Vahid Brown was or is an FBI instructor at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, who has recently been attempting to integrate himself into radical and activist scenes in Portland. As an instructor for the CTC’s FBI counter-terrorism training program, he designed curricula on Islamist terrorism and taught regular courses both at the FBI Academy and for Joint Terrorism Task Force training events at FBI Field Offices throughout the United States.
According to FOIA records obtained by the ACLU, it is clear that Vahid was training new FBI recruits for the CTC from 2008-2010. His classes included: Origins of Islam, Islam and Militancy, Modern Jihadist Groups, Islamic Terrorism and the Internet, How Terror Networks Use the Internet, and Radicalization.
Vahid Brown attended Reed College in Portland from 2003 – 2006, and recently has been attempting to re-integrate himself into radical and activist scenes in Portland. He portrays himself as “an activist and woodland creature who has been reading poetry at Portland coffeehouses, ballrooms, and basement bars for nearly twenty years.”
Vahid Brown has worked for the FBI, and as such should be thoroughly unwelcome among anarchists, radicals, and activists. Though his area of expertise is Islamic militancy rather than anarchism, he is still a threat and should not be tolerated, just like any other FBI employee, agent, informant, infiltrator, or cop who attempts to become friendly with radicals.
An agent of the state who has the same subcultural interests as you is still an agent of the state.
An agent of the state who calls himself an activist is still an agent of the state.
An agent of the state who works to destroy the lives of people who aren’t necessarily anarchists is still an agent of the state.
Sources:
Haqqani Network’s Reign Of Terror On Afghanistan
Committee Against Political Repression 
Reblogged this on bayareaintifada.
You clearly don’t have any personal knowledge to support the distrust you are trying to spread. A person who has worked to provide accurate, circumspect, and essential EDUCATION to government agencies so that perhaps they will not blunder around as ignorant as they might have otherwise been is not an agent of the state, any more than a professor at a public university would be. His involvement in the activist community is more sincere than many people you might welcome into your circle. His dedication to creating a better world is to be applauded, and attempting to alienate him from a meaningful movement where he is doing good shows your own ignorance and spite. Isn’t activism about working toward the kind of world you want to live in? A person who would spew this b.s. is not a representative of the world I want to live in.
Nice set of truisms there about “agents of the state.” By reducing people to labels and groups you commit the same error as the government, who would rather judge people as groups than as individual, unique human beings. This man may be an FBI infiltrator. He may be a spy. On the other hand, he may be a man who worked for the FBI because he honestly dislikes Islamic terrorism, but who still shares many of your views (obviously not the view that he is an FBI spy!) You also equate anarchists, radicals, and even activists, even though these are three very different beasts. We all are intimately entwined with state interests. It does no one any credit, least of all yourself, to condemn people for narrows aspects of their personality out of little or no knowledge. Worse still, you encourage others to shun this man for his views, a classic weapon of state interests. If, based on this action alone, I were to judge you a probable agent of the state, you would probably be offended. So go on. Get offended.
any one who pays taxes is an agent of the state, you incompetent fool.
Vahid Brown’s legal name is Jacob Brown. He is a doctoral student at Princeton in NJ.
Links:
http://www.reed.edu/commencement/highlights/2008/grads.html – Jacob Vahid Brown graduated from Reed in 2008.
http://books.google.com/books?id=8TWhiohOrcUC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=jacob+vahid+brown&source=bl&ots=bYKUGeCr_v&sig=ebsSaBtcDzZ9DaoFdk1ybYvtihc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VAxUUoHvKYWz4APp7ICYCg&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=jacob%20vahid%20brown&f=false
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