Pentagon Linked to Child Pornography Purchase

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation that was held in 2006 lead to discoveries of purchase of child pornography online inside the Defense Department. They therefore, discovered that more than 250 civilians and military employees used their credit cards or their PayPal account in order to purchase images of children in different sexual situations.

This project, known as Project Flicker was especially opened to process child porn payments. They were allowed to have access to more than 5,000 Americans that subscribed to websites that allowed you to see photos of child pornography.

As they discovered the fact that many of the addresses and the Zip codes that were introduced there, were in direct contact with Army. Therefore, after the ICE has made their list, they provided it to the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service in order for them to cut down and to seize the exact Defense employees and contractors that seemed to have acquired child pornography.

As this list is not public, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, opened investigations in just some of the cases for the moment. That is to say, in only 20 percent of the cases and as well has persecuted some of them; a little part but they did persecute them.

Whether at first it was considered that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service would investigate just a mere of 30 Defense Department employees, the actual number is bigger, meaning it gets to 264 Defense employees and contractors. The thing with them is that they have to act nicely and in little steps, because some of these people had access and some still have, to the Nation’s deepest secrets.

-          Nine of them had “top secret sensitive compartmentalized information” security clearances

-          13 possessed a Top Secret Security clearance

-          Eight possessed a NATO Secret Security clearance

-          42 possessed a Secret security clearance

-          Four possessed an Interim Secret security clearance.

That is to say 76 people possessed top secrets but from those just 52 of the subjects were investigated out of which, just 10 were charged with purchasing child pornography. We can only imagine that the vast majority of the names that were present on the list did not suffer any consequences as for their military career concerns.

Gary Douglas Grant is one of those that were arrested in this case. He was a Captain in the Army Reserves and as well a judge advocate general. He pleaded guilty last year after they did a furrow investigation on his computer and child pornography was found on his computer. Others, after having found out that they were looked for, like a former contractor for NSA with Top Secret clearances, fled to Libya.

Anyhow, the vast majority of the investigated ones were never charged, at least not so far. Anyhow, the list is far bigger and 212 people in ICE lists were never even investigated. This is because they maintained their investigations concentrated on those that actually had security clearances. They are more prone to influence the nation’s security and therefore, be vulnerable to espionage and blackmail.

Then they took those people that had previously been accused or just suspected of sex crimes, or those that had access to dealing with children through their assignments that the Defense Department provided them.

Anyhow, the institutions somehow were on their part, as the ones that were not dealt with by the DCIS, were dealt with by the ICE and the FBI. The total number of the staffers from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service is of 400 people which were rather busy, even before the Flicker dropped another 264 cases on their head.

Anyhow, some of the judges’ even rule out these condemning issues, as many years passed by and the actions cannot be considered as having been the same at the moment of speech. These people may have changed.

As for the rest of 212 people from the Project Flicker that were left apart and were not investigated at all, it was discovered that there as well was no systematic trial to inform their superiors about their suspected child pornography purchase.