What Does Ken Ford Know?  And Who Put Him in Prison to Keep Him from
Telling?
Ken's Family Seeks Gutsy Attorney to Appeal Their Son's Conviction

By all accounts, Ken Ford, Jr. reputed to be a computer whiz, was an
upwardly mobile, trusted, young African American man who was so trusted
that he worked his way into a security clearance that fewer than 150 people
have in the entire United States.  His work reports were good.  And Ken
considered himself lucky.  He was a homeowner and as a single young man, he
sought to climb the professional ladder.  Ken started out at the United
States Secret Service.  He received good reports there and moved over to
cybersecurity and monitoring at the National Security Agency (NSA).  He
moved around in the Agency to advance up the bureaucratic ladder.  He
served one stint in the Iraq Office lasting about 6 months.  When he
decided to leave the secretive National Security Agency and work for one of
the government's national security "private contractors" whose work would
boost his pay, that's when Ken's life began to turn upside down.  It
started when a young African American lady entered his life--well, I'm
being generous.  According to Ken, what happened between him and this
woman, it's clear that she's no lady!  Ken states that she was "planted in
my life" and issues this warning that he, himself, received later in this
episode:  "Be aware because they are looking at you.  I did receive a
message that the FBI does run sting operations using these social networks."

Imagine his shock when his girlfriend turned out to be a witness for the
prosecution!  Ken was charged with espionage under the Espionage Act of
1917, and the proof of his perfidy was found in the briefcase of what he
thought was his girlfriend!  Quick perusal of this Act reveals that the
Rosenbergs were charged under this Act and so was Daniel Ellsberg.  Ken
maintains his innocence, but does reveal an important aspect of his work
assignment at NSA in an interview with Dr. Randy Short and Joshalyn
Lawrence, members of DIGNITY who took the time to interview Ken on the day
after Christmas, 26 December 2011.

Ken Ford, Jr. wrote an intelligence report on his findings on the Iraq War,
his findings contradicted the Administration's premise at the time to
validate their reason for going to war against Iraq.  Ford's work was to
research whether or not there were WMD in Iraq.  The results of his
research were that there were no WMD in Iraq.  He says that when he went to
the next shop, he was assigned an entirely different subject matter, he
went from a job with a specific task, to a job with undefined tasks.

Everyone knows the name of Valery Plame.  The media did not pay attention
to Ken Ford's plight at all.  The only person who did pay attention to
Ken's situation was DIGNITY Delegation member Wayne Madsen of
WayneMadsenReport.com and who wrote extensively about Ken's case and where
those original stories still can be found by searching on Ken Ford's name.
Ken says that during his trial, Wayne was the only journalist in the
courtroom.

Where were all of the journalists who get paid to tell us what they
determine is the news?  Poor Ken Ford, one of only ten Black employees that
he ever saw during his entire time at the NSA was taken from his home in
handcuffs after approximately eight hours of questioning by 25
flack-jacketed government agents.

On 26 December 2011, Dr. Randy Short and Ms. Joshalyn Lawrence, both
DIGNITY Delegation members, interviewed Ken Ford, Jr. to allow him to tell
his story.  Incidentally, his father worked at the Brentwood Post Office
that was stricken by anthrax.

View these videos of this sincere young man and his mother as he relates
his personal ordeal of character assassination in an effort to shut him
up.  Ken Ford told the truth about WMD in Iraq and paid a heavy personal
price.

To hear Ken tell his story, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY4AN03sra0&feature=related

To hear Ken's mother tell the details of their ordeal as a family, click
here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-N59GH1aHw&feature=email

I would like to thank Wayne, Randy, and Joshalyn for giving this family the
opportunity to tell their story.  Ken Ford was sentenced to 6 years in
prisonIn light of the President signing the most recent Pentagon
authorization bill that allows for indefinite detention for U.S. citizens,
in combination with the Patriot Act, the Secret Evidence Act, the Funding
the War Against Terrorism Act, and more, Ken Ford's story could easily be
you!

