Marines Running Amok
Rufus. N. LaFayette
Records detail security failure in base file theft
By Rick Rogers
STAFF WRITER
May 22, 2008
A group suspected of stealing secret files on potential terrorists in San
Diego and elsewhere apparently operated with impunity from one of Camp
Pendleton's most heavily guarded buildings, newly obtained court records and
investigative reports show.
Its members - military reservists and law enforcement officers - allegedly
swiped the classified documents from the Strategic Technical Operations
Center.
Base officials have acknowledged the center's existence without discussing
anything about it, citing national security concerns. But FBI and Navy
agents said in reports that Col. Larry Richards, a Marine reservist, and his
accomplices had no trouble evading the building's security measures.
Richards was the center's chief.
When not on active military duty, Richards worked as a top specialist for
the Los Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Group, a task force largely
made up of members from law enforcement agencies.
While working at Camp Pendleton in January 2004, he escorted two Los Angeles
County sheriff's deputies through the center's vaultlike doors, past guards
and to the man stealing classified files for them, reports said.
Richards arranged the meeting after learning of his pending deployment to
Iraq, investigators said. He found a war buddy to replace him in raiding the
center's databases.
His recruit was Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz, an intelligence analyst at the
center and a survivor of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York
City.
Maziarz was the linchpin of the theft group until his arrest in late 2006.
He pleaded guilty the next summer and named Richards as the ringleader.
As part of his court-martial plea deal, Maziarz agreed to testify against
anyone charged in the case and to not speak with the news media. He is
serving a 26-month prison sentence.
Maziarz testified that he acted out of patriotism - to make it easier for
federal, military and civilian law enforcement agencies to share information
about possible terrorists.
Investigators, though, said some of the suspects might have passed files to
defense contractors in hopes of later being hired by them.
The FBI and military are still investigating Maziarz, Richards, Navy Cmdr.
Lauren Martin, Marine Maj. Mark Lowe and former Marine Col. David Litaker.
None of the suspects responded to requests for comment.
Government officials also are vetting the backgrounds of participating
attorneys ahead of expected charges against the remaining suspects in coming
months. Legal proceedings in the case probably will be conducted in private.
"The Marine Corps and the U.S. attorney are hashing out jurisdictional
issues and prosecution strategy," said Ed Buice, a spokesman for the Naval
Criminal Investigative Service.
The San Diego Union-Tribune first wrote about the theft ring in October
after obtaining much of the transcript from Maziarz's court-martial.
The newspaper has since received more transcripts, reports from the FBI and
naval authorities, and details from people close to the case. Those sources
asked not to be identified because the investigation is in progress.
The newly acquired material indicates that Maziarz and other suspects gave
investigators self-incriminating evidence. It suggests that a massive number
of files were taken from Camp Pendleton, including those with the most
confidential classification the government can bestow - Top Secret, Special
Compartmentalized Information.
It also details how Maziarz helped funnel the files, hints at a financial
motive for the theft and reveals that a mosque in San Diego's Clairemont
neighborhood was monitored by a federal surveillance program targeting
Muslim groups.
The theft operation began in 2001 or earlier with Richards at the helm,
Maziarz testified during his court-martial. It might have stayed undetected
had naval agents not stumbled upon classified material while questioning
Maziarz for a different crime - stealing Iraq war trophies - at the end of
2006.
In Maziarz's apartment in Carlsbad and a storage locker in Virginia,
investigators found more than 100 FBI and Defense Department files. Some
documents pertained to surveillance of Muslim communities in Southern
California.
"They were looking at specific mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego. The
mosque in Clairemont was one," said a source who confirmed some of the
files' contents.
That mosque, the Islamic Center of San Diego, is one of 18 houses of worship
in the county with prayer services for Muslims, said the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.
At his court-martial, Maziarz testified that Richards kept in touch with him
during the 2004 deployment in Iraq by talking on a secure, government-issued
satellite phone.
Maziarz said he used Richards' logon and password to access confidential
computer accounts on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System
and Secret Internet Protocol Router Network.
He also said he regularly obtained and disseminated secret files, such as
surveillance reports transmitted by Lauren Martin, an intelligence analyst
at U.S. Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The command handles information about suspected terrorism operations
nationwide, and Martin was responsible for the region that included Southern
California, Maziarz testified.
According to investigators' reports, Richards said in interviews that he
cold-called Martin after the Sept. 11 attacks and asked her to supply the
Los Angeles Terrorist Early Warning Group with region-specific intelligence.
He wanted law enforcement to have more ammunition to build cases against
suspected terrorists.
At Maziarz's sentencing hearing in July, Gunnery Sgt. Paul C. Hurst, a
security specialist, testified that Maziarz had "taken advantage of known
faults within the security system" during wartime, when there weren't enough
Marines to monitor the Strategic Technical Operations Center.
"The insider threat is the threat we should be focusing toward," Hurst said.
"It's not necessarily al-Qaeda or anyone else."
Maziarz said his group broke laws to minimize the threat of terrorist
attacks in Southern California. But federal officials are trying to
determine, among other things, whether Richards and others shared
anti-terrorism intelligence with defense contractors in exchange for future
employment.
Investigators are scrutinizing possible ties between Richards and Kroll
Associates, a risk-assessment company with offices in more than 65 cities
worldwide. (Kroll's clients have included the city of San Diego, which paid
the corporation $20 million for a 2006 report on its pension and financial
scandal.)
Some of Kroll's employees and consultants come from law enforcement or go
into that field after leaving the company. A few have had ties to the Los
Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Group.
A Kroll spokesman declined to comment on Richards or the theft case.
The investigative reports also note that agents are running down a possible
connection between Richards and MPRI International Group, which provides
services to law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Richards told authorities that MPRI offered him $300,000 to work in
Afghanistan, reports said.
An MPRI spokesman said Richards was never an employee or contract worker
with the company. The spokesman wouldn't answer other questions for this
story.
Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212; rick....@uniontrib.com
Ellie
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