Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy. Chapter One: ‘My family is military’

[bemildred]

MILTON, ONT., APRIL 2014 Guards at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex, a maximum-security jail near Toronto known to inmates as the Milton Hilton, came to rouse their newest prisoner from a concrete bed in the intake holding cells. Pulling back the hoodie covering his face, they found his T-shirt had been yanked up and twisted around his throat as a ligature.

The distraught prisoner was Matt DeHart, a 29-year-old American who had been brought to jail days earlier by a Canada Border Services Agency official and five police officers, who arrested him at the apartment he shares with his parents while fighting for refugee protection here.

Pulled from the cell and taken to hospital, he appeared to suffer no serious physical injury but underwent a mental health assessment. After returning to jail, Matt then dived headfirst from his bunk onto the concrete floor of his cell, requiring another urgent hospital visit. He told doctors he had crashed on purpose because he “had no hope.”

Days later, Matt appeared by video link at a detention review before a tribunal of Canada’s Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB). It took half an hour for jail guards to retrieve him from a one-to-one suicide watch cell and sit him in front of the camera. Matt peered into the lens. He looked dreadful: unshaven and unkempt, his eyes red and swollen, his lids heavy from medication. He squinted and grimaced.

http://news.nationalpost.com/matt-dehart-claims-hes-wanted-for-working-with-anonymous/

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1. ‘They think of WikiLeaks like Al-Qaeda’

WASHINGTON, D.C., 2010 Paul DeHart drove his son Matt in the family’s black Honda CRV through the snow-covered streets of Washington, toward Wisconsin Avenue, a major thoroughfare bisecting the capital from the Potomac River. Paul pulled to a stop near the U.S. Naval Observatory property, where the official residence of the Vice President sits.

It had been a sombre 1,100-kilometre drive through a late-winter storm from their home in Indiana and, if the DeHarts were aware of either of these D.C. landmarks, neither was on their minds that day. Their destination was a couple of blocks further along: 2650 Wisconsin Ave., home of the embassy of the Russian Federation. It is one of the largest and most distinctive embassies in the capital, partly because of its Soviet architecture but mostly for the Cold War-era security around it.

Father and son said emotional goodbyes.

“I have to leave, I’m sorry,” Matt recalled saying. “That shook up our whole family because we are very close.” After the FBI raided the DeHart’s home, officially looking for child pornography but, Matt believed, really investigating his links to Anonymous, the hacktivist group, and WikiLeaks, the whistleblower organization, he no longer felt safe.

http://news.nationalpost.com/matt-dehart-no-longer-felt-safe-after-fbi-raided-his-home-so-he-decided-to-visit-the-russian-embassy/

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2. ‘I was gone. I was broken’

CALAIS, MAINE, 2010 On Aug. 6, 2010, Matt DeHart was taken from a cell inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention centre in Calais, Maine, after crossing from Canada, and led to what looked like a medical office, he said. Steered past a bed covered by a long sheet of white paper, he was pushed into a seat resembling a dentist’s chair.

“Another guy comes in, in a lab coat,” Matt said, his words coming in short bursts between deep inhales of air. “They sat me down in this chair, forcibly took my arm and they gave me an IV. Seriously, they held my arm down and stuck me with an [intravenous needle].”

He thought they were just drawing blood until the man in the lab coat hooked up a drip bag, used for administering fluids, not drawing them out.

“Your mind is already blown from all the other stuff, but a forced IV?” he said. Matt believes he was drugged, although he doesn’t know with what. He was then taken to a private room to meet two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

http://news.nationalpost.com/matt-dehart-claims-fbi-tortured-him-and-grilled-him-about-anonymous-and-wikileaks/

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3. ‘No apparent danger’

BANGOR, MAINE, 2010 As his whirlwind first appearance in court drew to a close on Aug. 11, 2010, Matt DeHart started to stand so a U.S. marshal could handcuff him and return him to jail. He then abruptly slumped back down and slowly slid out of the chair and onto the courtroom floor.

He lay shaking and sobbing, not responding to questions from the federal marshal or the public defender assigned to his case. The lawyer phoned Matt’s dad in Indiana and held his cellphone to the young man’s ear to soothe him. “After making unintelligible responses” he gradually returned to some coherence, reported Judy Harrison, who was covering the litany of cases being heard that day for the Bangor Daily News.

Matt was eventually led out of court and returned to jail.

“Talking to him on the phone, he sounded like a zombie,” said Paul DeHart, Matt’s father.

http://news.nationalpost.com/matt-dehart-breaks-down-in-court-as-child-pornography-charges-brought-against-him/

[leftyohiolib]

4. tinker tailor

[bemildred]

5. Good movie, but not enough explosions in it. nt

[leftyohiolib]

6. sounds like a robert ludlum story

[bemildred]

7. Le Carre did Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy I think.

[Jefferson23]

8. This and all your follow up OP's, unfucking believable..or should be. sigh. K&R

[struggle4progress]

9. That's a long but interesting read. Thanks for posting it

[bemildred]

10. Yes, I think I've read of this guy before.

On the one hand he was what I would call naive, you won't find me being cute and rebellious on the internet to show off. On the other hand, it gives you a feel for the cluelessness and desperation of the security cops that they invest this much time and effort on this guy. And it gives a feel for the exercise of arbitrary power which has become so popular lately. And I confess that I did some things when I was young that I prefer not to talk about now.

And just the excessiveness of it all. It's like people have lost their minds. I'll go see if I can find the fifth.

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11. ‘Every minute is precious’

FORT FRANCES, ONT., 2013 Matt DeHart and his father, Paul, took turns driving a pick-up truck, borrowed from a church friend, during their 23-hour drive north from Indiana, with Paul making sure he was behind the wheel when they reached the border crossing from Minnesota to Fort Frances, Ont.

Paul paid the US$6 fee to cross the bridge and the family rolled to a stop at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) post on the other side. Paul handed over his and his wife Leann’s passports and identity cards showing they are retired members of the U.S. military; because Matt’s passport had been confiscated by the Tennessee court when releasing him on bail, they turned in Matt’s birth certificate with his expired military ID from his enlistment as a drone pilot. Paul then said they were U.S. citizens fleeing their country and making an asylum claim in accordance with the United Nations’ convention against torture.

The border guard stared at them wide-eyed.

That reaction made the DeHarts feel their choice of this remote border post was the right one. They had done their best to move covertly until they crossed the border: they had packed the few things they took with them into Leann’s car at night and then drove to the church where Paul was a pastor and swapped the car for their friend’s truck; Matt cut off his court-ordered monitoring bracelet and left it behind in a graveyard.

http://news.nationalpost.com/matt-dehart-waits-in-jail-as-canadian-authorities-decide-his-fate/