Claim: “The Hammer” Originally a Military Product Used to “Influence Elections”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 28, 2020) — In a December 23 on-camera interview between former NSA program developer J. Kirk Wiebe and The New American editor William F. Jasper, Wiebe made the unprecedented claim that the “capability” behind an alleged government supercomputer now known as “The Hammer” and software dubbed “Scorecard” was originally developed by the Department of Defense shortly after 9/11 with the purpose of altering election results in Middle-Eastern countries to produce pro-American outcomes.

“This capability was actually invented and built for use by our own soldiers in the Middle East as we waged the battle on terror,” Wiebe said at 7:12, “and it was designed to give us access to voting systems in Middle East countries where we didn’t have a friendly-people position; they were not pro-U.S. or even amenable to the movement of U.S. troops within their borders, so we would try to influence elections — the military would; they were the ones who had this tool — to more favor U.S. positions, whether military or political or whatever.”

Wiebe’s claim provides a new twist in the narrative of nearly four years at The American Report claiming that a self-described “whistleblower” and former government contractor, Dennis Montgomery, exclusively built The Hammer and designed software known as “Scorecard” which unnamed parties allegedly commandeered to alter the outcome of the November 3 presidential election.

The American Report first claimed The Hammer’s alleged interference in the election in an October 31 article identifying Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as the perpetrator, although offering no documentation or corroboration. However, Fanning and Jones have contended that The Hammer’s original purpose was to “keep America safe after 9/11.” On October 31 Fanning and Jones wrote, “Montgomery originally designed and built THE HAMMER in 2003 as a foreign surveillance system to protect America after 9/11.”

The previous week, American Report writers Alan Jones and Mary Fanning reported that The Hammer had gathered data on Hunter Biden’s overseas business activities. That claim came approximately 11 days after The New York Post released emails alleged to have come from a laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden left unclaimed at a repair shop and ultimately provided to the FBI.

In interviews beginning last year with Dave Janda, Sarah Westall, and Brannon Howse, Wiebe, himself known as a government whistleblower, characterized Montgomery as an individual deserving of the highest level of respect from Americans in recognition of Montgomery’s alleged exposure of government surveillance programs illegally directed against unsuspecting citizens.

Since May 2019, in addition to Wiebe and co-whistleblower/former NSA colleague Bill Binney, Janda has often hosted Fanning and Jones to discuss “parallel platforms” of government surveillance and Montgomery’s claims, although of late, Janda has gone silent on the issue.

Wiebe and Binney retired from their NSA positions in 2001, and both reported having been victims of government-initiated raids.

Neither Fanning, Jones nor Wiebe has disclosed that Montgomery is under indictment for five alleged felonies stemming from a million-dollar check written to a Las Vegas casino in 2008 with insufficient funds nor that he has a past replete with litigation; soured business arrangements; false claims, including against then-gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons; and a failure to provide evidence of his software’s alleged capabilities in a lawsuit he brought against former New York Times author James Risen.

As The Post & Email has noted, all criminal defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The next hearing in the Nevada case against Montgomery, according to the Clark County district attorney’s office, is in March 2021.

In late 2009, Playboy Magazine‘s Aram Roston wrote a detailed article assigning to Montgomery the moniker of “The Man Who Conned the Pentagon” based on Montgomery’s claim, while working for the government in the early 2000s, to have invented software which could detect hidden terrorist messages in al-Jazeera broadcasts, a claim Montgomery never proved.

Nevertheless, Montgomery was rehired by the federal government in 2009, reportedly working through sometime in 2010. While Montgomery has made myriad claims as to the work he performed as an NSA and CIA contractor, when pressed for details, he invokes the fact that in 2007, then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte imposed the “State Secrets Privilege” to preclude him from testifying in a lawsuit involving national security.

However, the imposition of the State Secrets Privilege is questionable under the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act and subsequent changes effected in 2007 when a current or former government employee reports to authorities what he or she believes to be illegal activity on the part of the government.

In 2015, Montgomery was provided two immunity agreements by the Justice Department and FBI, respectively, prior to testimony he provided as to the evidence he claimed to have of illegal government surveillance. Fanning and Jones have made many claims as to the information Montgomery imparted during those two meetings but provided no evidence or corroboration.

In his memoir, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio: An American Legend,” the former Maricopa County Sheriff wrote that Montgomery never produced the evidence he claimed to have of government surveillance of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Arpaio’s personal cell phone, and the breaching of more than 150,000 county residents’ bank accounts after having been hired as a confidential informant with the purpose of doing just that.

In addition to local surveillance, Montgomery told Arpaio’s office in the fall of 2013, The Hammer collected information on then-businessman Donald Trump; many of his relatives and employees; more than 150 federal judges, radio host Alex Jones and other prominent businessmen without a warrant.

Mike Zullo, an investigator tasked by Arpaio with overseeing Montgomery’s work for the MCSO, informed this writer that during hours of interviews leading up to his contractual agreement in which he discussed The Hammer, Montgomery never mentioned “Scorecard,” nor was Montgomery ever forthcoming about the source of his information.

In November 2014, Wiebe was one of two former NSA specialists who analyzed data Montgomery provided to the MCSO on 47 hard drives and found it to be deceptive and indicative of “a con.” Detailed in report format for Arpaio, Wiebe and Thomas Drake described Montgomery as “a complete and total FRAUD.”

When queried last month by this publication as to the evidence Montgomery claims to have of The Hammer’s role in vote-switching, Wiebe said he had not seen any evidence but that “Montgomery awaits government authorization that will allow him to produce that evidence (data).”

No one has yet heard publicly from Montgomery.

Wiebe told The Post & Email he was unaware as to which states were affected by alleged vote-switching on November 3. However, in his interview with Jasper, he provided details of the process by which votes were allegedly changed by The Hammer and Scorecard.

The altering of votes also occurred in 2012, Wiebe, Fanning and Jones have alleged, sourced solely to Montgomery.

Another new revelation Wiebe made in his interview with Jasper is that he “has a friend who is operating The Hammer on his computer.” “He has it, because these tools were leaked over many years of use,” Wiebe claimed. “They have been leaked through various leakers, either at the NSA or CIA, and unfortunately, people who like to dabble in the internet and like to have fun – we call them ‘hackers’ – love to get their hands on these kinds of things and what they do is experiment, see what they can do, what they can manipulate, what they can break into…”

At 10:27 in the video, Wiebe claimed that Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret), who he referred to as “another friend,” “field-tested the Scorecard and Hammer” in their earlier forms allegedly created by the U.S. Department of Defense.

In an upcoming article, The Post & Email will present definitive evidence as to whether or not Montgomery constructed The Hammer.