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Home Front: WoT
Man dupes CIA of $21 mn over anti-terror software
2011-02-21
(IANS) A computer expert was paid more than 13 million pounds (about $21 million) after he fooled the CIA that he developed software to stop Al Qaeda attacks, a media report said.

Officials were so convinced by Dennis Montgomery that, acting on a tip-off from him, former president George Bush ordered passenger jets flying from London to be turned back over the Atlantic amid fears they were being hijacked, Daily Mail reported Sunday.

There was even talk of shooting down the jets because it was feared the 'hijackers' would crash them into US targets in 2003.

But the information, like other tip-offs supplied by Montgomery, 57, was false.
Shouldn't spy agencies have .. a penalty .. for people who mislead them like that?
On that occasion French officials were so angry at the supposed lapse in their security - one of the planes was headed for France - that they carried out their own probe into Montgomery's technology and found it was a hoax.

One former CIA official said they realised then that they were conned and said: "We got played".

But even as late as 2008 he claimed to have picked up intelligence that Somalia terrorists were planning to disrupt President Obama's inauguration in Washington DC.

The programmer was given contracts worth over 13 million pounds after convincing the CIA and US Air Force that his software could decipher coded messages being sent among terrorists, according to the Mail.

Montgomery claimed his codes were able to find terrorist plots hidden in TV broadcasts made by the Arab network Al Jazeera. He also said his software could identify terror leaders from photographs taken by aerial drones and detect noise from enemy submarines - and he claimed that his software "could save American lives".

But an inquiry by The New York Times has revealed him as a fraud and, it is claimed, court documents that would prove the software failed are being kept secret by the US Justice Department to prevent embarrassment to spy chiefs.

Montgomery has not faced criminal charges over his deception or been ordered to pay back the money. He is awaiting trial in Nevada on unrelated charges of passing bad cheques worth 1.1 million pounds to Las Vegas casinos, the Mail said.
Isn't it always this way; a fraudster in one way is a fraudster in multiple ways.
Posted by:gorb

#4  Sounds like the CIA was scammed on some whizbang super data mining program with built-in translators (which may never have existed). Or Montgomery might have been a contractor who just sold purported services.
Posted by: JohnQC   2011-02-21 15:44  

#3  He is awaiting trial in Nevada on unrelated charges of passing bad cheques worth 1.1 million pounds to Las Vegas casinos, the Mail said.

This sounds like one of those instances where someone got caught and came up with a "Do you know who you're dealing with" reply and then had to generate some sort of story to cover the ever growing long tale. As much as we'd like to feed our own preconceived bias, this spins too much to be bought on a MSM source.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-02-21 15:34  

#2  Shouldn't spy agencies have .. a penalty .. for people who mislead them like that?

They could start with a penalty for those who are so easily misled.
Posted by: gorb   2011-02-21 14:01  

#1  Typical. Can fool the mandarins at CIA but the employees of a casino caught on straightaway.
Posted by: gromky   2011-02-21 11:21  

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