OWS Snitch is Partner in Private Security Firm with Busted Secret Service Agent

A business partner of the self-appointed spy who stole hundreds of Occupy Wall Street emails last month and posted them online was convicted of using excessive force as a Secret Service agent, court records show, and sentenced to six months incarceration in a halfway house.

Kevin Schatzle lists himself as one of two managing partners at Provide Security, a private intelligence and security firm whose Web site listed no physical address. His co-managing partner is Thomas Ryan, who last month infiltrated OWS and pilfered protesters’ e-mails and social network postings, which he claimed showed the movement’s plans for violence.

Provide Security boasts that its “associates are handpicked from the ranks of highly trained and experienced former agents of the US Secret Service, members of U.S. Special Forces, Global Intelligence Agencies and other premier law enforcement organizations.”


Ryan, who also claims that he “functioned as a security instructor for US Army INSCOM, USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM and several other military and government agencies,” says he turned the protesters’ e-mails over to the FBI and corporate security officers.

INSCOM is the US Army's Intelligence and Security Command. USNORTHCOM, set up after the 9/11 attacks, is responsible for security in the continental United States. SOUTHCOM covers Latin America.

Ryan also posted the e-mails on the Big Government.com Web site run by right-wing publisher/agitator Andrew Breitbart.

According to court records, Ryan’s business partner Schatzle, who also claims an extensive law enforcement background, was driving a Secret Service vehicle in the protective detail of presidential candidate Al Gore in 1988 when a New York pedestrian swore at him after nearly being sideswiped.

Schatzle stopped, got out and viciously beat the man, according to court records.

“Schatzle placed his hand on [Christopher] Gorayeb's shoulder and spun him around. Schatzle then punched Gorayeb in the face and, according to Gorayeb, broke his nose. He kicked Gorayeb repeatedly and delivered a knee to his groin with such power that, according to one witness, Gorayeb was thrust off the ground,” according to the court’s summary.

The court continued:

“After Gorayeb fell to the ground, Schatzle continued to punch and kick him. Finally, Schatzle handcuffed Gorayeb, by then well-bloodied, and informed him that he was under arrest.”

Schatzle’s conviction was upheld on appeal in U.S. District Court in New York 1990. He was sentenced to “a six-month term of imprisonment to be served at a halfway house, a three-year term of probation, and a $2,000 fine.”

Schatzle, understandably, omits any mention of his 23-year-old assault conviction in his several online resumes.

In one of them, he does claim to have "over three years of decorated New York City Police Department service [and to have] worked for one and one-half years with the FBI’s original Bank Robbery and Terrorist Task Force."

Schatzle also says that “for several years after 9/11” he “served as chairman of the Counter Terrorism Task Force - Infrastructure Advisory Group of the Morris County New Jersey Prosecutor’s Office.”

Schatzle also claims to have earned an M.A. and Ph.D degrees (in education) from Seton Hall University between 1998 and 2003.

But he lists no dates for his employment with the Secret Service or other law enforcement agencies, or for a wide variety of corporate consultancies that he claims.

Schatzle, whose arrest record was first reported Tuesday by a rudimentary and anonymous web site, Current Events Inquiry, did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiry asking whether he was currently serving as a consultant to any federal or local government law enforcement agencies.