Wayne Masden Report
February 4/5/6, 2006 --
Former NSA analyst Kenneth Ford was accepted into a fast track internship program at NSA in November 2002. A former White House Secret Service officer, Ford, a young African American with three college degrees, was what NSA wanted as a future senior executive at America's signals intelligence agency. That was until Ford's first internship assignment brought him face-to-face with what the Bush administration was cooking up for Iraq. After having transferred from NSA's Information Assurance X72 branch to start his internship in the Signals Intelligence Division (SID), Ford found himself assigned to the all-important "Iraqi shop," the branch responsible for analyzing communication intercepts of Iraqi military, civilian government, diplomatic, and commercial traffic for signs of weapons of mass destruction activity or proliferation.
In April 2003, Ford, a GS-9 who had been learning about the secretive world of signals intelligence through classroom and on-the-job training, was assigned the task of scouring the databases of intercepts, looking for anything that might indicate the presence of WMDs. The White House was clearly nervous about its earlier claims that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. By May 2003, with U.S. forces in Iraq, it was clear that there were no stockpiles of WMDs as had been claimed by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, among others in the administration. Ambassador Joseph Wilson visited Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium in that country. Wilson discovered the claims were false. In March, Cheney, not content with Wilson's findings in his reports to the CIA and State Department, stated on Meet the Press that Saddam was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons."
But those weapons were never found. The Bush administration's WMD claims, the original basis for invading Iraq, were discovered to have been without merit. However, Cheney and his staff, including indicted Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby engaged in what the Vice President called a "work up" on Joe Wilson. That "work up" also saw Wilson's wife, a covert CIA officer who worked on WMD proliferation issues, outed by the White House along with her entire Brewster Jennings & Associates cover company network.
It was clear that the neo-cons conducted a "slash and burn" campaign against those in the intelligence community who did not agree with the contention that Iraq possessed WMDs. In May 2003, Ford was directed to draft an intelligence report on what Iraqi SIGINT revealed about WMDs. His report stated that while Iraqi intercepts that contained the words "diode oscillators" could have had a military use and, more remotely, could have been used along with detonators, there were many other non-military uses for such devices. Ford also spoke to an NSA expert on counter-proliferation about the Iraqi WMD claims. In fact, Ford was a key liaison between the Iraqi shop and the Counter-proliferation branch at NSA. NSA's counter-proliferation expert agreed that the oscillators mentioned in the Iraqi intercepts had many uses other than being components for nuclear weapons. Ford's report with his findings, along with his name as the original drafter, went up the chain of command, was reviewed by senior NSA staff, and ultimately found its way to the office of Vice President Cheney. It was at that point in time Ford became a target for an administration that was hell bent on purging every level of the U.S. intelligence community of anyone who in the least way showed any degree of independence from the Bush administration's party line.
Something strange occurred within the Iraqi shop in March 2003, the same month the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. There was a sudden influx of private contractor linguists into the branch. After he took over as NSA Director in 1999, Gen. Michael Hayden began the process of contracting out NSA support jobs to contractors but operational responsibilities were to have been maintained by career NSA civilians. However, in the case of the Iraqi shop, contractors with Arabic and Kurdish linguistic abilities arrived on the scene. NSA sources report that the contractors were to cook SIGINT analysis on Iraq in the same manner that other WMD intelligence on Iraq had been doctored, on Cheney's orders, by the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Geo-spatial-Intelligence Agency.
Without his knowledge, the Bush administration laid an insidious trap for Ford -- a trap that would end his hopes of a professional career at NSA and eventually land him into a court room facing trumped up charges of illegally removing two boxes of classified documents in broad daylight from a well guarded building within the NSA campus at Fort Meade, Maryland. The Florida informant, Tucker, reportedly "tipped" the FBI and NSA to the presence of classified documents in Ford's home. In fact, it was Tucker who brought one classified document into Ford's home, given to her by Thompson, that was later used as an excuse for the FBI and NSA agents to enter Ford's home on January 11, 2004. Ford was detained in his home for seven hours, not permitted to drink any water, was denied bathroom privileges, witnessed his home being ransacked by FBI and NSA agents, and was then forced by Thompson to sign a confession without the presence of any other witness. Ford, fearful for his life, wrote a statement which was then supplemented by an additional statement written by Thompson. Later, the FBI claimed it seized two boxes of classified documents in Ford's home, even though no photos were taken of the boxes or other documents purported by the FBI and NSA agents to have been found in the house. For two days, Thompson waited in a car parked outside Ford's home to wait for the proper time for his informant Tucker to plant the one classified document that would begin the frame up. Sources report that Thompson has since been transferred by the FBI to Indiana.
