After the 9/11 terror attacks, U.S. intelligence agencies flush with money began pumping defense contractors with cash in the hopes of averting another terror attack.
One of the recipients of that windfall was Dennis Montgomery, a Reno, Nevada, software designer and frequent gambler who claimed to have come with software that would help the CIA penetrate deep inside al Qaeda’s systems.
At various times, Montgomery insisted his programs could identify terrorists’ faces and weapons through drone footage, or spot submarines deep underwater, receiving millions in contracts from the Air Force and the military’s Special Operations Command. But the jewel of Montgomery’s company was a program he claimed could detect messages to al Qaeda sleeper cells hidden in broadcasts from Qatar’s al Jazeera network.
CIA employees intrigued by the supposed Al Jazeera decoding technology moved into Montgomery’s Nevada office, and
Montgomery’s companies received at least $20 million from the U.S. government for what was then considered “the most important, most sensitive” technology in the agency’s repertoire, the New York Times reported in 2011.
“They began to believe, in this kind of war fever, that you could find Al Qaeda messages hidden in al Jazeera broadcasts,” New York Times reporter James Risen, who wrote a book about Montgomery’s business, said in 2014.
Montgomery’s supposed insights on al Qaeda reached the highest levels of the U.S. government, with insight that Montgomery provided prompting the George W. Bush administration to raise the terror threat level to “orange,” its second-highest rating.
In Dec. 2003, according to a Playboy report,
Montgomery claimed he had discovered information in a TV broadcast proving that al Qaeda hijackers were set to hijack planes flying to the United States from Europe and Mexico.
President Bush himself blocked the flights, ordering them to turn around or stay on the ground. The administration even considered shooting down the planes based on Montgomery’s information, according to the Times.
But according to reports and former employees,
Montgomery’s supposed technology was all a hoax. One employee quoted in the Playboy report claimed
Montgomery had ordered him to fake a test for U.S. military officials, tricking the officials into believing Montgomery’s software could detect weapons in drone footage.
French intelligence officials, furious that Montgomery’s data had been used to ground French planes, debunked the “technology” and reportedly convinced CIA officials to drop Montgomery, according to the Times.
“We got played,” an ex-intelligence official told the Times in 2011.