Support Ken Ford, Jr. and his family's attempt to clear their only child's
name.  They have reams of documents proving Ken's innocence, prosecutorial
misconduct, and fraud on the Court, but need an attorney willing to sue for
justice on Ken's behalf.  Are there any civil rights organizations out
there willing to help Ken?  Any appellate level lawyers willing to help
this traumatized family and young man?  Ken's mother has now been diagnosed
with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

According to Mrs. Ford, "We have solid proof of the illegality of this
situation from the day it started to today."

Here is one of Wayne's stories on the strange and unfair treatment of Ken
Ford, Jr.:

*September 26-27, 2011 -- A tale of two cases*

On June 15, U.S. federal judge Richard B. Bennett sharply rebuked federal
prosecutors for pursuing a four-year Espionage Act violation investigation
and case against former National Security Agency (NSA) official Thomas
Drake. At Drake's sentencing hearing in Baltimore, Bennett called the
four-year long case against Drake and the prosecutors' ultimate dropping of
multiple espionage charges to a single misdemeanor count of unauthorized
use of a government computer "unconscionable."

Drake had been charged with providing classified information to the *Baltimore
Sun* in 2006 and 2007. He was specifically charged with violation of
sub-paragraphs (d) and (e) of the Espionage Act, which covers "transmittal"
of classified information to unauthorized parties. Charges under the 1917
Espionage Act have rarely been brought by the Justice Department. The law
was used against American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials
Steve Rosen and Kenneth Weissman for receiving highly-classified
information, including Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), from a
Pentagon official. Charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped by Eric
Holder's Justice Department on May 1, 2009.

However, the "classified material" cited by prosecutors was not originally
classified and it pertained to NSA officials, particuarly then-NSA director
General Michael Hayden, defrauding the government for well over a billion
dollars. Hayden and his advisers awarded a failed program called Project
TRAILBLAZER to a group of contractors led by Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC).

The prosecutors, acting as virtual criminal racket protection agents for
Hayden and his advisers, decided to retroactively classify the unclassified
whistleblowing information in order to justify the Espionage Act charges
against Drake. Hayden's pet project also assisted in the program to conduct
warrantless wiretapping of communications of U.S. citizens, a
super-classified operation known by the code name STELLAR WIND.

Drake avoided prison and Bennett ruled against federal prosecutor's wish to
have a $50,000 fine imposed on Drake. In sentencing Drake to 240 hours of
community service, Bennett said "There has been financial devastation
wrought upon this defendant that far exceeds any fine that can be imposed
by me. And I’m not going to add to that in any way.”

Drake was represented by two federal public defenders, James Wyda and
Deborah Boardman. Drake's case began to fall party after it was featured on
CBS "60 Minutes." Retired NSA officials, interviewed on camera, defended
Drake and his whistleblowing actions. After the bad publicity for NSA and
Eric Holder's Justice Department, the espionage charges against Drake were
dropped.

Five years earlier, in another federal court room in Greenbelt, Maryland,
and in a case even more egregious than the one involving Drake, federal
judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced former NSA "Iraqi shop" signals
intelligence analyst Ken Ford Jr., to six years in prison and no fine as a
result of his politically-motivated conviction for allegedly removing two
boxes of classified materials from NSA during broad daylight without
detection. In fact, the documents were planted in Ford's Waldorf, Maryland
home in retaliation for his signals intelligence analysis report casting
doubt on the White House contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction. That report, which contained Ford's name as the preparer,
eventually ended up on the desk of Vice President Dick Cheney. As a result,
Ford became a target of the neo-con cell operating from within Cheney's
office and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), the same cabal that
compromised Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity and mission.