Ford wrote in a letter to his attorney that during his seven hour ordeal with the FBI and NSA agents ransacking his home, "people were walking around my home and me as if I were 'a piece of crap.' The phone was ringing continuously and I was not allowed to answer it. Thoughts were going around my head of them shooting and killing me. They could always have said I resisted them. I was scared." For two of the seven hours, the agents were in Ford's home without a search warrant and there is evidence from phone records of Thompson's informant Tucker that the FBI entered Ford's home previously in a "sneak and peek" operation to place a wiretap on Ford's telephone.
The efforts to which the Bush administration went to frame Ford point to the importance the White House gave to making examples. A number of Justice Department, FBI, NSA, and private contractor personnel were tasked with setting up Ford, who never had so much as a speeding ticket. For someone with such a clean record, Ford had to be charged with something spectacular. The trouble began in earnest in November 2003 after Ford was approached by FBI confidential informant Tucker who misrepresented herself as a successful lawyer. Ford then received a threatening e-mail on November 25, which he dutifully reported to NSA Security only to be told not to worry about it. The email said that his security clearance should be "revoke."
According to sources close to the case, the agents and officials tasked by senior U.S. government officials to carry out the frame up of Ford were FBI Special Agents Michael Thompson and Frederic Marsh; NSA Security Counterintelligence Agent John McCaslin (who were all part of the group that planted a single classified document inside Ford's home); "Tonya Tucker," (aka Tonya Stewart) a Florida confidential informant with a long rap sheet, many aliases, and apparently previously known to Thompson in Florida; Kathleen "M," Ford's branch chief at the Iraqi shop who had custody of the classified materials Ford was later charged with taking home; officials of Northrop Grumman, an NSA contractor who agreed in December 2003 to hire Ford after an NSA-sponsored job fair, but who later were involved in the frame up by stating that Ford had "confessed" to them; Maryclaire Rourke, the Justice Department's Branch Chief for Counterintelligence, and David I. Salem, the Assistant U.S. Attorney for Maryland. Salem and Rourke worked together to keep the Ford case alive. McCaslin alleged that two training course materials containing PowerPoint slides from www.navigators.com were classified NSA documents. As part of Ford's internship program, he attended the course to get up to speed on Voice over IP (VOIP) technology. Part of the tasking for NSA's Iraqi shop was to listen in on Iraqi communications using the Internet-based technology.
Tucker, who had no visible means of support and who used a company ID badge from Bearing Point, was in touch with NSA long before she met Ford. Her phone records indicate several calls to NSA, identified in the phone records as the "Waterloo, Maryland" exchange. "Waterloo" is a cover term used by the phone companies for NSA. There were several calls to "Waterloo" numbers prior to and after Ford's arrest. On January 8, 2004, just prior to Ford's arrest, Tucker placed calls to phone number, 410 782 1000, registered to an unidentified customer in Elkridge, Maryland, in the vicinity of NSA headquarters. On January 9, Tucker placed seven calls to TASC, an intelligence agency contractor in Fairfax, Virginia. After Ford's arrest, on January 12, Tucker made several calls to the "Waterloo" (NSA) number, 410 854 6466, and additional calls were made to TASC in Herndon, Virginia. Up until January 31, 2004, Tucker continued to make calls to unidentified government phone numbers in Maryland. Tucker was pre-briefed to tell the FBI that Ford planned to sell classified documents to an unknown foreign diplomat at a pre-arranged meeting at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
Although Tucker had an extensive rap sheet, she appeared to have a close working relationship with a number of U.S. intelligence agencies and contractors. She also had three years of her seven-year Florida parole status waived so that she could travel to Washington, DC to sting Ford. Tucker had been convicted of grand theft, illegal possession of a credit card, petit theft, forgery, and credit card fraud.
