U.S. Army Officer and Whistleblower Reveals Cover-Up of Terror Funding

“DARK ELEMENTS AND DARK CHARACTERS”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 21, 2015) — In a three-hour interview with Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot on October 1, 2014, 2Lt. Scott Bennett said that he is the only active Military Reserve member who has been tried and convicted in a civilian court.

After working for the State Department, as a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and having been commissioned an officer in the Army Reserve focusing on psychological warfare and counterterrorism efforts, Bennett was recruited to work for Booz Allen Hamilton, a U.S. Defense Department contractor, in 2008.

His work during the George W. Bush administration between 2003 and 2008 had involved the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, and U.S. intelligence services.

In early 2010, Bennett was offered a position at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, FL to utilize his skills as a Terrorist Threat Finance Analyst, combining his two roles as Army officer with a Top Secret/SCI clearance and Booz Allen Hamilton employee charged with “trying to find out what the U.S. was doing wrong and doing right” in the war against Islamic terrorists.

Bennett had considered it his duty to end the war against terrorists by cutting off their funding and using psychological warfare to defeat them intellectually.

Booz Allen Hamilton often hired former military members to work as its defense contractors.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden had also been employed by Booz Allen Hamilton when he told Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian (UK) of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying on the American people from a hotel room in Hong Kong in June 2013.

Bennett directly relates his attempts to expose terrorist funding sources to Snowden’s public revelations.  Bennett believes that Snowden revealed the information as he did after seeing what had happened to Bennett, who attempted to alert his superiors at Booz, his military chain of command, Congress and the media.

In a 76-page report sent to approximately 100 congressmen from his cell in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania dated “Memorial Day,” 2013, Bennett told of his discovery that money held by foreign banks, particularly Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), had been funding Middle Eastern terrorism, resulting in the unnecessary deaths and injuries of U.S. servicemen and women, and called for a special hearing and congressional investigation.

Bennett sent another communication to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, and former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon.

Rogers and McKeon chose not to run for re-election in 2014.

On page iii of his report, Bennett explained that he had found that a “concerted effort to punish and silence whistleblowers” attempting to perform their assigned duties in identifying America’s enemies had been carried out by the federal government.

On page 1, Bennett began his report:

When it comes to financing international terrorists with secret foreign bank accounts and then covering it up and silencing the whistleblower who reported it, nobody quite does it better than the United States Government–more specifically the U.S. Department of Justice and the Senate.

Bennett was released from prison last February and provided Cassidy with the first of a growing number of interviews on the intelligence he gathered, how he attempted to report it, and how he came to be a federal civilian prisoner for two years.  However, he has not revealed any classified information in accordance with his officer’s oath.

While imprisoned in Pennsylvania, he met Brad Birkenfeld, who in 2007 had testified to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired at that time by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI).  Then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was a member of the subcommittee and, according to Bennett, heard Birkenfeld testify about the existence of 19,000 Swiss bank accounts belonging to various parties in the Middle East which were funding terrorist activities.

Levin announced his retirement from Congress in early March 2013; Bennett believes that the information contained in his reports contributed to that decision.

While in prison, Birkenfeld and Bennett compared notes and realized that they had both been imprisoned as a result of blowing the whistle on UBS’s funding of terror directly tied to the United States’ national security and deaths of its soldiers.

Birkenfeld had previously attempted to provide documentation on the Swiss bank accounts to the Department of Justice and the IRS, which reportedly indicated no interest in it and failed to subpoena him.

On page 72 of his report, Bennett wrote that Barack Obama “ran the show” against Birkenfeld, who was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for allegedly failing to fully disclose information about which he had testified to the Permanent Subcommittee.

One of Obama’s 2008 bundlers was chairman of UBS Americas who resigned in 2012 to “start his own advisory firm.”

After relocating to Tampa on his new assignment on a “VIP” flight from Washington, DC, on April 23, 2010, Bennett was stopped at the gate to his base at gunpoint, ordered out of his vehicle, and taken to the Tampa police station, where he was interrogated.  He told Cassidy that he was “stopped” from blowing into a breathalizer machine and that there “was no DUI.”

