Starting to Smell a Lot Like Tyranny

Five years ago, did you think you would ever read stories like this in America?

[T]he Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. [Audrey] Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

They had a search warrant allowing them to look for weapons and ammo, because her husband Paul Flanagan is not allowed to possess firearms, evidently because he was found guilty of resisting arrest back in 1986.

But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said. …

On Thursday, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police declined to address any specifics about the search.

Under Obama, this is known as transparency.

The raid was conducted at 4:30 a.m. by at least seven officers dressed in full body armor.

After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.

Hudson said that investigator, Miguel Bosch, identified himself as a former air marshal official.

But it wasn’t until a month later, on Sept. 10, that Hudson was informed by Bosch that five files including her handwritten and typed notes from interviews with numerous confidential sources and other documents had been taken during the raid. …

She said she asked Bosch why they took the files. He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was “legitimate” for her to have them.

“‘Legitimate’ for me to have my own notes?” she said incredulously on Wednesday.

Asked how many sources she thinks may have been exposed, Hudson said: “A lot. More than one. There were a lot of names in those files.”

“This guy basically came in here and took my anonymous sources and turned them over – took my whistle-blowers – and turned it over to the agency they were blowing the whistle on,” Hudson said. “And these guys still work there.”

That is how government employees learn not to talk to the press without official permission in the sort of country this is turning into.

On tips from Sean C, Bob Roberts, FTCS, and Matt L. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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