Salem, a resident of Columbia, Maryland, a town that is a stone's throw from NSA, originally succeeded in having Federal Judge Alexander Williams removed from the Ford case. Williams was problematic for the Bush administration. As an African American, it was feared Williams would be sympathetic to Ford. Salem also threatened to bring espionage charges against Ford's private attorney who had been granted a Top Secret/Special Background Investigation clearance for the case. The defense attorney was pressured to withdraw from the case. When he refused, Salem took the low road of threatening him with indictment for a security breach. There were also questions concerning the relationship between Salem and Ford's original attorney, Federal Public Defender for the Southern Division of Maryland, John Chamble. Salem had originally attempted to add a charge of aiding and abetting against Ford. The charge was that Ford aided and abetted a known criminal, Tonya Tucker, in furtherance of her crimes. However, since Tucker was the chief government informant, Salem apparently decided that bringing up Tucker's role would expose the activities of FBI agent Thompson and other government functionaries in the affair. In addition, Thompson was coached by Salem to studiously avoid any mention of Ford's work in the Iraqi shop. Thompson only mentioned Ford's work in X72 and at the Technical Exploitation Center (TEC), the unit to which Ford was transferred after his internship in the Iraqi shop. However, Thompson was coached by Salem to studiously avoid any mention of the Iraqi shop, where the classified "evidence" used against Ford originated.
Salem's case further began to crumble after U.S. Magistrate Judge Jillyn Schultz, on August 25, 2004, ordered that Ford "be permitted to secure employment in a classified capacity" with the caveat that "employer must be notified of pending charges." After Ford began a job with Lockheed Martin, he explained the arrest on his security questionnaire and stated it was based on false charges. With the Bush administration seeking to ruin him financially and jail him, Ford did not last long at Lockheed. One of Salem's charges was that Ford "lied" on his Lockheed security questionnaire, a felony.
It took Salem two years to bring Ford to trial, a clear violation of the Speedy Trial Act. Apparently, when the neo-cons want to string out a prosecution phase because of the lack of a case, they are successful as they were in the case of Ford. However, when it serves their interest to delay a defense trial, as they have done in the case of Scooter Libby, they are successful as well. In any case, the neo-cons have compromised the U.S. justice system.
Salem also successfully had Ford's pre-trial officer removed from the case after she showed sympathy with Ford's plight. Salem's case appeared shattered on May 16, 2005 when U.S. Judge Peter Messitte dismissed the two Ford indictments of unauthorized possession of national defense information and making a false statement, without prejudice. The "without prejudice" caveat was key. Salem was able to bring back the indictment before the same judge just one week later. Salem's case was slipping away but the higher ups in the Bush administration expected results. And results they would get.
As a result of Salem's serious prosecutorial misconduct, during Ford's November 2005, witness after witness for the government perjured themselves without fear of recrimination. The jury was salted with at least one tainted member.
One member of the federal jury that convicted Ford on one count each of retaining classified material and lying on a security questionnaire for a Federal contractor turned out to have been a one-time program manager for Northrop Grumman, an NSA contractor. That fact should have disqualified him from the jury, however, it is clear that jury intimidation and tampering was also ordered up by the Bush administration.
Salem succeeded in getting his conviction of Ford last November. Ford faces sentencing on March 1 at the US Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland and up to 15 years in prison. However, Salem and his associates must now face their own investigation, one that is focused on prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, and criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights of a U.S. citizen. After the neo-cons seized control of the United States in 2001, what happened to Ford could happen to any U.S. citizen.
For 2 days, the FBI sat in a car parked on a corner (left) in the street outside Ford's home (right) waiting for the right moment to enter the home and plant the "evidence." How many neighborhoods in our country does this resemble? Does it look like your community?
