Rebecca Weiner, Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism, NYPD. Photo: The Grayzone/File photo.
By Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal ¡ May 2, 2024
Rebecca Weiner is a Columbia U. professor who also serves as intelligence director of the NYPD. Mayor Eric Adams credits her with spying on anti-genocide student protesters and directing the militarized raid that dislodged them from campus.
The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israelâs genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the schoolâs own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.
During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.
âShe was the one that was monitoring the situation,â Adams explained, adding that the crackdown was carried out after âshe was able to â her team was able to conduct an investigation.â
Congratulations to SIPA Adjunct Professor Rebecca Weiner, who was recently appointed as Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism of the NYPD by @NYPDPC Edward Caban.https://t.co/DqvBZIaFTJ pic.twitter.com/zMOFrOLnGY
— Columbia | SIPA (@ColumbiaSIPA) July 24, 2023
On April 30, dozens of police in riot gear descended on Columbiaâs Hamilton Hall after students seized the building earlier in the day, citing a request from the administration. Several hours later, officers used a heavily armored NYPD BearCat vehicle to enter the building through the window on the second floor and arrested those inside, while another team swept up members of the encampment outside.
Starting on April 17, students at Columbia escalated their ongoing protest against Israelâs genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. They encamped on school grounds, stating their refusal to leave until the university fully divested from its Israeli-related investments. That protest model has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Just a few hundred meters from the Gaza protest encampment, Weiner maintained an office at Columbiaâs School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an âAdjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairsâ who simultaneously serves as the âcivilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Departmentâs Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau.â
In that role, according to SIPA, Weiner âdevelops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.â
The NYPDâs Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israelâs security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureauâs offices in Israel and New York.
*Tucson
— Bahar Ostadan (@BaharOstadan) January 31, 2024
A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called âDemographics Unitâ operated secretly within the NYPDâs Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area, and even on students at campuses outside the state who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA, which has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the senior ranks of the NYPDâs intelligence division.
The âDemographics Unitâ appears to have been inspired by Israeli intelligence as well. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to âmap the cityâs human terrainâ through a program âmodeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.â
A lawyer by training, Weiner oversaw negotiations between the NYPD and lawyers for local Muslims who had their civil liberties violated by its âDemographics Unit.â
Weiner is the granddaughter of Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish Jewish mathematician who helped conceive the hydrogen bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. âIâm very proud of that legacy,â Weiner said of her grandfatherâs work upon being appointed as NYPD intelligence chief.
US Police Enter Columbia University to Clear Pro-Palestinian Protesters
NYPD/Columbiaâs Weiner: militarized raid was response to student ârhetoric associated with terrorism,â Tiktok posts
During the NYPDâs triumphant May 1 post-raid press conference, Weiner blamed âoutside agitatorsâ for triggering the military-style police crackdown at Columbia. However, she refused to name the outsiders supposedly on the scene.
According to Weiner, the police response was not necessitated by any criminal behavior, but by the radical language and symbols of the students. âThis is not about students expressing ideas,â she claimed. The real problem, Weiner maintained, was the alleged âchange in tacticsâ by protesters, which she said represented âa normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism.â
Rebecca Weiner, head of the NYPD "counter-terrorism" bureau, identifies one of the threats that supposedly necessitated the Columbia raid: "Mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with Terrorism." No question this is recasting political speech as "Terrorism." She also blames TikTok pic.twitter.com/nqz5NuetPu
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 1, 2024
Proof of this dynamic, Weiner suggested, could be seen in what she claimed was the âcommonâ trend of wearing of âheadbands associated with foreign terrorist organizationsâ on college campuses; the âreissuing of Osama Bin Ladenâs 2002 letter to Americaâ on TikTok; and a brief visit to Columbia by Nahla Al-Arian, who Weiner incorrectly described as âthe wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism.â
âThatâs not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia,â Weiner commented.
Nahlaâs husband, Palestinian academic Sami Al-Arian, had been indicted on flimsy terrorism charges in 2003, but a jury refused to convict him. Nevertheless, her brief stop at the Columbia encampment â where she says she did not even interact with any demonstrators â was cited by Adams during three separate media engagements to justify the police repression.
CNNâs @thelauracoates just smeared @SamiAlArian, whose wife apparently visited the Columbia encampment a few days ago in solidarity, as a âconvicted terrorist.â This is a malicious lie.
He was never convicted of terrorism. He was charged in a bogus case under the Patriot Act.⌠pic.twitter.com/mi9CbacGcS
— Aaron MatĂŠ (@aaronjmate) May 1, 2024
Throughout the press conference, Mayor Adams repeatedly cast the cityâs crackdown on student speech as the only possible solution to ongoing campus encampments, citing undefined threats to the minds of impressionable youth.
âThere is a movement to radicalize young people, and Iâm not gonna wait until itâs done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,â Adams proclaimed.
âYoung people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children,â he insisted, without specifying. âAnd Iâm not gonna allow that to happen as the mayor of the city of New York.â
After angrily proclaiming that his âuncle died defending this country,â Adams declared: âItâs despicable that schools will allow another countryâs flag to fly in our country.â
However, as an enthusiastic participant in New York Cityâs annual Celebrate Israel parade, Adams is no stranger to waving another countryâs flag.
Wyatt Reed
Wyatt Reed is a Blacksburg, Virginia-based writer and activist who spent several years in Latin America.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath,The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on Americaâs state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
