Commonsense & Wonder: NASA employees caught buying child porn. Are they being protected by NASA?

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

NASA employees caught buying child porn. Are they being protected by NASA?

EXCLUSIVE: NASA employees caught buying child porn from site which showed three-year-olds being abused - but they escape prosecution and now their names are being kept secret

Sixteen current and past staff were found to have purchased illegal images
Were bought from Belarus and Ukraine using credit cards and PayPal
FBI uncovered the illicit transactions in 2010 as part of a government probe
They were identified by authorities, but their names have been redacted
Raises fears some of the perpetrators could still be working for the agency

By WILLS ROBINSON F

NASA employees were caught buying child pornography from a criminal ring in Eastern Europe that distributed images of minors as young as three, it can be revealed.

An investigation by Daily Mail Online found 16 staff members from the space agency paid for pictures and videos of children in sexual situations, but were never prosecuted.

Their names have never been released because of government guidelines which protect their privacy – prompting fears some of the culprits are still employed by NASA.

The probe found that in 2010, the employees paid for the pornography using personal credit cards or PayPal while working for the government.

Their actions were uncovered during Project Flicker - an investigation by the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into American citizens buying child pornography from Belarus and Ukraine.

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An investigation by Daily Mail Online has revealed 16 current and former staff members working for NASA purchased child pornography from Eastern Europe, but avoided prosecution and could still be working for the space agency. Pictured is the vehicle assembly building at the JFK Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida

The investigation began in 2007 when more than 33,000 images of minors being abused flooded into the country.

Investigators identified more than 5,200 citizens across the country who had paid for a subscription to illicit websites in order to access the content.

In 2010 it was revealed that 264 of these worked for the Pentagon as either employees or contractors. Some of them worked for the NSA and had top security clearance.

But the Daily Mail Online can reveal for the first time that NASA employees were also identified in the sickening scheme in the same year.

Transactions from the space agency workers were discovered after a FBI special agent tipped off investigators.

However their names have been redacted in documents obtained by Daily Mail Online via a Freedom of Information Act request from NASA's Office of Inspector General.

Therefore it is not known whether they were disciplined or sanctioned within the department - meaning they could still be working for the government.

When the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) investigated the Pentagon employees identified in the scheme, they only investigated 52 of the suspects and 212 people on ICE's list were never questioned at all.

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They were part of a group of federal employees who downloaded more than 33,000 explicit images of children between them

Some had highest available security clearance.

After the probe was completed just 10 were ever charged with viewing or purchasing child pornography - prompting fears some of those caught could still be working for the military.

It is not known whether any of the NASA employers were questioned, but it is clear they were not prosecuted - as their names have not been revealed.

If they had been found guilty of a crime, their names would not have been redacted in the disclosed files.

A spokesman for NASA told Daily Mail Online they would not be commenting beyond what was stated in the FOIA documents.

PROJECT FLICKER: HOW MORE THAN 5,000 US CITIZENS WERE CAUGHT UP IN CHILD PORN RING

The investigation began in 2007 when more than 33,000 x-rated images of minors were believed to have flooded into the country from Belarus and Ukraine.

Investigators identified more than 5,200 citizens across the country who had paid for a subscription to illicit websites in order to access the content.

In 2010 it was revealed that 264 of these worked for the Pentagon as either employees or contractors. Some of them worked for the NSA and had top security clearance.

But the Daily Mail Online can reveal for the first time that NASA employees were also identified in the sickening scheme in the same year.

Despite the number of people identified, only a handful of people were prosecuted.

A spokesman from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said: 'In 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) opened an investigation into the criminal network behind hundreds of child pornography websites.

'The investigation, called Project Flicker, was conducted in collaboration with other U.S. and international law enforcement partners around the world, and identified 30,000 customers in 132 countries - resulting in hundreds of convictions in the U.S. and 16 arrests in Belarus and the Ukraine.

'The criminal rings involved used a variety of online and traditional payment methods, elaborate defense measures and a franchise business model that provided access to images and videos of sexually exploited boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old.

'HSI’s Cyber Crimes Center distributed more than 5,000 domestic leads to field offices around the country and shared more than 4,000 foreign leads with its law enforcement partners via HSI’s attaché offices.

'HSI is a leading federal law enforcement agency combating the sexual exploitation of children. HSI conducts investigations under Operation Predator, a nationwide initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who possess, trade and produce child pornography; who travel overseas for sex with minors; and who engage in the sex trafficking of children.

'HSI encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.'

The FBI said they would not be adding to the ICE's statement.

The latest disclosure comes after Daily Mail Online investigations unearthed shocking breaches of computer guidelines inside the Department of Education the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Saul Alinsky's
Rules for Radicals

(or understanding current Democratic tactics)

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

Rule 8: Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Rule 10: Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

Communist Manifesto 10 Planks

10 Conditions For Transition To Communism

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.