Link Here
Former NSA analyst Kenneth Ford was accepted into a fast track internship program at NSA in November 2002. A former White House Secret Service officer, Ford, a young African American with three college degrees, was what NSA wanted as a future senior executive at America's signals intelligence agency. That was until Ford's first internship assignment brought him face-to-face with what the Bush administration was cooking up for Iraq. After having transferred from NSA's Information Assurance X72 branch to start his internship in the Signals Intelligence Division (SID), Ford found himself assigned to the all-important "Iraqi shop," the branch responsible for analyzing communication intercepts of Iraqi military, civilian government, diplomatic, and commercial traffic for signs of weapons of mass destruction activity or proliferation.
In April 2003, Ford, a GS-9 who had been learning about the secretive world of signals intelligence through classroom and on-the-job training, was assigned the task of scouring the databases of intercepts, looking for anything that might indicate the presence of WMDs. The White House was clearly nervous about its earlier claims that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. By May 2003, with U.S. forces in Iraq, it was clear that there were no stockpiles of WMDs as had been claimed by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, among others in the administration. Ambassador Joseph Wilson visited Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium in that country. Wilson discovered the claims were false. In March, Cheney, not content with Wilson's findings in his reports to the CIA and State Department, stated on Meet the Press that Saddam was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons."
But those weapons were never found. The Bush administration's WMD claims, the original basis for invading Iraq, were discovered to have been without merit. However, Cheney and his staff, including indicted Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby engaged in what the Vice President called a "work up" on Joe Wilson. That "work up" also saw Wilson's wife, a covert CIA officer who worked on WMD proliferation issues, outed by the White House along with her entire Brewster Jennings & Associates cover company network.
It was clear that the neo-cons conducted a "slash and burn" campaign against those in the intelligence community who did not agree with the contention that Iraq possessed WMDs. In May 2003, Ford was directed to draft an intelligence report on what Iraqi SIGINT revealed about WMDs. His report stated that while Iraqi intercepts that contained the words "diode oscillators" could have had a military use and, more remotely, could have been used along with detonators, there were many other non-military uses for such devices. Ford also spoke to an NSA expert on counter-proliferation about the Iraqi WMD claims. In fact, Ford was a key liaison between the Iraqi shop and the Counter-proliferation branch at NSA. NSA's counter-proliferation expert agreed that the oscillators mentioned in the Iraqi intercepts had many uses other than being components for nuclear weapons. Ford's report with his findings, along with his name as the original drafter, went up the chain of command, was reviewed by senior NSA staff, and ultimately found its way to the office of Vice President Cheney. It was at that point in time Ford became a target for an administration that was hell bent on purging every level of the U.S. intelligence community of anyone who in the least way showed any degree of independence from the Bush administration's party line.
Something strange occurred within the Iraqi shop in March 2003, the same month the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. There was a sudden influx of private contractor linguists into the branch. After he took over as NSA Director in 1999, Gen. Michael Hayden began the process of contracting out NSA support jobs to contractors but operational responsibilities were to have been maintained by career NSA civilians. However, in the case of the Iraqi shop, contractors with Arabic and Kurdish linguistic abilities arrived on the scene. NSA sources report that the contractors were to cook SIGINT analysis on Iraq in the same manner that other WMD intelligence on Iraq had been doctored, on Cheney's orders, by the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Geo-spatial-Intelligence Agency.
Without his knowledge, the Bush administration laid an insidious trap for Ford -- a trap that would end his hopes of a professional career at NSA and eventually land him into a court room facing trumped up charges of illegally removing two boxes of classified documents in broad daylight from a well guarded building within the NSA campus at Fort Meade, Maryland. The Florida informant, Tucker, reportedly "tipped" the FBI and NSA to the presence of classified documents in Ford's home. In fact, it was Tucker who brought one classified document into Ford's home, given to her by Thompson, that was later used as an excuse for the FBI and NSA agents to enter Ford's home on January 11, 2004. Ford was detained in his home for seven hours, not permitted to drink any water, was denied bathroom privileges, witnessed his home being ransacked by FBI and NSA agents, and was then forced by Thompson to sign a confession without the presence of any other witness. Ford, fearful for his life, wrote a statement which was then supplemented by an additional statement written by Thompson. Later, the FBI claimed it seized two boxes of classified documents in Ford's home, even though no photos were taken of the boxes or other documents purported by the FBI and NSA agents to have been found in the house. For two days, Thompson waited in a car parked outside Ford's home to wait for the proper time for his informant Tucker to plant the one classified document that would begin the frame up. Sources report that Thompson has since been transferred by the FBI to Indiana.
