From: James M. Atkinson <jm..._at_tscm.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:41:56 -0500

I would wager that the Fluke equipment mentioned in the article were handheld oscilloscopes.

Er, were these shipments alleged to have happen from his place of employment (or for that matter one of the 300 ghost companies in the DC area), or were these alleged to have been shipped from non-agency address. More to the point, was he shipping these as a legitimate part of his job and mischief is afoot on the part of his ex-employer, or what.

Since when does a test equipment manufacture tell someone that they originally sold a stack of equipment to the CIA. I mean step back and this about this for a second and try to get your head around this. Someone just picks up the phone, calls a provider of equipment to a covert government agency, equipment that is covert, for a covert purpose, in a covert way... and the equipment provider just spits out that "eh, yah dood, we, uh shipped those them there units to that secret CIA company in Reston".  Which leads to the buyer calling the CIA Inspector General.

Does anybody else find the governments version of thing to sound a little too implausible. If what they say is true, then( Anritsu violated their contract with the CIA by blabbing about a highly confidential purchase of equipment that they would have been contractually bound to conceal... not blab to some equipment broker who calls them on the phone.

It is more probable that a company who took delivery of was equipment thought that something fishy was going on once they had the equipment in hand and called the manufacture (Anritsu) who put them on hold, and then who notified the customer (CIA) to whom that they had originally sold the equipment to, that being one of the numerous companies who act as fronts for the agency when buying these kinds of things. True, the Agency could had purchased it directly from Anristu of course, using as one would expect CIA letterhead, and using the CIA AMEX card, but when did they start doing that?

I don't know if anybody has quite figured this out yet, but Anristu is actually a foreign owned and foreign controlled company. They make really, really good equipment, but they are still foreign owned, and foreign controlled. Doesn't it strike you as just a little strange that a foreign owned company would be told that the CIA was the end user of the equipment? Er, what?  They do have a California office, but it is still foreign owned and they should not have actually known that the CIA was the end user.

What I am driving at here is that the governments version of what went down, and how they claimed to have found out about it is suspicious at best.

Did perhaps the fairly large amount of money that allegedly flowed into the employees bank account trip the interest of the CIA Counter-Intelligence folks (Angleton's Dysfunctional Orchids) and they reached out to the company buying the equipment and directed them to call Anristu, and then those same CIA CI folks called Anristu and told them that it would be perfectly fine to reveal that the CIA was purchasing those pieces to an equipment broker who was on the other line so that the equipment broker could be told to call the CIA IG?

Something does not smell right with a governments version of what went down and there is too much improbability in their version of what happened, and in what order.

-jma



TSCM/SO Group wrote:

He’s fire trucked………

 

 

Mitch Davis
TSCM/Special Operations Group
20 Music Square West,Suite 208
Nashville,TN 37203 USA
615 251 0441
Fax 615 523 0300
mit..._at_tscmusa.com
www.tscmusa.com

"maintaining a higher degree of excellence"
******************************
Tools for investigators at www.covertworx.com

---

From: socalsweeps [mailto:socal..._at_aol.com]
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 11:34 AM
To: TSCM-L
Subject: [TSCM-L] {4816} Test Equipment - complete article

 

 

Originally published 05:00 a.m., March 2, 2010, updated 11:05 a.m., March 2, 2010

CIA technician arrested on theft charges

Bill Gertz

A CIA technical-support official has been arrested on charges of selling more than $60,000 worth of pilfered agency electronic gear.

Todd Brandon Fehrmann, a communications-technology specialist with the agency, was arrested Friday morning at his office in Virginia and charged in a criminal complaint with stealing government equipment and selling it to a Massachusetts-based electronics equipment broker.

The FBI complaint unsealed Friday stated that Mr. Fehrmann worked for an unidentified U.S. government agency. However, U.S. officials and Mr. Fehrmann confirmed he was a CIA employee.

"This agency takes very seriously any allegation of misconduct, period," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said, who added that he was not discussing any particular case. He declined further comment.

Reached by phone at his home in Reston, Va., Mr. Fehrmann declined to comment on the arrest, but said he is no longer employed with the CIA. Mr. Fehrmann's attorney, Paul Kemp, also declined to comment.

According to the affidavit, Mr. Fehrmann arranged the sale of several handheld spectrum analyzers — high-technology devices with military applications that can measure and check cell-phone signals and equipment — to a company called Bizi International Inc.

The buyer became suspicious after noticing that two analyzers were new and contacted the manufacturer, Anritsu, and learned they were sold recently to the CIA. The discovery triggered a CIA inspector general investigation of Mr. Fehrmann last month, which led to an FBI probe.

"This appears to have been detected internally rather quickly — just as it should have been — and the cooperation with law enforcement was good," said a U.S. official familiar with the case.

The CIA equipment seized by the FBI in the case included 10 Anritsu analyzers, one Rhode & Schwartz analyzer and a Fluke electronic testing device. The affidavit stated that the value of half the equipment is $60,000 and that the investigation was continuing.

Mr. Fehrmann is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Thursday.

According to the affidavit, Mr. Fehrmann, who analyzed and bought communications gear, identified himself to the purchaser in a telephone conversation as a self-employed independent government contractor who in the past worked on "rebuilding telecommunication infrastructure in Iraq." According to the affidavit, he said he was not going back to Iraq and needed to sell surplus equipment.

Mr. Fehrmann told The Times it was "not correct" that he was involved in telecommunications projects in Iraq. He said he did not work in Iraq.

Communications experts say spectrum analyzers have a variety of security uses. They can be used for checking the security of intelligence communications or for countering or tracking those who plant and trigger improvised explosive devices, which commonly use cell phones as part of the triggering device.

Anritsu, manufacturer of two types of analyzers taken from the CIA, stated on its Web page that the analyzers have several uses, including measuring cell phone base-station signals, mapping signal strength to determine where to place antennas, base stations and signal repeaters.

Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:17 CST