The team of Assistant U.S. Attorney David Salem; federal public defenders
John Chamble, Andrea Callaman, and Susan Bauer; and even the private lawyer
eventually retained by Ford, conspired to ensure that Messitte was
successfully "judge shopped" as the trial attorney, that at least one
dubious pro-NSA jury member was selected for the trial jury, and that Ford
would receive anything but a fair trial. Unlike Drake, Ford served in a
lower-level analyst position. However, Ford, an African-American who
previously served as a uniformed U.S. Secret Service officer at the White
House, was on a fast-track for an executive position at NSA.

"60 Minutes" never covered the Ford case, even though it was as, if not
more, outrageous as the case brought against Drake. *The Washington Post*,
rather than assign one of its national security correspondents to the case,
handed it to a Metro desk reporter, who parroted in his articles what was
given to him by the prosecution team.

Prosecutors never cited any classified document that was said to be in
Ford's possession at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors relied on the
testimony of a confidential informant named Tonya Tucker, who had several
other aliases and a long criminal record, who said she saw a document
labeled "classified" in Ford's home. Of course, "classified" is not a
national security label or designator for any documents. Salem also charged
that Ford was planning on meeting a foreign agent at Dulles International
Airport to transmit documents. However, Salem could not identify the
foreign country involved, a flight number, a rendezvous point, or any
details of what amounted to a "pre-crime" allegation. In fact, Salem made
up the entire Dulles story as a way to ensure a guilty verdict, especially
considering that the jury was never shown any of the alleged classified
documents that were said to be in Ford's possession. In the Drake case, the
jury was shown copies of "retroactively" classified documents, which were
originally unclassified.

Ford is now out of prison and serving three-years of restricted travel
probation in Maryland. He maintains his innocence and intends to appeal his
case. However, Ford's attempt to enlist the assistance of the parties who
came to the defense of Drake have been unsuccessful. There is another
problem with the Ford case. The Ford case files, including those maintained
by the PACER system and the federal public defenders office in Washington,
DC, have all disappeared. Even Ford's original birth certificate in the
District of Columbia Vital Records Office has disappeared. The only
information available on the Ford case from the Justice Department are the
press releases issued on the case.

The federal public defenders office in Washington is clearly nervous about
the double standard applied to Ford and Drake. Moreover, the supervisor of
Ford's tainted public defenders in 2004 was Wyda, the same public defender
who successfully argued Drake's case.

Former Justice Department prosecutor Thomas Tamm, under a long
investigation for revealing the nature of NSA's warrantless wiretapping
program to *The New York Times*, eventually saw his investigation by the
FBI suspended. However, WMR has learned that the STELLAR WIND program was
routinely violated by NSA employees. Hayden, who came up with the program
and sold it to then-CIA director George Tenet and Vice President Cheney,
essentially canceled the provisions of U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive
18 (USSID) 18, which governed the application of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) at NSA. NSA was prohibited from
eavesdropping on "U.S. persons" without a court order from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Under Hayden's tenure, some NSA
analysts were conducting e-mail surveillance of their current and former
girl friends, prompting Hayden to cover his tracks by implementing a
procedure that saw database security officers, including those with
oversight over the PINWALE e-mail interception database, conducting
after-the-fact audit trail analysis for internal abuse of the new NSA
powers.

*Ken Ford, Jr. [center], reunited with his father and mother after six
years of imprisonment on trumped up neo-con political charges stemming from
the search for phony Iraqi WMDs*.

Ford's case, which involved pressure from the Bush-Cheney White House, has
also met with indifference from the Obama White House and the Congressional
Black Caucus. Groups like the Government Accountability Project (GAP),
which assisted with Drake's defense, did not raise a finger in the Ford
case.

During his incarceration at Lewisburg federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania,
Ford received rank-and-file support from some current and former NSA
employees. However, unlike Drake, not one high-level NSA official, current
or retired, came to Ford's defense, even though his innocence was as
provable as that of Drake. It is, indeed, a "tale of two cases," one with a
relatively happy outcome, the other singed with racism.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110926

--
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Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

"The biggest weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the minds of the
oppressed." Steve Biko

"Any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations is
both arbitrary and subjective."  American Anthropological Association 1999

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