Ford wrote in a letter to his attorney that during his seven hour ordeal with the FBI and NSA agents ransacking his home, "people were walking around my home and me as if I were 'a piece of crap.' The phone was ringing continuously and I was not allowed to answer it. Thoughts were going around my head of them shooting and killing me. They could always have said I resisted them. I was scared." For two of the seven hours, the agents were in Ford's home without a search warrant and there is evidence from phone records of Thompson's informant Tucker that the FBI entered Ford's home previously in a "sneak and peek" operation to place a wiretap on Ford's telephone.
The efforts to which the Bush administration went to frame Ford point to the importance the White House gave to making examples. A number of Justice Department, FBI, NSA, and private contractor personnel were tasked with setting up Ford, who never had so much as a speeding ticket. For someone with such a clean record, Ford had to be charged with something spectacular. The trouble began in earnest in November 2003 after Ford was approached by FBI confidential informant Tucker who misrepresented herself as a successful lawyer. Ford then received a threatening e-mail on November 25, which he dutifully reported to NSA Security only to be told not to worry about it. The email said that his security clearance should be "revoke."
According to sources close to the case, the agents and officials tasked by senior U.S. government officials to carry out the frame up of Ford were FBI Special Agents Michael Thompson and Frederic Marsh; NSA Security Counterintelligence Agent John McCaslin (who were all part of the group that planted a single classified document inside Ford's home); "Tonya Tucker," (aka Tonya Stewart) a Florida confidential informant with a long rap sheet, many aliases, and apparently previously known to Thompson in Florida; Kathleen "M," Ford's branch chief at the Iraqi shop who had custody of the classified materials Ford was later charged with taking home; officials of Northrop Grumman, an NSA contractor who agreed in December 2003 to hire Ford after an NSA-sponsored job fair, but who later were involved in the frame up by stating that Ford had "confessed" to them; Maryclaire Rourke, the Justice Department's Branch Chief for Counterintelligence, and David I. Salem, the Assistant U.S. Attorney for Maryland. Salem and Rourke worked together to keep the Ford case alive. McCaslin alleged that two training course materials containing PowerPoint slides from www.navigators.com were classified NSA documents. As part of Ford's internship program, he attended the course to get up to speed on Voice over IP (VOIP) technology. Part of the tasking for NSA's Iraqi shop was to listen in on Iraqi communications using the Internet-based technology.
Tucker, who had no visible means of support and who used a company ID badge from Bearing Point, was in touch with NSA long before she met Ford. Her phone records indicate several calls to NSA, identified in the phone records as the "Waterloo, Maryland" exchange. "Waterloo" is a cover term used by the phone companies for NSA. There were several calls to "Waterloo" numbers prior to and after Ford's arrest. On January 8, 2004, just prior to Ford's arrest, Tucker placed calls to phone number, 410 782 1000, registered to an unidentified customer in Elkridge, Maryland, in the vicinity of NSA headquarters. On January 9, Tucker placed seven calls to TASC, an intelligence agency contractor in Fairfax, Virginia. After Ford's arrest, on January 12, Tucker made several calls to the "Waterloo" (NSA) number, 410 854 6466, and additional calls were made to TASC in Herndon, Virginia. Up until January 31, 2004, Tucker continued to make calls to unidentified government phone numbers in Maryland. Tucker was pre-briefed to tell the FBI that Ford planned to sell classified documents to an unknown foreign diplomat at a pre-arranged meeting at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
Although Tucker had an extensive rap sheet, she appeared to have a close working relationship with a number of U.S. intelligence agencies and contractors. She also had three years of her seven-year Florida parole status waived so that she could travel to Washington, DC to sting Ford. Tucker had been convicted of grand theft, illegal possession of a credit card, petit theft, forgery, and credit card fraud.