He was held in jail overnight and released the next day.  Bennett believed that the event might have been staged as a “test” of his abilities in advance of his planned deployment overseas.

However, a second stop resulted in his being handcuffed and questioned in a police car, then later, at the police station with his hands behind his back, accused of having unregistered firearms on the military base.

The U.S. Department of Justice then charged Bennett with having made a “base housing paperwork error,” making a false statement, wearing his military uniform without authority, and violating firearms laws.  He was later charged by what he described as a “false affidavit” for “impersonating a police officer” by DOJ prosecutor Sara Sweeney.

Bennett said he expected the entire case to be “thrown out,” but his JAG attorney failed to submit a Motion to Dismiss; rather, he made a Motion to Suppress evidence.  An Air Force Major was brought in as prosecutor, and a civilian court found him guilty.

Bennett told Cassidy that it was “the first time” an Air Force Major in uniform prosecuted a U.S. Army officer.

The judge gave Bennett an “enhanced” sentence of 36 months.

A prosecutor in McMinn County, TN asked for “enhanced” punishment for CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) after he attempted to expose local government corruption to the county grand jury.  Fitzpatrick is serving a three-year sentence for “aggravated perjury” and “extortion,” although a criminal complaint against him was never filed.

Fitzpatrick considers himself a whistleblower after he was falsely court-martialed in 1990 by his commanding admiral, John Bitoff.  He has accused his defense counsel, Kevin Martis “Andy” Anderson, of forging his signature on a “confession” document.  The Navy has refused to release the entirety of the record of court-martial and has not responded to correspondence about it made last year by both Fitzpatrick and The Post & Email.

Since that time, Fitzpatrick has worked to expose other military “command racketeers” and criminal syndicates, including in eastern Tennessee, where he moved in 2007 to assist SSgt. Ray Girouard in his court-martial defense.

On April 30, 2010, Navy veteran Darren Wesley Huff was charged with two federal firearms violations for driving to Madisonville, TN ten days prior to attend a hearing for Fitzpatrick.  Huff had patronized a local restaurant with a friend while his firearms were locked in the toolbox attached to his truck.  Nevertheless, he was charged with transporting firearms across state lines for use in a “civil disturbance.”  He is serving the last few months of a four-year sentence in federal prison in Texarkana, TX.

Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were among the recipients of Bennett’s Memorial Day report from prison.  Bennett told Cassidy that of the more than 100 recipients, only Paul responded, albeit with a form letter.

Bennett has urged all Americans wishing to hold their government accountable to submit requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to their congressmen.  Bennett stated that had Congress responded when the documentation first became available through Birkenfeld in 2007, much terror funding could have been halted by 2010.

Birkenfeld was released from prison, reportedly paid $104 million, and has never spoken publicly again on the Swiss bank accounts to anyone’s knowledge.

Bennett told Cassidy that during his odyssey from Washington, DC to Florida to the federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, he observed “dark elements and dark characters” in a panorama of either incompetence or deliberate acts of treason against the United States.

On Wednesday, The Post & Email contacted Paul through his website “contact” form:

If acceptable through this portal, this is a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the following:

Any and all documents received by Sen. Paul’s office from all sources between January 1, 2009 and January 21, 2015 containing the name “Scott Bennett” and the terms “UBS” and “Booz Allen Hamilton.”

I am willing to pay reasonable costs for copying and postage.

Thank you.

A similar message was sent to Cruz’s media representative, press@cruz.senate.gov.

Bennett stated that he has sent his report to all major media, including Fox News and The Guardian, none of which has shown an interest.  He has written several books on his experiences and believes that Americans can either demand government accountability or succumb to a “police state.”

In describing his book, “Shell Game,” Bennett wrote on his website:

It is hoped this information will empower you with the knowledge, confidence, and relationships that will make you powerful in the arena of public policy. As a leader of your community, and a liaison to the highest levels of the intelligence community, you now have the duty, the burden, and the blessing to enlighten your family, friends, and neighbors about your discoveries—and the feelings they inspire. Make no mistake, your family and friends’ freedom is dependent upon your work to awaken them; and as difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable, as arousing people content in their sleep can be, it is our spiritual calling and duty to do so. So I encourage you in your challenge.