- Former NSA analyst and White House Secret Service officer
found guilty in politically-motivated trial. Yesterday, a chill blew across
Washington, DC from the US Court House in Greenbelt, Maryland. However,
the chill was not just a result of the icy weather that hit Washington
yesterday afternoon but also a warning to anyone in the U.S. intelligence
community who has not yet been purged from the ranks that they could now
face prison if they dare contradict the Bush administration.
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- WMR has reported on the case of former NSA analyst Kenneth
W. Ford who worked in the National Security Agency's Iraq shop in the Signals
Intelligence Division between November 2002 and May 2003. Ford was found
guilty of possessing classified material at his home and failing to tell
the truth on a security form for a post-NSA civilian contractor job. As
the verdict was read and Ford became emotionally distraught, one of the
female jurors openly wept. The jury of 12 members and four alternates,
made up of nine white females, three African-American females, three African-American
males, and one white male, deliberated only four hours before reaching
a guilty verdict.
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- Ford's name appeared as the author of an NSA intelligence
report on intercepts of Iraqi communications that concluded, contrary to
Bush administration claims, that there was no evidence to support the presence
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Shortly after Ford left NSA for
a job in the private sector in January 2004 he was confronted with a jaded
FBI confidential informant planting two boxes of classified training material
and other documents in his Waldorf, Maryland home. Evidence in the case
clearly showed that the boxes had never left the custody of NSA, however,
relying on perjured testimony by NSA Security personnel and FBI agents,
US Assistant Attorney for Maryland David I. Salem contended that Ford drove
his pickup truck in broad daylight to a highly-secured building at Fort
Meade, Maryland and casually loaded two boxes in the back from an unguarded
loading dock and drove off unchallenged. Furthermore, the government contended
that a security camera located at the loading area was inoperative on the
day the event supposedly occurred. Later, the government contended that
Ford lied on a security questionnaire about prior arrests.
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- Because the trial was held in public, the government
did not present the jury with details about Ford's job at NSA and his role
in analyzing Iraqi communications.
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- There is more to come on this story.
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- http://waynemadsenreport.com/
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