The New York Times is reporting on a story first publicized by Playboy in 2009, albeit without Playboy’s accompanying series of “military-themed nude pictorials.” Dennis Montgomery, a former biomedical technician and inveterate gambler, who claimed to be responsible for the creation of video-analysis software with almost magical terrorist-catching capabilities, is currently facing multiple charges.
Older readers of The Faster Times might remember a decade known as the 2000’s, a time rife with paranoia and the threat of violence, that saw the beginning of both our current wars. During this decade, an inexplicable and mercurial system known as the Alert Level used to warn us in conveniently color-coded format of exactly how likely we were to be blown to pieces by crazed Jihadists on any given day. Also during this time, flying was made difficult by interminable security checks, an arbitrary no-fly list and, on occasion, the cancellation of whole flights into the country for unspecified reasons.
At least some of these abuses seem to have been the indirect result of extraordinary con-man Dennis Montgomery’s bogus video-analysis software. His Etreppid company, after having aroused the interest of the CIA was awarded a $10 million contract with the military’s Special Operations Command and the Air Force.
Initially, the idea was that his technology’s color-decoding software could somehow identify targets on video taken by Predator drones. In 2003, Montgomery offered the startling news that he had in fact employed the software to identify coded messages in Al Qaeda’s broadcasts, including the famed Bin Laden videos. These messages supposedly indicated info about US bound flights to be considered hijacking targets. No substantiation of any of these threats was ever obtained and the CIA eventually lost confidence in Montgomery.
This did not however, stop the Air Force from presenting the con-man with a renewed contract in 2009. Shortly after that, as Obama came into office and the decade of paranoia came to an end, this contract was reviewed and ultimately canceled. Montgomery has been facing lawsuits since 2006, but details remain sketchy because the Justice Department has moved to clamp down on the publicizing of key portions of the charges against him, citing national security concerns. How retro.
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Keir Willett
Keir Willett was born on the deck of a rapidly sinking battle-cruiser in the gulf of Oman. Life as a child spy for the CIA left him little time for much besides fighting Nazis, unearthing powerful artifacts and gaining acceptance to Sarah Lawrence College where he would go ...
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