Salem, a resident of Columbia, Maryland, a town that is a stone's throw from NSA, originally succeeded in having Federal Judge Alexander Williams removed from the Ford case. Williams was problematic for the Bush administration. As an African American, it was feared Williams would be sympathetic to Ford. Salem also threatened to bring espionage charges against Ford's private attorney who had been granted a Top Secret/Special Background Investigation clearance for the case. The defense attorney was pressured to withdraw from the case. When he refused, Salem took the low road of threatening him with indictment for a security breach. There were also questions concerning the relationship between Salem and Ford's original attorney, Federal Public Defender for the Southern Division of Maryland, John Chamble. Salem had originally attempted to add a charge of aiding and abetting against Ford. The charge was that Ford aided and abetted a known criminal, Tonya Tucker, in furtherance of her crimes. However, since Tucker was the chief government informant, Salem apparently decided that bringing up Tucker's role would expose the activities of FBI agent Thompson and other government functionaries in the affair. In addition, Thompson was coached by Salem to studiously avoid any mention of Ford's work in the Iraqi shop. Thompson only mentioned Ford's work in X72 and at the Technical Exploitation Center (TEC), the unit to which Ford was transferred after his internship in the Iraqi shop. However, Thompson was coached by Salem to studiously avoid any mention of the Iraqi shop, where the classified "evidence" used against Ford originated.
Salem's case further began to crumble after U.S. Magistrate Judge Jillyn Schultz, on August 25, 2004, ordered that Ford "be permitted to secure employment in a classified capacity" with the caveat that "employer must be notified of pending charges." After Ford began a job with Lockheed Martin, he explained the arrest on his security questionnaire and stated it was based on false charges. With the Bush administration seeking to ruin him financially and jail him, Ford did not last long at Lockheed. One of Salem's charges was that Ford "lied" on his Lockheed security questionnaire, a felony.
It took Salem two years to bring Ford to trial, a clear violation of the Speedy Trial Act. Apparently, when the neo-cons want to string out a prosecution phase because of the lack of a case, they are successful as they were in the case of Ford. However, when it serves their interest to delay a defense trial, as they have done in the case of Scooter Libby, they are successful as well. In any case, the neo-cons have compromised the U.S. justice system.
Salem also successfully had Ford's pre-trial officer removed from the case after she showed sympathy with Ford's plight. Salem's case appeared shattered on May 16, 2005 when U.S. Judge Peter Messitte dismissed the two Ford indictments of unauthorized possession of national defense information and making a false statement, without prejudice. The "without prejudice" caveat was key. Salem was able to bring back the indictment before the same judge just one week later. Salem's case was slipping away but the higher ups in the Bush administration expected results. And results they would get.
As a result of Salem's serious prosecutorial misconduct, during Ford's November 2005, witness after witness for the government perjured themselves without fear of recrimination. The jury was salted with at least one tainted member.
One member of the federal jury that convicted Ford on one count each of retaining classified material and lying on a security questionnaire for a Federal contractor turned out to have been a one-time program manager for Northrop Grumman, an NSA contractor. That fact should have disqualified him from the jury, however, it is clear that jury intimidation and tampering was also ordered up by the Bush administration.
Salem succeeded in getting his conviction of Ford last November. Ford faces sentencing on March 1 at the US Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland and up to 15 years in prison. However, Salem and his associates must now face their own investigation, one that is focused on prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, and criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights of a U.S. citizen. After the neo-cons seized control of the United States in 2001, what happened to Ford could happen to any U.S. citizen.
For 2 days, the FBI sat in a car parked on a corner (left) in the street outside Ford's home (right) waiting for the right moment to enter the home and plant the "evidence." How many neighborhoods in our country does this resemble? Does it look like your community?
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 4:52 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home