Duped by false terror updates,US covers up

The Justice Department,which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court,said it is guarding state secrets. But others involved in the case say the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.

A onetime biomedical technician with a penchant for gambling,Montgomery is at the centre of a tale that features terrorism scares,secret White House briefings,backing from prominent Republicans,backdoor deal-making and fantastic-sounding computer technology.

Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and a review of documents show that Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop al-Qaeda’s next attack on the US. But the technology appears to have been a hoax,government agencies,including Central Intelligence Agency and Air Force,repeatedly missed warning signs.

Montgomery’s former lawyer,Michael Flynn — who now describes him as a “con man”— said he believes the administration has been shutting off scrutiny of Montgomery’s business for fear of revealing that the government has been duped.

The software he patented — which he claimed could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of the Arab network Al Jazeera; identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines — prompted an international false alarm that led President George W Bush to order airliners from France,Germany and other countries to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003 over a terror alert. The software led to dead ends in connection with a 2006 terrorism plot in Britain. And they were used by officials to respond to a bogus Somali terror plot on the day of President Obama’s inauguration.

CIA officials came to believe that Montgomery’s technology was fake in 2003,but their conclusions were not relayed to the Special Operations Command,which had contracted with his firm. In 2006,the FBI was told by co-workers of Montgomery that he doctored test results. But Montgomery still landed business. In 2009,the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology,even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical.