Pentagon Declined to Investigate Hundreds of Purchases of Child Pornography
September 4th, 2010Via: Yahoo News:
A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department — including some with the highest available security clearance — who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.
The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.
In a related inquiry, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.
Related:
Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics
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I believe that the reason the Pentagon is not too concerned about the porn situation is because so many in the top echelon are generally perverted to begin with. Those who can condone wanton killing of women, children, and innocent civilians possess a lack of empathy and callousness that can only be considered perversion by normal people. The transition from the perversion of death to the perversion child porn is probably not much of a jump for most of them.
@ Larry
Your comment reminded me of an earlier cryptogon article:
https://cryptogon.com/?p=3649
http://proliberty.com/observer/20080306.htm
Good points, Dennis. Robert O. Hare, PhD, wrote a book called Without Conscience, the Disturbing World of the Psychpaths Among Us. His research started in the prison system and ended up in society at large. His conclusions were that the most dangerous of psychopaths never live behind prison walls. They are largely in positions of power and influence. They have spent much of their energy in learning to avoid suffering the consequences of their actions and effectively placing the blame for their predatory behavior on others (including their victims) when they are confronted. Many of these people are in politics and military leadership.
I’m not terribly surprised by this.
I used to work in adult entertainment (regular adult stuff, not the topic here). I noticed folks who had subscribed using their work email address. Looking across the database at all the .gov’s and .mil’s was very interesting, and did include a few pentagon addresses. You would think that folks working at such a facility may not want to have emails from an adult site showing up, even if they are “Thanks for your subscription to our porn site”
The government employs a lot of people. The background checks are obnoxiously detailed, but can easily miss things that aren’t generally known. An investigator wouldn’t necessarily know that someone was predisposed to something, until they get caught doing it.
I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if a few of the cases cited were payments made with stolen credentials. I’d be willing to bet that those would be a very small percentage of the total though.
They’re obviously taking the easiest way out. Pretending a problem doesn’t exist is always easier than finding out that there is a widespread and embarrassing problem.
This may be a psy-op of an intelligence agency opposed to the US intelligence agencies. Then again, maybe not.