for possible deployment.”
The document reveals that multiple agencies recommended against getting involved in a confrontation with the Bundy family, instead opting for a “soft impound” of the Bundy cattle, but that BLM OLES Director Woody stated, “by not taking strong and affirmative action we will just embolden those who are opposed to our actions and things will likely escalate.”
Following the lead of Woody, Love said in an email that “although a passive approach may have the desired effect, it may also be considered a sign of weakness or ordered constraint which may embolden one or more members of those we are confronting. That’s not the kind of message we want to send.”
Ultimately, the Wooten document paints a picture of a multi-agency criminal conspiracy to spy on law-abiding Americans and commit crimes and fraud in the courts.
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