So much for military intelligence. For most of George W. Bush's administration, the U.S. government paid Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, more than $20 million for software he claimed could stop al Qaeda’s next attack by detecting secret messages in Al-Jazeera broadcasts, identify terrorists from predator drones, and detect noise from enemy submarines. But the software didn’t work, and the government is still invoking national security to keep the details secret and avoid further embarrassment.
The Bush CIA was so excited about the technology at first, one former agency official says, people called it “the most important, most sensitive” program they had. But when it was actually used in 2003, it set off a false alarm that led President Bush to order airlines over the Atlantic Ocean to turn around. French officials, angered that the Bush administration had grounded their planes, launched their own investigation into the program and quickly determined that it was a hoax.
However, the Bush administration kept turning to Montgomery and in late 2008, reacted to another false alarm-- this time, the bogus software claimed to have picked up intelligence that Somali pirates were plotting to disrupt President Obama’s inauguration. Despite that second high profile failure, outgoing Bush officials still did not initiate a closer look at Montgomery. Even worse, Obama administration officials eventually decided that no one else should be able to investigate Montgomery either. According to Montgomery's former lawyer, the Justice Department has recently issued protective orders in an attempt to keep details of his software sealed by the federal court and save the U.S. government further embarrassment.
Montgomery has not faced criminal charges over his deception or been ordered to pay back the money. He is currently in bankruptcy in Palm Springs, California, and facing charges of passing $1.8 million in bad checks at Vegas casinos.
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