Pentagon Analyst Kept Intel Job After Joining Jan. 6 Mob, Planned to Kidnap Jewish Leaders

[Nevilledog]

https://theintercept.com/2023/03/13/january-6-military-intelligence-hatchet-speed/

No paywall
https://archive.is/d2t6B


IN 2018, a newly hired software engineer at a defense and intelligence contractor in the Washington, D.C., suburbs was assigned to a team led by a senior developer named Hatchet Speed.

At first, the new engineer, Richard Ngo, got along well with Speed. They sometimes went out to lunch together and socialized away from the office. “Speed was my mentor at Novetta as the software lead,” Ngo later said in court testimony. “We worked together every day.”

But after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Ngo noticed that Speed, a longtime Navy reservist who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst and held other sensitive cyber and intelligence posts in connection with Naval Special Warfare units, seemed to be changing. Ngo had always known that Speed was a gun enthusiast, but after the Capitol riot, he became more openly anti-government than he had ever been before. “He was just frustrated with just how everything was going,” Ngo testified, adding that Speed was “panic-buying” guns.

What Ngo didn’t realize was that Speed, who had legally changed his first name from Daniel to Hatchet in 2007, according to Utah court records, had been an apocalyptic far-right extremist long before January 6.

In fact, Hatchet Speed was a self-described member of the Proud Boys working deep inside the U.S. intelligence community. He joined other Proud Boys members to storm the Capitol on January 6, but he got away undetected and continued to work in sensitive jobs in the months after the insurrection, even as he amassed a huge arsenal of weapons and began to think about kidnapping Jewish leaders and others he considered an existential threat. He wasn’t arrested until 18 months after the insurrection, and no investigation has been conducted to determine whether he compromised classified information, a Navy spokesperson said. Officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on any possible damage to U.S. intelligence resulting from Speed’s decadeslong access to classified information.

*snip*

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Are these Proud Boys, etc, really that hard to weed out?

Honestly I think it's these government rotting from the inside stories that worry me more than the more overt issues.

[crickets]

2. *sigh* So... who was responsible for the regular background checks?

This guy is a dangerous nutbar. How did it take so long to notice? Why was so little done about it?

Three active-duty Marines were given new intelligence assignments even after they were involved in the January 6 mob, The Intercept reported in February, including one who was reassigned to work inside the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. The three Marines were finally arrested two years after they stormed the Capitol.

Oh, come on.

[slightlv]

3. I think the timeframe between regular background checks

may be too long. I want to think I was just coming up on my 2nd, and I was closing in on 20 years from my first check - first as a contractor, and then as a civilian DoD. A lot can happen in 20 years that isn't picked up unless someone actually runs it up the command structure and continues follow up. But that can be a damned scary path to choose, depending on where you're working and who you are in the pecking order.

Problem is, the backlog for background checks was so overburdened when I finally got mine approved, it had me working on the job for 2 months basically doing nothing, simply because I didn't have the security clearance. And remember, this was (now) way over 20 years ago. So much more to check these days than then... all of the stuff from the past, plus foreign influence AND terrorist extremist influences. The office doesn't have enough people, and of course, the R's don't want to fund the office.

[crickets]

4. That is a problem.

Thanks for the info, slightlv. I do wonder, with the budget the US military has, why more money isn't being spent on such a vital national security issue.

[bottomofthehill]

6. Depends on the type of clearence.

Top Secret every 5 years
Secret every 10
Public trust was something like 12

The people with the information must be willing to act in the information.

Filling out an SF 86 every 5 years is often enough

[slightlv]

8. Well, like I said mine was coming up on 20 years.

I held "Secret" (no big deal, really for what I did). But still... but also it was way over 20 years ago now. And, if it WAS suppose to be 10 years, then they skipped at least two people I know personally --- me and my coworker who started with me -- on our updates.

And believe me, I never wanted to go through that multi page form again. Just that alone was enough to want to make me call it a career! (LOL) I was at the point I couldn't remember what I had for breakfast at the beginning of the week, no way could I have answered the questions at that point that I had to research, even, the first time around!

[UpInArms]

5. I am thoroughly disgusted

🤦🏽?♀️

[Samrob]

7. Wonder if Rachel would do a special on the infiltrators? They are every level of our military and

Executive Branch.

[ancianita]

10. Yes, and its military contractors that skirt under the radar for doing background checks

on their own hires. The military budget itself allocates for the contracts of contractors; and if the military doesn't monitor the contractors, these contractors' poor spending priority problems can go undetected.

The biggest problem for the military is its contractor controls, imo.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[RockRaven]

11. "no investigation has been conducted to determine whether he compromised classified information"

They didn't even bother saying "we can't say one way or another." Just jumped right to "nah."

[2live is 2fly]

12. Come on man, when you hear this guy was named Daniel by his parents but legally changed

his name to fucking HATCHET, bells & whistles should've been going off left n right. I know at first it may seem petty, but its something you need to think about. Changing your name from one that's normal to Hatchet, (IMO) says a lot about your mental state, your psyche! "Hatchet Speed" WOW that tells me this guy has an unhealthy & huge ego, plus has a need to let ppl know he's very special.